What role do Relics play?
Relics are rare, indestructible items that are crucial to the creation of many, but not all, cornerstones. They are to be kept on stands which surround a cornerstone creator, much like bookshelves surround an enchanting table. Human players can steal relics even without a pickaxe. Thus it might be wise to guard them.
While one particular relic is all that is strictly required per given cornerstone, the larger the total variety of relics you have around the creator, the more powerful the cornerstones can be. This translates into cornerstones that allow for more material processing capabilities, more extravagant training algorithms, and larger pertinent construction areas for special buildings.
For some cornerstones, mainly the ones for the buildings that enable player sub-games, the strength of the cornerstone has no impact on the building's effectiveness. Thus the creation of these buildings' cornerstones perhaps only requires the cornerstone creator itself (without relics).
What role do Special Items play?
Special Items are not required in order to create a cornerstone. However, they are required in order to activate some special buildings after they are constructed. Primarily they are crucial to the special buildings that enable player sub-games. In order for these buildings to work to add interface features for player sub-games, the special building must be built, and it must have the special item inside.
In order to activate the new features, a player must then enter the building and click on the special item in the building.
So relics are used in the creation of cornerstones for special buildings, while special items are used inside the special buildings after the buildings' completion. Special items are also generally crafted with more general techniques, and they are destructible. Relics are indestructible.
Special items take up one block space. Examples might be like lecterns, desks, a throne, a wall map, a drafting desk, etc. They would be identified with the purpose of the building itself. Special items do not have to be created in special buildings. They might have their own purposes outside of special buildings (like lecterns).
What role do Special Structures play?
Special Structures exist mainly outside and independent of buildings, but they sometimes interact with buildings. They consist of items that garner special abilities greater than the sum of their parts.
The primary existing example of a special structure already in Minecraft is the enchanting table with bookshelves. Special structures incorporate items that can augment the structure to be more powerful.
In this blog post, a cornerstone creator is one of these special structures. Adding more relics surrounding it make it more powerful.
In a previous post, I described a special structure that designates an area of blocks to be resistant to mining with a pickaxe. This special structure consists of a diamond solar collector, a redstone crystal emitter, and then multiple lense cubes to create more powerful effects according to their relative frequency and directional placement.
