Ara Vitae and Runes - breakinblocks/NeoVitae GitHub Wiki
Ara Vitae and Runes
Every practitioner of Vitaemancy must begin here, at the Ara Vitae, the Altar of Life. This sacred basin transmutes raw blood into Essentia Vitae (EV), the refined lifeforce that fuels all vitaemantic works. It begins as a humble stone vessel, but as your mastery deepens, the Ara Vitae grows into a towering monument of rune-carved power.
How the Altar Works
Once placed, the Ara Vitae awakens. It drinks the blood offered to it and distills it into Essentia Vitae, which it then uses to transfigure items laid within its basin. Right-click the altar to place an item upon it; right-click with an empty hand to retrieve it.
To feed a bare altar, lay a Tier 0 recipe such as a diamond upon it. Lacking any stored essence, the altar draws blood from any nearby who carry no Blood Orb of their own until the working completes, never killing, taking only what it needs. Once you carry a Blood Orb, right-click it near an altar to bleed straight into the basin; away from an altar the blood is stored in the orb to carry and deposit later. The basin holds 10,000 EV at first; watch the crimson pool within for a rough fill indicator, or use a Divination Sigil to read exact figures.
The moment an item is placed upon the basin, the transmutation begins. EV drains steadily; crimson motes rising from the surface confirm the working is underway. Should the altar run dry mid-craft, gray smoke rises as the working unravels and progress is lost. The basin holds and transmutes a single item at a time, so it need only carry enough essence to finish one working.
Your first creation should be the Novicius Orb of Vitae, a diamond offered to a Tier 0 altar with 2,000 EV. This orb is the key to your Anima, the invisible network that binds your soul to all your vitaemantic instruments. Consult JEI for the full list of altar recipes.
Hidden reservoir: 10% of the Ara Vitae's total capacity seeps into an internal vessel used for fluid transfer. If the numbers seem off, this unseen reservoir is the culprit.
Tier Construction Summary
To ascend to greater tiers, you must lay Blank Runes in concentric circular rings around the basin, each new ring sitting one level deeper and further out than the last. Higher tiers also add pillars or capstone blocks at the ring's cardinal points or corners. Specialized runes confer different blessings; the most basic, the Blank Rune, carries no enchantment of its own and serves only as structural scaffolding. The in-game guide (Scriptura Vitae) renders the full multiblock for each tier if you want a block-by-block view.
| Tier | Total Runes | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | A lone Ara Vitae, unadorned. |
| 1 | 8 | A ring of 8 runes one level below the basin (the 3x3 ring with the center left open). The four cardinal slots take specialized runes; the four diagonal slots stay inert (blank) until higher tiers. |
| 2 | 24 | Adds a circular ring of 16 runes, one level lower and out at radius 3. Pillars rise at the four cardinal sides, capped with Blood Stained Glass. |
| 3 | 52 | Adds a ring of 28 runes, another level down at radius 5. Bloodstone Brick blocks sit at the four corners (requires Tau Fruit from the Breaching the Edge of Demon Realm ritual). |
| 4 | 100 | Adds a ring of 48 runes, lower again at radius 8. Hellforged Block caps mark the four cardinal points. |
| 5 | 172 | Adds the widest ring of 72 runes at radius 11. Tall pillars rise at the four cardinal sides, crowned with Crystal Clusters (or Crystal Cluster Bricks). |
Crystal Clusters are forged in the Hellfire Forge from Sculk, a Tabula Aetherea, a Weak Blood Shard, and a Nether Star. A Crystal Cluster or Crystal Cluster Brick placed by an Enchanting Table counts as 15 bookshelves, so one is enough to reach the table's maximum.
Tabula
The Ara Vitae also forges Tabula, the inscribed stone tablets that serve as the foundation for nearly every vitaemantic creation. Each successive Tabula demands a more powerful altar and a steeper offering.
| Tabula | Altar Tier | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tabula Rasa | Tier 0 | 1,000 EV | Deepslate, first sigils etched. |
| Tabula Robur | Tier 1 | 2,000 EV | Sigils deepen; the stone hardens with purpose. |
| Tabula Animata | Tier 2 | 5,000 EV | The stone pulses with a faint, living warmth. |
| Tabula Spiritus | Tier 3 | 15,000 EV | Dark veins thread the tablet like frozen lightning. |
| Tabula Aetherea | Tier 4 | 30,000 EV | Almost translucent, hovering at the edge of the beyond. |
Short of Deepslate? Lay Cobblestone on a Tier 0 altar and, for 50 EV, it becomes Cobbled Deepslate; smelt that into Deepslate. A Vitae Link crafts its whole input stack at once, so it converts 64 cobblestone in a single craft.
Two specialized variants exist for the alchemical bench: the Tabula Vial (a glass vessel reinforced with powdered Tabula, used to hold anointments) and the Tabula Ampoule (a small reservoir for crystallised EV, produced by certain throwing daggers and crushable for raw EV). Both are forged in the Tabula Vitae brewing rig.
Rune Families
Runes fall into two grades: the standard inscription, and a Reinforced variant tempered with Netherite Scrap and Intricate Hellforged Parts plundered from the Demon Realm. Reinforced runes are roughly twice as potent (saving rune slots for other inscriptions), and the Athanor can strip the reinforcement back to a base rune if needed.
