Mana Essence Bridge

Mana Essence Bridge

A bridge between Botania mana and Mystical Agriculture essence - and a set of Botania flowers built for essence farms.

Your Inferium farm runs around the clock while your mana pools sit half empty? Or the other way round - endoflames burning fuel into nothing while you're short on essence? This addon merges the two economies: an upgraded Mana Pool becomes a two-way exchange, and eight new flowers grow, harvest, guard and feed your farm.

How it works

Craft an Inferium Mana Catalyst and right-click it onto a plain Mana Pool. The pool is now upgraded and can:

Action	Result
Right-click with essence	convert one
Shift + right-click with essence	convert the whole stack
Shift + right-click, empty hand	buy essence back with mana
Hopper or pipe into the pool	the same, automated
Right-click with an Essence Siphon	the pool starts pulling essence from adjacent chests (redstone pauses it)
Shift + right-click with a Resonance Crystal	strip the top tier and get the catalyst back

Six tiers

Each catalyst unlocks the next essence level, demands its own rung of Botania progression and doubles the pool's capacity:

Tier	Essence	Mana given	Mana to buy	Pool holds	Crafted at
1	Inferium	2,000	2,500	1M	Crafting table
2	Prudentium	8,000	10,000	2M	Petal Apothecary
3	Tertium	32,000	40,000	4M	Runic Altar
4	Imperium	128,000	160,000	8M	Elven Trade
5	Supremium	512,000	640,000	16M	Terra Plate
6	Insanium	2,048,000	2,560,000	32M	Runic Altar

"Pool holds" is for a plain Mana Pool; Diluted and Fabulous pools scale from their own size. Expander Crystals placed against the pool add 25% more each, up to 8 per pool. Tier 6 exists only with Mystical Agradditions installed - without it, Insanium doesn't show up anywhere.

No skipping ahead: catalysts apply strictly in order, and the higher tiers are physically out of reach until you have smelted Terrasteel, opened the Alfheim portal, beaten the Gaia Guardian - and, for tier 6, the Gaia Guardian II. Until a rung is cleared, its entry stays hidden in the Lexica Botania and its catalyst stays hidden in JEI.

Automation

• Essence Siphon - the pool pulls essence out of the chests touching it.
• Essence Condenser - the buy-back, automated. Pick a tier with an essence, and the condenser turns pool mana into essence and pushes it into a chest, hopper or pipe next to it. A reserve of 0-75% keeps part of the pool untouched; surplus mode only uses mana the pool has no room for. Works with a pool touching it or one up to 12 blocks away, bound with the Wand of the Forest.
• Mana Fertilizer - Fertilized Essence steeped in a Mana Pool: grows every Mystical Agriculture crop in a 3x3 by two stages, by hand or from a dispenser. The Greater one, from the Terrestrial Agglomeration Plate, ripens a whole 5x5 at once.
• Pool network - link your upgraded pools with an Essence Mirror (Shift + right-click), and mana evens out between them once a second, however far apart they are.
• Condensation Lens - on a Mana Spreader aimed at an upgraded pool, bursts turn straight into Inferium instead of filling the pool.

Flowers

Flower	Type	What it does
Mysticarnation	functional	an Agricarnation for Mystical Agriculture crops
Reaperbloom	functional	harvests ripe Mystical Agriculture crops in an 11x11 area and replants them
Wardenia	functional	guards any farm: keeps farmland moist, stops trampling, pushes hostile mobs out, stops their projectiles, snuffs out explosions
Essentide	generating	eats resource essences - the higher the crop tier, the more mana
Brookbell	generating	mana from items drifting past in flowing water, without taking them
Boltbloom	generating	catches lightning, and in a thunderstorm calls harmless lightning onto itself
Melodia	generating	listens to note blocks; varied tunes pay more than one note on repeat
Bumblebloom	generating	bees pollinate it, and every visit makes mana

Every flower also comes in a floating version on a Botania island - the flower plus any floating flower. Jade and The One Probe show what each flower is doing - digesting, resting, waiting for lightning, mana made in the last second.

Tools

• Essence Mirror - bind it to an upgraded pool and trade with it from anywhere in that dimension: right-click opens the pool's window - mana, prices, any essence to buy - and Shift + right-click sends all your essence into the pool.
• Mana Ledger - every upgraded pool you own in one window: tier, coordinates, distance and a direction arrow, mana, how fast it fills or drains, which condenser draws from it, and its pool-network links (hover a pool to light up the pools it is linked to). Pools in unloaded chunks show their last known state.
• Resonance Crystal - strips the top tier off a pool and returns that catalyst intact. It is not consumed: the price is mana from the pool itself. Sneaking is required, so a stray click can't undo your progress.
• Wardenia Belt - a Wardenia's guard you wear in the Curios belt slot: hostile projectiles near you vanish, hostile mobs get pushed back, their explosions next to you fizzle out, and farmland survives your boots. Runs on mana from your rings and tablets.

A mined upgraded pool keeps its tier and its mana in the item, so you can move it without losing anything.

