The 
Imbuement Chamber is a block in Ars Nouveau that turns 
Lapis Lazuli and 
Amethyst Shards into 
Source Gems. Nearly every recipe in the mod needs Source Gems at some point, including the Sourcelinks that make Source in the first place. So the Imbuement Chamber tends to be the first thing you’ll want to craft, straight after the 
Novice Spell Book.
It’s not only used for Source Gems though. The Imbuement Chamber also makes all seven of the Essences, as long as the right items are sitting on 
Arcane Pedestals next to it, and there’s three arrows for the 
Enchanter’s Bow that are made in it too. It will work on its own without any Source, but it’s a lot quicker with a 
Source Jar close by.
Crafting the Imbuement Chamber
The Imbuement Chamber is crafted using six 
Archwood Planks and two 
Gold Ingots, with the Gold Ingots going in the middle of the top and bottom rows, and it doesn’t need anything else from the mod to make. Archwood Planks come from any of the Archwood trees, of which there’s four colors, and they all give the same planks so it doesn’t matter which ones you’ve found first.
An item is put into the Imbuement Chamber by right clicking it, and it’ll float in the middle of the chamber while it’s being worked on. The Imbuement Chamber only ever holds a single item though, so if you’re holding a stack of Lapis Lazuli only one of them goes in at a time. Right clicking it again with an empty hand takes the item back out, whether it’s finished or not.
Making Source Gems
A Source Gem is made by putting either Lapis Lazuli or an Amethyst Shard into the Imbuement Chamber, and both of them cost 500 Source for one Source Gem. Lapis Lazuli is usually what you’ll have more of to begin with, since it turns up while mining anyway, whereas Amethyst Shards become the better option later on because a 
Budding Amethyst keeps on growing more of them.
There’s also a recipe for turning a 
Block of Amethyst into a 
Source Gem Block, which costs 2,000 Source. That works out the same as making four Source Gems and crafting them together, so it’s not really a saving, but it does mean less time spent going back and forth to the Imbuement Chamber when you need a few Source Gem Blocks for things like Source Relays.
Anything that doesn’t have a recipe won’t go into the Imbuement Chamber, and you’ll get a message saying no recipe was found. If the item is actually used in an 
Enchanting Apparatus recipe instead, the message will ask whether you meant to use the Enchanting Apparatus, which is quite helpful because the two machines look fairly similar once there’s pedestals around them.
How Long It Takes
The Imbuement Chamber doesn’t need any Source to work, as it builds up a slow trickle of its own at 10 Source a second, so a Source Gem takes around 50 seconds without anything around it. That’s actually how most players make the Source Gems for their very first Sourcelinks, although an Essence at 2,000 Source would take over 3 minutes each that way.
Once a Source Jar is within 2 blocks of the Imbuement Chamber, it’ll start pulling 200 Source a second out of it instead, and a Source Gem is then done in 5 seconds. Adding more Source Jars won’t make it go any faster than that. The 2 block range is a lot shorter than the other machines in Ars Nouveau have, so it’s easiest to just place the Source Jar right beside it.
| Recipe | Source | No Source Jar | With a Source Jar |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source Gem | 500 | 50 seconds | 5 seconds |
| Source Gem Block | 2,000 | 3 min 20 s | 10 seconds |
| Any Essence | 2,000 | 3 min 20 s | 10 seconds |
| Augment Arrows | 100 | 10 seconds | 5 seconds |
If you don’t have Source coming in yet, the Source page covers each of the Sourcelinks and how to fill a Source Jar. For most of the early game, an 
Agronomic Sourcelink next to a crop farm should be enough to keep one Imbuement Chamber running.
Essences
Essences are made by putting a Source Gem into the Imbuement Chamber while three specific items sit on Arcane Pedestals around it. The Arcane Pedestals need to be within 1 block of the Imbuement Chamber. That includes the corners and the blocks one higher or lower, so you can place them in a ring around it on the same level, or stagger them if that fits your base better.
The good news is that the items on the Arcane Pedestals don’t get used up. Only the Source Gem in the middle turns into the Essence, so you can leave the pedestals as they are and keep feeding it more Source Gems. Although the pedestals have to hold exactly what the recipe asks for, and even one extra item on a fourth pedestal stops it from working.
| Essence | Pedestal items | Used for |
|---|---|---|
 Air Essence |  Feather,  Wilden Wing, any  Arrow | Air glyphs, Feather Falling and Power |
 Water Essence |  Water Bucket,  Snow Block,  Kelp | Water glyphs, Respiration and Depth Strider |
 Earth Essence |  Iron Ingot, any seeds,  Dirt | Earth glyphs, Fortune and Looting |
 Fire Essence |  Flint and Steel,  Torch,  Gunpowder | Fire glyphs, Fire Aspect and Flame |
 Abjuration Essence |  Fermented Spider Eye,  Sugar,  Milk Bucket | Heal, Dispel, Protection and Unbreaking |
 Conjuration Essence |  Wilden Horn,  Starbuncle Token,  Book | Summoning glyphs |
 Manipulation Essence |  Stone Button,  Redstone Dust,  Clock | Blink, Exchange and Place Block |
Most of the pedestal items are things you’ll already have, but three of them come from mobs. The Wilden Wing is dropped by the Wilden Stalker, and the Wilden Horn by the Wilden Hunter, which both live around Wilden Dens in forest biomes. The Starbuncle Token comes from giving a wild Starbuncle a 
Gold Nugget.
