Malum

Malum is a Minecraft mod about soul magic, where you tear the souls out of the mobs you kill and use them as spirits to power everything else in the mod. It’s a slower, more hands on magic mod than most, and instead of a single machine that does it all, you’ll be building altars, carving totems and throwing things into an old well at the bottom of the world.

There’s quite a lot to it, and the mod’s own book doesn’t always make the order clear, which is why so many people get stuck early on. This guide goes through it in the order you’ll actually need things, from finding Soulstone and your first Scythe, through the Spirit Altar and totems, all the way to the Spirit Crucible and the Weeping Well.

Getting Started with Soulstone

The first thing you’ll need is Soulstone Ore, which is found in regular Stone and Deepslate anywhere from the very bottom of the world up to around Y 100. It’s quite common, and any pickaxe will mine it, so you don’t need to wait until you’ve got Iron before you start looking for it in caves.

Mining it gives you Raw Soulstone, which smelts into two Processed Soulstone in a Furnace, and Fortune works on the ore too, so it’s worth using a Fortune pickaxe if you’ve got one. Processed Soulstone is used in nearly every early recipe in the mod, so it’s worth grabbing a full stack before you go any further.

Processed Soulstone

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With a bit of Processed Soulstone you can make the Encyclopedia Arcana, which is the mod’s guide book, from a Book and one Processed Soulstone. You’ll often get one for free as well, as the first undead mob you kill drops a copy, so a Zombie or a Skeleton on your first night will usually sort you out.

Encyclopedia Arcana

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While you’re underground, keep an eye out for a few other ores that come up later on. Natural Quartz is found deep down and sometimes in geodes, and it’s used in place of Nether Quartz. Chunk of Brilliance comes from Brilliant Stone below Y 40, and it’s basically solid XP that you can use for enchanting or repairing things.

Runewood Trees

Runewood is the other thing you’ll need right away, and it’s a tree with bright orange and yellow leaves that grows in Plains, as well as Mountain and Hill biomes. It turns up in forests too, but it’s a lot rarer there, and in snowy biomes you’ll find Azure Runewood instead, which has blue leaves but gives you the same Runewood Logs.

You’ll want quite a few Runewood Logs, as the Spirit Altar, the pedestals and the totems are all made from Runewood. It’s worth taking the Runewood Saplings home and starting a small farm, since you’ll be using the wood for most of the mod and trekking back out to the Plains every time gets old quickly.

Runewood Logs also smelt into Arcane Charcoal, which burns twice as long as normal Charcoal, so it’s a really good fuel to have early on. Soulwood Logs smelt into it too, and it’s handy to keep a stack of it in your Furnaces while you’re processing all the Soulstone and ore you’ll be digging up.

Arcane Charcoal

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Some of the logs will have sap building up on the side, and if you strip the bark off with an Axe you can fill a Glass Bottle with Runic Sap. It’s a drink that heals you a little, and the sap can be made into sapballs, which work as a replacement for Slime Balls in most recipes that need them.

The Crude Scythe and Soul Hunting

Spirits are the whole point of Malum, and you get them by killing mobs with a Scythe. The Crude Scythe is the first one you can make, from three Iron Ingots, one Processed Soulstone and two Sticks, and it’s a decent weapon on its own as well, with a wide sweep like a Sword has.

Crude Scythe

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The thing that trips a lot of people up is that the Scythe doesn’t need to land the killing blow. Hitting a mob with a Scythe exposes its soul for 10 seconds, and if it dies in that time from anything, whether that’s a Sword, an arrow or lava, it’ll still drop its spirits for you.

When a mob with an exposed soul dies, its spirits come flying out and float over to you, and they go straight into your inventory. A mob killed without its soul exposed won’t drop anything, so if you’ve been killing Zombies with a Sword for an hour and wondering where the spirits are, that’s the reason.

Staves and every Soulstained Steel tool expose souls too, not just Scythes, so once you’ve got better gear you’re not stuck using the Scythe for everything. Mobs from a Spawner still drop spirits by default, which means a normal mob farm with a Scythe hit at the end is a really good way of getting them in bulk.

The Spirit Types and Where to Get Them

There are eight spirits you’ll be collecting, plus a ninth rare one called Umbral that only comes from the Weeping Well. Every mob drops a set mix of them, which is based on what the mob is like, so peaceful animals drop Sacred Spirits, while most hostile mobs will give you Wicked Spirits and Arcane Spirits.

Arcane is the one you’ll run through fastest, as nearly every recipe asks for at least one, so a Skeleton farm or a Spawner is worth setting up early. Witches are brilliant as well, since each one drops two Wicked and two Arcane, and Creepers are the easiest early source of Infernal Spirits before you get to the Nether.

