Hi gang!


Editorial

So the other day I wrote a review about "TechCraft" which is the name I gave the collection of mods which my gf and I like to play with. During that review I went over the collection a few times and noticed several mods which we barely used. I talked this over and we decided that we would indeed remove them, also to keep things less cluttered; why keep items around in the JEI overview (and Creative tabs) if you never use them?

This also created a bit of an opportunity to maybe add something new as a replacement. Because most of the mods we play with focus on technology and machinery (referring to Mekanism, Thermal series & EA2) I figured that it might be fun to focus on something different, like magic for instance. The only mod we have that does this is Botania, which is a huge favorite of my gf.

And that's when I discovered EvilCraft; a mod which managed to hook me the very moment I started playing. Because my previous review was about a whole collection of mods I couldn't go into too much detail yet, also because I was quite new to EvilCraft at that time. So... now it's time to correct this and give this mod all the attention it deserves!


Because Aya doesn't really like this mod ("a bit too sinister") I grabbed my alt account 'TheOtherShell' so that I can keep a clear separation between creative & survival (also to make sure that I don't make any dumb mistakes).

So now I'd like to invite you on a journey to discover the darker sides of Minecraft...

The dark side of the craft is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be.... "disturbing". --- ShelLuser 2023.

It begins: finding Dark Ore

EvilCraft is a mod that's just simply there in your game. While other mods focus themselves specifically on early or mid-game (some even end-game) EvilCraft otoh just adds its stuff and then it's up to you to decide what you're going to do with all this. While ming you can come across so called dark ore blocks, as well as a deepslated variant; see the screenshot above. These ores can be mined with any type of pickaxe and will drop more loot if you have the Fortune enchant applied on your tool.

So I decided to check for differences. I set up two sets of blocks, each consisting of 2 rows with 2x4 dark ore and 2x4 deepslated dark ore. I then gave my alt both a regular iron pickaxe and one with the Fortune III enchant, then I mined these blocks with an interval of 4 blocks each:

As you can see there's quite a difference between using a normal pick or one with the Fortune enchant: not only do you get more dark gems, you'll also get several crushed variants (the purple powder?). These dark gems are your key into unleashing corruption onto the world! Of course this begs the question: how much of these are there available?

Well, I figured we could do a bit of research on that:







Because my friend doesn't really like this mod I figured I'd set up an autominer and have it replace all the evil ore blocks with iron. So... I mined out an area with a radius of 32 blocks, going all the way from bedrock (y-60) to just below the miner itself (I went for y58). The result? Well: 44 dark ore blocks, and 88 (= 1 stack + 24 blocks) of deepslated dark ore. mwuah, ha, haaaaa, now all MINE!!!


Errr.... sorry about that, no idea what just got over me.

So where do we start? First you'll want to get yourself some guidance and get the in-game manual. So once you got yourself some dark gems try to get an apple somewhere and then combine it with one dark gem: this gets you a darkened apple. How about we feed this to one of the mobs? Make sure you keep a book ready, because as soon as the creatures spiritual essence manifests itself then you'll need to throw your book in there... let me show you:


So now you got a new book: the Origins of Darkness from which you can learn what to do next. You proceed through the mod into 2 stages: the First Age and Second Age; as soon as you get hold of a dark gem then you'll automatically start the first age.

The book tells the story of an adventurer who, like you, also decided to explore these strange ages and luckily for us they wrote up their experiences within the book. And it becomes quickly clear that we just went onto a path of evil filled with destruction and despair.

One of the first things this books teaches you is how to create iron spikes: by placing a dark gem above an iron ingot within a crafting table you'll get 16 of these spikes. So if you then place 3 spikes in a row on the crafting table, then place an iron ingot below the middle of that row you'll get the so called spikey claws. A handheld weapon that does 6 attack damage, but can also be used to quickly remove soft blocks like dirt, sand and clay.

And it doesn't stop here: get yourself an iron pressure plate (made by placing 2 iron ingots side by side) and then do the same thing as above: place it on a crafting table under a row of spikes right in the middle. Now you'll get a spiked plate: a plate that hurts mobs but not players. Better yet: if a mob dies from standing on this plate for too long then it dies in the same way as if it would've been killed by a player. Meaning that it also drop XP orbs!

Next we learn that the dark gems can also corrupt glass: place a dark gem in the middle of a crafting table, then surround it with 8 glass blocks and you'll get 8 obscured glass in return. Very peculiar indeed because if I place those glass blocks then it doesn't seem to obscure anything; I can still see right through them. Perhaps this is blocking out something else? Maybe... the good essence of light that prevents evil things from happening?

