Mana Essence Bridge

Mana Essence Bridge

A bridge between Botania mana and Mystical Agriculture essence - and a set of Botania flowers built for essence farms.

Your Inferium farm runs around the clock while your mana pools sit half empty? Or the other way round - endoflames burning fuel into nothing while you're short on essence? This addon merges the two economies: an upgraded Mana Pool becomes a two-way exchange, and eight new flowers grow, harvest, guard and feed your farm.

How it works

Craft an Inferium Mana Catalyst and right-click it onto a plain Mana Pool. The pool is now upgraded and can:

Six tiers

Each catalyst unlocks the next essence level, demands its own rung of Botania progression and doubles the pool's capacity:

"Pool holds" is for a plain Mana Pool; Diluted and Fabulous pools scale from their own size. Expander Crystals placed against the pool add 25% more each, up to 8 per pool. Tier 6 exists only with Mystical Agradditions installed - without it, Insanium doesn't show up anywhere.

No skipping ahead: catalysts apply strictly in order, and the higher tiers are physically out of reach until you have smelted Terrasteel, opened the Alfheim portal, beaten the Gaia Guardian - and, for tier 6, the Gaia Guardian II. Until a rung is cleared, its entry stays hidden in the Lexica Botania and its catalyst stays hidden in JEI.

Automation

• Essence Siphon - the pool pulls essence out of the chests touching it.
• Essence Condenser - the buy-back, automated. Pick a tier with an essence, and the condenser turns pool mana into essence and pushes it into a chest, hopper or pipe next to it. A reserve of 0-75% keeps part of the pool untouched; surplus mode only uses mana the pool has no room for. Works with a pool touching it or one up to 12 blocks away, bound with the Wand of the Forest.
• Mana Fertilizer - Fertilized Essence steeped in a Mana Pool: grows every Mystical Agriculture crop in a 3x3 by two stages, by hand or from a dispenser. The Greater one, from the Terrestrial Agglomeration Plate, ripens a whole 5x5 at once.
• Pool network - link your upgraded pools with an Essence Mirror (Shift + right-click), and mana evens out between them once a second, however far apart they are.
• Condensation Lens - on a Mana Spreader aimed at an upgraded pool, bursts turn straight into Inferium instead of filling the pool.

Flowers

Every flower also comes in a floating version on a Botania island - the flower plus any floating flower. Jade and The One Probe show what each flower is doing - digesting, resting, waiting for lightning, mana made in the last second.

Tools

• Essence Mirror - bind it to an upgraded pool and trade with it from anywhere in that dimension: right-click opens the pool's window - mana, prices, any essence to buy - and Shift + right-click sends all your essence into the pool.
• Mana Ledger - every upgraded pool you own in one window: tier, coordinates, distance and a direction arrow, mana, how fast it fills or drains, which condenser draws from it, and its pool-network links (hover a pool to light up the pools it is linked to). Pools in unloaded chunks show their last known state.
• Resonance Crystal - strips the top tier off a pool and returns that catalyst intact. It is not consumed: the price is mana from the pool itself. Sneaking is required, so a stray click can't undo your progress.
• Wardenia Belt - a Wardenia's guard you wear in the Curios belt slot: hostile projectiles near you vanish, hostile mobs get pushed back, their explosions next to you fizzle out, and farmland survives your boots. Runs on mana from your rings and tablets.

A mined upgraded pool keeps its tier and its mana in the item, so you can move it without losing anything.

On balance - why exactly x4

The exchange rate deliberately mirrors Mystical Agriculture's own ladder: 4 essences make 1 of the next tier, and the same in reverse. That isn't laziness, it's arithmetic - the Master Infusion Crystal has infinite durability, so climbing that ladder costs the player nothing. Any rate better than x4 becomes an infinite mana loop: buy cheap essence, craft it upward for free, sell it higher. At exactly x4 the loop pays nothing.

Buying back costs 25% more than selling, so the pool doesn't become free storage.

The flowers follow the same rule. Growing a crop with Mysticarnations always costs more mana than the Essentide gets back from its essence, so "a flower grows it, a flower eats it" never pays for itself.

Configuration

Everything lives in config/manaessencebridge-common.toml and takes effect without rebuilding:

Every flower number - ranges, costs, mana per strike, note or bee - is in the [flowers] section.

This is a common config: single player uses your file, on a server the server's file wins - so players can't tune their own exchange rate. The x4 step itself is deliberately not configurable, for the reason above.

Also included

• A chapter of its own in the Lexica Botania - every page of the mod in one place, including "An Essence Farm" and "An Advanced Essence Farm" with 3D layouts you can project into the world
• Shared recipes between Botania and Mystical Agriculture
• Pools tinted by tier, with matching particles on every conversion
• Jade and The One Probe support for pools, the condenser and every flower; without either, a built-in readout shows the pool
• JEI tabs for every exchange rate and for what the Essentide eats
• Advancements for every tier, the tools, the flowers and mana milestones
• /manabridge for operators: list a player's pools, set a pool's tier, change its owner
• English and Russian - fully localized
• Something special happens on October 17th

For modpack makers: custom exchange rates

Upgraded pools can take more than Mystical Agriculture essence. A datapack can add any item or item tag, with its own mana value and the pool tier it needs - put JSON files into data/<namespace>/manaessencebridge_exchange/:

{
  "required_mod": "thermal",
  "entries": [
    { "item": "minecraft:diamond", "mana": 40000, "tier": 2 },
    { "tag": "forge:gems/emerald", "mana": 30000 }
  ]
}

tier defaults to 1, required_mod is optional (the file is skipped when that mod is missing), and a single entry can also sit at the root of the file. These items are accepted everywhere essence is - by hand, from hoppers and pipes, through the Essence Siphon and the Essence Mirror - and show their value in the tooltip. They are sell-only: a pool never gives them back, so they can't form a buy-low/sell-high loop through this mod. Pricing them is up to the pack; Mystical Agriculture essences always keep their own x4 ladder.

Compatibility

This mod uses no Mixins. Everything goes through Botania's public API and ordinary Forge events - no third-party bytecode is touched, so it cannot add another Create-versus-Rubidium style conflict to your pack.

Available for Minecraft 1.16.5, 1.18.2, 1.19.2 and 1.20.1, all on Forge. Pick the file that matches your pack.

Requires: Botania and Mystical Agriculture

Optional: Mystical Agradditions (tier 6), JEI, Jade, The One Probe

FAQ

A creeper blew up my pool - where's my tier?

Gone. Botania's Mana Pool carries a survives_explosion condition, so an exploded pool drops nothing at all, not even itself. Use a pickaxe - or plant a Wardenia next to it: it stops explosions in a 17x17 area.

Can I apply a tier 5 catalyst straight away?

No. Strictly in order, starting from tier 1.

I run a public server. Can other players drain my pool?

Turn on privatePools: then only the player who placed a pool's first catalyst can buy from it, strip it or tie a condenser to it. Operators are not limited, and owners can share all their pools with friends: /manabridge trust add <player>.

Does it work with Botania addons?

Yes, as long as their pool implements Botania's mana pool interface - IManaPool on 1.16.5 and 1.18.2, renamed to ManaPool on 1.19.2 and 1.20.1. The upgrade attaches to the interface, not to one specific block.