Spirit

Overview

Spirit is a soul magic mod that revolves around collecting souls from slain mobs and using them to power various magical systems. At its core, you'll be gathering souls into crystals, building customizable mob spawners called Soul Cages, transmuting mobs into other creatures at the Soul Pedestal, and crafting special items by engulfing them in Soul Fire. The mod works on both Forge and Fabric for modern Minecraft versions.

The mod adds a full set of Soul Steel tools and weapons, an enchantment for boosting soul collection, and a mob trait system that lets you channel the abilities of captured creatures through your weapons. You can browse all items and recipes using the tabs at the top of this page. The tier system is entirely datapack-driven, meaning modpack makers can customize every aspect of how Soul Cages behave.

Soul Crystal System

The soul crystal system is the foundation of everything in Spirit. There are three distinct crystal types, each serving a different purpose in the mod's progression.

Soul Crystal Shard

The simplest soul container. A Soul Crystal Shard captures the type of the first mob you kill while carrying it, permanently binding to that entity type. It holds exactly 1 soul and functions as a one-time capture tool. Shards are useful for quickly attuning a crystal to a specific mob type without committing a full Soul Crystal. You can transfer a shard's soul into a Soul Crystal at a Crystal Pedestal.

Crude Soul Crystal

The Crude Soul Crystal is an untyped soul container that accepts souls from any mob. It has a configurable capacity cap of 256 souls by default. While versatile, crude crystals cannot be used in Soul Cages because they lack a specific mob type binding. They're primarily used as a generic soul battery for powering the Soul Steel Bow and for Soul Pedestal interactions.

Soul Crystal

The full Soul Crystal is the workhorse of the mod. When you first kill a mob while carrying an empty Soul Crystal, it permanently binds to that entity type. From then on, it only accepts souls from that specific mob. The maximum number of souls it can hold is determined by the highest tier available for that entity type. Once it reaches a tier threshold, you'll see a chat message indicating the crystal has upgraded. Soul Crystals are required for Soul Cages, and they also enable mob trait effects on Soul Steel tools and the Soul Steel Bow.

The Tier System

Spirit's tier system controls how Soul Cages behave. Tiers are defined entirely through datapacks, meaning modpack creators can customize every aspect. Each tier specifies a required soul count, spawn delays, spawn count per cycle, spawn range, player detection range, and whether the tier respects natural spawn conditions.

When a Soul Crystal accumulates enough souls to reach a new tier, the Soul Cage it's placed in gains the benefits of that tier. The system sorts tiers by required souls in descending order, so you always get the highest tier your soul count qualifies for. Certain entity types can be blacklisted from specific tiers via the datapack configuration.

Soul Cage Spawner

The Soul Cage is the mod's signature block. It functions as a customizable mob spawner that uses soul-filled crystals to continuously spawn mobs. Place a Soul Cage and right-click it with a Soul Crystal that has reached at least the first tier threshold. The cage will display a spinning animation and emit soul particles when active.

The spawner checks for a player within the tier's nearbyRange before activating (unless nearbyRange is 0, which means always active). Each spawn cycle, it attempts to place mobs at random positions within the tier's spawnRange. If there are already 6 or more entities of the same type within the spawn range, spawning is paused to prevent overcrowding. All mobs spawned by a Soul Cage are marked as "Corrupted," which visually distinguishes them from natural spawns.

Tiers with redstoneControlled set to true will stop spawning when receiving a redstone signal, giving you full control over when the cage operates. On the client side, a redstone-controlled cage that receives a signal slows its spinning animation by a factor of 30, providing visual feedback that it's paused.

Soul Fire Engulfing

Soul Fire Engulfing is Spirit's crafting system for transforming items. The process requires dropping an item near Soul Fire while a specific multiblock structure surrounds the flame. The default multiblock is simply a Soul Fire block on top of a Log, but more advanced recipes can require elaborate multi-layer structures with specific block types.

