Botanic Additions

Overview

Botanic Additions is an addon for Botania that extends the mod's progression with new materials, powerful equipment, and quality-of-life blocks. The centerpiece is Gaiasteel, a new tier of metal above Terrasteel that requires the Gaia Agglomeration Plate and a staggering 1,000,000 mana to craft. Along the way you get Mana Tesseracts for wireless cross-dimensional mana transport, an upgraded Dreaming Mana Pool with double capacity, weather-themed generating flowers, and the Elven Altar as an improved Rune Altar.

This mod is designed for players who have already progressed through Botania's core content and defeated the Guardian of Gaia. You can browse all items this mod adds and their recipes using the tabs at the top of this page. This guide walks through the full progression from early elven materials to endgame Gaiasteel gear.

Prerequisites

Botanic Additions requires Botania and HammerCore as dependencies. Before you can engage with most of this mod's content, you need to have a working Botania setup including a Mana Pool, Mana Spreaders, a Rune Altar, and an active Alfheim Portal. The endgame content requires defeating the Guardian of Gaia at least once for Gaia Spirit drops. If you haven't reached the Elven Gateway yet in Botania, focus on that first, as the majority of Botanic Additions' progression starts at the elven tier.

Elven Materials & Blocks

The first tier of new content revolves around the Alfheim Portal and Elven Trading. Dreamrock is obtained by trading Living Rock through the Elven Gateway. It serves as the primary building block for many of the mod's crafting stations, including the Dreaming Mana Pool and the Elven Altar. Visually, the Dreaming Pool even uses Dreamrock as its texture.

Elvenwood Logs are obtained by trading any type of wood log through the gateway. Their main purpose is to feed into a Pure Daisy, which converts them into Dreamwood, giving you an alternative source of Dreamwood beyond the standard Elven Trade. This is particularly useful in modpacks where Dreamwood demand is high.

Mana Lapis & Elven Lapis

Mana Lapis is created by infusing Lapis Lazuli in a Mana Pool (5,000 mana per piece, or 45,000 mana for a full Lapis Block into a Mana Lapis Block). Elven Lapis is then obtained by trading two Mana Lapis through the Alfheim Portal. Both materials can be compressed into storage blocks using a 3x3 crafting recipe. Elven Lapis Blocks are a key ingredient in the Gaia Agglomeration Plate, so plan your Lapis production accordingly.

Key Blocks

Mana Tesseract

The Mana Tesseract is one of the most impactful blocks in the mod. It allows wireless mana transfer across unlimited distances and even between dimensions. Two Tesseracts linked to the same channel will share mana as if they were adjacent Mana Pools. To link them, combine a Tesseract with any item in a crafting grid. The item's identity becomes the channel key (displayed as a hash code in the tooltip). Craft a second Tesseract with the same item to put it on the same channel. You can attach Sparks to Tesseracts for mana transfer, and they support Wand of the Forest interaction to check their status.

Dreaming Mana Pool

The Dreaming Mana Pool holds 2,000,000 mana, exactly double the capacity of a standard Mana Pool. It is crafted from Dreamrock surrounding a regular Mana Pool, with Terrasteel Nuggets along the bottom. The pool supports all the same interactions as a regular pool, including Sparks, Alchemy Catalyst, and item infusion recipes. It functions identically to a normal pool but with the larger buffer, making it ideal for feeding mana-hungry devices like the Gaia Agglomeration Plate.

Elven Altar

The Elven Altar is an upgraded Rune Altar crafted from Dreamrock, an Elven Dragonstone, and a standard Rune Altar. It functions exactly like a Rune Altar but with one important addition: you can attach Sparks to it while sneaking. This means it can receive mana from Spark networks directly, eliminating the need for Mana Spreaders pointed at it. It emits a Redstone comparator signal based on its crafting progress.

Terra Catalyst

The Terra Catalyst functions like the Alchemy Catalyst but for a different set of recipes. Place it beneath a Mana Pool to enable Terra Catalyst recipes. Currently, its primary use is converting Gaia Spirits into 8 Gaia Shards for 10,000 mana. It is crafted from Shimmerrock, Terrasteel Ingots, a Gaia Spirit, and an Alchemy Catalyst.

Gaia Agglomeration Plate

The Gaia Agglomeration Plate is the endgame crafting station. It works like the Terrestrial Agglomeration Plate but handles two recipes: Terrasteel (300,000 mana) and Gaiasteel (1,000,000 mana). Drop the ingredients on top, supply mana via surrounding Sparks, and wait. The plate emits a comparator signal proportional to its mana fill level. The crafting recipe requires Elven Lapis Blocks, a Rune of Energy, a Terrestrial Agglomeration Plate, a Rune of Teleportation, and Gaia Shards.