Essences are mainly needed at the 
Scribe’s Table for glyphs, and in the Enchanting Apparatus for enchantments and most of the gear. Each one costs a Source Gem as well as the 2,000 Source, so they do add up. If you find yourself making the same Essence over and over, it’s worth giving it an Imbuement Chamber of its own.
Augment Arrows
The Imbuement Chamber is able to make three different Augment Arrows as well, and these are made from a normal Arrow, costing 100 Source each. For all three of them, you’ll need to place a Source Gem and an Air Essence on the Arcane Pedestals, but the third item is different for each arrow, which is shown in the table below.
| Arrow | Third pedestal item | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
 Augment Arrow: Amplify |  Diamond | Two Amplify at the end of the spell |
 Augment Arrow: Pierce |  Wilden Spike | Two Pierce at the start of the spell |
 Augment Arrow: Split | Wilden Horn | Two Split at the start of the spell |
Augment Arrows are fired from the Enchanter’s Bow, and each one adds two of its augment onto whatever spell is inscribed on the bow at the time. Just like with the Essences, the Source Gem and the Air Essence stay on the Arcane Pedestals, so it’s only ever the Arrow that gets used. The Wilden Spike for the Pierce ones is dropped by the Wilden Defender, which guards the Wilden Dens found in cold biomes.
Automating the Imbuement Chamber
Feeding the Imbuement Chamber automatically is the easy part, as a 
Hopper pointing into it will put items in for you, and it’ll only insert something when the chamber is empty and there’s a recipe for that item. So a Hopper running out of a 
Chest of Lapis Lazuli is enough to keep it topped up for as long as the Lapis Lazuli lasts.
Getting the Source Gems back out is where most people end up getting stuck, because a plain Hopper underneath the Imbuement Chamber doesn’t care what’s inside, and it will pull the Lapis Lazuli straight back out before it’s had the chance to turn into a Source Gem. What you’ll need instead is something that’s able to pick out only the finished items, and in Ars Nouveau the usual answer to that is a Starbuncle.
The Starbuncle gets linked with the 
Dominion Wand to take from the Imbuement Chamber and store into a Chest, and then it’s given an 
Item Scroll: Allow with a Source Gem written on it. After that it’ll only ever carry away the Source Gems, and the Lapis Lazuli gets left where it is until it’s done. The Starbuncle page goes through the linking and the Item Scrolls in a lot more detail.
It’s also a good idea to keep your Source Gem chamber and any Essence chambers separate from each other. Because the pedestals have to match a recipe exactly, an Imbuement Chamber that has items on the Arcane Pedestals around it won’t accept Lapis Lazuli at all, and any Source Gem that did end up inside it would just get turned into an Essence.
On the 1.20.1 version, the Imbuement Chamber only takes Source from one Source Jar at a time, and that Source Jar needs to have at least 200 Source in it. The recipes and the pedestal items are the same on both versions.
Once there’s a steady supply of Source Gems coming in, the next thing most players build is the Enchanting Apparatus, which is where the Source Gems and Essences get used for the majority of the mod’s gear. It’s set up in a similar way to the Imbuement Chamber, with an 
Arcane Core underneath it and Arcane Pedestals around it for the rest of the recipe.
Frequently Asked Questions
Source Gems are made in the Imbuement Chamber, which is crafted from six Archwood Planks and two Gold Ingots. Once it’s placed, right clicking it with Lapis Lazuli or an Amethyst Shard turns it into a Source Gem for 500 Source, which takes about 50 seconds on its own, or 5 seconds if there’s a Source Jar within 2 blocks of it.
Most of the time it’s because there’s an item left on an Arcane Pedestal within 1 block of the Imbuement Chamber, since the pedestals have to match the recipe exactly and that stops Lapis Lazuli from going in. The other common reason is a Source Jar that’s more than 2 blocks away, in which case it still works but only at its own slow speed.
No, the items on the Arcane Pedestals are never used up, and it’s only the item inside the Imbuement Chamber that changes. That means you can leave the pedestals set up for one Essence and keep making it just by putting in more Source Gems.
A Source Jar needs to be within 2 blocks of the Imbuement Chamber, which is the shortest range of any machine in Ars Nouveau. The Enchanting Apparatus for example reaches 10 blocks, so a Source Jar that’s in range of one of them can easily end up being too far away from the other.
