Athanor and Materials

The Athanor is the alchemist's furnace, a vessel of transmutation that transcends mere smelting. Within its core you may quintuple ore yields, revert Orbs of Vitae, unmake Netherite and Reinforced Runes, and most critically distill Weak Blood Shards from Saturated Tau.

Most tools placed in the Athanor degrade over time, but Unbreaking or Mending enchantments will slow or halt their decay.

Operating the Athanor

The Athanor is sided, much like a common furnace. Tools may only enter or exit from the top. Inputs are accepted from the sides. Outputs emerge from the bottom. Keep this geometry in mind when placing your Hoppers or Routing Nodes; an automated Athanor is the heart of any serious ore-processing chain.

It accepts only two fuel sources, the Primitive Fuel Cell (a Block of Coal worked in a recipe) or a Lava Crystal. The Primitive Fuel Cell endures for 128 individual operations, more than double what its Block of Coal would yield in a furnace, and wears down only on completing a craft so nothing is wasted. The Lava Crystal is a shard of imprisoned heat born from molten rock and sustained by your Anima; placed in any furnace it becomes an inexhaustible flame, drawing 50 EV per item smelted (ten seconds per operation, one item per cycle).

Spiritus Sensitivity

The Athanor is sensitive to the Raw Spiritus saturating the surrounding chunk. With no spiritus present, the vessel operates at half speed; as raw spiritus builds toward 100, the Athanor accelerates to double speed at full saturation. While crafting, there is a 5% chance per second that the Athanor consumes 1 raw spiritus from the chunk; keep Spiritus Crystals growing nearby to replenish what it consumes.

For more speed, the Ritual of Celerity doubles the pace of every Athanor in its area, and its Deus form multiplies it tenfold. This stacks with the tool and the Aura.

Some advanced recipes require a specific amount of spiritus in the chunk to craft. The Athanor's interface shows a gauge with current spiritus levels and a red overlay marking how much is needed. If the chunk lacks sufficient spiritus, the Athanor stalls and emits dark particles until the deficit is replenished. Spiritus costs are consumed on craft completion, not during progress.

The Sanguine Reverter

Forged in the Hellfire Forge, the Sanguine Reverter is a tool of unmaking. It peels away the enchantments of creation, reducing Orbs of Vitae, Netherite, and Reinforced Runes back to their constituent materials. It is also the instrument by which Weak Blood Shards are born from Saturated Tau. Reversion targets include:

• Novicius, Discipulus, Veneficus, and Magus Orbs of Vitae
• Netherite Ingot
• Any Reinforced Rune (back to base materials, invaluable when restructuring your altar)

Disenchanting

The Reverter also strips enchantments. Place a stack of plain Books and a single enchanted item (gear, a tool, or an enchanted book) in the Athanor's inputs. Each operation lifts one enchantment onto a fresh enchanted book and removes it from the item, costing 5 raw spiritus and 100 mB of Essentia Vitae per enchantment. Once the item has no enchantments left, it drops to the output. It runs only while you have books to receive enchantments and output space to hold them.

Ore Processing: From Vein to Ingot

You have two paths and you choose by tempo. The Tabula Vitae doubles your ore in a single quick step. The Athanor is slower but far more rewarding: a unified refinement chain yields 5 ingots per silk-touched ore block, 3 per raw ore at the floor, and rises further when Raw Spiritus soaks the chunk.

Cutting Fluids

Cutting Fluid is the universal reagent for every Athanor ore-processing step, prepared in the Tabula Vitae. Three grades exist:

Fluid	Effect
Basic Cutting Fluid	The baseline. A Bottle of Water may substitute for the Water Sigil in the recipe.
Intermediate Cutting Fluid	Endures 8x as long, hastens the Athanor's work by 50%. Requires Tau Oil from the Demon Realm.
Advanced Cutting Fluid	Persists 64x longer, doubles crafting speed, and doubles bonus-yield probability. Requires Hellforged Dust from the deepest Demon Realm.

The Refinement Chain

A single path from rock to ingot, every step driven by Cutting Fluid except the resonator stage:

1. Ore block + Cutting Fluid = 5 Ore Fragments.
2. Raw ore + Cutting Fluid = 3 Ore Fragments.
3. Each fragment + Resonator = 1 Ore Gravel, with a 50% chance of a Tiny Corrupted Dust byproduct.
4. Each gravel + Cutting Fluid = 1 Metal Dust.
5. Each dust smelted in any furnace = 1 ingot.

The Resonator is forged in the Hellfire Forge. Reinforced and Hellforged Resonator variants are far more durable; the Hellforged variant also doubles the Corrupted Dust byproduct rate.

