Nature's Aura

Aura: what it is, how to measure it and how it spreads

Every area of a world starts with the same amount of Aura, 1,000,000. Devices that use Aura take it from the richest spot nearby, and generators add it to the area around them. Draining an area far below its normal level harms it, and filling it far above causes effects of its own (see Aura Imbalance below).

Environmental Eye

Held anywhere in the hotbar or worn as a Curios charm, it shows a bar of the Aura around you, read within about 35 blocks. Half full is the normal level, full is twice that. It also shows how full Aura-bearing blocks are.

Environmental Ocular

The upgrade. Its gauge is twice as large, it works from anywhere in the inventory, and it shows an icon for every Aura Imbalance effect at the spot you stand on.

Aura Detector

A block that sends a comparator signal from 0 to 15 for the Aura within 25 blocks, on the same scale as the Eye's bar. Use it to switch generators or consumers off automatically.

The type of Aura depends on the dimension: Overworld Aura is sunlight, the Nether's is ghosts and the End's is darkness. Every other dimension, including ATM10's Mining Dimension, The Other and The Beyond, counts as "other", where the altar does not charge and the Overworld generators do nothing. Build your Aura setup in the Overworld or the Nether.

Aura moves on its own. Once a spot is 500,000 above or below normal and the area around it is far off balance, most of it shifts 15 blocks outward toward the area that needs it most, and a new generator first refills drained ground around it. Aura that has spread more than 150 blocks from where it was made fizzles out and is lost; that is the server's setting, the mod's default.

Gold Leaves and Gold Powder: the first step

Everything early in the mod needs Gold Leaf, and Gold Leaf grows on trees you treat with Brilliant Fiber. Craft the Book of Natural Aura from two paper, a leather and any sapling if you want the mod's own guide in hand.

• Craft Brilliant Fiber: four leaves of any kind in the corners, four gold nuggets on the sides and short grass in the middle make four.
• Right-click leaves on a tree with it. One fiber turns one leaf block into Golden Leaves.
• Golden Leaves ripen by themselves over four stages, and from the third stage on they turn the leaves next to them golden too.
• Break fully ripe, bright yellow leaves. Each has a 75% chance to drop a Gold Leaf; unripe ones drop nothing.
• Craft a Gold Leaf into two Gold Powder, or crush it on the Natural Altar for four.

Gold Powder is placed on the ground like redstone dust and is what the Ritual of the Forest is drawn with. A Gold Leaf on top of a log makes a Wooden Stand, which holds the ritual's ingredients.

The Ritual of the Forest

The ritual turns a growing sapling and the items around it into something new. It is how you make the Natural Altar, the Tokens, the Environmental Eye and the altar's catalysts.

• Place the sapling the recipe asks for. Most use an oak sapling; the Transmutation Catalyst and the Powder of Fertility use a jungle sapling.
• Fill the 5 by 5 square around it with 16 Gold Powder, leaving out the square's four corners and the four blocks directly beside the sapling.
• Place up to eight Wooden Stands just outside the ring: one four blocks away in each direction and one three blocks out on each diagonal.
• Put one ingredient on each stand. Empty stands are fine, but a stand holding something the recipe does not use stops the ritual.
• Grow the sapling with bone meal or wait. The tree that grows is eaten, its logs and leaves vanish, and the result drops in the middle after 10 to 30 seconds.

Natural Altar

Three stone, a Gold Leaf, a gold ingot and a Token of Joy. Oak sapling.

Token of Joy

Bottled Sunlight, a Gold Leaf, any small flower, an apple, a torch and an iron ingot make two.

Token of Fear

Bottled Ghosts, a Gold Leaf, rotten flesh, a feather, a bone and soul sand make two.

Token of Anger

Bottled Ghosts, a Gold Leaf, a magma block, blaze powder, gunpowder and an ender pearl make two.

Token of Sorrow

Bottled Sunlight, a Gold Leaf, a ghast tear, raw beef, mutton, chicken or porkchop, glass and a fish make two.

Environmental Eye

A spider eye, a gold ingot and two Gold Leaves.

Ancient Sapling

An oak sapling, a dandelion, a poppy, wheat seeds, sugar cane and a Gold Leaf make two.

Transmutation Catalyst

Golden Stone Bricks, Infused Rock, a brewing stand, an Ingot of the Skies, a Gold Leaf and glowstone. Jungle sapling.

Crumbling Catalyst

Golden Stone Bricks, Infused Rock, a piston, flint and a Token of Anger.