Eldritch Spirits are the hard ones, and you’ll only get them from Endermen, Endermites, Shulkers, the Elder Guardian and illagers like Evokers and Ravagers. Endermen only drop one each, so a raid or a trip to a Woodland Mansion is a good time to stock up, as you’ll need Eldritch for the totem base and the stronger rites.

How to Use the Spirit Altar

The Spirit Altar is the most important block in Malum, and almost everything past the Crude Scythe gets made on it. It’s crafted from four Runewood Planks, two Gold Ingots and one Processed Soulstone, so you’ll be able to make it as soon as you’ve got some Runewood and a bit of Gold.

Spirit Altar

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To use it, right-click the altar with the item you want to infuse, then right-click it again while holding the spirits the recipe needs, and they’ll start spinning around the top. Once everything the recipe asks for is there, the infusion starts on its own and takes about 15 seconds, and the finished item pops out on top.

Most recipes also need extra items, and these go on Runewood Item Pedestals or Runewood Item Stands placed around the altar. They have to be within four blocks of it sideways and three blocks up or down, and the altar pulls the items in one at a time while it’s working, so you’ll see them fly across.

Runewood Item Pedestal

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The Encyclopedia Arcana shows every recipe with the spirits and pedestal items it needs, which is the easiest way to check what goes where. If an infusion won’t start, the problem is almost always a missing spirit or a pedestal item that’s just out of range, so count the blocks before you start pulling the whole setup apart.

Once you’ve got some Hallowed Gold you can make Runewood Obelisks, and each one placed near the altar makes it a quarter faster, up to four of them. They’re not cheap, as each one needs 16 Aerial Spirits and 8 Sacred Spirits, but if you’re making a lot of Soulstained Steel they’re worth building.

Your First Infusions

The first few infusions are the materials you’ll use for the rest of the mod, so it’s worth making a good batch of each one before moving on. Hex Ash is the easiest, and it’s just a piece of Gunpowder and one Arcane Spirit, which makes it a nice one to try the altar out with.

The Soulstained Steel Ingot is the big one, as it’s what your better weapons, tools and armor are made from. Each ingot takes one Iron Ingot, three Wicked Spirits and four Processed Soulstone on pedestals, so a Zombie and Witch farm pays for itself pretty quickly once you start making these in bulk.

Tainted Rock and Twisted Rock are the mod’s building stone, and they’re also needed for the Spirit Crucible later on. You can use Cobblestone, Blackstone or Cobbled Deepslate for both of them, and you get the full 16 back out, so it’s a cheap way to get a lot of nice looking blocks for your build.

Spirit Pouch and Spirit Jars

Spirits fill your inventory up fast, so the Spirit Pouch is one of the first things worth making with Spirit Fabric. It’s made from three Spirit Fabric, a piece of String, and either Soul Sand or Soul Soil, and it holds 27 slots of spirits that it picks up for you automatically.

Spirit Pouch

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For storing spirits at your base, Spirit Jars are the way to go, and they’re made from seven Glass Panes and a Hallowed Gold Ingot. Each jar only holds one type of spirit, but it’ll hold a huge amount of it, so a row of eight jars next to your altar keeps everything sorted and easy to grab.

Spirit Jar

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You can right-click a jar to put spirits in or take them out, and they work with Hoppers too, which is handy if you want to feed spirits in from a mob farm. It’s a good idea to label them or place them in the same order every time, as the colors can be quite hard to tell apart from across a room.

Soulstained Steel Gear

The Soulstained Steel Scythe is the upgrade for your Crude Scythe, and it’s made on the altar rather than in a Crafting Table. It takes your Crude Scythe on the altar, 16 Earthen Spirits, 8 Wicked and 8 Arcane, with four Soulstained Steel Ingots, two Hex Ash and four Processed Soulstone on the pedestals around it.

It hits a little harder than the Crude Scythe and adds magic damage on top, and it lasts a lot longer too. The other Soulstained Steel tools are just crafted from the ingots and Sticks like Iron ones, but the armor is made on the altar starting from a piece of Iron armor, so keep your old set.

The armor gives you something called Soul Ward, which is a second bar that soaks up hits before your health does. While it holds, you take less physical damage and hardly any magic damage, and it recharges on its own after a few seconds, so it’s really good for fighting Witches and Evokers while you’re out collecting spirits.

If you’d rather go down the magic route, the Soulhunter armor made from Spirit Fabric is lighter, but each piece boosts your magic damage instead. It’s more for when you’re using staves, and most people start with the Soulstained Steel set first, as the extra protection makes spirit hunting in the early game a lot safer.

