Getting Started (Blood Magic) (Pre 1.8)

Note: This guide is currently being transferred and rewritten, and is currently not in its complete form.

Preface
Blood Magic is a mod that is centered around the manipulation of blood, or life essence (LP). This life essence is used to fuel several things within the mod itself, ranging from your own personal, custom armor, to a ritual to speed crop growth, to summoning a meteor. With its own unique spell and alchemy system, the possibilities within Blood Magic are endless. Should you also be an aspiring Thaumaturge, you will be delighted to know that both mods flow seamlessly together.

Tier One
In order to begin Blood Magic, it is recommended you have a few valuable materials lying around.The first block we will create is the Blood Altar, which is used for creating a large amount of the items needed throughout the mod. Put this in a safe place, as you will not be capable of too much fighting (or any, for that matter) when you begin work. Now that that's done, you need a way to get blood into your altar for manipulation. To this end, craft yourself a Sacrificial Knife. Each right click of this will put a mere 200 LP into your altar at the cost of a single heart. Now, before you go and start filling up your altar, remember that it has a cap of 10,000 LP, and that you will need either a large amount of food or some way to speed up your regeneration process.

So, you've found out how to generate LP, but now want to store it. In order to do this, grab yourself a diamond and 2,000 LP in an altar. Toss your diamond in, and watch it carefully. See those particles? That shows that your altar is consuming the available LP. If it turns into any color other than red, you're losing progress due to a lack of LP. Watch carefully for this! Once your diamond is done absorbing the LP, there will be a burst of particles, and your new Weak Blood Orb will be sitting in the altar, ready to store all the LP you can throw at it! (Up to 5,000 for this tier) In order to do this, you must first right click with the orb in your hand, binding it to your personal LP network. From here, you can either continue right clicking to donate some of your life to your network, or you can place the orb back into the altar and begin using your knife.

New Toys!
Now you're probably beginning to wonder how to tell just what your storage levels are. To answer this question, get yourself a piece of smooth stone and toss it into your altar with about 1,000 LP. This will create a Blank Slate, which you can use with your Weak Blood Orb to create a Divination Sigil (Don't worry, the blood orb is returned). Just like with most Blood Magic items, right click to bind it to yourself. This sigil will now allow you to see how much LP is in both your network and your altar. A right click to the altar will show how much it contains, while a right click elsewhere will show how much is in your network. The next two sigils you can make are the Water Sigil and Lava Sigil. These will place a single source block of their respective liquid, for 100 (Water) and 1000 (Lava) LP. You may have noticed that the Lava Sigil takes a Lava Crystal, and are now wondering what it can do for you. Go ahead and craft one, bind it to yourself, and toss it into a furnace with a few pieces of cobble (Make sure your network has some LP before you do this). This crystal acts as a fuel source, much like coal, but at the cost of 25 LP per smelt.

First Runes
Using your new-found powers of the Lava Crystal (Or with another source, if you choose to use another fuel), smelt up some more smooth stone for rune creation. These Blank Slates can be used in a crafting table to create runes, which will be used to advance your altar's tier. The first tier is the altar block itself, with the second tier requiring the altar and eight Blood Runes, with the runes being placed one level below the altar around it. Do note that Speed Runes can also be used in place of regular runes, and will do what its name implies. The Speed Runes increase the speed at which the altar performs actions by 20% (additively).

Tier Two
With a new tier altar comes a new blood orb. This one, however, requires an elusive emerald and 5,000 LP in an altar. This fancy new Apprentice Blood Orb you just received will increase your storage to 25,000 LP, as well as unlock a few additional crafting recipes.

If you're lacking in increased regeneration, you're probably getting annoyed with the large amount of downtime there is when filling your altar. Now that you're at the second tier, you can create some more advanced runes, specifically the Rune of Self-Sacrifice and the Rune of Sacrifice. These runes require Reinforced Slates to be created, which require a total of 3,000 LP per smooth stone in an altar. You can also place any extra Blank Slates into the altar with 2,000 LP to get Reinforced Slates. Now, the Rune of Self-Sacrifice increases the amount of LP you receive per heart when using the Sacrificial Knife by 20 LP per rune, while the Rune of Sacrifice increases the total amount of LP you receive when sacrificing an entity by 10% (additively).

Alternate Sacrifices
I've made mention of sacrificing something other than yourself, now it's time to go into detail. If this is the way you've chosen to generate LP, grab yourself an Iron Sword and toss it into your altar with 3,000 LP and watch the magic happen. When it's done, grab your shiny new Dagger of Sacrifice and go find some entities to poke with it.

There are different entities you can sacrifice, each with its own LP values. All entities that can be sacrificed, if they are close enough to the altar, will be instantly killed, and all essence will be absorbed. Babies cannot be sacrificed to the altar, however. Below are the LP values for each entity:
 * Animals (Cows, sheep, etc.) = 250 LP
 * Hostile Mobs (Creepers, zombies, etc.) = 500 LP
 * Villagers = 2,000 LP

New Toys! (Part 2)
Now that you have access to this new tier and set of slates, you can make some new sigils. Having liquid problems? Create a Void Sigil! It magically removes any liquid blocks at the cost of 50 LP and the liquid itself.

Ever wanted to fly, without needing special armor? The Air Sigil is for you. This allows you to fly in the direction you are facing at the cost of 50 LP per click. Be warned though, falling is hazardous to your health.

The vanilla enchanting system isn't good, and that's no secret. So rather than fool with an annoying system for your pickaxe, grab yourself a Sigil of the Fast Miner. Activation (and every 10 seconds) will draw 100 LP from your network in return for an increased mining speed.

For those who enjoy large, manual farms and can't stand dealing with bone meal, the Sigil of the Green Grove has you covered. It has two uses, the first being a constant, passive effect. As you move around with the sigil activated, it will send additional growth ticks to plants, speeding their growing progress. The second effect is that it is able to act like bone meal. Both effects will drain a small amount of LP from the owner's network when in use.