On balance - why exactly x4

The exchange rate deliberately mirrors Mystical Agriculture's own ladder: 4 essences make 1 of the next tier, and the same in reverse. That isn't laziness, it's arithmetic - the Master Infusion Crystal has infinite durability, so climbing that ladder costs the player nothing. Any rate better than x4 becomes an infinite mana loop: buy cheap essence, craft it upward for free, sell it higher. At exactly x4 the loop pays nothing.

Buying back costs 25% more than selling, so the pool doesn't become free storage.

The flowers follow the same rule. Growing a crop with Mysticarnations always costs more mana than the Essentide gets back from its essence, so "a flower grows it, a flower eats it" never pays for itself.

Configuration

Everything lives in config/manaessencebridge-common.toml and takes effect without rebuilding:

Option	Default	What it does
manaPerInferium	2000	mana per Inferium Essence; every tier above is worth 4x more
buyMarkupPercent	125	buy-back price as a percent of the sell price
maxTier	5	highest of the first five tiers the mod will handle
enableInsanium	true	tier 6, when Mystical Agradditions is installed
boostCapacity	true	upgraded pools hold x2 mana per tier above the first
buyHighestTier	true	empty-hand buying: the best tier you can afford, or always Inferium
automationEnabled	true	accept essence from hoppers and pipes
pullFromContainers	true	server-wide switch for the Essence Siphon
condenserIntervalTicks	2	how often a condenser makes one essence
privatePools	false	only a pool's owner (and friends added with /manabridge trust add) can buy from it, strip it or tie a condenser to it
poolLinkRate	50000	mana a pool-network link moves per second
keepManaOnBreak	true	a mined upgraded pool keeps its mana
expanderPercent	25	capacity each Expander Crystal adds
expanderMaxCrystals	8	Expander Crystals counted per pool
manaFertilizerStages	2	growth stages a Mana Fertilizer gives each crop
poolGlow	true	tier-coloured sparks over upgraded pools (client-side)
showHud	true	on-screen readout when looking at a pool

Every flower number - ranges, costs, mana per strike, note or bee - is in the [flowers] section.

This is a common config: single player uses your file, on a server the server's file wins - so players can't tune their own exchange rate. The x4 step itself is deliberately not configurable, for the reason above.

Also included

• A chapter of its own in the Lexica Botania - every page of the mod in one place, including "An Essence Farm" and "An Advanced Essence Farm" with 3D layouts you can project into the world
• Shared recipes between Botania and Mystical Agriculture
• Pools tinted by tier, with matching particles on every conversion
• Jade and The One Probe support for pools, the condenser and every flower; without either, a built-in readout shows the pool
• JEI tabs for every exchange rate and for what the Essentide eats
• Advancements for every tier, the tools, the flowers and mana milestones
• /manabridge for operators: list a player's pools, set a pool's tier, change its owner
• English and Russian - fully localized
• Something special happens on October 17th

For modpack makers: custom exchange rates

Upgraded pools can take more than Mystical Agriculture essence. A datapack can add any item or item tag, with its own mana value and the pool tier it needs - put JSON files into data/<namespace>/manaessencebridge_exchange/:

{
  "required_mod": "thermal",
  "entries": [
    { "item": "minecraft:diamond", "mana": 40000, "tier": 2 },
    { "tag": "forge:gems/emerald", "mana": 30000 }
  ]
}

tier defaults to 1, required_mod is optional (the file is skipped when that mod is missing), and a single entry can also sit at the root of the file. These items are accepted everywhere essence is - by hand, from hoppers and pipes, through the Essence Siphon and the Essence Mirror - and show their value in the tooltip. They are sell-only: a pool never gives them back, so they can't form a buy-low/sell-high loop through this mod. Pricing them is up to the pack; Mystical Agriculture essences always keep their own x4 ladder.

Compatibility

This mod uses no Mixins. Everything goes through Botania's public API and ordinary Forge events - no third-party bytecode is touched, so it cannot add another Create-versus-Rubidium style conflict to your pack.

Available for Minecraft 1.16.5, 1.18.2, 1.19.2 and 1.20.1, all on Forge. Pick the file that matches your pack.

Requires: Botania and Mystical Agriculture

Optional: Mystical Agradditions (tier 6), JEI, Jade, The One Probe

FAQ

A creeper blew up my pool - where's my tier?

Gone. Botania's Mana Pool carries a survives_explosion condition, so an exploded pool drops nothing at all, not even itself. Use a pickaxe - or plant a Wardenia next to it: it stops explosions in a 17x17 area.

Can I apply a tier 5 catalyst straight away?

No. Strictly in order, starting from tier 1.

I run a public server. Can other players drain my pool?

Turn on privatePools: then only the player who placed a pool's first catalyst can buy from it, strip it or tie a condenser to it. Operators are not limited, and owners can share all their pools with friends: /manabridge trust add <player>.

Does it work with Botania addons?

Yes, as long as their pool implements Botania's mana pool interface - IManaPool on 1.16.5 and 1.18.2, renamed to ManaPool on 1.19.2 and 1.20.1. The upgrade attaches to the interface, not to one specific block.