Weather Generating Flowers

Botanic Additions adds three passive generating flowers that produce mana based on weather conditions, plus one functional flower. All three passive weather flowers share the same base behavior: they do not decay, they share mana with adjacent flowers of the same type, and they benefit from Enchanted Soil which doubles their generation rate and capacity.

Rain Flower

The Rain Flower generates mana whenever it is raining at the flower's position (it must be exposed to rain). It produces 1 mana every 2 ticks on normal soil, or 2 mana every tick on Enchanted Soil. Its internal buffer holds 200 mana (400 on Enchanted Soil). Crafted on a Petal Apothecary with 4 Blue Petals, 2 Light Blue Petals, and 1 Yellow Petal.

Snow Flower

The Snow Flower is identical to the Rain Flower in stats (1 mana per 2 ticks, 200 buffer, same Enchanted Soil bonuses) but generates mana only when it is snowing at its location. This means it only works in cold biomes during precipitation. Crafted with 4 Light Blue Petals and 3 White Petals.

Lightning Flower

The Lightning Flower is the most powerful of the weather generators, but also the most situational. During thunderstorms, it captures nearby lightning strikes within 128 blocks and converts them into 2,000 mana per strike (4,000 on Enchanted Soil). After capturing a strike, it enters a 1,000-tick (50-second) cooldown. It has a very small chance (0.01%) each tick during thunderstorms to attract its own lightning bolt. The flower's max mana buffer matches its per-strike yield (2,000 or 4,000). It requires a Rune of Energy in its petal recipe, making it the most expensive flower to craft.

Wither Flower

Unlike the other flowers, the Wither Flower is a functional flower that consumes mana rather than generating it. It automatically constructs a Wither boss by placing Soul Sand and Wither Skeleton Skulls from dropped items in the area. It has a range of 3 blocks for picking up items and works every 10 ticks. Each placement of a Soul Sand block or Skull costs 100 mana. The flower holds a maximum of 700 mana and can be disabled with a Redstone signal. It searches upward (up to 5 blocks above itself) for a suitable construction position.

Endgame Equipment

Gaiasteel is the mod's pinnacle material, and the three pieces of equipment crafted from it are designed to be significant upgrades over Botania's existing endgame options.

Mana Stealing Blade

The Mana Stealing Blade is a Gaiasteel sword with 3,000 durability, 15.0 base attack damage (11.0 from the tool material plus 4.0 base), and 60 enchantability. It fires a mana burst projectile when you attack (similar to the Terra Blade), which drains 1,000 to 2,000 mana from any player it hits and transfers that mana to the attacker. The burst projectile itself deals the full sword damage to any mob it contacts. Like Botania's mana tools, durability is repaired by consuming 200 mana per point of durability from your mana supply. Crafted from 2 Gaiasteel Ingots and a Terra Blade.

Terra Protector

The Terra Protector is a Baubles amulet that creates a damage-absorbing shield around the wearer. It charges from your mana supply up to 100,000 mana, which powers a Defense value that caps at 100. When you take damage, the shield absorbs the hit entirely and reduces your Defense value by an amount based on the cube root of the damage dealt (minimum 1, maximum 10). After absorbing hits, a Heat value builds up which slows the rate at which Defense regenerates. This means rapid successive hits are more effective at breaking through the shield, but given time it will fully restore. Crafted from 3 Gaiasteel Ingots, Terrasteel Nuggets, and a Rune of Earth.

Gaia Band of Aura

The Gaia Band of Aura is a Baubles ring that generates mana passively while worn. It generates 1 mana every single tick, which is twice the rate of the Greater Band of Aura. It is crafted by combining a Greater Band of Aura with a Gaiasteel Ingot in a shapeless recipe. This is the simplest Gaiasteel item to craft and a good first target for your initial ingot.

Crafting Progression

The mod also modifies one vanilla Botania recipe: the Gaia Mana Spreader (the third-tier spreader) is re-registered to use a Gaia Shard instead of its original recipe component. This means you need to engage with the Botanic Additions material chain even for this standard Botania item.

The overall progression flows naturally from Botania's endgame. After defeating the Guardian of Gaia, convert Gaia Spirits into Gaia Shards using the Terra Catalyst. Use those shards alongside Elven-tier materials to build the Gaia Agglomeration Plate. Then pour a massive 1,000,000 mana into it with endgame elven materials to produce Gaiasteel Ingots. Each piece of Gaiasteel equipment requires 1 to 3 ingots, so plan on multiple Guardian kills and significant mana infrastructure.

CraftTweaker Support

Modpack makers can add and remove Gaia Agglomeration Plate recipes via CraftTweaker. Use mods.botanicadds.GaiaPlate.add(output, mana, inputs) to register new recipes, and mods.botanicadds.GaiaPlate.remove(output) to remove existing ones. This lets modpack authors extend the plate with their own custom crafting chains or adjust the mana costs for balance.