Totems and Rites

Totems are how Malum does area effects, like healing you, speeding up nearby Furnaces or making crops grow faster. You’ll need a Runewood Totem Base, which is made on the altar from four Runewood Logs with two each of Aerial, Aqueous, Earthen and Infernal Spirits and one Eldritch Spirit, and Runewood Planks and Hex Ash on the pedestals.

To make the poles, right-click the side of a placed Runewood Log with a spirit, and it’ll carve that spirit into the log, using one of them up. It has to be the side of the log, not the top or the bottom, and you stack the carved logs on top of the Totem Base with the first spirit of the rite sitting at the bottom.

Once your poles are stacked, right-click the Totem Base and it’ll check each pole from the bottom up, and if the spirits match a rite it’ll start running. Most rites use an Arcane pole at the bottom and two of another spirit above it, and you can switch a running totem off again by right-clicking the base.

The rites starting with an Eldritch pole are the greater versions, and they tend to work on blocks rather than on you. As well as Rite of Growth, Infernal gives you a Rite of Smelting that smelts the blocks in front of the totem, and Earthen gives you a Rite of Destruction, which breaks them instead.

Soulwood and the Blight

Soulwood is the corrupted version of Runewood, and the only way to make it is by running the Undirected Rite. That’s five Arcane poles on a Runewood Totem Base, and when it runs, the whole totem turns into Soulwood and the ground around it turns into a purple blight, so don’t do this in the middle of your base.

A Soulwood totem runs the corrupted version of every rite, and they’re quite different to the normal ones. The Rite of Quickening makes nearby Furnaces run faster without using any extra fuel, and the Rite of Nourishment ages up animals, which is great for an animal farm, while the Undirected Rite becomes the Unchained Rite on Soulwood.

The Unchained Rite changes blocks that are placed on top of Blighted Earth or Blighted Soil, and this is how you get Soulwood trees. Plant a Runewood Sapling on the blight near an Unchained Rite and it turns into a Soulwood Growth, which grows into a tree like a normal sapling, and Bone Meal works on it too.

Soulwood trees spread the blight as they grow, so give them a fenced off area away from anything you care about. You’ll get Soulwood Logs from them, which are needed for the Soulwood Totem Base and a few of the later recipes, and their sap is a stronger version of Runic Sap that boosts your damage.

The Spirit Crucible

The Spirit Crucible is Malum’s version of an ore doubler, and it uses spirits to make materials out of an Alchemical Impetus. You make it on the altar from a Furnace, 12 Infernal and 4 Arcane Spirits, with two Hex Ash, eight Tainted Rock and eight Twisted Rock on the pedestals, so you’ll want a fair bit of rock first.

The Alchemical Impetus is the tool that goes inside it, and it’s made from eight Alchemical Calx with Arcane and Earthen Spirits, plus three Processed Soulstone and a Hex Ash on pedestals. The Impetus loses durability every time the Crucible finishes a recipe, and once it cracks you’ll need to repair it or make a new one.

The Crucible is really handy for Glowstone Dust and Redstone Dust before you’ve got a proper farm for them, as a single spirit turns into eight of them each time. The metal versions of the Impetus turn into nodes that smelt into extra ingots, so it’s also a good way to squeeze more out of your Iron and Gold.

There are four augment slots on the Crucible for things like faster focusing or using less of the Impetus, and Spirit Catalyzers placed around it speed it up as well. The Repair Pylon is worth building nearby too, as it repairs damaged gear using spirits and a bit of the matching material, like an Iron Ingot for Iron tools.

The Weeping Well

The Weeping Well is a structure found deep underground, between Y -50 and Y -20, and it can show up under any Overworld biome. It’s a pool of dark liquid in a stone room, and throwing items into it transmutes them into something else, which is how you get a few of the rarer materials in the mod.

Don’t stand in the well yourself, as after about three seconds it’ll throw you back out, hurt you, and slow you down for a while. The first time it rejects you it also gives you an Umbral Spirit, which is the rarest spirit in the mod, and any other mob that falls in is simply deleted, so be careful with pets.

Tips

Always carry your Scythe even if you’ve got a better Sword, as one quick hit before you switch weapons is all it takes to expose a soul. Spirits only drop from mobs that were hit within the last 10 seconds, so the habit of opening every fight with the Scythe saves a lot of wasted kills.

It’s worth building your altar room with space for pedestals on all four sides from the start. Plenty of recipes need four or more different items on pedestals, and moving an altar setup around once you’ve got jars, obelisks and pedestals everywhere is a real pain, so give yourself more room than you think you’ll need.

Keep Arcane Spirits stocked at all times, since they’re in almost every altar recipe, every rite, and most Crucible recipes too. A Skeleton Spawner with a Scythe hit at the bottom of the drop chute will keep you going for the whole mod, and it gives you a steady supply of Wicked Spirits as a bonus.

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