Throughput
| Rune | Effect (per rune) |
|---|---|
| Speed | +20% transmutation speed (additive). Idle progress also bleeds faster. |
| Reinforced Speed | +40% transmutation speed (additive). |
| Acceleration | Removes 1 tick from the Charging/Displacement 20-tick pulse delay (min 1). |
| Reinforced Acceleration | Removes 2 ticks from the pulse delay. |
Capacity
| Rune | Effect (per rune) |
|---|---|
| Rune of Capacity | +20% to the basin's reservoir (additive). |
| Reinforced Capacity | +40% reservoir (additive). |
| Rune of Aug. Capacity | +7.5% reservoir (multiplicative, applied after additive Capacity Runes). |
| Reinforced Aug. Capacity | +15% reservoir (multiplicative). |
Charging
The Charging Rune siphons EV into a hidden internal reserve while the altar is idle. The moment an item is placed upon the basin, this stored charge floods into the transmutation at a perfect 1:1 ratio.
- The altar pulses once every 20 ticks (reduced by Acceleration Runes).
- Each pulse stores: 10 EV x Charging Runes x (1 + Speed Runes / 10).
- Maximum stored charge: 1,000 EV per Charging Rune, scaled by (altar capacity / 20,000) if that ratio exceeds 1.
- Reinforced Charging Runes double both the storage rate and the maximum capacity.
Sacrifice
| Rune | Effect (per rune) |
|---|---|
| Rune of Sacrifice | +10% EV harvested from creatures slain near the altar (additive). |
| Reinforced Sacrifice | +20% EV harvested (additive). |
| Rune of Self-Sacrifice | +10% EV from your own wounds (orb bleeding and altar draw, additive). |
| Reinforced Self-Sacrifice | +20% EV from your own wounds (additive). |
Dislocation (Fluid Transfer)
| Rune | Effect (per rune) |
|---|---|
| Displacement | +20% fluid transfer rate (multiplicative). Essence flow between altar and external tanks. |
| Reinforced Displacement | +40% fluid transfer rate (multiplicative). |
Orb
The Rune of the Orb resonates with the Blood Orb resting in the basin, stretching the bounds of your Anima while it sits there.
| Rune | Effect (per rune) |
|---|---|
| Rune of the Orb | +2% to the Orb of Vitae's capacity (additive). Orb must remain in the basin. |
| Reinforced Orb | +4% to the orb's capacity (additive). |
Redstone and Automation
The Ara Vitae accepts mechanical servants. Items and EV alike can be piped in and out, with a few quirks.
- The basin holds a single item at a time. A simple Hopper can feed items in one by one, each transmuted in turn; keep the basin supplied with essence and the working never stalls for want of blood.
- The altar makes no distinction between input and output. Without a filter, items will cycle in and out as fast as your transfer system allows. Routing Nodes solve this neatly: an output face feeds the reagent while an input face pulls the finished product. See Automating the Ara Vitae for the full loop.
- The altar accepts EV transfers to and from external fluid tanks, but the flow is sluggish by default. Acceleration Runes quicken the altar's pulse; Displacement Runes widen the channel.
- The hidden 10% internal reservoir is the intermediary for piped fluid; essence may seem to vanish from the basin without explanation when that reservoir is filling or draining.
Comparators
A comparator placed beside the Ara Vitae reads the basin level, much like a chest. Place a Blood Stained Glass block directly beneath the altar, and the comparator instead reads the Anima of whoever owns the orb in the basin. Signal strength scales to the orb's tier, not the maximum capacity of the network; 500,000 EV reads overflowing through a Novicius Orb but only half-strength through a Magus Orb. Clever Vitaemancers use this to shut down costly rituals before their Anima runs dry.
When the orb is bound to a team via NeoVitae Teams, the comparator reads the team's pooled Anima automatically. Placing a Redstone Lamp beneath the altar makes it emit a redstone pulse the instant a transmutation completes; useful for chained automation.
Vitae Link
A bare altar has no way to cap its craft tier: feed it Deepslate and it climbs the whole Tabula chain to the highest tier its runes allow. The Vitae Link fixes that. It binds to a nearby altar and crafts on the altar's behalf, but only up to a tier you choose, with dedicated input and output slots for clean automation.
Craft one by transmuting an Ara Vitae inside another, larger altar (min tier 1, 1,500 EV).
- Binding. Place the Link within 8 blocks of an altar and it auto-binds, firing a crimson thread to the altar (the same effect a Routing Node uses when it links). It holds no tank of its own: it drains EV straight from the bound altar's basin and borrows that altar's rune bonuses for craft speed and efficiency. An unbound Link gives off smoke, and Jade shows its bind status.
- Tier cap. Sneak + use to cycle the craft tier. A Link always caps one tier below the altar it serves (a tier-5 altar allows a Link up to tier 4), wrapping back to 0 past the maximum. If the altar drops a tier, the Link follows it down; if the altar gains a tier, the Link keeps your setting. The tier cannot be changed while it is crafting.
- Crafting. Use with an item to insert (one at a time, like the altar); use empty-handed to take the result. The Link crafts in place, climbing the chain only as far as your chosen tier, then moves the finished piece to its output slot. Use it while it works to cancel the craft and reclaim the item.
- EV and stalls. EV is drained from the bound altar exactly as the altar would drain it; if the altar runs dry mid-craft, progress decays and the working fails the same way a starved altar's would.
- Piping. Insert into any side except the bottom (input); extract from the bottom (output). Input and output stay separate, so an automated line never pulls back its own reagent.
- Multiple Links. Place as many as you like around one altar. Only one crafts at a time, and never while the altar itself is crafting; when several have work, the highest tier takes priority, then the rest in turn.
See Automating the Ara Vitae for a full automated loop using Links.
See also: Blood Orbs and Anima, Sigils, Rituals, Hellfire Forge and Sentient Equipment.