Ars 'n' Spells

Ars 'n' Spells bridges Ars Nouveau and Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks, bringing their magic systems together instead of leaving them as two completely separate progression paths.

Unify their mana pools, make equipment bonuses work across both systems, share spell-school progression, cast spells across mod boundaries, and even place custom Ars Nouveau spells into real Iron's spellbooks for use through Iron's native spell wheel.

Most systems are configurable, so Ars 'n' Spells can serve as anything from a lightweight compatibility layer to the foundation of a heavily integrated magic modpack.

Minecraft 1.20.1 | Forge

Requirements

Iron's Spellbooks is treated as an optional dependency. If it is removed, Ars 'n' Spells disables features that depend on it and falls back to normal Ars Nouveau behavior where possible.

Unified Mana

Ars 'n' Spells can make Ars Nouveau and Iron's Spellbooks use the same magical resource.

Five mana modes are available:

Conversion rates, split costs, regeneration behavior, and related balancing options can all be configured.

Mana modes can also be changed while a world is running without requiring a restart.

Equipment Works Across Both Magic Systems

Mana equipment is integrated with whichever mana system you choose.

Depending on your configuration:

• Ars Nouveau equipment can contribute to Iron's mana
• Iron's Spellbooks equipment can contribute to Ars mana
• Mana regeneration bonuses can transfer between systems
• Mana-related enchantments are respected
• Mana attributes on equipped Curios can contribute to the unified pool

Curio attribute support is generic, allowing compatible mana bonuses from mods such as Apotheosis, Apothic Curios, Magical Jewelry, Jewelcraft, and similar equipment mods to participate without requiring dedicated compatibility for every item.

Combat attributes unrelated to mana or spell power are left alone.

Cross-Mod Spell Scaling

Iron's spell-power attributes can improve Ars Nouveau spells.

General spell power contributes to Ars spell potency, while elemental bonuses can apply when an Ars spell belongs to the corresponding school, including:

• Fire
• Ice
• Lightning
• Holy
• Ender
• Blood
• Evocation
• Nature
• Eldritch

Ars 'n' Spells uses Ars Nouveau's own spell-school metadata rather than relying on a fixed list of glyph names. This allows addon glyphs to classify themselves naturally and improves compatibility with mods such as Ars Elemental and Too Many Glyphs.

A configurable spell-power cap is provided for pack authors who want to keep cross-mod scaling under control.

Shared Progression and Affinity

Casting spells can build progression across both magic systems.

Ars and Iron's casts contribute to shared school progression, while the affinity system tracks which schools a player uses most frequently.

Progression bonuses can then feed back into both Ars and Iron's spell power.

Affinity decay is optional and disabled by default, allowing pack authors to decide whether specialization should be permanent or gradually shift with a player's habits.

Resonance

Resonance rewards players for keeping their mana pool near full.

When mana rises above a configurable threshold, normally 95 percent, spell damage can receive an additional bonus. The threshold, strength, duration, and maximum bonus can all be adjusted.

Ars and Iron's resonance support can also be enabled or disabled independently.

Source Jar Synergy

Ars Nouveau Source Jars can provide a passive mana regeneration bonus to nearby players.

The system includes configurable:

• Regeneration strength
• Detection radius
• Scan interval
• Master enable or disable option

The implementation avoids force-loading chunks and caches player position checks to reduce unnecessary server work.

Cast Spells Across Mods

Ars 'n' Spells allows spells from one system to be attached to items associated with the other.

The Spell Transcription ritual can inscribe:

• Ars Nouveau spells onto other items
• Iron's spells onto compatible non-Iron's items

Once an item contains multiple cross-cast spells, right-clicking casts the selected spell while sneak-right-clicking cycles between inscriptions.

Cross-cast spells use the active mana configuration and can have their own configurable mana-cost multiplier.

A matching Spell Uninscription ritual safely removes the stored cross-spell data so the item can be reused.

Both inscription recipes are datapack-driven, allowing modpack authors to rebalance their ingredients and Source costs.

Put Ars Spells Inside Iron's Spellbooks

One of the largest integrations is the ability to turn an Ars Nouveau spell into something that behaves naturally inside Iron's Spellbooks.

Spell Loom

The Spell Loom lets players take an Ars spell and place it onto a real Iron's scroll.

