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.

Tier 3
So the second tier altar was helpful, but you want more power. Grab yourself twenty additional runes of any kind and four blocks of glowstone. Now, go out one additional block on each side, and down one. Place five runes per side, and build a two tall pillar of whatever material you wish, and cap it with glowstone. You now have access to a tier 3 altar. Grab your Divination Sigil and give the altar a whack and see what it says, just to be safe.

As I said earlier, each altar gives a new blood orb. This one requires a block of gold and 40,000 LP. This is four times as much as the altar can hold, so be prepared for this! After successfully creating your new Magician’s Blood Orb, bind it as normal, and you will have access to 150,000 LP storage in your network, as well as some additional treats.

The first of the new toys you get are two additional runes, the Rune of Augmented Capacity and the Rune of Dislocation. The Rune of Augmented Capacity will increase your altar's storage by 1,500 LP (Also known as 1.5 buckets) per rune, while the Rune of Dislocation speeds up the process of adding and removing fluids by 20% (multiplicative). This means you can setup piping networks and have them run much faster than previously possible. In order to create these runes, you need to create Imbued Slates, which will set you back 10,000 LP per slate.

More Sigils!
Lava has always been a problem with mining straight down. A solution to that problem is the Sigil of Elemental Affinity. This sigil, when active, will consume 200 LP every 10 seconds in return for water breathing, lava immunity, and fall damage negation. Use in conjunction with the Air Sigil to zip around like a drunk humming bird.

Should you have created every sigil so far, you'll realize they take up quite a bit of space. Craft yourself a Sigil of Holding, and shift-right click with it to find another sigil in your inventory, which will bind it to this Sigil of Holding, freeing up inventory slots. To use the held sigil, simply right click. To cycle through held sigils, a simple shift-right click will do.

The Sigil of Magnetism is your standard item magnet, collecting everything around it in a five block radius.

Remember that Ars Magica light spell? Well, Blood Magic has something very similar with the Sigil of the Blood Lamp. This sigil allows you to both place and throw light sources where you wish. Now you can light your caves with blood!

For those that need a portable platform, the Sigil of the Phantom Bridge is for you! Once activated, the bridge can be called when falling by attempting to sneak. Once summoned, the bridge can easily be destroyed by a single punch, and can even be replaced with blocks. Sneaking will cause the bridge to move down one block. This only works on newly formed bridge blocks; all current blocks will remain at their current height. The bridge will also despawn after you have moved a certain distance, so no need to worry about cleaning it up.

Ritual Preparation
Your advance through the “tech tree” is now limited. In order to continue with Blood Magic, you need to get your hands on a Bound Blade. Easier said than done, as this means you need to get into rituals (which are rather easy). To get started with rituals, let’s make the Elemental Inks that are used to define what runes are to be used. To do this, take obsidian, a lapis block, a ghast tear, and a magma cream and toss them into an altar with about 1,000 LP each. This will get you an Elemental Ink for earth, water, air, and fire.

At this point, you have the choice of either making a Ritual Diviner, or manually creating the rituals. Regardless of your choice, you will still need a Master Ritual Stone, and the required number of Ritual Stones to create a ritual. Should you choose the Ritual Diviner, you should notice that there are two listed in NEI. At this point, you can only create one, as the other requires a tier 4 altar.

So you have your Master Ritual Stone, several Ritual Stones, and your Elemental Inks (or Ritual Diviner). In order to use them, you need a Weak Activation Crystal. Grab a Lava Crystal, and throw it into the altar with 10,000 LP to create this Crystal. Now, head to a location you want your Ritual of Binding to be at (It’s a 9x9 sized multiblock). Make sure you have cleared some space for the ritual, as the stones cannot be placed if there's anything other than air where they need to go if using the Diviner. Place down your Master Ritual Stone, and right click it with your Ritual Diviner until there's no more particles. Your structure is then complete. Should you be doing this manually, refer to the picture located in the article for the Ritual of Binding.

As a warning, snow can cause issues with both ritual placement and ritual use, so keep your ritual areas clear of any possible obstructions.

Binding Contracts
The Ritual of Binding is an impressive ritual, simply due to its products. Grab yourself a diamond sword, and head to the Master Ritual Stone. Smack it with your Weak Activation Crystal, and throw your diamond sword at it. Now, quickly put out the fire around the center as it can destroy the item when it is done, and begin to dodge lightning until the ritual is complete. When it finishes, retrieve your newly created Bound Blade from the ground somewhere around the ritual site. Then, just shift-right click to activate (and de-activate) the blade.

Each diamond tool (except the hoe) has a bound version you can create through the same method. Have caution with these tools! A single, accidental right click can clear your base out! For example, right clicking with an active Bound Pickaxe is hazardous to the health of your storage room (and your home!).

Since bows are boring, you can take your Apprentice Blood Orb and toss it into the ritual, and get an Energy Blaster from it. This deals 12 base damage just like the Bound Blade, and also must be activated and deactivated.

Kills made with your Bound Blade have a chance of dropping a Weak Blood Shard, which can be used to create your next tiered altar and blood orb. Collect at least two shards, and be ready for more construction.

As a bonus to all aspiring Thaumaturges, you can take your Goggles of Revealing, and bind them with your Ritual of Binding. This will create a Sanguine Helmet, which functions like the goggles, allowing you to see nodes and other important information. As a bonus, the helmet will provide an 8% discount, up from the standard 5% of the goggles.

Tier Four
The path to your fourth tier blood altar requires 28 additional runes, laid out in pattern similar to the third tier: drop down and out one additional block, and place seven runes per side. In each corner, create a pillar that is five blocks high, capped with a Large Bloodstone Brick. These bricks are created by fusing stone with a Weak Blood Shard in any crafting grid. Each craft will yield 32 bricks. To ensure your altar was assembled properly, hit it with your Divination Sigil.