Towers and labs

Arcana Varia adds two kinds of structure to explore: sealed Wizard Towers and ruined Forsaken Laboratories. Both are rare. Towers are about 72 chunks apart (at least 28), labs about 44 (at least 14).

With JEI installed, every lab block, journal and Thurible blueprint has an info page saying what it does and where it is found.

Wizard Towers

A tower is a climb from the door to the top. It comes in four shapes: classic, thaumic, crooked and shattered. It is built from one of over 200 palettes: 10 vanilla ones, and the rest from about 50 other mods, used only when that mod is installed.

Part	How it works
The ward	Step inside and the ward seals behind you. While it is sealed you can't leave, fly, glide or teleport. Ender pearls, chorus fruit and other mods' teleports are turned aside. The walls can't be broken or built on, and explosions spare them. You can still place and take torches, lattice parts and essentia jars.
Floors	Each floor is a fight, a puzzle or a parkour run, with a warded hatch to the next one.
The top	A guardian waits at the top. When it dies the ward falls for good and the vault opens.
Dying	You wake outside the tower. Once nobody is left inside (all died, or gone for a minute) the tower resets: the locks re-arm, the guardian goes back to sleep and the ward waits for the next climber.

Forsaken Laboratories

Labs are ruined workshops with locked doors, a guardian chamber and chests. There are 40 kinds. 17 belong to the vanilla world:

Overworld	Underground and water	Nether	End
badlands, cherry, cliff, desert, frost, jungle, savanna, swamp	cave, deep dark, dripstone, underwater	basalt, crimson, soul, warped	end

Other mods

The other 23 are built for dimension mods and load only when that mod is installed:

Mod	Labs
Twilight Forest	aurora, castle, dark tower, labyrinth, naga
The Undergarden	depthrock, shiverstone, tremblecrust
The Aether II	agiosite, holystone, icestone, sentry
Aerial Hell	catacombs, golden, lunatic, mud
Stellaris	crater, forest
Tropicraft	mangrove, tiki, volcano
Voidscape	thunder, void

Wizard Tower palettes come from about 50 more mods in the same way.

Puzzles

Every puzzle block gives a redstone signal when it is solved, so it can open a door, a hatch or a lift.

Block	How it works
Aspect Lock	wants a set amount of one aspect, poured from a phial, a Thurible, a lattice outlet or a tube
Rune Stone and Rune Lock	press the stones in the right order; the clue is somewhere in the room, and a wrong rune starts it over
Sun Lens, Beam Mirror and Beam Receptor	the lens throws a beam up to 32 blocks; right-click mirrors to turn it until it reaches the receptor
Vis Lift	lifts whoever stands on it, up to 16 blocks; some run only once a lock is open
Phase Stone	solid for 2 seconds of every 4; rows of them make a wave to run along
Warded hatch	the way between tower floors

A lab's lattice floors use the Alembic Lattice: make the right compound and bring it to the lock.

Guardians

Each tower top and each lab has a Guardian Altar. The guardian rises from it: a large vanilla mob of one of seven kinds, with one or more traits. The boss bar names the kind and every trait it has. Killing it drops the altar's reward and, in a tower, opens the ward.

Guardian	Body	Health	Damage	Armor
Blighted Beast	ravager	260	10	8
Brass Colossus	iron golem	320	14	12
Drowned Thaumaturge	drowned, with a trident	210	8	6
Hellforged Fiend	piglin brute, with a golden axe	240	11	10
Hollow Magus	wither skeleton	200	9	8
Twisted Archmage	evoker	220	6	6
Void Stalker	enderman	200	10	4

Trait	What it does
Blazing	fire resistance; hits set you alight; throws fire volleys
Blinking	teleports around the room
Eldritch	an aura of Darkness
Mighty	hits harder and knocks you back
Sickening	an aura of Weakness
Spined	hurts whoever hits it
Stoneskin	tougher armor; can't be knocked back
Summoner	calls up pairs of vexes
Swift	moves faster
Undying	heals itself every 10 seconds
Vampiric	heals from the damage it deals
Venomous	hits poison
Warded	more armor; pushes you away with a pulse

What you find

Find	Where and what
Journals	Lab studies hold journals that reveal hidden research: Locks of the Thaumaturges, Notes on the Failed Experiments and The Architect's Diary.
Chests	Materials, lattice parts and Thurible blueprints. Studies sometimes hold a written Blueprint Scroll (a stair, an arch or a bench) for the Architect's Lens.
Tower vaults	One at the top of each tower: blueprints, scrolls, lattice parts and a journal.

For pack makers

The guardians and the Thurible's effects are datapack JSON, under data/<namespace>/arcanavaria/:

Folder	What it holds
lab_archetype/	guardian kinds: the mob, health, damage, armor, size, speed, held item and bar colour
lab_trait/	traits: particles, effects on itself, auras, on-hit effects, attributes and timed abilities (volley, blink, summon, heal, pulse)
lab_pool/	which kinds and traits a tower or lab draws from (tower_overworld, lab_overworld, lab_underwater, lab_nether, lab_end, default)
thurible_effect/	what each aspect's cloud does (see The Thurible)

An archetype or trait entry can list the dimensions it may appear in. Copy one of Arcana Varia's own files from the jar as a starting point.

The lab blocks are all in the creative tab, so you can build your own rooms by hand. Lab blocks can't be broken outside creative and drop nothing. The block tag #arcanavaria:lab_mutable lists what a player sealed in a tower may still place and take; add to it if one of your floors needs more.