• ⚠️ Fixed essence containers voiding on essence collection
• Added Hoes Till Creep Blocks opt-in config setting
• Refactored creepball usage
• Streamlined glaive creep block tilling

⚠️ Essence collection is broken in this release, please update to 1.4.1!

Thanks to invaluable feedback from several players, this update is fully focused on rebalancing the early game progression and making the mod overall less painful to get into.

Updated Sounds (courtesy of PessiMysterio):

• Essence spawning, collecting, and despawning
• Athame creation
• Harbingers
• Altar Crafting

Additions:

• Added Soumberglass and Soul Soot, new materials used for various recipes throughout the mod.
• Added basic keepers, these are made with pure Soumberglass and don't require ender pearls.
• Added obsidian and extra mineral drops to Spectral miners.
• Spectral Miners now have a rare chance to drop a diamond.
• Added the Willingness enchantment with four levels, this allows glaives and scythes to reap faster than normal while also providing a chance to not consume durability on reap.
• Added the Reaping Frenzy enchantment, this allows glaives and scythes automatically reap as long as right-click is still held.
• Added a new page to the guidebook that shows information about Soumberglass.

Fixes:

• Fixed glaives and scythes not swinging properly while using the ability on the offhand.
• Fixed glaives and scythes being interrupted while being repaired like from Mending.
• Fixed the animated texture on soul altars.
• Fixed small globins doing no damage.

Tweaks:

• Deadtime Watch now applies the Slowness effect on nearby players.
• Increased charging costs for durable weapons.
• Increased the drop chance for a Damaged Vampire Knife in the Nether (1/2000 -> 1/1000).
• Ripe Biomass crops will now always drop germinated seeds.
• Various altar recipes are now cheaper with most costs being halved.
• Altars, absorbers, and crucibles no longer require ender pearls and now require Soumberglass.
• Made recipes for all essence containers cheaper.
• Essence containers will now carry the same amount of soul essence as blood.
• Increased the maximum amount of essence carried for keepers and vessels.
• Buffed Biomass gear and greatly improved the repairing mechanic.
• Harbingers now always drop ender pearls and abyssal fragments.
• Harbingers now drop Soumberglass instead of bones.
• Increased the chance for the Bloodletting (10% -> 20%) and Soulsteal (15% -> 25%) enchantments to drop essences.
• Essence max health limit is now disabled by default, silverfish and small slimes will drop essence again!
• The guidebook now shows more information about essence containers.
• Updated Book of Shadows and Book of Carnage recipes to require only basic keepers.
• All glaives and scythes now require at least one Soumberglass to craft.

Mod Integration:

• Implemented HWYLA integration for Biomass crops.
• Increased the chance for the Blood Conjuration (10% -> 20%) and Soul Conjuration (20% -> 25%) traits to drop essences.

This is an emergency hotfix to a bug that can lock players out of their worlds permanently!

• Fixed a crash with trinkets that can lock players out of their worlds permanently
• Unbreaking can no longer be applied with anvils to all Harken Scythe: Resharpened items that already don't accept it in enchantment tables
• Athame tools no longer accept Mending and Unbreaking enchantments because they do not lose durability or break

• Added ore dictionary support to all variants of spectral glass and spectral glass panes
• Added sweep particles to Blood Butcherer
• All recipes that require spectral glass or spectral glass panes now accept both variants
• Blood Butcherer recipe now accepts a Livingmetal Sword of any durability in its recipe
• Deadtime Watch can now also be crafted with wither skulls
• Fixed enchantment description formatting
• Fixed soul trinkets having blood altar recipes
• Harbingers can no longer be harmed by spectral mobs
• Improved Blood Butcherer hit checks
• Updated Vampire Knife projectile sounds (courtesy of PessiMysterio)
• Updated glaive and scythe sounds (courtesy of PessiMysterio)

The incredible sounds for the absorbers, altars, and blood butcherer were brought to you by PessiMysterio. You can also see their work on Thaumic Augmentation, Embers, Sonomagy, and Malum!

Additions:

• Altars now play a sound when approached.
• Altars now play a loop sound while active around players.
• Added Deadtime Watch, entities around you including objects like arrows will freeze for a few seconds whenever it is used. It costs blood essence per use.
• Added basic absorbers, these allow quick transport of essence containers into crucibles. No more tedious spam clicking on crucibles!
• Updated Thaumcraft integration and added aspects to items that lacked them.
• New Moons will now apply Strength to all mobs that spawn.
• Added a lot of new config options for essences.
• Add config option for Vampire Knife entity despawn time.
• Overhauled essence making all tiers now obtainable (read A Bottle of Fun in the guidebook for more info about essence tiers!).
• Added new tiers for blood essence (read A Bottle of Fun in the guidebook for more info about essence tiers!).
• Sickly blood essence can now spawn during New Moons.
• There is now a 10% chance (5% chance for bosses) for the Soul Reaper to instantly kill the target while it reaps.
• Added XP for when essences are harvested.
• Added essence trinkets, these can be used to store a ton of essence within and can even be upgraded using Nether Stars! Essence can only be transported into crucibles with the new absorbers.
• Added Baubles support, so far the essence trinkets can be equipped on any slot.
• Added the Blood Butcherer, it can sweep through large groups of mobs and will apply the Bleeding effect. The amplifier of the effect will increased upwards to V, the more the same mob is hit.

