Ars Nouveau: Reserves

Reserves adds a layered reserve system for revival, Essence Charges, and contingencies.

It works on its own with a clean revival HUD for vanilla Totems of Undying, but most of the mod comes alive alongside Ars Nouveau.

Optional integrations

Download pages:

- Ars Nouveau
- Ars Additions
- Ars Elemental
- Not Enough Glyphs
- Ghosts
- Curios API
- Charm of Undying
- Ars Nouveau: Two Way Portals

None of the supported content mods are hard requirements. Install only the integrations you want.

Main Features

Teleport Glyph: Similar to blink, but without the need to cast rune, and also allows teleporting to the player's bed/spawn.

Reserve orbs which can be enchanted with "Reserving", this enchantment prevents creepers and enderman from griefing blocks within 100 tiles of the wearer.  They also store charges from each standard element + anima, up to 100.

At 100 charges, you can unleash a powerful attack designed to help with bosses, or acquire powerful buffs to your character.

Revival HUD for available Totems and supported revival items.

Novice, Apprentice, and Master Orb tiers which alter the cost of mana per charge.

Hidden and Revealing Orb variants, the Revealing variant allows a HUD to be visible along with the mana bar that shows how many charges you have for each essence type.

Charge Threads for passive charge generation, and Contingency Threads that allow perpetual contingency spells.  Place the thread on a Scribe's Table, then shift+right click with a chosen spell on your spellbook to set the contingency spell.  Contingency Threads only apply to Reserve Orbs.

Rechargeable revival items from supported mods: 
Harvesting Charm of Second Wind - charges from nearby source jars without needing an imbuement chamber.
Mana Charm of Second Wind - slower, but charges with mana instead of source, if held by a ghost, charging will be mana-free, but still takes time.

Extensive configuration for HUDs, charges, contingencies, revival priority, and integrations.
I tried to make most things in this mod configurable for maximum control.

Essence Charges:

I decided that I wanted a way to directly control the precise amount of charges a spell grants, and plan to extend this further later.
Right now, spells which grant charges work in binary, with the charge, amplify/dampen acting as bits.
The charge glyph itself represents a 0 bit, where as either amplify or dampen acts as a 1.
This allows charge precision with up to 8 bits (1 byte, since the first glyph is always a 0)

So for example, if you want exactly 100 charges:
0110 0100 = 100
Self->Charge:Fire->Amplify->Amplify->Charge:Fire->Charge:Fire->Amplify->Charge:Fire->Charge:Fire

Or if you want a single charge, simply use:
Self->Charge:Fire->Amplify
Which is the same as 0000 0001.

Offensive Charge Spells

Essence Charges can be spent through Projectile, Homing Projectile, or Ray to produce powerful offensive effects.
These are expensive spells that require at lower levels a large investment of mana to be cast, though at higher levels they become more accessible.

Partial attacks scale with the number of charges consumed. Reaching the full 100 charges unlocks the spell’s maximum strength, so don't cast spells at 99 charges!

Area and chain effects spread only to hostile mobs. A passive creature can be affected only when deliberately selected as the initial target, though it still will not chain to passive creatures.

Reflected or retaliatory damage can come only from the initial target and is capped at 5 hearts. Secondary targets cannot return damage to the caster. - It's less punishing.

Fire

Fire delivers a heavy initial strike followed by a lingering magical burn.

At full charge:

• 45 hearts of immediate damage
• 15 additional hearts over 10 seconds
• the initial strike can damage fire-immune creatures, though the additional burn won't.

Water

Water erupts around the target as a concentrated magical blast.

At full charge:

• 40 hearts of splash damage
• affects hostile mobs within a 5×5×5 area

Air

Air traps enemies in branching chain lightning.

Each affected target is held in place for 5 seconds before being struck. Nearby hostile mobs can join the chain during that time.

At full charge:

• 40 hearts of damage per target
• chains across targets up to 15 blocks apart
• can spread through as many as four branching levels
• can potentially strike up to 65 targets

Earth

Earth crushes the target and locks it in place.

At full charge:

• 35 hearts of direct damage
• immobilizes the target for 15 seconds
• suppresses movement, jumping, attacks, and knockback

Partial casts provide up to approximately 5 seconds of immobilization. The full duration is reserved for a 100-charge attack.

Anima

Anima spreads a powerful Wither effect through the target’s life force.

At full charge:

• affects hostile mobs within a 5×5×5 area
• applies Wither III for 60 seconds
• deals approximately 60 hearts of damage over time

Manipulation

Manipulation weakens the target’s attacks and can turn its strength against it.

At full charge:

• affects hostile mobs within a 5×5×5 area
• lasts for 30 seconds
• reduces outgoing damage by 5 hearts per strike
• converts negative damage into healing

For example, an affected creature that normally deals 2 hearts of damage instead heals its victim for 3 hearts during the duration of the effect.

Abjuration

Abjuration tears through both health and magical protection.

At full charge:

• 50 hearts of direct damage
• removes existing beneficial effects
• prevents new beneficial effects for 15 seconds

Conjuration

Conjuration marks a target and summons allied Vexes to hunt it.

The first Vex appears immediately. Additional Vexes arrive every 3 seconds, prioritizing the original target before attacking other nearby hostile mobs.

