Vitality 3 is a new version of Vitality for Minecraft 1.11 and above. It completely revamps the magic system in the mod and adds a bunch of new mechanics and items. The main focus of the mod is to be able to start using it very early on in the game, and actually get useful things without having to have expensive items. Ideally it should be usable as soon as the player finds copper and tin.
A key part of this redesigned version of the mod is that there is now no “best”. Before the system was very linear, having a Basic Wand, then an Advanced wand, then a Master Wand. Now, there are different wands, rods and staffs for different purposes, and different kinds of essence to suit your needs and available resources.
So far this only contains the tier 1 items in the mod, and there will be more mid and late-game content available later on.
Please, don’t copy the ideas here. I spent a lot of time making version 2 of Vitality, and thinking of these ideas for Version 3. Feedback on what I have here would be greatly appreciated though.
Essence is a concept brought over from Vitality 2. In the old versions of Vitality, it was simply a mystical substance used to cast spells. There was only one kind of Essence, simply called Essence. In Vitality 3, that is very different.
This dark form of Essence is found deep within your world. To obtain your first Demonic Essence samples you can use a Life Extraction Rod on Lava source blocks. This will drain the lava and fill the nearest Essence Vial in your inventory with Demonic Essence.
Demonic Essence increases the potency of spells by a lot, but also increases the casting cost. The cooldown of spells when using Demonic Essence is very slightly more than normal as well.
Angelic Essence is a mystical form of Essence found from objects that radiate god-like powers. The first Angelic Essence that you collect will be obtained using a Life Extraction Rod on Angelic Crystal Ore, which will turn the ore into stone and provide you with 15 Angelic Essence.
Note that Angelic Essence does not generate in Deserts or Plains, yet it is still relatively easy to get since there are many other biomes, especially when mods such as Biomes O Plenty are installed.
Casting spells using Angelic Essence will reduce both the potency and the casting cost, but the cooldown will be increased by a large amount.
This form of Essence is collected by weather based events. Placing a Life Extraction Crucible down during the rain will cause it to gradually fill Essence Pumps connected to the Crucible with Atmospheric Essence, During a storm, the process will be slightly faster. When it is sunny, nothing will collect.
Atmospheric Essence will decrease the cooldown of spells by a lot, and keep the potency and casting cost relatively normal.
Exotic Essence is one of the harder Essence types to find. This Essence is first found from Exotic Crystal Ore, and extracted using a Life Extraction Rod to yield 30 Exotic Essence. However, Exotic Crystal Ore is only found in Jungles and Mesas, and is therefore difficult to get early on.
Exotic Essence decreases all three primal aspects of a spell (cooldown, potency and casting cost).
Energetic Essence is a relatively easy Essence source to obtain, although slightly dangerous. It can be extracted out of any aggressive mobs whenever they are damaged using a Life Extraction Sword. This will fill up the first Essence Vial found in your inventory with 5 Energetic Essence.
Energetic Essence increases the potency and casting cost of spells, and decreases the cooldown time.
Essence Vials are the most basic way to store Essence. Crafted by simply right-clicking a glass bottle that is thrown on the ground with a Transmutation Rod, Essence Vials are the first available way to store Essence in your survival world. Essence Vials can store 4000 Essence of any kind, but only one kind at a time.
When extracting Essence from natural sources as described above, if you have a Essence Vial full of that type of Essence already in your inventory, the Essence will be transferred there. If you only have Empty Essence Vials in your inventory, or Vials storing the wrong type of Essence, the first Empty Essence Vial found in your inventory will be filled the the specific type of Essence that you are extracting.
Essence can be moved out of Essence Vials by right-clicking an Essence Jar while holding the vial.
Essence Jars are a more permanent storage system for Essence. To create them, you first need an Empty Jar, crafted with six pieces of glass in a jar shape. You can then right-click on a dropped Empty Jar with a Transmutation Rod to turn it into an Essence Jar.
To fill an Essence Jar, you can either pipe in Essence from an Essence Tube, or right-click the jar while holding a full Essence Vial. So long as the Jar is either empty or holding the same type of essence as you have in the Vial, the Essence from the Vial will be transferred into the Jar. Essence Jars can hold a max of 16000 Essence, and drop themselfs when mined, allowing you to move them without loosing the Essence stored inside. You cannot interact with them unless you place them down, however, so they cannot be used as an alternative to Essence Vials for that purpose.
Essence Vats are used to store Essence in a fixed, permanent way. You can insert and extract essence using Essence Vials, like you can with Essence Jars, but you cannot dig them up and keep the contents. When broken, they yield only an empty Essence Vat.
Essence Vats are a multiblock structure, and must contain at least one Essence Valve to be valid. The Valve is where you connect an Essence Pump to extract and insert Essence automatically.
Essence Pumps are used to transfer Essence between Essence Vat/Jars and Essence Tubes. They are crafted with eight bronze and a piece of glass.
Essence Pumps will by default insert Essence into the Essence Vat/Jar that they are placed next to. However, you can right-click the Pump with a Technicians Rod to reverse the flow of Essence. This will cause Essence to pump into nearby conduits and out of Vats/Jars connected to the Pump.
