Corail Tombstone is a Minecraft mod that changes what happens when you die. Instead of your items spilling out on the ground and despawning after five minutes, they all go into a grave at the spot where you died, and they stay there safely until you come back for them. It’s been around since the 1.12 days and it’s still one of the most downloaded survival mods.
There’s a lot more to it than the grave, though. The mod has its own crafting material in 
Grave Dust, decorative graves that attract souls, magic scrolls and tablets you power with those souls, a perk tree called Knowledge of Death, and a few items that can stop you dying altogether. This guide goes through all of it in roughly the order you’ll run into it.
What Happens When You Die
When you die, the mod places a grave block as close to your death spot as it safely can, and everything in your inventory goes inside it. It also sweeps up any of your items lying within five blocks, so things that got flung out by an explosion still end up in the grave. You’re told the exact coordinates and dimension in chat as soon as you die.
By default the grave is locked to you, and it never unlocks for anyone else. Other players can only open it if they’re holding your Grave Key, or if you were killed by another player on a PvP server. Nothing is lost from the grave by default either, since the item loss options in the config are all set to zero.
To get your things back, just right-click the grave, or sneak while standing on top of it. Everything goes straight back into your inventory. The grave can’t be broken with a pickaxe, so there’s no risk of someone digging it up, and you don’t need the key to open your own grave as long as you’re the owner.
Experience works a bit differently. By default you respawn with only 5% of the experience you had when you died, and the rest is gone. The Memento Mori perk raises that by 20% per level, so it’s worth thinking about early if you spend a lot of levels on enchanting. A 
Scroll of Knowledge is the other way to protect experience, since it can store it safely.
Ghostly Shape
For two minutes after you respawn you have Ghostly Shape. While it lasts you can’t take any damage and mobs can’t see you, which gives you time to get back to your grave without dying a second time. It’s easily the most useful part of the mod when you’ve died somewhere dangerous, like a Nether Fortress or a mob spawner room.
The catch is that attacking anything cancels it straight away, so don’t swing at the mob that killed you until you’ve got your gear back on. If you teleport to your grave with an enchanted Grave Key, Ghostly Shape is also cut down to 10 seconds, so the teleport is quicker but a lot less safe.
The Grave Key
Every time you die you respawn holding a Grave Key for that grave. On its own, the key shows you where the grave is from a distance with a marker, which makes finding it much easier than reading coordinates off the chat. You can also hand the key to a friend and they’ll be able to open the grave for you.
The real upgrade is the Enchanted Grave Key. Put a Grave Key and an 
Ender Pearl together in a crafting grid and the key becomes enchanted, which lets you hold right-click to teleport straight to your grave. It works across dimensions by default, so a death in the Nether or the End doesn’t mean a long walk back.
It’s a good habit to keep one Ender Pearl on you for exactly this. Each death gives you a fresh, plain key, so you’ll need to enchant a new one each time you want to teleport. The Jailer perk in the Knowledge of Death tree can give you a chance of respawning with the key already enchanted.
Grave Dust and Marble
Grave Dust is the material almost every recipe in the mod needs. The main source is killing undead mobs yourself, which gives about a 1 in 10 chance of dropping one or two Grave Dust per kill. It only counts when you’re the one who killed them, and you have to be within 50 blocks, so mob farms that kill from far away won’t give any.
Undead bosses like the Wither roll that loot five times instead of once, and tamed Cats sometimes bring you Grave Dust as a morning gift after you sleep. The Grave Guardian also trades one Grave Dust for ten 
Bones or ten 
Rotten Flesh, which is a handy way to turn a skeleton farm into dust.
Your first Grave Dust usually goes into Marble. 
White Marble is made from one Grave Dust, a block of 
Stone and some 
Bone Meal, and there are dark, blue, green and carmin versions too, each with slabs, stairs and walls. Marble is what you need for decorative graves and the 
Strange Tablet, so make a stack before you go further.
The 
Impregnated Diamond is the other early craft, made from a 
Diamond surrounded by eight Grave Dust. It goes into the 
Receptacle of Familiar and a few of the stronger magic items, and it’s the first thing that makes Grave Dust feel expensive, so it’s worth farming a few stacks of dust before you get to it.
Decorative Graves and Grave Souls
Decorative graves are where the mod’s magic comes from. You craft them from Marble and one 
Essence of Undeath, and there are several shapes to choose from, including the 
Simple Grave, crosses and full tombstones. Place one somewhere and it’ll slowly attract souls, which you then use to power scrolls, tablets and books.
Essence of Undeath is the hard part. It drops from undead mobs far less often than Grave Dust, only about once in every 190 kills, but undead bosses drop it much more often. If you’re struggling, fight the Wither, since each kill gives you five tries at the loot, which is far better odds than farming normal mobs.
Every 10 minutes, each decorative grave has a 25% chance of gaining a soul, and the soul stays on the grave until you use it. The timer keeps running while you’re away, so a grave you haven’t visited for an hour will almost always have a soul waiting. Building a small graveyard of four or five graves near your base keeps you well supplied.