When an eligible item enters the Soul Fire, the engulfing process begins. A timer counts down based on the recipe's duration (measured in ticks). During this time, the multiblock structure must remain intact. If any block in the structure is broken or removed, the engulfing resets and you'll need to start over. Once the timer completes, the output item appears and the multiblock structure is consumed (destroyed) if the recipe specifies it.

Multiblock Patterns

Multiblock patterns are defined as 3D grids using character maps. The '@' symbol always represents the Soul Fire position, '&' matches any Log or Wood block, and a space character matches any block (effectively a wildcard). Custom keys can map characters to specific block types with optional NBT matching. Advanced recipes might require structures several blocks tall and wide surrounding the flame, so check the recipe viewer for exact layouts.

Soul Transmutation

Soul Transmutation is Spirit's mob conversion system, allowing you to transform one entity type into another. This powerful mechanic uses the Soul Pedestal as its centerpiece, surrounded by regular Pedestals holding the required item ingredients.

Setting Up the Ritual

Place a Soul Pedestal in the center of your ritual area. Around it, position up to 8 regular Pedestals at the cardinal and diagonal positions, exactly 3 blocks away (north, south, east, west at distance 3, and diagonals at distance 2,2). Right-click the Soul Pedestal with a Soul Crystal or Soul Crystal Shard to set the input entity type. Then place the required ingredient items on the surrounding Pedestals.

Starting the Transmutation

Once the entity type is set and all ingredients are in place, right-click the Soul Pedestal with the recipe's activation item (or with an empty hand if no activation item is required). The transmutation begins with a dramatic particle animation: soul particles spiral inward from the surrounding pedestals toward the center over the recipe's duration. At 50% completion, the particles start from 3 blocks away and spiral tighter. When the process finishes, the ingredient items are consumed from the pedestals and the new entity spawns at the Soul Pedestal's location.

Crystal Pedestal

The Crystal Pedestal is a specialized block for managing soul crystals. Place a crystal on it, then right-click with another crystal to transfer or merge souls between them. Two Soul Crystals of the same entity type will combine their soul counts (up to the tier maximum). You can also transfer souls from a Soul Crystal to a Crude Soul Crystal, or use it to imbue an empty Soul Crystal Shard with a type from a full Soul Crystal. This makes the Crystal Pedestal essential for managing your soul crystal inventory efficiently.

Soul Steel Tools & Weapons

Spirit adds a complete set of Soul Steel tools and weapons. Soul Steel sits between Iron and Diamond in terms of raw stats, but its unique abilities make it far more valuable than those numbers suggest. All Soul Steel tools can be repaired using Soul Fire and share a distinctive teal color.

Soul Steel has notably lower durability than Diamond at only 200 uses, but compensates with 9.0 mining speed (faster than Diamond's 8.0), 3.5 base damage bonus (higher than Diamond's 3.0), harvest level 3 (equal to Diamond), and an excellent enchantability of 25 (nearly double Diamond's 10). This makes Soul Steel tools glass cannons: powerful and easy to enchant, but they wear out quickly.

Individual Tool Stats

The Soul Steel Sword deals 3 bonus damage with -2.4 attack speed. The Soul Steel Axe hits harder at 5.0 bonus damage but swings slower at -3.0 attack speed. The Pickaxe adds 1 bonus damage at -2.8 speed, the Shovel adds 1.5 at -3.0 speed, and the Hoe subtracts 3 damage but swings at 0.0 speed modifier (fastest recovery).

Empowered Mode

All Soul Steel tools have an empowered mode that can be toggled with a keybind. When empowered (indicated by a "Charged" NBT tag), the tool consumes souls from a Soul Crystal in your inventory to apply mob trait effects on hit. Each hit in empowered mode costs 1 soul from your crystal. The trait applied depends on which mob's souls are stored in the crystal, so a Blaze-attuned crystal might add fire damage while a Creeper crystal could trigger explosions.

Soul Steel Bow & Soul Arrows

The Soul Steel Bow fires Soul Arrows instead of regular arrows. Unlike a normal bow, it doesn't consume arrows from your inventory. Instead, it draws from soul crystals: each shot costs 1 soul from whatever crystal the mod finds in your inventory (checking Trinkets slots first, then mainhand/offhand inventory, then hotbar).