The Natural Altar: the structure, the catalysts and what it makes

The altar soaks up Aura from up to 20 blocks around it, up to 300 a tick, and holds 500,000. It drains until the area is empty, so it never pushes the ground into the negative on its own, but it can leave an area drained. It only charges where the Aura is Overworld or Nether type, so it does nothing in the End.

There is one altar and one structure. What changes is the catalyst on top: none for infusing, a Transmutation Catalyst to turn one thing into another, and a Crumbling Catalyst to crush.

• The altar stands on a floor layer of 32 blocks centred under it: 20 planks of any wood, 8 stone bricks and 4 chiseled stone bricks.
• Four pillars stand four blocks out in each direction, starting at the altar's height: two stone bricks topped with a Golden Stone Brick.
• Four more Golden Stone Bricks sit at the altar's height, two blocks out on each diagonal. A catalyst goes on top of any one of these four.
• So you need eight Golden Stone Bricks, each a stone brick and a Brilliant Fiber. In the Nether, nether bricks, red nether bricks, crimson or warped planks and Golden Nether Bricks do the same job.

To use it, right-click an item onto the altar and wait. The recipe pulls its Aura from the altar's tank a little every tick and pauses when the tank runs dry. An Aura Cache or Aura Trove placed on the altar fills from the tank instead, at 1,000 Aura a tick.

Infused Iron Ingot

An iron ingot, 15,000 Aura, 4 seconds. A Block of Iron gives a block for 135,000. The basic material of the mod.

Tainted Gold Ingot

A gold ingot, only 3,000 Aura but 15 seconds. A Block of Gold gives a block.

Infused Rock

A stone block, 7,500 Aura, 2 seconds.

With a Transmutation Catalyst

Charcoal to coal, rotten flesh to leather, sand to soul sand, arrows to spectral arrows, amethyst shards to ender pearls (90,000 Aura), soul soil to ghast tears, quartz to prismarine shards, a water bucket to milk, Bottled Darkness to dragon's breath, and more.

With a Crumbling Catalyst

A bone to six bone meal, a blaze rod to four blaze powder, cobblestone to sand, a Gold Leaf to four Gold Powder, glowstone to dust, an amethyst block to shards.

Bottled aura: Sunlight, Ghosts, Darkness and Vacuum

Bottled aura is collected with a Bottle and Cork, a glass bottle and any planks. Right-click while aiming at the air, not at a block. Each bottle takes 20,000 Aura from the richest spot within 30 blocks, and the dimension you are in decides the kind.

Bottled Sunlight

The Overworld. Tokens of Joy and Sorrow, the Spirit of Calling, the Canopy Diminisher, the Rail of the Overworld and the Eye of the Pillager.

Bottled Ghosts

The Nether. Tokens of Fear and Anger, the Spirit of Calling, Crimson Meal, the Offshoot Observer, the Rail of the Nether and the Eye of the Blaze.

Bottled Darkness

The End. The World Eye, the Ender Crate and Ender Ocular, the Lamp of Sanctuary, the Ring of Last Chance, the Rail of the End, the Aura Attraction Cart, the Eye of the Shulker, and dragon's breath on the altar.

Bottled Vacuum

Any dimension, but only where the Aura has been drained to about 1.1 million below normal. It goes into the Aura Imbalance Ward.

Bottled Substance

What you get in any other dimension, such as the Mining Dimension. No recipe uses it.

A dispenser holding Bottles and Corks fills them in the air in front of it and spits them out, so a hopper or collector beside it is enough to bottle automatically. The Redstone Aura Vaporizer also uses bottles as a timer: a bottle of sunlight lasts a second, ghosts a minute and darkness an hour.

The Offering Table and Ingots of the Skies

The Offering Table is the mod's second altar, and the way to its stronger metal, the Ingot of the Skies. It uses no Aura; it trades items for better ones.

• Craft the table: three stone, an Infused Iron Ingot, a Token of Fear, a Token of Sorrow and three logs.
• Surround it with two rings of small flowers of any kind, as the book shows: an inner square ring and a wider round one.
• Put the items to offer in its bowl: Infused Iron, Tainted Gold, a Token or a nether star. The whole stack is traded at once.
• Throw a single Spirit of Calling next to the table. A stack of them is ignored.
• Lightning strikes and the results fall from the top of the world onto the table, so keep the sky above it open.

Ingot of the Skies

One for each Infused Iron Ingot, or two for each Tainted Gold Ingot. Tainted Gold is the cheaper way.

Tokens

Joy becomes Euphoria, Fear becomes Terror, Anger becomes Rage, Sorrow becomes Grief.

