Main Progression Steps

This is a walkthrough from start to finish, containing only the truly essential steps. The mod has loads of side stepping which holds the most interesting mechanics and unlocks, but that is not covered in this step by step walkthrough to keep it short.

+++ MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW +++

You can only experience a game or mod once. Give it 5 seconds and think about the consequences of your actions before you continue reading.

Chapter 1 - Start of a Journey

1. Obtain any of the three main gems from a geode (Amethyst deep underground, Citrine around sea level and Topaz in hill/mountains).
2. Build a Pigment Pedestal (used for basically all generic crafting recipes in Spectrum).
3. Crush gems via Anvil crushing (or other mod compat method like Create crushing). Gem powder is a main crafting component in pedestal crafting.
4. Craft any available Spectrum item via the pedestal.
5. Upgrade your Pigment Pedestal using all three gems and place it on a structure built by you called the Spectrum Focus, built from polished Basalt and polished Calcite (or Balcite for short).
6. You can now find a new ore found often in cliffs: Shimmerstone Gems. Collect them.
7. Experiment #1: Craft a Bottle of Fading. Place it next to any "soft organic" blocks like leaves, melons, pumpkins, etc. It will spread to these blocks, consuming them in the process. Mining the consumed blocks yields Vegetal.
8. Using Vegetal, craft Colored Saplings. Using these, you can grow Colored Trees, which you can now also find in the wild.
9. Mine the Colored Leaves manually, which yields Pigments. Try to find and collect all colored pigments. Once you do this, you will realize that you can't find Brown Pigments (including the gray-scale colors), since you are missing black to do so.
10. Build a Fusion Shrine, which also requires a structure. Use it to fuse all the three main shards with lava into Onyx Shards during a new moon, giving you access to black.
11. Using onyx, upgrade your Spectrum Focus into a Spectrum Temple.

Chapter 2 - Fall from Grace

1. You have to find three new ressources: Mermaid's Gems (found floating on ocean surfaces sometimes), Stratine Fragments (new Nether ore) and Quitoxic Reeds (found in swamps and mangroves)
2. Using mermaid gems, craft Liquid Crystal Buckets.
3. Experiment #2: Craft a Bottle of Failing. Be careful, this can spread to basically any block, but spreads only up to 15 blocks far. Let it consume Obsidian and mine it afterwards, collecting Neolith in the process.
4. Using the fusion shrine, craft the final, most powerful resource: The Perfect Compound, using all four basic gems, neolith and liquid crystal. Be prepared for glory!
5. You fucked up big time. The result is catastrophic, resulting in the spillage of a nasty liquid called Midnight Solution, spreading slightly and destroying any life it touches. The perfect compound you created is far from perfect, crumbling in your hands upon picking it up. You just made Midnight Aberration, a practically useless material.
6. Let any creature die in midnight solution, resulting in them dropping Midnight Chips, which you need.
7. You can now find a new ore spawning very close to bedrock: Azurite.
8. Experiment #3: You thought the last experiment was dangerous? Using midnight chips, raw azurite and dragon's breath (which means you need to have entered the End at this point), you craft a Bottle of Ruin. Be EXTREMELY careful with this, because while it also spreads to all blocks, it doesn't ever stop unlike Failing and takes forever to mine. This can literally ruin your world. Using this, let it consume Bedrock, which can then be mined for Bedrock Dust.
9. Using Ruin, carve a hole into the bottom bedrock layer of the overworld, giving you access to a new region called the Deeper Down.

Chapter 3 - Turn to Purity

1. Explore the Deeper Down (DD). There is a lot of stuff to find, but here is a list of things needed for the main progression:

• Find a new geode and collect its gems: Moonstone Shards. Use it to upgrade your pedestal structure a final time and build the Spectrum Palace.
  • To finish the structure, you will need Moonstone Chiseled Blocks, which you can only craft after the structure is complete. Therefore you'll have to borrow them from a structure found in step B.
  • Craft a white sapling to obtain White Pigment from it.
• Find a City in the DD. These can contain several structures. The important ones for the main progression are the Church (containing moonstone chiseled blocks) and the Seed Vaults (big dark blue structures surrounded by a wall of yellow Pyrite walls and a big transparent blue gate), which don't spawn in every city.
  • Enter the gate by having Dike Trinkets equipped (crafted from azurite) and either find Moonstone Cores found in a hidden chest there or get them as a drop from the Turrets positioned there.
• In case you missed it, the overworld contained several structures: Preservation Ruins, requiring you to solve puzzles. For now, you need to find the Color Mixing Ruin, identifiable by having colored spore blossoms in front of the gate.
  • After solving the puzzle to enter, you can find another gate with a Gray Spore Blossom. While being unsolvable in the beginning, you can now solve this puzzle thanks to Moonstone Powder and Onyx Powder. Obtain the Mysterious Locket from inside the chest behind this gate.
• You will find an entry inside your guidebook called "What Happened down there?", containing a list of 7 things to do. You will have to cross out at least 4 of these points, doesn't matter which. To solve these hints:
  • Find all seven DD biomes
  • Go to the bottom layer of the DD
  • Find another structure, located at the very bottom of the DD. Obtain Downstone Fragments from a chest within
  • Revive one of the disgusting bulbs found in the Black Langast biomes by using the Nature's Staff on it
  • Crack the fossils found in the Dragonrot Swamp biome by using a very powerful explosion, then mine the Dragonbone. Any explosion with a power of at least 6 will do, with the "intended" Spectrum-only solution being blowing up an Incandescent Amalgam right next to it
  • In the Crystal Gardens biome, you can find Hummingstone. Striking these blocks makes them hum, causing other hummingstones closeby to also hum. If you let a lot of these hummingstones hum this way at the same time, they will drop Resonance Shards
  • Find Moonstone Geodes

Chapter 4 - A Final Encore

1. Open the Mysterious Locket via the newly unlocked fusion recipe, using liquid crystal, white pigments, a moonstone core and the locket itself, revealing a Myterious Compass.
2. Go back to the DD and use the compass to find the final structure, which can be pretty far away.