The number of Vexes depends on the charges consumed:

• 1–20 charges: 1 Vex
• 21–40 charges: 2 Vexes
• 41–60 charges: 3 Vexes
• 61–80 charges: 4 Vexes
• 81–99 charges: 5 Vexes
• 100 charges: 10 Vexes

Their lifetime matches the number of charges consumed, up to 100 seconds. All Vexes from the spell disperse together when that time expires.

Conjured vs Stored Attacks

Offensive Charge spells support two very different playstyles.

Conjured Charges

Use an Amplify-based Charge expression to create the attack directly from mana.

• No Orb required.
• Each generated charge costs mana based on your Orb tier.
• Mana is spent when the attack is cast.
• If a projectile misses, the energy is lost.

Stored Charges

Use a Dampen-based Charge expression to pull charges from your Reserve Orb.

• Costs no additional mana.
• Charges are consumed only when the attack actually hits a target.
• If fewer charges are available than requested, the attack automatically scales down.

This makes Reserve Orbs useful as genuine magical batteries rather than just passive storage.

Reserve Orbs

Reserve Orbs store all eight Essence Charge types.

A normal Orb displays its stored charges in the tooltip.

A Revealing Reserve Orb also adds a compact charge display near the Ars Nouveau mana HUD.

Reserve Orbs can also contain up to three Contingency Threads, allowing contingency spells to remain armed without constantly recasting them every 100 seconds or so.

Contingency spells are easily swapped instead of permanently bound, allowing you to adjust as needed.

Charge Threads

Charge Threads can be installed on Ars Nouveau armor to slowly refill their matching Essence Charge while worn.

Different Essence Threads can operate at the same time.

Higher-tier Reserve Orbs improve their generation rate.

Generation threads of the same type do not stack, it'll generate based on the highest tier equipped.

Contingencies

Reserves adds minimum and maximum Charge contingencies for every supported Essence.

These can be combined with other contingency mechanics to build more complex emergency systems.

For example:

• Death contingency removes one stored Fire Charge.
• Fire Charge Min triggers when the reserve reaches zero.
• Fire Charge Min then casts an emergency Teleport spell.

This allows multiple revival sources to be exhausted, then the player is teleported home when there are no revivals left.  I plan to hash this out more thoroughly in the future with more time and planning.

Teleport Glyph:

The Teleport glyph sends the affected entity to:

the caster's saved respawn point, or

the first valid bound Warp Scroll found in the caster's hotbar

It can be used manually or as part of a contingency spell.

Revival System

Reserves recognizes multiple revival sources when their corresponding mods are installed.

The HUD only counts revival sources that are actually ready to save the player.

Supported sources include:

• held Totems of Undying
• Curios-equipped Totems
• Ars Nouveau Thread of Undying
• supported Charms of Second Wind
• revival items carried by a tamed Ghost if the Ghost mod is installed.

Uncharged or unusable revival items do not falsely appear as available lives.

Ghosts Integration

With Ghosts installed, tamed ghosts become useful reserve carriers.

They can:

• carry supported revival items
• appear separately on the revival HUD
• recharge supported charm variants
• hold a Reserve Orb
• store and transfer Essence Charges through Touch-based Charge spells

Ghost-held Orbs act as independent reserve batteries.

Optional Integrations

Curios

Adds wearable slots and right-click equipping for supported Reserve Orbs and revival items.
It's highly recommended to use this, as many features won't work unless an Orb is worn.

Ars Additions

Adds support for:

• Charm of Second Wind
• Harvesting Charm of Second Wind
• Mana Charm of Second Wind

Supported charm variants are included in the revival system and HUD.

Ars Elemental

Enables Anima Charge content when Anima Essence is available.

Not Enough Glyphs

Fixes "Contingency: Death" to work and recognize supported modded revival mechanics and adds compatible Contingency Threads.  By default, "Contingency: Death" only recognizes death on revival with a held totem, but I extended it to recognize death even when revived by other sources.

Reserving

Reserve Orbs can receive the Reserving enchantment.

While the enchanted Orb is actively equipped, nearby creepers and Endermen are prevented from damaging blocks.

This is intended to protect complex bases without making hostile mobs harmless.
I already put this above in the main features, but figured I'd add a section for it here for emphasis as this is very useful.  Explosions from creepers still deal damage to entities when this enchantment is active.
This enchantment can be disabled in the config.

Configuration

reserves-server.toml

Controls:

• Essence Charges
• Charge glyph behavior
• Charge Threads
• contingencies
• revival sources
• revival priority
• Ghost interactions
• charm recharging
• Reserving
• Self and offensive Charge effects

reserves-client.toml

Controls:

• revival HUD
• Charge HUD
• position offsets
• scaling
• frames
• display options

reserves-offensive-charges.toml

Contains additional balancing options for offensive Charge effects such as Fire burn behavior.

Most feature groups can be disabled independently.

Requirements

NeoForge 1.21.1

Ars Nouveau and all integration mods are optional.

License

Copyright 2026 Astrologic. All Rights Reserved.

All code and original assets shipped directly with Reserves are original to the project. Supported mods provide their own content at runtime and are not redistributed by Reserves.