Hand of Time

One for a nether star. It goes into the Shifting Sundial, and in ATM10 into the Modular Machinery Time Counter.

Spirit of Calling

Bottled Sunlight, Bottled Ghosts, an Infused Iron Ingot, a diamond and a Tainted Gold Ingot make three.

Ingots of the Skies make Skyseeker's tools and armour, the Aura Trove and most of the mid game devices. With netherite scrap and Tainted Gold they make the Ingot of the Depths for Soulstrider's gear.

Making Aura: the generators

Generators put Aura back into the area. Most stop when the area reaches the top of the Environmental Eye's bar, twice the normal level, and show red sparks when they do. A Creational Catalyst placed directly under one lifts that limit at no cost.

Herbivorous Absorber

Eats a small flower within 3 blocks every half second for up to 25,000 Aura. Feed it different flowers: each repeat of the same one gives 500 less. Overworld only.

Canopy Diminisher

Oak saplings within 10 blocks grow into small oaks instead of big ones, and each big oak prevented gives 100,000 Aura. Made for a tree farm. Overworld only.

Ancient Sapling

Its leaves slowly refill drained Aura and die back as they do. Overworld only.

Disentangler of Mortals

An animal killed within 5 blocks releases Aura and drops nothing. The longer it lived the more it gives, up to about an hour and a half; babies give less.

Rose of Oblivion

Grows on the End island when the dragon dies. Drop an eye of ender next to it and it releases 500,000 Aura over about 50 seconds, without needing a catalyst.

Other generators

The Firecracker Gaze eats fireworks, the Shooting Mark projectiles hitting its sides in order from north, the Swamp Homi moss, the Offshoot Observer slimes splitting, the Reaper of Ender Heights chorus plants, and the Ritual of the Brewer lingering potions.

Creational Catalyst

Four Infused Rock, a Tainted Gold Ingot and the four strong Tokens. Place it under a generator to let it keep going.

Watch an area you run without limit with an Aura Detector: Aura pushed far enough spreads out and fizzles, so unlimited generation is wasted unless something nearby spends it.

Spending Aura: caches, devices and tools

Tools and staffs take their Aura from a cache you carry, and placed devices take it from the area. An Aura Cache holds 400,000 and an Aura Trove 1,200,000; fill either on a charged Natural Altar, and wear it on a Curios belt slot or keep it in the inventory.

Botanist's and Skyseeker's gear

Infused Iron and Ingot of the Skies tools and armour repair themselves from a carried cache while you sneak and stand still.

Altar of Birthing

Spawns 57 kinds of mob from a Spirit of Birthing and a few of the mob's drops, thrown on the ground beside it, paid in Aura from the area.

Energetic Aura Forge

Turns Aura above the normal level within 45 blocks into FE: 20 Aura per FE, at most 10,000 FE a second. It needs a frame of redstone blocks around it.

World Eye

A chunk loader that costs a little Aura. A redstone signal sets its radius, up to about 30 blocks.

Other devices

The Extraneous Firestarter speeds a furnace, Armorer's Aid can double blast furnace ores, the Lamp of Sanctuary stops mob spawns, the Aura Field Creator breaks blocks, and the Shifting Sundial and Cloudshifter change the time and weather.

Too much or too little: Aura Imbalance

An area far from its normal level reacts. Every effect is switched on in the server's config. The Environmental Ocular shows which are active where you stand.

Too little

Grass and leaves die (Overworld and Nether), netherrack decays into soul soil and soul sand and catches fire, players lose breath and heal slowly, neutral mobs like endermen turn hostile, and at the extreme, explosions.

Too much

Crops grow faster (about three quarters of the bar), animals breed on their own near Powder of Fertility, carried caches fill up, grass spreads on netherrack, and past the top of the bar ores appear in stone near Powder of the Bountiful Core.

Effect Powders made in the Ritual of the Forest switch effects. Placed on the ground, a stack works over as many blocks as it has items, and hitting it picks it up again. The Aura Imbalance Ward stops a device beside it when the Aura gets too low.

Nature's Aura in ATM10

ATM10 leaves the mod as it is: no recipe of Nature's Aura is changed, and the server runs its default config. Two of the pack's own recipes use its items: Reliquary's Fertile Lily Pad takes four Powder of Steady Growth, and the Modular Machinery Time Counter takes a Hand of Time from the Offering Table.

Remember the dimension rule when choosing where to build: the Mining Dimension is "other" Aura, so an altar or a Herbivorous Absorber there does nothing.

Questions