Let's find out!



So I made an ad-hoc arena, addded a zombie spawner and then teleported my alt in here; I also set gave myself Regeneration 2 just to prevent nasty things from happening. You can see for yourself that the glass looks normal enough: it only has a thicker and darker border. But now look what happens when I use a /fill command to add the roof; also made from this same type of glass:



So I added several spiked plates below the spawner, I also set up my alt with an extra line of defense and then I added the roof. As you can see the spawner immediately sprang to life and zombies started to pour in. You can also clearly see the XP orbs lying on the ground and trust me when I say that my alt never left its safe position ;)

This takes mob farming to a whole new level I think! Can it get any better than this? Why, yes it can!

Controlling the weather, and more...

If you explore the world then you may come across structures like these: some kind of raised altar with one or more treasure chests near its edges and in the middle you see a so called environmental accumulator. That device gives you control over the very weather as well as the nature of the world itself, though somewhat limited.

See, if you combine a dark gem with a glass bottle and also add some sugar then you'll get a so called weather container. This container can then be inserted into the accumulator you see above and wham... you will not only capture the essence of the current weather, but by doing so also change the current weather into something else. Something needs to replace it, right? So if it was a sunny day then the rain begins to fall. Maybe try to repeat the process with another empty weather container?

And that's only half of it... try making a minecart out of glass blocks: just mimic the pattern on a crafting table. Then add a crushed dark gem in the middle, and a regular dark gem on top. Now all of a sudden you got yourself three biome extract bottles which can also be inserted into the accumulator, but this may not get you the results you were looking for. Not just yet anyway.


BUT... enough of all this healthy fresh air, it's time to head back to my mancave so that we can explore the second age of darkness: the era of blood.

Blood magic!

Warning: viewer discretion is advised from here on because things are about to turn really dark and gruesome...

Remember those iron spikes from earlier? If you place three of those in the top row of a crafting table, then put a glass block in the middle below it and underneath that you put a dark gem you'll now get yourself a Blood Extractor, a handheld device which can contain up to 5,000mB of blood. We now started the second age of evil.

In case you weren't aware: mB stands for millibucket which is a fluid measurement within modded Minecraft. One bucket full of fluids equals 1,000mB.

Back to the extractor: as long as you keep this in your inventory then it will automatically extract blood from anything you kill, assuming there's something to extract of course...





I've obviously been watching too much Star Wars as of late, classics FTW! ;) Anywhoo, here we invited two villagers and also asked them to bring their prize animals to show us, and maybe we could come to some kind of deal? Let's see what happened next...



Ok, ok, I'll stop with the references, but notice how my current tool shows a small bar beneath it? You can also see an indicator on the lower right side of the screen; right now the extractor contains 1,634mB of blood. Which is a nice supply but it won't be enough for what we want to do next. For that we need to fill the extractor all the way up to 5,000mB, which is also the maximum amount it can contain by default: 5 buckets of blood.



So... after killing approx. 11 chickens, 8 sheep, 6 pigs, one cow and a wolf we finally collected enough to perform the blood ritual:



Notice the discolored block on the left side? If you leave blood out in the open for too long then it will harden and change into an hardened blood block. Despite what the manual tells you this cannot be undone (at least not on my version): if you try to punch or mine it you'll always get hardened blood shards in return, which isn't a bad thing perse because you will actually need those later as crafting ingredients.

But for now you need to make sure to place 5 blocks of blood into the world (see above), then you throw a dark gem into the pool as soon as you can; the gem will then absorb all the blood and change into a Dark Power Gem. Note that the shape doesn't really matter, but for ease of use the + shape shown above is probably the easiest.

The dark power gem can be used to craft several different items, but for now you'll want to combine it with 8 hardened blood shards in order to get the blood infusion core. Place one in the middle of a crafting table, then surround it. This new core allows you to create 2 new machines:

• Surrounding the infusion core with planks on a crafting table will get you a blood chest. This can be used to repair any kind of tool using blood.
• Surrounding the core with (cobble)stone however gets you the blood infuser, which at this time is much more useful!

See, what we did above was actually infusing a dark gem with blood. But because we did this all out in the open we not only risked the blood to harden, but it also took us much more blood than if we were to use this infusing device. Let me show you:




See what I mean? This is also something which I really like about this mod: there is some solid progression involved. But don't count yourself rich just yet, because some of the materials which you need to progress further are going to cost you a lot more blood. For example; infusing an iron block is going to take you 10,000mB, so a fully loaded blood infuser! This gets you the iron promise acceptor which you can use to craft the first upgrade for the blood infuser and some other devices: the Promise of Tenacity I; created by combining the iron promise accepter with a spiders eye and a Bowl of Promises.