Corrupted Dust

The Resonator step throws off Tiny Corrupted Dust as a side product, a 50% chance per fragment (doubled by the Hellforged Resonator), so it builds up naturally as you refine ore. It has two uses today, with more planned:

• Simple Keys. Two iron ingots and a single Tiny Corrupted Dust worked in the Hellfire Forge make a Simple Key, which is in turn an ingredient of the Mine Entrance Key. See The Endless Dungeon for what those keys open.
• Richer ore yields. Combine four Tiny Corrupted Dust into one full Corrupted Dust at a crafting table, then refine an ore fragment with it in the Tabula Vitae: the fragment yields 2 Ore Gravel instead of the Resonator's 1. Corrupted Dust is the catalyst that pushes refinement past the standard chain.

Further corrupted-material crafts (Corrupted Coal, Iron, and Debris among them) are planned for a future update, so it is worth banking any spare dust against them.

The Spiritus Boost

When Raw Spiritus saturates the chunk in which the Athanor sits, every ore-to-fragment craft gains a chance to yield one extra fragment. The chance scales with chunk saturation:

Raw Spiritus in chunk	Bonus chance
Below 5	0% (no bonus)
5	33%
50 (midpoint)	~67%
100 or higher	100% (always +1)

Linear scaling between the thresholds. Each successful bonus has a small 2.5% chance to consume 1 Raw Spiritus from the chunk, so heavily saturated chunks deplete slowly under heavy industry. Pair an Athanor with a Spiritus Crystal array to keep the well topped up.

At full saturation the Athanor effectively yields 6 ingots per silk-touched ore block or 4 per raw ore before any further bonus from advanced cutting fluid.

Yield Summary

Input	Floor (no spiritus)	Cap (100+ Raw Spiritus)
Ore block (Silk Touch)	5 ingots	6 ingots
Raw ore	3 ingots	4 ingots
Ore block via Tabula Vitae	2 ingots	2 ingots (no scaling)
Ore block via vanilla furnace	1 ingot	1 ingot

The Hydration Cell

Fitted with a Primitive Hydration Cell, the Athanor becomes a font of elemental water. Supply it with Water, or the cell thirsts in vain. Among its uses:

• Saturated Tau -> Weak Blood Shard (requires Essentia Vitae), the keystone production chain for Tier 3 altar capstones.
• Sand -> Clay and Terracotta -> Clay.
• Dirt -> Mud.
• Concrete Powder -> Concrete for all sixteen hues.
• Strips dye from beds, wool, carpets, and glass (any color to white/clear).
• Cultivates moss on cobblestone, stone bricks, and their stair/slab/wall variants.
• Hastens copper oxidation through every stage (block, cut, stairs, slabs).

Bloodstone Bricks

Bloodstone Bricks are stone saturated with crystallised life force; dark and warm to the touch. Beyond their unsettling beauty, they serve as the capstones for the Tier 3 Ara Vitae. Their creation requires Weak Blood Shards, obtained by placing Saturated Tau in the Athanor with the Sanguine Reverter, and the Saturated Tau itself comes from the Demon Realm. See Ara Vitae and Runes for the tier-construction chart.

Sanguine Deus Block

A Hellforged Block steeped in Essentia Vitae and every Aspect at once. Craft it in the Athanor with a Divinus Orb of Vitae in the tool slot (it guides the work and is not spent), a Hellforged Block in the input, 10,000 mB of Essentia Vitae in the tank, and 40 of every Spiritus in the chunk: Raw, Ruina, Nihilum, Vindicta and Invictus, all consumed when the block is done.

Placed beneath The Endless Quarry, it gives the widest scan of any foundation: radius 255, a 511×511 footprint down to bedrock. The Hellforged Block it is made from gives radius 127. Both blocks also work as beacon bases.

Bucket of Essentia Vitae

Essentia Vitae is potent within the Ara Vitae, but it can also be poured into the world. Place an empty Bucket in the Ara Vitae while it holds at least 1,000 EV and the altar fills the vessel in moments. One unit of EV equals one millibucket. Useful for filling a moat around your Incense Altar, or for any working that calls for liquid lifeforce. It is emphatically not blood; blood would have coagulated long ago.

See also: Ara Vitae and Runes (the altar that consumes the materials), Hellfire Forge and Sentient Equipment (forges the Sanguine Reverter and Resonators), Spiritus, Aspects and Crystals (the chunk-aura the Athanor draws on), Tabula Vitae, Flasks and Anointments (where Cutting Fluid is brewed).