Bookmaking
Books are made on a Crafting Bench as part of the Test of the Library of Alexandria. To make a book is a multi-stage process which results in a Library Book with a Quality value depending on the choices made.
Stages
The first choice to make is which type of Paper to bind the book. The Crafting Bench can make books with Papyrus Paper, Wood Paper or Vellum Paper. This lets you add a Leaf of the appropriate paper type to the book. Each Leaf takes one piece of Paper and adds 4 Quality points for Papyrus Paper and 8 Quality points for Wood Paper. At least two leaves need to be added before the option to bind the book appears. A maximum of 60 leaves can be added to a book, for a max quality at this stage of 240 for Papyrus and 480 for Wood.
When you are happy with the number of pages in your book, you have the option to bind the book with either Twine or Linen Cord. The amount of binding needed seems to be half the quantity, so a max of 120 Twine or 120 Linen Cord.
Adding Twine gives an extra quality boost of half the number of Twine used.
Adding Linen Cord gives extra quality equal to the number of Linen Cord used.
The next stage is to cover the book. This requires either 2 Leather or 2 Calfskin, and 2 Mandibular Glue. This cost is constant regardless of how many pages or the quality of the book. Adding Leather gives no extra quality points, whereas adding Calfskin doubles the quality of the book at this stage.
The final stage is an optional step where you can choose to cover the book with Foil. There are several options here:
- Foil the book with Gold Foil (Multiplies the Quality by 2)
- Foil the book with Water Metal Foil (Multiplies the Quality by 4)
- Foil the book with Sun Steel Foil
- Foil the book with Moon Steel Foil (Multiplies the Quality by 4)
- Foil the book with Thoth's Metal Foil (Multiplies the Quality by 8)
- Foil the book with Metal Blue Foil (Multiplies the Quality by 8)
- Foil the book with Octec's Alloy Foil (Multiplies the Quality by 10)
Each option requires 2 db of the chosen foil. Once the book is complete, you can 'Take the completed book' and it appears in your inventory as 'Library Book: Quality nnn'.
Authoring a Book
With a Library Book in your inventory, click on Self->Tests->Architecture->Library of Alexandria->Author a Book. This process takes 10 minutes (where you cannot move but can interact with buildings), it also needs you to have a Quill in your inventory, and 1/3 the Book Quality in Ink. The Ink is consumed by this process but the Quill is not.
After 10 minutes, you get the message in Main 'You've finished authoring your book. Hopefully a library will welcome its presence.' and your inventory will now contain a 'Library Book (Authored)' which shows the quality and also which region the book was authored.
The authored book can now be added to any wing of your Library