Soul Arrows leave a trail of soul particles and Soul Flame particles as they fly. If your crystal is a typed Soul Crystal (not crude), the arrow inherits the mob trait effects of the stored entity. This means a bow loaded with Blaze souls might fire arrows that set targets ablaze, while Witch souls could apply potion effects on hit. The bow is fully compatible with vanilla enchantments like Power, Punch, and Flame.

Mob Traits

The Mob Trait system links specific entity types to combat effects that can be channeled through Soul Steel tools and Soul Arrows. Traits are defined via datapack recipes, with each entity type mapping to one or more trait effects. The system supports five trait types:

Damage Trait

Adds flat bonus damage to attacks and arrows. The additionalDamage parameter is a float, so trait packs can fine-tune the extra damage for each mob type.

Fire Trait

Sets targets on fire for a configurable duration (default 120 ticks, or 6 seconds). When used on a Soul Arrow that hits a block, it attempts to ignite flammable blocks above the impact point.

Explosion Trait

Creates an explosion at the point of impact with configurable power and block interaction mode (NONE for no block damage, BREAK for full destruction, or TRIGGER for redstone-style activation). Arrows that trigger explosions are destroyed in the process.

Knockback Trait

Applies knockback to Soul Arrows on hit, with a configurable strength from 1 to 5. This stacks with the Punch enchantment for devastating ranged knockback.

Potion Trait

Applies a list of potion effects on hit. Each effect has configurable duration, amplifier, and visibility. When a Soul Arrow with potion traits hits a block, it creates a lingering potion cloud (60 ticks, radius 1) at the impact point, making it useful for area denial.

Soul Reaper Enchantment

Soul Reaper is Spirit's exclusive enchantment that increases soul harvest per kill. It has a maximum level of III and can be applied to swords and axes (the melee weapon enchantment slot). At uncommon rarity, it appears at the Enchanting Table with reasonable frequency. Each level adds +1 to your soul harvest amount, stacking with the Soul Steel tool bonus for a maximum of 5 souls per kill.

Entity Rarity System

Spirit categorizes all entities into five rarity tiers that affect how Soul Crystals display their contents. Common entities appear in white text, Uncommon in aqua (with a 1.25x energy modifier), Rare in gold (1.5x), Epic in purple (2.0x), and Legendary in red (4.0x). Rarity is determined by entity tags in the datapack: mobs tagged as spirit:rarity/uncommon, spirit:rarity/rare, spirit:rarity/epic, or spirit:rarity/legendary receive the corresponding tier. All untagged entities default to Common.

The experience drops also scale with rarity: Common gives 1, Uncommon gives 2, Rare gives 4, Epic gives 8, and Legendary gives 16 experience. The energy modifier affects how souls interact with various systems, making rarer mob souls more valuable.

Decorative Blocks

Spirit adds several decorative and functional blocks beyond its core machines. Soul Glass is a transparent soul-themed block that comes in up to 13 chipped variants (if the Chipped mod is installed for additional styles). Soul Slate is an opaque decorative stone. Soul Steel Blocks, Soul Powder Blocks, and Compressed Soul Powder Blocks serve as compact storage for their respective materials. Compressed Soul Sand provides a denser version of vanilla Soul Sand. The Broken Spawner is a non-functional decorative block that resembles a damaged mob spawner.

Configuration

Spirit's config file (spirit.json) offers several important settings. The collectFromSoulless option (default: false) controls whether corrupted mobs spawned by Soul Cages can yield souls when killed. The soulPedestalRange (default: 3) sets the detection radius for ingredient pedestals around a Soul Pedestal. The crudeSoulCrystalCap (default: 256) limits how many souls a Crude Soul Crystal can hold. The initialTierName setting controls the display name for crystals that haven't reached any tier yet. The showChippedError toggle controls whether integration errors with the Chipped mod are logged.