Fixes:

• Fixed altars duplicating items in certain circumstances.
• Fixed altars playing sounds when the tile entity is removed.
• Fixed a rare crash with altar rendering.
• Fixed dimensional mirror cooldown application.
• Fixed Harbinger targeting mechanics.
• Fixed a crash with the vampire knife.
• Fixed AI with spectral minions.
• Fixed blood essence dropping on every entity death.
• Fixed Harbinger spawning conditions.
• Fixed vampire knife model json.
• Fixed particle handler calls.
• Fixed the drop borders position in the guidebook and extended the amount of drops shown.
• Fixed entity damage being incorrect in the guidebook.
• Fixed Vampire Knife projectiles being affected by liquid.

Tweaks:

• Improved athame creation.
• Fully revamped altar sounds (thanks PessiMysterio!).
• Tweaked Vampire Knife projectile sounds.
• Tweaked the model and texture of both altars.
• Altars can now be rotated.
• Improved crucible logic (position caching and essence count syncing).
• Updated grieving soul essence texture because it looked almost identical to common souls.
• Essence will no longer spawn if the afflicted mob has 7 or less health.
• Different tiers of essence will now spawn depending on how much health the mob has.
• New Moons spawn grieving soul essence rather than culled.
• Globins will now increase in size depending on essence tier.
• Spectral Miners now inflict Mining Fatigue.
• Spectral Miners now has a chance to spawn Ectoglobins when hurt.
• Harbingers teleport away from projectiles like Endermen.
• Harbingers now deal x1.5 the amount of damage on non-players and double the amount of damage on animals.
• Made Harbingers neutral, in the future they will target you when you hold onto important Harken Scythe items.
• Made Spectral Humans neutral.
• Harbingers now have a glow layer.
• Harbingers will now gain regeneration upon reaping mobs.
• Increased ender pearl drops from Harbingers.
• The Vampire Knife now requires an Abyssal Fragment to craft.
• Buffed biomass cultivation.
• Lowered the amount of blood needed to bloody a creep block from 10 to 5.
• Buffed spectral entity minions.
• Soul essence tiers now affect spectral entities.
• Bloodweave and Soulweave sets no longer accept Mending.
• Most Harken Scythe items no longer accept Unbreaking.
• Bloodweave armor, Soulweave armor, and the Vampire Knife can no longer have durability restored by XP repair.
• Updated Bloodweave armor overlay.
• Tweaked livingmetal armor model texture.
• Updated biomass axe texture.
• The Bleeding effect now spawns particles.
• Renamed the Vengeful Revenant advancement to Deathtouched.
• Harbingers and Spectral Miners now drop grieving soul essence rather than common.
• Reduced the amount of essence dropped from Spectral Miners.
• Added a pickaxe to the rotating Spectral Miner model in the guidebook.
• Updated filler page texture on the guidebook (thanks to Luke.RUSTLTD for the texture).
• The mob pages in the guidebook no longer require the respective mobs to be killed first. The advancements still remain.

• Added abyssal fragments (will have future uses)
• Exempted baby mobs from granting essence drops
• Fixed glitch when collecting despawning essence
• Fixed guidebook icon
• Fixed vampire knife recipe causing modpack edge case issues
• Improved biomass tool textures
• Improved registration for blocks and items
• Made Exospiders immune to fire
• Removed functionless biomass crop item block

• Added the Vampire Knife, a powerful item costing blood essence, obtained as an extremely rare drop from Nether mobs (if you played Terraria a lot, then you will know exactly what this is inspired by)

• Added the Exospider, a new spider variant habitated in the Nether and controlled by essences with a weakness for biomass

• Added new advancements

• Added various new config options

• Added a few new blood altar ritual recipes for converting vanilla items

• Added guidebook entries for enchantments and the Vampire Knife

• Tweaked a few guidebook pages to fix typos and formatting

• Updated durability bar color of rechargeable items depending on essence type required

• Fixed CraftTweaker recipe addition/removal loading order for good

• Stereo sounds are converted to mono to improve directional audio

• Added an additional Blood Altar recipe, you can now infuse a Golden Apple into an Enchanted Golden Apple (Notch Apple)
• Added a cooldown for athames
• Fixed duplication issues that could happen when rapidly conducting rituals
• Fixed spectral name tag cascading
• Fixed CraftTweaker recipe addition/removal load order

More content updates soon! 😉

• Adjusted random pitching of crucible sounds to make them less annoying

• Blood Magic integration: Blood containers like keepers and vessels can be used similarly to the sacrificial dagger to fill a blood altar with LP
• CraftTweaker integration: Altar ritual recipes can be added and removed
• GroovyScript integration: Altar ritual recipes can be added and removed
• Enchantment Descriptions integration: All enchantments now have proper descriptions on their effects
• Just Enough Items integration: All altar ritual recipes can be viewed when pressing the usage key (default: U) on altar blocks within JEI
• Added invalid altar ritual recipe status messages
• Added essence spawning animations + interpolation
• Adjusted essence container durability bar colors
• Fixed voiding of essence with foreign containers
• Improved some guidebook phrasing