Nature’s Aura

Nature’s Aura is a Minecraft mod about Aura, a natural energy that’s spread through the world around you, and it’s what powers the mod’s rituals, altars and machines. Instead of finding it in nodes or mining it, you draw it out of the area you’re standing in, and if you take too much you’ll need to find a way to put it back again.

The mod is by Ellpeck, and it’s a slower, more thoughtful magic mod than most. There’s no boss to fight, so almost all of your progress comes from rituals and multiblocks, and the in-game Book of Natural Aura walks you through each step. This guide covers the parts people usually get stuck on, from your first Gold Leaf through to the Altar of Birthing.

How Aura Works

Aura isn’t stored in one place, it’s spread out through every chunk of the world, and every area starts off with a normal amount of it. Taking Aura out of an area will lower it, and adding Aura will raise it, with the change spreading out from wherever it happened. If you leave it alone for a while, Aura will also move around by itself to even things back out.

You can’t really see any of this without an Environmental Eye, which is made with the Ritual of the Forest further down. Having the Environmental Eye anywhere in your hotbar puts a bar in the top left of your screen, and when that bar is half full, the area is at its normal level. It’ll also show how much Aura is in any block that stores it.

Problems start once an area gets drained too far below normal. The grass and leaves will decay first, then anything nearby starts to struggle breathing and regenerating health, and if it gets really bad, explosions start going off on the surface. Too much Aura is a lot less of a problem, as mostly it just makes the crops nearby grow faster.

Luckily the early part of the mod can’t really drain an area that far on its own. The Natural Altar stops taking Aura once the area around it is empty, so unless you’re running a lot of the bigger machines in one spot, you’ll mostly just see the bar go down, and then slowly come back up again.

Getting Started: Gold Leaf and Gold Powder

Pretty much everything in Nature’s Aura starts with Gold Leaf, and to get Gold Leaf you’ll need to turn a normal tree golden. First craft some Brilliant Fiber from Leaves, Gold Nuggets and Grass, which makes four at a time, then right-click the leaves on any normal tree with it. That block turns into Golden Leaves, and over time the gold spreads through the rest of the tree.

Brilliant Fiber

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Golden Leaves go through a few stages as they change, and you only want to break the ones that are fully gold. Those have a 75% chance to drop a Gold Leaf, but leaves that haven’t finished changing won’t drop anything. So it’s best to wait for the whole tree to turn before harvesting it, as the gold carries on spreading to the leaves around it.

When you’ve got a few Gold Leaves, put them in a crafting grid, and each one gives you two Gold Powder. Gold Powder is placed on the ground like Redstone, and it’s used to mark out the Ritual of the Forest. You’ll also need some Wooden Stands, which are just a Gold Leaf on top of any type of log.

Gold Powder

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Wooden Stand

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Brilliant Fiber is cheap, so you can easily turn a few trees gold at once and just leave them until they’ve finished spreading. One big tree is normally enough Gold Leaf for your first few rituals though, so you don’t need to go overboard with it straight away.

The Ritual of the Forest

The Ritual of the Forest is how you make most of the early items in the mod. It uses a sapling in the middle, a ring of Gold Powder around it and up to eight Wooden Stands holding the ingredients, and when the sapling grows into a tree, the ritual eats the tree and gives you the item instead.

The layout fits in a 9×9 area with the sapling in the center. The Gold Powder goes in a small ring of 16 around the sapling, leaving the four blocks right next to it clear, and the Wooden Stands sit four blocks out on each side and three blocks out along each diagonal. You don’t need all eight stands, only as many as the recipe has ingredients.

Put each ingredient on a stand by right-clicking it, then plant the right sapling and either wait or use Bone Meal. Most recipes use an Oak Sapling, but a couple need a Jungle Sapling, and a stand holding something the recipe doesn’t use stops the ritual from starting. The Book of Natural Aura shows the layout in 3D if you’re unsure.

The four Tokens are worth making early, since they turn up in a lot of the later recipes. Every one of them needs a bottle of Aura from the Bottle and Cork, which is covered further down, so it’s a good idea to make one of those as soon as you’ve got your first Gold Leaf.

Ancient Sapling and Ancient Trees

The Ancient Sapling is the first thing most players make with the ritual, and it gives you two at a time. It grows like any other sapling into an Ancient Tree, with orange leaves and a thick trunk, and those leaves slowly feed Aura back into the area around them. That makes it the easiest way to top an area back up after you’ve been using it.

