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Tired of inventory chests stuffed with duplicate guide books? Losing your "Materials and You" to a lava pocket? Dragging eight lexicons between bases every time you move? Runic Tome fixes that.
Runic Tome gives every player a single, persistent book called the Runic Tome. The moment any guide book enters your inventory — pickup, craft, quest reward, command, anything — the tome quietly absorbs it. The physical book vanishes; a new entry appears in your tome's library. One item, forever.
Open the tome to browse every manual you've ever collected. Click an entry. The real book opens, native UI and all.
data/<namespace>/runictome/books/*.json) that syncs to clients. No code, no patching./give, anything. The tome absorbs it near-instantly — you'll see the book disappear and a toast (with the book's name) confirming the unlock.That's it. No crafting recipe, no ritual, no GUI to learn. The mod is effectively invisible until you want to read.
Confirmed supported guide systems:
Add more via config or datapack: drop any item ID into extraBookItemIds in config/runictome-common.toml, or define books in data/<namespace>/runictome/books/*.json. Example config:
[integrations]
extraBookItemIds = [
"immersiveengineering:manual",
"occultism:dictionary_of_spirits",
"farmersdelight:cookbook",
]For mod authors: Runic Tome exposes a public GuideSystemAdapter API and an IMC registration path. If you ship a mod with its own guide system, hooking in takes about 20 lines of code. See the GitHub repository for details.
Q: Does this replace my existing books? A: It absorbs them into a virtual library on first contact. The original books vanish, but you can still open them through the tome with one click — and the original mod's native UI is preserved.
Q: What if I lose the tome? A: Your unlocked books are stored per-player, not in the tome itself. Craft a new tome (or use /give — the mod will re-give it automatically on next login if you don't have one), and your full library is still there.
Q: Does it work on dedicated servers? A: Yes. The mod is server-authoritative — all absorption decisions happen server-side and the unlocked-book list is synced to clients. Install it on both sides.
Q: Will it absorb something I don't want absorbed? A: No. The keyword catch-all only matches book-like items and skips block items and vanilla books. Functional gear is never absorbed: Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks spellbooks (and spell containers like scrolls) are detected by their item class/capability — so spellbooks from any Iron's Spellbooks addon, like Apprentice's Codex's "Isekai Travel Guidebook", are excluded automatically without needing a per-mod blocklist. RPG Lore is left to its own collection system. You can exclude anything else by mod ID, item ID, or item tag (#runictome:absorb_blocklist) via config — no code needed. And nothing is ever destroyed on a failed unlock — if a book can't be stored, the item simply stays in your inventory.
Q: How do I add support for a book my mod uses? A: If your mod uses Patchouli, it already works. If it uses a standalone item, add the item ID to extraBookItemIds. If you're building a new guide system, implement GuideSystemAdapter and register via IMC — see the GitHub README.
Q: What's the performance cost? A: Negligible. Books are absorbed event-driven (on pickup, craft, smelt, and container close). A timer sweep runs once per second by default (configurable via sweepIntervalTicks) as a safety net for inventory inserts that bypass Forge events, e.g. /give.
mods/ folder.Runic Tome has no hard dependencies. Patchouli and Tinkers' Construct are both detected at runtime if present — the mod will gracefully skip integrations that can't be loaded.
RUNIC-TOME-ARCHITECTURE.md in the repoLicense: MIT. Free to use in modpacks, streams, videos, and derivative works. Attribution appreciated but not required.