Essence Tubes are used to move Essence between different vats and vials. They are crafted with six glass and three bronze, and placed in the world similar to BuildCraft pipes. Essence Tubes will not connect to Vats or Jars though, and need to be connected on both sides to an Essence Pump, which is then connected to a Jar or vat.
Essence Tubes can only move one type of Essence at a time, and will change color based on what is flowing through them. Once the pumps at both ends have stopped moving Essence through they will reset to the default color and start again if there is a new type of Essence to move.
Although there are already a bunch of Essence Types in Vitality 3, there are even more. Every type of Essence (Angelic, Energetic, Demonic, etc) can be infused using different methods to create sub-types.
This is the form that all Essence starts in when first extracted. It can be turned into either Distilled or Purified Essence, or used as is.
When any type of Essence is poured into an Essence Distiller, it begins to slowly convert into the Distilled version of the Essence type used. This process takes around a minute. The resulting Essence will be automatically output into connected Essence Pumps, and will be disposed of into the atmosphere is nowhere is available for the Essence to go.
Distilled Essence increases the potency of spells used with it, and can be used to create either Strengthened or Weakened versions of each type of Essence. For example, Strengthened Demonic Essence or Weakened Angelic Essence.
Created using Distilled versions of any Essence in a Chamber of Strength, Strengthened Essence is stronger than normal Essence and therefore increases potency of spells that it is used for. However, it also increases casting cost by a lot. Since it is made with already-stronger Distilled Essence, the resulting spells will be incredibly powerful, but expensive. The cooldown is also quite long. To get the Strengthened Essence out of the Chamber of Strength, you must pump it out of the Essence Valve.
Strengthened Essence is not as easy to obtain as it sounds, however. Chambers of Strength can only be operated during the full moon, between dusk and sunrise. They also must be placed above y=128 and cannot operate during rain or thunder.
Why would you want a weaker Essence, you may ask? There are many reasons for this, as you will see soon. Weakened Essence is created in a Chamber of Weakness, during any time except full moons. They operate faster when it is raining, and take a few minutes to weaken the Essence fully.
Essence is pumped out of the Essence Valve in the Chamber of Weakness, and will be destroyed if no pump is connected. It decreases the potency of spells, but vastly decreases the cooldown and casting costs as well. It is also much easier to make than Strengthened Essence, making it viable even though Strengthened Essence has much higher potency in spells.
Being the counterpart of Distilled Essence, Purified Essence is created in an Essence Purifier in around 10 minutes. It can be turned into either Atomic Essence or Reconstructed Essence, and has a lower cooldown than Distilled Essence, but also a much lower potency.
Being the most delicate form of Essence, Atomic Essence has a very low potency and a very high Essence Cost. However, the cooldown is almost non-existent, making it viable to be used when quick usage of spells is crucial.
Atomic Essence is created in an Deconstruction Altar during daytime. It takes about 5 minutes to convert from Purified Essence.
Reconstructed Essence is created in the Reconstruction Altar using Purified Essence. It takes about 15 Minutes to convert, and will only convert during night-time, so it will stop while it is day.
Despite the long conversion time totalling 35 minutes when you include the creation of the Purified Essence, Reconstructed Essence is still quite useful. It has a high casting cost, but very high potency and low cooldown, making it useful for fast-reaction situations when you need to make a big impact.
There were already a few Rods mentioned above, and they are all important to progression in Vitality 3. Here are all of them and what they do.
This rod is used to control the mode of Essence Pumps. Is crafted using two sticks and a piece of redstone. It can also be used to infuse spells into Spell Bundles, and to extract spells from Spell Bags
The transmutation rod is used to convert items into more useful items. It is crafted using two sticks and a water bucket.
Crafted using a Transmutation Rod on a iron sword, this sword deals damage similar to a stone sword. However, when mobs are damaged with the sword, the first Essence Vial in your inventory storing Energetic Essence will be filled with 5 extra Energetic Essence.
This rod is used to extract Essence from previously living things such as ore and lava. It is crafted using two sticks and any flower.
There have already been a bunch of machines and multiblocks mentioned. Here's is an explanation of how they work.
This simple machine is used to extract Atmospheric Essence from the skies when it is raining. It pumps Atmospheric Essence into adjacent Essence Pumps, and produces essence actively during rain at a slow rate instead of producing it every few minutes once full. It is crafted using a Transmutation Rod on a cauldron. The Essence Pump must be connected to the bottom of the crucible for it to work.
This machine is used to convert any type of Essence into that type of Distilled Essence, for example Energetic Essence into Distilled Energetic Essence. It is crafted using five cobblestone, one bronze ingot and one blaze rod.
This machine will purify your essence. It is crafted using three cobblestone, a blaze rod, two redstone and a piece of glass.
This multiblock structure looks slightly similar to the Ars Magica Crafting Altar. One of the blocks in the multiblock is an Essence Valve, which is where the Strengthened Essence is pumped out once it is ready.
This multiblock is a darker version of the Chamber of Strength. It works in the same way under different conditions as described under the Strengthened Essence section.