You use a soul by right-clicking the grave with the item you want to power. Most scrolls, tablets and books need this step to become enchanted, and it uses up the soul. Around 1 in 10 souls is a strong soul, and half of those summon a Grave Guardian instead of staying on the grave.
Scrolls and Tablets
Almost all the magic items start from two base crafts. The 
Strange Scroll is 
Paper, 
Sticks and Grave Dust, and the Strange Tablet is two Marble and two Grave Dust. You then combine the scroll or tablet with one extra ingredient to decide what it becomes, and finally enchant it on a Grave Soul.
Scrolls give you a buff for 10 minutes. The Scroll of Knowledge is the exception, since it stores your experience instead of giving an effect, and it’s made from a Strange Scroll and 
Glowstone Dust. The Scroll of Preservation, made with a 
Rabbit’s Foot, is another good one, because it keeps your potion effects and all of your experience through a death.
Tablets are teleports, and each has a five minute cooldown after use. The 
Tablet of Recall is the most useful, since you link it to a Grave Soul and it takes you back there whenever you like. That makes a decorative grave at your base work like a waypoint you can return to from anywhere.
| Tablet | Extra ingredient | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Tablet of Recall | Bone Meal | Teleports you to the grave it was linked to |
| Tablet of Home | Red Mushroom | Teleports you to your respawn point |
| Tablet of Assistance | Gunpowder | Teleports you to another player |
| Tablet of Guard | Bone | Summons a Spectral Wolf to guard the area |
| Tablet of Cupidity | Golden Carrot | A risky teleport that can bring you fortune, and lowers your Alignment |
Ancient versions of the scrolls and tablets only come from loot, never from crafting. They’re stronger, and ancient tablets bring nearby creatures along with you when you teleport. The 
Lost Tablet is a special one you get from the Grave Guardian, and once it wakes up it points to a far-off structure you can teleport to.
The Tablet of Recall itself is just a Strange Tablet and a bit of Bone Meal, so it’s cheap to make a few of them. Linking a new one to a different grave changes where it takes you, which is useful if you want one tablet for your base and another for a mining outpost or a farm.
Soulbound and Magic Books
Soulbound is the enchantment most people install the mod for. An item with Soulbound stays in your inventory when you die instead of going into the grave, so your best sword or pickaxe is always on you when you respawn. In game the enchantment shows up as Tombstone Soulbound, which is how you tell it apart from other mods’ versions.
There are two ways to get it. It can come up at a normal 
Enchanting Table, which is allowed by default, or you can craft a 
Book of Soulbound from a 
Book, 
Lapis Lazuli, Diamonds and Grave Dust. To use the book, hold it in your offhand and the item in your main hand, then right-click a Grave Soul.
The mod has a handful of other books that work the same way. The 
Book of Disenchantment pulls enchantments off an item, the Book of Recycling breaks items back down, the Book of Repairing fixes them, and the 
Book of Oblivion resets your perks, with a two hour cooldown between resets. Oblivion is the one to remember if you spent perk points early and regret it later.
Items That Stop You Dying
The 
Voodoo Poppet is the mod’s version of a Totem of Undying. You craft it from Grave Dust, a 
Clay Ball, 
Leather, a 
Dead Bush and 
String, then right-click a Grave Soul to activate its protection. When you’d otherwise die, it heals you fully, clears bad effects and gives you a short Ghostly Shape.
The 
Receptacle of Soul does the same job, but you can’t craft it. It mostly drops from undead bosses, and it saves you once from dying as long as it’s anywhere in your inventory, then breaks. If you’re carrying both, the Voodoo Poppet is always used first, so the Receptacle stays as your backup.
You can also free the soul inside a Receptacle of Soul by right-clicking a decorative grave that has no soul on it. That gives you Alignment and 10 Knowledge of Death points, and it leaves a fresh soul on the grave, so it’s a decent trade once a Voodoo Poppet is already covering you.
Knowledge of Death and Perks
Knowledge of Death is the mod’s levelling system. You earn points from the mod’s own advancements, from praying with an 
Ankh of Prayer at a decorative grave, from freeing souls and from opening abandoned graves. Each advancement gives between 1 and 20 points, and there are a lot of them, so you’ll level up just by playing through the mod.
The Ankh of Prayer is worth making early for the points alone. It’s crafted from Grave Dust, Sticks and a 
Gold Ingot, and you hold right-click near a decorative grave to pray. It gives you a buff and a few Knowledge of Death points, then goes on a one hour cooldown before you can pray again.
