Malum

Getting started in StoneBlock 4

Malum's first steps need two things the stone world does not hand you: soulstone and runewood. Get them in this order:

• Get Raw Soulstone. The Echo of the Magician sells it 16 at a time once you have done his first task, raw ores thrown into a Weeping Well come out as soulstone, and dungeon chests carry it. Smelt each one into two Refined Soulstone.
• Craft the Encyclopedia Arcana from a Book and one Refined Soulstone. It is the mod's own guide. On our server it never drops from undead, so craft it.
• Craft a Crude Scythe from three iron ingots, one Refined Soulstone and two sticks. Kill zombies and skeletons with it: they give the spirits your first infusions need.
• Find the Arcane Grove, around x 512, z 512. The Magician's quest gives you a compass that points to it. Wilden guard it, so bring diamond armor or better. Cut its trees for Runewood Logs and Runewood Saplings, and loot its chests.
• Craft the Spirit Altar from four runewood planks, two gold ingots and one Refined Soulstone, and a few Runewood Item Stands or pedestals around it for the extra ingredients.
• Make Hex Ash from gunpowder and one arcane spirit. Many later recipes use it.

Where runewood, soulstone and the rest come from in StoneBlock 4

The Encyclopedia says runewood grows on plains and blazing quartz in the Nether. StoneBlock 4's world is rings of stone, and the Nether and the End are closed to players, so the pack supplies each one its own way.

Runewood

Trees in the Arcane Grove, around x 512, z 512. Runewood leaves drop a sapling 1.5% of the time, 5% with Fortune III, so plant the first ones you get. Grove chests and dungeon chests also hold Runewood and Azure Runewood Saplings.

Soulstone

The Echo of the Magician's shop, 16 Raw Soulstone at a time. Raw ores thrown into a Weeping Well. Dungeon and vault chests. An Atomic Reconstructor with a Lens of the Miner can turn stone into Soulstone Ore, and Occultism's Dimensional Mineshaft miners dig it up.

Brilliance

Grove and dungeon chests, and the Brilliant Stone built into the pack's Weeping Wells. The World Engine, with its Source, Machine Block and Enchanting upgrades, turns a Fluorescent Jelly and 1,000 mB of Source into two Raw Brilliance.

Blazing Quartz

A Spirit Crucible makes it: an Alchemical Impetus with two infernal and two arcane spirits gives four. Grove and dungeon chests have a few.

Cthonic Gold

Throw Nether Gold Ore into a Weeping Well for Cthonic Gold Ore, or into Occultism's Spiritfire for a fragment. StoneBlock 4 adds both. Eight fragments craft one Cthonic Gold.

Umbral Spirit

No mob drops it. The Echo of the Infernal sells it.

Soulwood

Made from runewood with a rite. See the totem section.

Spirits and scythes

A spirit is what a mob's soul shatters into when you kill it with a scythe or a Soulstained Steel weapon. Each mob gives a fixed set. Three StoneBlock 4 settings matter here: spirits drop as ordinary items on the ground, mobs from a spawner have no soul and give none, and kills with Iron's Spellbooks spells reap spirits too.

Sacred

Animals: pigs, chickens, cows, sheep, wolves, villagers.

Wicked

Zombies, pillagers (2), witches (2), vindicators (4).

Arcane

Skeletons (2), witches (2), strays, phantoms (3).

Eldritch

Endermen (3), evokers (2), ravagers (4), shulkers.

Aerial

Spiders (2), bats (2), phantoms (3), breezes (3).

Aqueous

Drowned (2), squid (2), fish, guardians (3).

Earthen

Zombies, cows, sheep, iron golems (5).

Infernal

Blazes (3), creepers (3), ghasts (2), wither skeletons.

Scythes take their own enchantments. Spirit Plunder adds one spirit per kill for each level, up to two by default. Haunted adds magic damage, Animated makes swings faster, Rebound throws the scythe like a boomerang and Ascension lifts you on a gust; the last two cannot go together. StoneBlock 4's World Engine also makes a Spirit Plunder VI book from a book, an Empowered Palis Crystal Block, a Ring of Esoteric Spoils and a Spirit Jar.

A scythe kill can also leave reagents the body never drops on its own: zombies give Rotting Essence, skeletons Grim Talc, phantoms Astral Weave, breezes a Wind Nucleus and endermen Warp Flux.

The Spirit Altar and spirit infusion

Put the main item and its spirits on the Spirit Altar. Every other ingredient goes on a Runewood Item Pedestal or Item Stand within four blocks of it. Once everything is in place the infusion starts by itself. It is slow.