The leaves don’t last forever, though. Each one only holds a small amount of Aura, and once it’s all been given back to the area, the leaf turns into Decayed Leaves. It’s better to plant a few Ancient Trees near the places you drain the most than to rely on one, and they only work in the Overworld.

If your Ancient Sapling isn’t growing, the usual reason is light. Just like a vanilla sapling, it needs a light level of at least 9 on the block above it, so it won’t grow in a dark room or underground unless you’ve put down some Torches. Bone Meal works on it as well, and it’s the quickest way to get the tree up.

The Natural Altar

The Natural Altar is where you turn normal materials into their Aura infused versions, and it’s a multiblock. The Altar block itself comes from the Ritual of the Forest, and then it needs a structure built around it before it’ll start doing anything. Once it’s complete, it pulls Aura out of the area, stores it, and spends it on whatever you put on top.

The floor goes one block below the Altar and reaches three blocks out in a plus shape, with the Chiseled Stone Bricks on the four inner corners. The four pillars stand four blocks out on each side, each one two Stone Bricks with a Golden Stone Bricks block on top, and the other four Golden Stone Bricks sit level with the Altar, two blocks out on each diagonal.

Golden Stone Bricks are a shapeless recipe, just one Stone Bricks and one Brilliant Fiber. The Nether version works the same way with Nether Bricks, and the two can be mixed in the structure, so you can use whichever you’ve got more of.

Golden Stone Bricks

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Once the structure is done, the Altar starts filling up, and it can store 500,000 Aura. It only pulls from the area within about 20 blocks, and it stops once that area is drained to empty, so it can’t cause Natural Decay by itself. It works in the Overworld and the Nether, but it won’t collect anything in the End.

To infuse something, right-click the Altar with it to put it on top, then wait. Each recipe uses a set amount of Aura over a few seconds, and if the Altar runs dry partway through, it just waits until it’s refilled. These are the ones you’ll use the most.

Tainted Gold uses very little Aura, but it takes a lot longer than Infused Iron to finish, so it’s a good one to leave running while you’re off doing something else. You’ll want plenty of both, since the Offering Table turns either of them into Ingots of the Skies later on.

Catalysts

Placing a catalyst on top of any of the four diagonal Golden Stone Bricks unlocks more Altar recipes. The Transmutation Catalyst turns items into other items, like Rotten Flesh into Leather or Charcoal into Coal, and the Crumbling Catalyst crushes things, like Bone into six Bone Meal and a Gold Leaf into four Gold Powder. Both catalysts come from the Ritual of the Forest.

The Crumbling Catalyst is the better one to make first, because crushing Gold Leaf on the Altar gives you double the Gold Powder you’d get from crafting it. The Transmutation Catalyst is more of a convenience, but it’s handy for things like Ender Pearls and Ghast Tears once you’ve got Aura to spare.

Bottling Aura

The Bottle and Cork is a Glass Bottle and any Planks crafted together, and right-clicking the air with it bottles up some of the Aura around you. What you get depends on the dimension you’re in, with Bottled Sunlight in the Overworld, Bottled Ghosts in the Nether and Bottled Darkness in the End.

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Every bottle takes a fair chunk of Aura out of the area, so don’t fill a whole stack of them in the same spot. If the area is already drained a good way below empty, you’ll get a Bottled Vacuum instead. You can also put Bottles and Corks in a Dispenser to fill them automatically, with a Hopper underneath to catch them.

The Spirit of Calling needs one Bottled Ghosts, so you’ll have to make at least one trip to the Nether with a few empty Bottles and Corks. Fill a handful while you’re there, since you’ll be making Spirits of Calling for as long as you use the Offering Table.

Offering to the Gods

Offering to the Gods is how you get Ingots of the Skies, the strongest metal in the early part of the mod. You’ll need an Offering Table with rings of flowers around it, a stack of Infused Iron or Tainted Gold, and a Spirit of Calling to start it off.

The flowers go in two rings around the Table, 12 in the inner ring and 24 in the outer one, and any small flowers will do, so a mix is fine. The inner ring sits two blocks out from the Table and the outer ring four blocks out, with the corners rounded off, and the Book of Natural Aura shows the exact shape.

Put up to 16 items in the Table’s bowl by right-clicking it, then throw a single Spirit of Calling on the ground right next to it. Lightning strikes the Table, which is only for show and won’t set anything on fire, and the results fall out of the sky a moment later. One Spirit handles the whole stack, so fill the bowl to 16 first.

