Soul Shards allow players to harvest the Souls of creatures they kill, placing them inside Soul Shards. These can then be leveled up and used to create custom spawners and mob farms.
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Soul Shards
The first item that’s required is a Soul Shard, and a custom structure needs to be created to summon one. You’ll need 4 Obsidian, 4 Quartz Blocks, 1 Block of Glowstone, and 1 Diamond.
As you can tell, most of these items require a trip to the Nether, which is designed to stop the mod from feeling too overpowered. Create the structure like below, with Obsidian in the corners, Quartz in the remaining outer blocks, and a Glowstone Block in the middle. Then, hold a Diamond, and right-click the Glowstone Block.

A Soul Shard will be created. With it in your inventory, the first creature that you kill will be bound to the Soul Shard. Each time that entity is killed, its Soul will enter the Soul Shard. It needs to reach Tier 1 before it’s usable, which is 64 Souls.
Tier | Souls | Cooldown |
1 | 64 | 20 Sec |
2 | 128 | 10 Sec |
3 | 256 | 5 Sec |
4 | 512 | 5 Sec |
5 | 1024 | 2 Sec |
There are 5 Tiers in total, which determine factors like the number of mobs that are spawned each time, the cooldown of the Soul Cage, whether a player needs to be nearby, and more. Tiers are as follows:
Vile Sword
A new weapon included with Soul Shards is the Vile Sword. It has an Attack Damage value of 6 and an Attack Speed of 1.6. It’s not designed for power, as it’s weaker than a Diamond Sword. Instead, the Vile Sword will give 2 Souls per kill, instead of 1 with a regular Sword.
Vile Swords require some new items included with the mod. The Sword can be crafted from 2 Corrupted Ingots and a Stick. Whereas Corrupted Ingots need Vile Dust and Corrupted Essence, the recipes of which you can see above.
In total, you need 2 Iron Ingots, 8 Soul Sand, 16 Obsidian, 8 Lapis Lazuli, 8 Redstone Dust, and a Stick. That’s the raw ingredients, before turning them into Corrupted Ingots.
Soul Cage
Once your Soul Shard has reached at least Tier 1, you’ll need to create a Soul Cage. It can be crafted from 4 Corrupted Ingots and 4 Iron Bars. View the slideshow above to see how to craft Corrupted Ingots.

Place the Soul Cage down in a suitable location, and right-click it with your Soul Shard to connect them. Once the Soul Shard is added to the Cage, the linked entities will begin to spawn. You can remove the Soul Shard at any time to stop spawning or to level it up further.
Soul Shards Mod Download
The links above will take you to the CurseForge page for the Soul Shards Mod. Specifically, they direct you to the download for your chosen version of Minecraft. Learn more about why you should only download files from CurseForge.
How to Install
If you haven't already, make sure to install Forge for Minecraft. It's a simple process and takes just a few minutes. Once Forge is installed:- Download the mod for your Minecraft Version. It will be a .JAR file.
- Take this file, and place it in the 'mods' folder of your Minecraft directory. If this folder doesn't exist, create it. The easiest way to access your Minecraft directory is opening the game, going to Resource Packs and pressing the 'Open Resource Pack Folder' button.
- Once it's inside the mods folder, run Minecraft with the Forge preset selected. The mod will be installed and can be played with in-game.