Up to four Runewood Obelisks near the altar each make it a quarter faster. A Brilliant Obelisk does nothing for the altar: it counts as five bookshelves for an enchanting table.

The first infusions, and what everything after them is made of:

Hex Ash

1 gunpowder and 1 arcane spirit.

Alchemical Calx

4 clay balls with 2 arcane, 2 earthen and 2 aqueous spirits. Makes 4.

Living Flesh

4 rotten flesh with 2 sacred and 2 wicked spirits. Makes 2.

Tainted Rock

16 cobblestone with 1 sacred and 1 arcane spirit. Makes 16.

Twisted Rock

16 cobblestone with 1 wicked and 1 arcane spirit. Makes 16.

Soulstained Steel

1 iron ingot, 4 Refined Soulstone, 3 wicked, 1 earthen and 1 arcane spirit.

Hallowed Gold

1 gold ingot, 4 Nether Quartz, 2 sacred and 1 arcane spirit.

Soulwoven Silk

2 wool, 2 string, 3 aerial and 3 earthen spirits. Makes 4.

Ether

4 glowstone dust, 1 Blazing Quartz, 2 infernal and 1 arcane spirit. Makes 2.

A Spirit Jar is a Hallowed Gold Ingot over a glass block. It stores an almost endless amount of one kind of spirit, which keeps them out of your inventory.

The Spirit Crucible and focusing

The Spirit Crucible is infused from a furnace, two Hex Ash, eight Tainted Rock and eight Twisted Rock with eight infernal and eight aqueous spirits. It focuses spirits through an impetus into new material, and each run wears the impetus down.

The Alchemical Impetus is four Alchemical Calx, four Refined Soulstone and two Hex Ash with four arcane and four earthen spirits. When it breaks it becomes a Fractured Alchemical Impetus; a Repair Pylon restores it with two Alchemical Calx and four arcane and four earthen spirits.

Blazing Quartz x4

2 infernal and 2 arcane spirits. On StoneBlock 4 this is the steady source.

Nether Quartz x4

2 earthen and 2 arcane spirits.

Redstone x8

1 arcane spirit.

Glowstone Dust x8

1 infernal spirit.

Gunpowder x8

1 earthen spirit.

Amethyst Shard x4

2 aerial and 2 arcane spirits.

Prismarine Shard x4

2 aqueous and 2 arcane spirits.

Metal impetus: an Alchemical Impetus infused with four gunpowder, one Cthonic Gold and six ingots of the metal. It focuses into three nodes with two earthen and two infernal spirits, and an Iron Node smelts into six nuggets. StoneBlock 4 has them for iron, gold, copper, lead, silver, tin, nickel, osmium, aluminum, zinc and uranium.

Spirit Catalyzers beside a crucible speed it up, up to eight of them, at the cost of more wear on the impetus. Augments go in the crucible, up to four, or one in each catalyzer, and a Tuning Fork shows the crucible's stats when you hold it.

Totems and spirit rites

A rite is a Runewood Totem Base with a pole of engraved runewood logs on top. To engrave one, use a spirit on the side of an upright Runewood Log: it becomes a totem pole rune and the spirit is used up. Stack the runes on the base and right-click the base to start the rite; right-click again to stop it.

Totem bases are infused four at a time from four runewood logs, six runewood planks and two Hex Ash, with two each of aerial, aqueous, earthen, infernal and eldritch spirits. A Totemic Staff shows the area each totem reaches.

Reading up from the base, a lesser rite is one arcane rune and two runes of its spirit. A greater rite is an eldritch rune, an arcane rune and two of its spirit. The same runes on a Soulwood Totem Base give a different rite.

Sacred

Lesser: Healing, mends creatures nearby. Greater: Nurturing, speeds animal growth. On soulwood: Nourishment (players get hungry slower) and Lust (animals act as if fed).

Wicked

Lesser: Harming, slowly hurts creatures nearby. Greater: Culling, thins out overcrowded animals. On soulwood: Empowerment (hostile mobs get stronger) and Rending (a fatal blow to weakened monsters).

Aerial

Lesser: Howling Gale, movement and attack speed. Greater: Gravity, makes blocks fall. On soulwood: Sky Tether (higher jumps) and Ascension (lifts blocks up to 16 high).

Aqueous

Lesser: Flowing Grasp, longer reach and item pickup range. Greater: Soaking, speeds plant growth like bone meal. On soulwood: Good Tides (fishing luck) and Sapping (faster cauldron filling under pointed dripstone).

