Beacon

"Beacons!. No, not "bacon" but a beam of light to pimp your castle with!."

- The Pretty Scary Update Promo Poster

A beacon is a unique block that projects a light beam skyward and can provide status effects to players in the vicinity.

Obtaining
A beacon can be mined successfully with any tool, or with bare hands.

Usage
Beacon blocks provide two unique functions:
 * An aesthetic landmark beam reaching into the sky, which can be visible from far away, only when placed atop a pyramid of specific mineral blocks.
 * Powers, which give players status effects within a certain radius (the visual beam must first be active)

Beacon blocks can also function as ordinary light sources, as they emit a light level 15 and can emit light while submerged underwater. Like other light sources, they will melt snow and ice.

Beam
A beam appears from a beacon if the beam is activated. The beam is visible from roughly the same distance as a single ordinary stack of blocks. If a render distance of 16 chunks is set, the beam of light is visible from up to 256 blocks away.

The color of the beam may be changed by placing up to 4 blocks of stained glass (or stained glass panes) anywhere above the beacon block. The beam will change colors according to the color of glass placed above it. Unlike other colored/dyed items, the beam color will change to match all of the colored glass above it. Also adding normal glass above the beacon will not change the default color, but will make other colors lighter.

Powers
The five primary powers are:
 * : Increased movement speed.
 * : Increased mining speed.
 * : Increased armor rating.
 * : Increased jumping distance and height.
 * : Increased melee damage.

The only secondary power is:
 * : Regenerates health.

Level 4 pyramids can also select a secondary power. This can either be regeneration or a tier II variation of the selected primary power. When selecting the tier II variant, regeneration is no longer provided by the beacon. When selecting regeneration, the tier II variant is no longer provided by the beacon, and will change into a tier I version.


 * Level 1 pyramid - (speed or haste)
 * Level 2 pyramid - (speed, haste, resistance, or jump boost)
 * Level 3 pyramid - (speed, haste, resistance, jump boost, or strength)
 * Level 4 pyramid - (speed, haste, resistance, jump boost, or strength, and regeneration)

Powers will always be reactivated within the vicinity of the pyramid. The effective radius depends on the number of pyramid levels. When a player travels outside the area-of-effect, the powers will persist for 4–8 seconds.

Activation
In order to activate a beacon, the beacon must adhere to the following requirements
 * Beacons in the Overworld and the End require an unobstructed view of the sky, though transparent blocks (including other beacon blocks) and water will not count as obstruction. Beacons can function in the Nether, but this requires that all terrain above them be naturally generated or transparent. Also, the beam will not appear.
 * The beacon is on top of a pyramid constructed from iron blocks, gold blocks, emerald blocks, and/or diamond blocks.
 * An iron ingot, gold ingot, emerald, or diamond is used to activate the powers (status effects) to players who remain within a certain radius.

Pyramids
Pyramids are the structures required to activate beacons. The more levels a pyramid has, the more powers will be available to choose from, and the wider its affected vicinity will be. The type of mineral block used to build the pyramid is entirely cosmetic and has no functional effect. Several different block types can be mixed without affecting functionality. There are four possible pyramid heights. If the pyramid is damaged so that the beacon is deactivated, it will "remember" the powers it was set for, and will reactivate once the pyramid is repaired with no additional resource cost. This applies to piston-altered pyramids as well. Multiple beacons can make use of the same specific mineral blocks below them. Combined pyramids do not need to be symmetrical. The image to the right shows a 6-beacon (2 by 3) pyramid. It requires a total of 244 mineral blocks, with a base layer of 10 by 11.

Range
The beacon forms a squared affected area around itself, the size of which depends on the pyramid type. The affected area has the same radius below the beacon as it does on the sides, however it travels up to the height limit (256) along the light beam, which makes it optimal to place beacons near the bottom of the map. This serves for a more optimal coverage of volume (making beacon powers available in your mine for example).

Since these squares are centered from the beacon, the radius indicates the distance from the beacon to 5 directions, excluding top.

Requirements for powers
Once the beacon is emitting a beam, it can then be fed 1 iron ingot, 1 gold ingot, 1 emerald, or 1 diamond, in order to provide powers (status effects) to players who remain within a certain radius. This is done through the beacon's GUI, which is displayed by pressing while looking at the beacon block.

In the GUI, place the item to be fed in the empty slot shown, and choose a primary power by clicking one of the choices displayed. Beacons sitting atop 4-level pyramids will also display secondary power choices, one of which can be clicked to provide a second simultaneous boost. When the Done button (green check mark) is clicked, the item will be consumed and the power will be activated. To set a beacon to different powers, another gem/ingot must be consumed.

Trivia

 * The player can leave a resource in the beacon block without clicking "Done".
 * The beam is 255 blocks tall, relative to the height where the beacon block itself was placed, so several beacon beams can stop at different heights.
 * If the player flies more than one block above the top of the light beam, the beam will disappear until the player moves five blocks below it.
 * A beacon's light beam does not extend all the way up to the block limit, and becomes increasingly more difficult to see if you are not looking directly at it in higher levels.
 * The texture of the beacon is 16x16, but only renders the 10x10 area in the center.
 * In the Nether a beacon's beam starts severely darkening at y127 making it almost invisible at the build limit y255.

Official release
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