This block is used to fill wands with Essence of any type accepted into the wand. Simply right-click the pedestal with a wand to add it into the Pedestal. This will cause the wand to be visible when you look at the Pedestal, sitting in the middle of the block. Essence will flow in from Essence Jars within a 3 block radius until the wand is full of all the types of Essence it can hold.
This multiblock structure is used to create Atomic versions of Essence, such as Atomic Angelic Essence.
This multiblock structure creates Deconstructed versions of Essence using Purified Essence, like the Deconstruction Altar does to make Atomic Essence.
When you extract Essence with a Life Extraction Rod or Sword, there is also Essence that is from then on bound to your soul. Additionally, any Life Extraction Crucibles that are placed by you are bound to you, so any Essence extracted with these counts towards your soul. Since every extraction kills that which was once living within the core of the extracted thing or block, too much Essence bound to your soul can cause negative effects.
You can check how much Essence is currently bound to you by shift + right-clicking with a Life Extraction Rod.
If you have too much Demonic Essence bound to your soul, Dark Spirits will start to spawn nearby you. These beasts cause the skies to turn dark just by existing within proximity to players, and they will turn hostile and start to attack you if you have excessive amounts of Demonic Essence.
Even Angelic things aren’t always good. Having too much Angelic Essence bound to your soul will cause you to randomly start levitating upwards for a period of time. The more essence you have bound, the longer you levitate for at a time.
Too much Atmospheric Essence is not a good thing. Lightning will start to randomly strike down on you at sudden intervals, and it will become more intensive the more Essence you have stored.
When you have too much Energetic Essence bound to your soul, you will begin to get slowness debuffs. Mobs will also begin to spawn near to you that have speed buffs, making it a very hard fight.
For every Exotic Essence you collect, you lose one point of every other Essence that is bound to your soul. If you collect Exotic Essence when you have none of every other type bound, however, you will get 10 points of every other Essence added to your soul bindings.
A Wand Base is an essential part of any wand. It is where the Essence is stored, and defines what types can be stored in that wand.
This is the first way that you will be able to use Demonic Essence in a wand. The Wooden Demonic Core is crafted using just two sticks and two lava buckets, and returns the now-empty buckets to your inventory when it is crafted.
The Wooden Demonic Core, when used as the core of a wand, will allow it to store only Demonic Essence.
This is the most early-game method of storing Angelic Essence in a wand. It is crafted using two Angelic Crystals, which are dropped when Angelic Crystal Ore is mined, and two sticks.
When used to make a wand, it limits the wand to only storing Angelic Essence.
Atmospheric Wand Base’s are crafted using two sticks and two water buckets. They force the wand they are used on to only store Atmospheric Essence.
Exotic Wand Base’s are made using two sticks and two Exotic Crystals, which drop from mined Exotic Crystal Ore. They allow wands made with the base to store only Energetic Essence.
Energetic Wand Base’s are made using two rotten flesh and two sticks. They limit wands made with them to only storing Energetic Essence.
Wand Tips are the other essential part of any wand. They define the maximum amount of Essence that the Wand can store.
This simple wand tip is crafted with five planks and a bronze ingot. It provides a maximum Essence storage of 50 Essence when used in a wand.
These are the things that actually use all the stuff above!
Once you have a Wand Base and a Wand Tip, you can simply craft two of the same Wand Tip with a single Wand Base in the middle. This will create a wand with properties from the components used. If you used a Wooden Wand Tip and an Atmospheric Wand Base, you would, for example, end up with a Wooden Tipped Atmospheric Wand. This wand would have a maximum of 30 Atmospheric Essence usable in the core.
Once any type of Essence is stored in an Essence Jar, you can easily transfer it into your wand by right-clicking the Jar. This does not work backwards, however, and you cannot remove Essence from your Wand once it is full. Every time you right-click on an Essence Jar with a wand, 1 of the type of Essence stored in the Jar is added to the Wand’s internal storage. If you shift + right-click the Jar, you can extract 10 Essence at a time.
If filling wands manually becomes tedious once you have higher capacity wands, you can place your wand on a Wand Pedestal and it will automatically fill up from nearby Essence Jars.
In order to use your wand, you will first need a Spell Bag so that your wand knows what spells to cast. Craft this simply by right-clicking a bookshelf with a Transmutation Rod. You can now put spells into your Spell Bag by throwing as many spells as you want on the ground and right-clicking them with a Technician's Rod. This will create a Spell Bundle, which can then be crafted with your Spell Bag to add the spells. Right-clicking on a dropped Spell Bag with a Technicians Rod will revert the process and drop all the spells as well as the bag, allowing you to remove the spells after you put them in. You can add more than one Spell Bundle to your wand, but only one at a time.
Once a Spell Card is infused into your spell bag, whenever you have a spell bag in your inventory you can simply press G while holding your wand and an interface will come up allowing you to select a spell.
Spells are cast similar to Vitality 2, but in v3 they are more aesthetic and there are more types. All spells have a base Casting Cost, Potency and Cooldown, which is modified depending on what type of Essence you use to cast it. From Purified Angelic Essence to Weakened Energetic Essence, every essence type will change the costs of using a spell in different ways as described in the Essence and Essence Subtypes sections.