Earthen

Lesser: Stone Ward, damage reduction, stronger without armor. Greater: Creation, fills empty space with cobblestone. On soulwood: Oaken Might (more damage, most with an empty hand) and Destruction (breaks blocks).

Infernal

Lesser: Burning Fervor, attack and mining speed. Greater: Smelting, smelts blocks where they lie. On soulwood: Fiery Embrace (puts out fire and heals) and Quickening (faster furnaces).

Arcane

Five arcane runes. On runewood the Undirected Rite, on soulwood the Unchained Rite.

Soulwood starts with the Undirected Rite. Build it where it can be contained: it turns the totem into soulwood and the ground around it into Blighted Earth. Five arcane runes on a soulwood totem are then the Unchained Rite, which changes whatever sits on blight: runewood logs, planks and saplings become soulwood, and stone becomes cobblestone, then gravel, then sand. Soulwood Saplings spread blight again each time they grow, so plant them inside a contained area.

To farm spirits without swinging, the pack's quests use wicked rites: the Rite of Harming wears hostile mobs down, and the Rite of Rending on a soulwood totem finishes weakened monsters and releases their spirits.

The Weeping Well

A Weeping Well is a small pool walled in tainted rock. Throw an item into it and it comes back out a moment later, changed, thrown to the south. On StoneBlock 4 Wells generate underground in the stone and deepslate rings, between y -40 and y 60, and the Arcane Grove has one.

Raw Iron and other raw ores

Raw Soulstone, one for one.

Refined Soulstone

Null Slate.

Raw Brilliance

Two Mnemonic Fragments. Refined Brilliance gives one.

Hex Ash

Void Salts.

Blaze Powder

Auric Embers.

Cthonic Gold

Malignant Lead.

Encyclopedia Arcana

The Encyclopedia Esoterica.

Glow Berries

Glowstone Dust. StoneBlock 4 adds this one.

Nether Gold Ore

Cthonic Gold Ore. StoneBlock 4 adds this one.

The void materials lead to Malum's last tier. A Malignant Pewter Ingot is infused from four iron ingots, one Malignant Lead, eight Null Slate and two netherite scrap with 16 earthen and 16 eldritch spirits, and it goes into the Malignant Stronghold armor and weapons such as the Edge of Deliverance.

Armor, weapons and curios

Malum has three armor sets. Soulhunter is a little better than leather, Soulstained Steel is about diamond and Malignant Stronghold about netherite.

Soulhunter

The leather piece, 4 Soulwoven Silk, 4 Refined Soulstone and 2 leather, with 8 aerial and 8 earthen spirits. It raises your magic proficiency, and your spell power with Iron's Spellbooks.

Soulstained Steel

The iron piece, 6 Soulstained Steel Plating, 4 Refined Soulstone and 8 Twisted Rock, with 16 earthen, 8 wicked and 8 arcane spirits. It gives Soul Ward: while it holds you take 10% of magic damage and 70% of physical damage, and it recovers over time.

Malignant Stronghold

A soulstained piece, 8 Soulwoven Silk and 3 Malignant Pewter Plating, infused with earthen, aqueous, wicked and eldritch spirits.

The Crude Scythe upgrades into the Soulstained Steel Scythe with four Soulstained Steel, two Hex Ash and four Refined Soulstone. Soulstained tools and weapons reap spirits too. The Tyrving is a soulstained sword infused with Twisted Rock, Soulwood Planks and a Paracausal Flame; it adds magic damage that grows with the soul it hits. The quests point to the Edge of Deliverance for early bosses.

Malum adds ring, necklace, belt and brooch slots. Plain hallowed gold trinkets give a little armor and soulstained ones armor toughness. The Echo of the Magician sells the Ornate Ring.

Ring of Esoteric Spoils

One more spirit from every kill. An Ornate Ring with 8 Refined Soulstone and 8 each of wicked, arcane and eldritch spirits.

Ring of Curative Talent

Heals you a little each time you pick up a spirit.

Ring of Arcane Prowess

Gives you experience each time you pick up a spirit.

Runic Brooch

Opens rune slots for the runes you make at a Runic Workbench.

Soulwoven Pouch

String over Soulwoven Silk. A bundle that picks up spirits for you.

Ravenous Pouch

Grabs any item that matches what it holds. On StoneBlock 4 a full one cannot fill a Spirit Jar: take the spirits out and use them on the jar by hand.

Oaths are sworn at a Soulbinding Brazier: put in the central item, the other ingredients and the spirits, light it with Ether and interact with it to take the oath. Each player can hold two at once, and the Encyclopedia lists what each one asks and gives.

Questions