We're getting way deep into the realm of dark magic right now:

• You can use 3 dark power gems to craft a bowl of empty promises.
• If you combine the bowl of empty promises with two crushed dark gems then you'll get the dusted bowl of promises.
• Using that dusted bowl within the blood infuser gets you the Tier 0 bowl of promises, as mentioned above.

So now that you have the Promise of Tenacity it's time to insert this into the infuser, lo and behold: now you can store up to 40,000mB of blood! But that's not all, you also got a lot of new recipies at your disposal. How about... infusing a Potentia Sphere with 2,000mB of blood (while having the Promise of Tenacity active)? That will actually get you an ender pearl!

This basically means that you can transform 2 redstone + 2 lapis lazuli + 4 glowstone dust and one slimeball into an ender pearl, of course at the cost of 2,000mB ("2 buckets") of blood. Further upgrades get you even more exciting recipies like changing wheat seeds into nether warts, bones into blaze rods, sand into soul sand, and so on...

Ever fancied to follow into the footsteps of Darth Plagues - the wise, by trying to create life?



Get your hands on a dead bush. You will find these in the desert and you can collect them with a pair of shears. Of course that requires effort so what you could also consider doing is placing shears and any kind of sapling onto a crafting table to, uhm, kill the sapling. This also gets you a dead bush. Now place the dead bush into the blood infuser and all of a sudden you brought it back to life and created a new type of sapling: the undead sapling.





When planted you eventually get an undead tree, as shown above. Not only does it look rather omnious but this tree actually bleeds, you can see as much above. So now either use your extractor to collect those blood drops or... maybe get yourself a Pedestal to do that for you.

Either way, this can also get you undead wood which you can use to craft undead planks. And if you combine those with yet another dark gem you get yourself a dark stick. This can be used to create various tools.

Oh, about those blood drops? Try making yourself a dark block by combining 9 dark gems. Then place this block in the middle of a crafting table and add 2 rows of dark gems on top and on the bottom. Now you'll get yourself the Sanguinary Pedestal which can automatically pick up those blood drops and also store these.You could even consider upgrading to a powered version by using dark power gems.

Tapping into the spirit realm

If you kill a mob then its spirit still remains in the world for a little while, however we normally can't see it. But if you combine some iron ingots with crushed dark gems then you can make yourself a vengeance ring. Put it on and now you'll be able to see these spirits for yourself, but watch out! They can now sense you as well and if they decide to attack they will cause you some harm.



Yet there's more... you can actually capture these spirits using a box of eternal closure... these are crafted in almost the same way as the pedestal I mentioned earlier, but it's a little more sinister: place 2 rows of crushed dark gems on the top and bottom row of a crafting table. Then place an enderchest in the middle with two potions of weakness on each side (you get these by using a fermented spiders eye as a brewing component).

The only thing left to do now is to somehow "persuade" these spirts to enter the box...





You can pull a spirit in by using the so called vengeance focus: an upgraded version of the vengeance ring. You actually need a vengeance ring to make this: place the ring at the center of a crafting table, then use the same recipe which you used earlier to make the ring itself.

Congratulations: you now got yourselves a filled "spirit box", but so far this is pretty useless. I mean, you can open the box after which the spirit will come back out again. Then I suppose you could either try to get it back in or just let it go. Either way, this doesn't seem very useful so far, right?

Killing mobs, over and over again?

So, let me ask you a question: why do we kill mobs anyway? Easy answer, right? For their drops! No pun intended, or... maybe just a little bit ;)

But still:

• Pigs drops raw porkchop.
• Cows drops raw beef and optionally a piece of leather.
• Chickens drops raw chicken and often a feather.
• Sheep drops muton and wool (though it's obviously more efficient to shear it).
• Zombies drops rotten flesh.
• And a witch can drop all sorts of things (sticks, glass bottle, redstone dust, glowstone dust, gunpowder, sugar, spider eye, etc.).

Why I'm sharing all of this, you wonder?

Well, what do you think could happen if we were to try and apply blood magic onto those spirits in order to try and somehow get parts of their essence back into our world again? Not everything of course, just their core essence. Then we kill this manifested spirit again after which we should be able to collect any manifested remains which they may leave behind.



In other words: we revive a spiritual being, we then apply blood magic to force its essence back into our world after which we kill the spirit. We then collect any manifested assets, in other words: any left behind drops. And then we do it all over again, and again, and again! As long as we have enough blood to fuel all these efforts.

