Physical Magic

What it is

Tidal Lift lifting real water and sending it along an attack arc

Physical magic makes real, solid things for a short time: walls you can hide behind, steps you can climb and water you can throw. You can stand on them, and so can everyone else.

Rune	Tier	Mana	What it does
Strata Rise	II	9	Raises a stone wall five blocks wide and three high.
Tidal Lift	II	12	Lifts up to three nearby water sources and throws them along an arc. Each enemy is hit once and left Soaked.
Wind Steps	II	8	Builds five thin wind platforms ahead of you, rising as they go.

Each one has two fusions, all Tier III:

Fuse	Makes	Mana	What it does
Strata Rise + Fire	Cinder Bulwark	16	A glowing wall. Enemies who brush it take 2 damage, once per cast.
Strata Rise + Grow	Root Bulwark	16	A living wall that gives nearby allies Regeneration.
Tidal Lift + Fire	Boiling Surge	19	Scalding water: 5 damage once per enemy and 2 seconds of Weakness.
Tidal Lift + Shock	Thunder Tide	19	Charged water: 5 damage once per enemy, Soaked and 1 second of Slowness.
Wind Steps + Frost	Rime Causeway	16	A wider, three-block ice path.
Wind Steps + Shock	Thunder Walk	16	Charged steps. Enemies who touch one take 2 damage, once per cast.

How to get it

Each base rune is a Tier II rune: a Blank Rune, 2 Lapis Lazuli and a Gold Ingot, plus:

Strata Rise: Stone, Packed Mud and Flint.
Tidal Lift: a Prismarine Shard, Kelp and a Clay Ball.
Wind Steps: a Feather, a Breeze Rod and String.

For a fusion, put both runes and an Amethyst Shard on the Fusion Altar. It costs 3 XP levels. Full recipes are on Rune Recipes.

How to use it

Walls and steps last 8 seconds. Longer-lasting spells can stretch that to 20 seconds at most.
Steps give slow fall to nearby allies just before they vanish.
There’s a limit. You can have 64 blocks of this terrain at once, and the whole world 512.
Tidal Lift needs water: source blocks within 4 blocks of you sideways and 2 up or down. The water travels up to 10 blocks and stops at walls. The water goes back afterwards, so you can’t use it to copy water.
It never breaks your build. Walls and steps won’t replace valuable blocks, chests and the like, or a space a creature is standing in. They respect claims, the world border and build height. Cancelling the cast takes the terrain away.

Change it with another spell. Your side’s magic can turn Wind Steps into rime (Frost), charge them (Storm) or harden them (Earth). Fire turns a stone wall to cinder, Life turns it to roots, and Frost freezes flying water into a short ice platform. Changed terrain keeps its original timer.

Weaving many effects

An Amethyst Block on the Fusion Altar weaves effects together exactly, instead of making a named fusion. You can keep adding effects or other weaves, up to eight effects.

Effects in the weave	Tier needed	XP levels
2	The highest tier among them	3
3 or 4	At least III	6 or 9
5 to 8	IV	12 to 21

A weave costs the full mana of every effect in it. Saving sockets doesn’t save mana.
Only effects go in a weave. Use a Knot to save a whole sequence of shapes, modifiers and links in one socket.
A weave with an innate rune is a soul weave: always Tier IV, one innate only, and you can only cast it if that innate is your own.
Copy your innate: sneak and use a Blank Rune on the Fusion Altar. It costs the blank and 3 XP levels and gives you a rune of your own innate to weave with.

Tips and counterplay

Break their steps. Hostile wind magic blows Wind Steps away, and hostile fire melts rime.
Fire boils away a Tidal Lift while it’s in the air.
Raise a wall to block a beam or a charging enemy, then fire round it.
Try Self · Strata Rise or Self · Wind Steps in an open space first, to see where they land.