Points turn into perk points on a curve, so each perk point costs more than the last. You’ll have around 10 perk points at 100 Knowledge of Death and 20 at 400. That means you won’t be able to max everything, so it’s worth picking a few perks that fit how you play rather than spreading points thinly.
| Perk | What it improves |
|---|---|
| Memento Mori | Keeps 20% more of your experience on death per level |
| Jailer | Chance to respawn with an Enchanted Grave Key |
| Guardian | Reduces the damage you take |
| Gladiator | Increases the damage you deal |
| Treasure Seeker | More loot rolls from undead mobs |
| Rune Inscriber | Chance for a tablet use not to be consumed |
| Witch Doctor | Chance for the Voodoo Poppet not to be used up |
| Priest | Chance for the Ankh of Prayer to skip its cooldown |
For a first few points, Memento Mori and Jailer are the two that change how dying feels the most, since one keeps your levels and the other gets you back to your grave faster. Guardian and Gladiator are the safe combat picks, and Treasure Seeker is worth it if you farm a lot of undead for Grave Dust.
Alignment
Alignment runs alongside Knowledge of Death and tracks whether you’re playing on the side of light or darkness. Freeing a soul from a Receptacle of Soul gives the biggest boost, 50 points, and exorcising Zombie Villagers helps too. Robbing another player’s grave, zombifying villagers or killing your own tamed animals pushes it the other way.
It mostly matters for a few perks. The Necromancer perk, for example, only works while your Alignment is below zero, so a player who wants to raise undead on their side needs to lean dark. For most players it’s enough to know it exists and not rob graves on a shared server.
Familiars and Pet Revival
If you have tamed animals, the Receptacle of Familiar is one of the best things in the mod. Keep it in your inventory and the next time one of your pets would die, its soul is captured in the receptacle instead. It’s made from a 
Ghast Tear, 
Iron Ingots and an Impregnated Diamond, so it isn’t cheap.
The captured soul has to recover before you can bring the pet back, and it does that slowly by drawing on your own vitality. Once it’s fully restored, hold the receptacle in your offhand and right-click a Grave Soul, and your pet comes back to life. The 
Gemstone of Familiar, from Grave Guardian trades, can revive your most recently lost pet directly.
The Grave Guardian
The Grave Guardian is a trader who sometimes appears when a strong soul shows up on a decorative grave. Only one can be around in the same area, with at least 100 blocks between them, and it restocks its trades every hour. Its trades are the easiest way to turn common drops into Grave Dust and other mod items.
| You give | You get |
|---|---|
| 10 Bones | 1 Grave Dust |
| 10 Rotten Flesh | 1 Grave Dust |
| 3 Gunpowder | 1 Dust of Vanishing |
| 10 Marble blocks | 1 Lost Tablet |
| 10 Grave Dust | 1 Potion of Restoration |
| Horse Armor and 5 Grave Dust | 1 Gemstone of Familiar |
The higher tier trades get more interesting, with magic scrolls for a 
Skeleton Skull, enchanted scroll buffs for a 
Wither Skeleton Skull and random armor trims for Grave Dust and a Diamond. The trades are data driven since 9.1.2, so a modpack might have changed them, but the Bone and Rotten Flesh trades are almost always there.
Abandoned Graves
Abandoned graves are small structures that generate on land and in the ocean, spread fairly far apart and never too close to villages. On land they’re often guarded by a couple of Witches. Right-clicking the grave gives you a bit of loot and 5 Knowledge of Death points, which makes them worth a detour if you spot one.
You can find the nearest one with /locate structure tombstone:abandoned_grave_land, or the ocean version by swapping the last word for ocean. They’re also tied into the mod’s lore scrolls, which unlock small permanent bonuses once you’ve collected every part, though that side of the mod is optional.
Tips for Corail Tombstone
Keep a single Ender Pearl in your inventory at all times. When you die, you can craft an Enchanted Grave Key on the spot and teleport straight back, which turns a long walk through a dangerous area into a couple of seconds. It’s the cheapest safety net in the mod and easy to forget about until you need it.
Build your decorative graves early, even before you have a use for souls. The soul timer runs whether you’re there or not, so by the time you’ve crafted your first Strange Scroll you’ll already have souls waiting. Four or five graves near your base is plenty for most players, and they look good as part of a build too.
Put Soulbound on your main tools and weapon as soon as you can. Your grave is safe by default, but getting to it without your best sword can be the hard part, and Soulbound means you respawn already armed. A Book of Soulbound is fairly cheap once you have a Diamond and some Grave Dust spare.
Frequently Asked Questions
Go back to your grave and either right-click it or sneak while standing on it, and everything goes back into your inventory. The Grave Key you respawn with shows where the grave is, and if you enchant it with an Ender Pearl you can teleport there by holding right-click.
Kill undead mobs yourself, which gives about a 1 in 10 chance of one or two Grave Dust. Undead bosses roll the loot five times, Cats can bring it as a morning gift, and the Grave Guardian trades one Grave Dust for ten Bones or ten Rotten Flesh.
Put the Grave Key and an Ender Pearl together in a crafting grid. The key comes out enchanted, which lets you hold right-click to teleport to your grave, even in another dimension. Each death gives you a new plain key, so you’ll need another Ender Pearl for the next one.
Soulbound can come up at a normal Enchanting Table, or you can craft a Book of Soulbound from a Book, Lapis Lazuli, Diamonds and Grave Dust. Hold the book in your offhand and the item in your main hand, then right-click a Grave Soul on a decorative grave.