The spirit furnace!

The main problem with tapping into these unholy powers is to make sure that nothing can go wrong. See, if one vaguely present vengeance spirit can harm us, then can you imagine what would happen if we were to let a manifested spirit run amok? We need to prevent this at all costs, so... we'll need to build a structure which is both large enough to manifest the spririt but then also strong enough to contain and kill it.

We're going to need dark bricks, and then infuse those with blood.







By the way; notice the dark colored legs of that crafting station? That's because it was made using undead logs, the wood type provided by EvilCraft; as you can see this mod also provides full support for Tinkers Construct as well.

First things first: getting your hands on the Promise of Tenacity II in order to upgrade the blood infuser. After that you're ready to infuse the dark stone bricks and change them into dark blood bricks. There's one last thing you're going to need though: the spirit furnace block itself, you can make this by surrounding a blood infusion core with four dark blood brick blocks.

Then it's time to build the actual furnace:





This is a multi-block structure and there are a few rules to keep in mind:

• It needs to be a fully enclosed 'squared out' structure, so no shortcuts by placing a single block on top as roof for example.
• There needs to be enough open space for the spirit to manifest itself.
• The furnace or control block can't be placed in a corner.

A witch for is the same size as a player: 1 x 2 blocks; it takes up one block and is 2 blocks high. Well... if the OtherShell fits in there, then so will a witch. But if we were to try and cook a cow spirit then we'd get an error because a cow is 2 x 2 in dimension, so it wouldn't fit in there. As soon as you succesfully finish the structure you'll immediately get to see a forbidden red glow appear. If it doesn't light up a bit then make sure that it matches all the rules mentioned above.

Then it's time to add some blood and when all is said and done try inserting a filled spirit box in there:







As you can see I managed to collect quite a few mobs; I actually ran into the witch by accident and it was pure luck that I managed to kill it instead of dying from poison. Anyway... as you can see I got quite a few drops from all this.

And if that wasn't enough already...







The Spirit Reanimator block can use blood to extract a 'boxed' vengeance spirit and then infuse it into an ordinary egg. The result can be seen above: players can actually use this method to generate spawn eggs!

And with that the mystical circle is somewhat complete I think... kill a mob, capture its spirit, "ab"use said spirit to gain even more drops out of the mob and once you're done you could consider infusing the spirit into an egg so that you can re-animate the mob and release it back into the world.

Maybe needless to say but I had a lot of fun with figuring out this mod and learning about all these new mechanics and machines. However, there are still some things which I haven't tried yet like a purifier, entangled chalices, the colossal blood chest and there are also several tools which I haven't played with. Even so, this mod left quite the impression, I can tell you that!

Summing up!

Some fun facts to know about EvilCraft...

• EvilCraft can easily be added to an existing world. It provides an option for "re-seeding" (= creating ore blocks in already generated chunks), however I suggest to rely on generating new chunks at the borders of your world.
• If you kill another player then there's a small chance that they drop humanoid flesh (eeewww!).
• You can even try to capture player spirits; when cooked in a spirit furnace this will create player heads.
• The mod also adds new mobs: the poisoneous libelle, a werewolf and also some nether nasties ;)
• Keep in mind that the in-game manual (book) doesn't necessarily explain how to do things in chronological order. In fact, it's usually a better idea to make up your own mind about what device or tool to create next.
• While it provides good integration with other mods it's not perfect. Jade often shows wrong flood amounts in blocks and Integrated Dynamics/Tunnels doesn't always get the right tank amounts either.
• Another minor annoyance: blood chests can't seem to repair tools made with Tinker's Construct.

Keep in mind though that we play on Minecraft 1.18.2 (= Forge version 40.2.14), so not the latest release of the mod.

But even so, this mod is a lot of fun, and the best part is that you can start playing right away if you want to. You don't need any expensive requirements like gold or diamonds right away, just go with the flow.

In fact... I like this mod so much that I might try to convince Aya to help me with a comparison between this mod and Botania. All lighthearted mind you, it's not about competing to see which one is "better", but rather to look for differences and similarities. For example... in Botania you can make yourself an Assembly and/or Manufactory halo to get a portable crafting table. EvilCraft gets you the (wooden) Exalted Crafter which you can even wear on you so that a simple keyboard shortcut is enough to bring up the crafting table.

... of course Botania can actually set up automated crafting. But then again EvilCraft also provides either a small portable storage or access to your enderchest.

See what I mean? ;)

Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope you guys enjoyed!