Tainted Gold is the better deal here, since each ingot gives you two Ingots of the Skies instead of one. The Spirit of Calling itself makes three at a time from a Diamond, an Infused Iron Ingot, a Tainted Gold Ingot and one each of Bottled Sunlight and Bottled Ghosts.

Offering Table

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Spirit of Calling

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The Offering Table needs a Token of Fear and a Token of Sorrow, along with Infused Iron, Stone and logs. That means you’ll need a few rituals and some Altar work done before you can build one, so it’s more of a mid-game step than something you’ll make on your first day.

The Altar of Birthing

The Altar of Birthing spawns mobs from their drops, and it’s one of the main reasons people get into the mod. You throw a Spirit of Birthing and a few items tied to the mob on the ground next to it, and after a short while that mob appears, using Aura from the area around it to do so.

Spirits of Birthing come from breeding animals, but only when the area has a bit more Aura than normal. With an Environmental Eye, you’ll want the bar a little over half full, and then every baby you breed drops one to three Spirits. Planting Ancient Trees or running a generator near your animal pen is the easiest way to keep it there.

The Altar needs a structure under it as well. It sits on top of a 7×7 floor made of 16 Hay Bales around the outside, 16 Infused Bricks filling most of the middle and four Ancient Planks, and it doesn’t matter what’s directly under the Altar itself.

Altar of Birthing

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The Altar is made from four Ingots of the Skies, two Hay Bales, two Iron Bars and a Token of Euphoria, so it’s one of the later things you’ll build. Once it’s up, the items have to land within two blocks of it, and the Book of Natural Aura lists every mob it can make.

The hostile mobs use a lot of Aura each, so spawning a few Blazes or Wither Skeletons in a row can drag the area down quickly. Keep an eye on the bar, and if it gets close to empty, stop and let it recover before you carry on. Newer versions of the mod add a few more mobs, but the ones above work the same way.

Making Aura

Sooner or later you’ll use more Aura than your area can give back on its own, and that’s where the generators come in. Each one turns something into Aura and spreads it back into the area, but most of them stop once the Eye bar is full. Putting a Creational Catalyst directly under one of them removes that limit.

The Herbivorous Absorber is the easy one to start with, as long as you keep feeding it different flowers. Giving it the same flower over and over makes it produce less and less, so about six different kinds is the sweet spot. The Canopy Diminisher fits nicely into an oak tree farm, since it stops the big oaks from growing too.

The Rose of Oblivion is worth mentioning too, even though it isn’t a generator. It grows on the End island once the Ender Dragon has been killed, and you’ll need one to upgrade your Environmental Eye into the Environmental Ocular.

Tools, Armor and the Aura Cache

Nature’s Aura has three sets of tools and armor, made from Infused Iron, Ingots of the Skies and Ingots of the Depths. The Infused Iron set is the Botanist’s gear, the Ingot of the Skies set is the Skyseeker’s gear, and the Ingot of the Depths makes the Soulstrider’s set.

All of the mod’s gear repairs itself with Aura, as long as you’re carrying a charged Aura Cache. Hold sneak and the Cache puts Aura into the tool in your hand and the armor you’re wearing, fixing a point of damage at a time. You fill an Aura Cache by putting it on top of the Natural Altar.

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The Aura Trove is the bigger version and holds three times as much. Other tools and armor can get the same repairing from the Nature’s Mend enchantment, which you’ll find the same way as any other enchantment, and it’s about as common as Looting.

Tips

Build your first Natural Altar in an area you don’t mind draining. The Altar can’t take the area below empty on its own, but Bottles and Corks and the Altar of Birthing can, so keeping the heavy stuff away from your main base saves your Grass and Leaves if something gets out of hand.

Tainted Gold is cheap on Aura and gives double the Ingots of the Skies, so it’s the one to leave running on the Altar overnight. Swap to Infused Iron when you need it for a recipe, since the Botanist’s gear and the Offering Table both use it directly.

A Powder of Steady Growth stops the growth spurts you get in a high Aura area, which is handy if you’d rather your farm grew at a normal pace. Powders only work in a radius equal to the size of the stack you put down, so a bigger stack covers more ground.

Every flower spot around the Offering Table can be a Wither Rose. Filling all of them with Wither Roses makes each offering drop a handful of Black Dye along with the ingots, which is a nice little bonus if you use a lot of dye.

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