Players can choose:

• A spell name
• A nature
• An icon

The resulting scroll carries the complete Ars spell while remaining an actual Iron's scroll item.

Spellbook Binding

Exported scrolls can then be bound into an Iron's spellbook through the Spellbook Binding ritual.

Once bound, each Ars spell appears as its own entry inside Iron's native spell-selection wheel.

Select it just like an Iron's spell and cast normally.

The spell still executes as a real Ars Nouveau spell, but Ars 'n' Spells handles its mana cost, scaling, cooldowns, and cross-mod integration.

Native Iron's spells already stored in the spellbook are not replaced.

Up to 8 Ars spells can appear in a book's spell wheel, with a configurable lower limit available for pack authors.

Mana Infusion and Mana Well Rituals

Ars 'n' Spells also includes additional rituals built around the unified mana system.

Mana Infusion

Provides an immediate burst of mana to a nearby player.

Mana Well

Creates a temporary area that continually restores mana to players standing within its range.

Both feed into the mana pool selected by the active unification mode and have configurable values for pack balancing.

Optional Unified Cooldowns

An optional cooldown system groups spells from both mods into shared categories:

• Offensive
• Defensive
• Utility
• Movement

Casting one spell can temporarily prevent other spells in the same category from being used, even when they come from the other magic mod.

This system is disabled by default and is intended mainly for packs that want tighter combat balance.

Covenant of the Seven Integration

When Covenant of the Seven / Sanctified Legacy is installed, Ars 'n' Spells adds deeper resource integration for its special rings.

Ring of Seven Curses

Spell costs can be converted from mana into Life Points.

LP can come from:

• Blood Magic's Soul Network
• Player health
• Blood Magic first, with health used as a fallback

The behavior when a player cannot afford a spell is configurable.

Ring of Seven Virtues

Ars Nouveau spells can instead consume Covenant's Aura resource while the Virtue Ring is equipped.

Covenant remains responsible for the actual Aura pool, regeneration, persistence, and HUD. Ars 'n' Spells handles converting Ars spell costs into Aura costs.

Blasphemy Curios

Supported Blasphemy curios can provide spell-cost discounts, with additional bonuses when their element matches the school of the spell being cast.

All associated costs and multipliers are configurable.

Blood Magic Integration

Blood Magic is not required.

When installed alongside the Covenant integration, its Soul Network can be used as the Life Point source for Cursed Ring casting.

Servers can choose whether Blood Magic is preferred, mandatory, or ignored in favor of health costs.

Scroll Resource Costs

Iron's spell scrolls can be configured to follow the same resource rules as ordinary spells.

Available modes include:

• Full: scrolls consume normal spell resources
• LP Only: scrolls skip mana but still respect applicable Life Point costs
• Free: scrolls do not consume normal resources

This makes scroll balance adaptable to both progression-heavy and more casual packs.

Built for Modpacks

Most major Ars 'n' Spells systems are controlled through the per-world server configuration.

Pack authors can adjust or disable:

• Mana unification
• Mana conversion rates
• Cross-system regeneration
• Dual-pool cost splitting
• Cross-cast costs
• Spell-power scaling
• Resonance
• Source Jar regeneration
• Progression
• Affinity and affinity decay
• Unified cooldowns
• Scroll costs
• Covenant LP and Aura systems
• Curio attribute bridging
• Spellbook binding
• Maximum Ars spells per Iron's spellbook
• Mana ritual values

Several integration points also use datapack tags or recipes so custom content can participate without requiring code changes.

The configuration is server-authoritative and synchronized to clients.

Commands

Ars 'n' Spells provides the /ans command for configuration and diagnostics.

Useful commands include:

• /ans mode to view the current mana mode
• /ans mode set <mode> to change it live
• /ans info <player> for mana and integration diagnostics
• /ans debug to toggle additional debugging
• /ans aura to view Covenant Aura
• /ans export_to_irons_scroll for operator-side Ars spell export
• /ans bind_scroll_to_irons_book for operator-side spellbook binding

Normal survival progression uses the Spell Loom and rituals instead of the operator commands.

Compatibility Philosophy

Ars 'n' Spells is designed to integrate the two magic systems without requiring every feature to be enabled.

Want one shared mana pool but otherwise mostly vanilla Ars and Iron's gameplay? You can do that.

Want shared mana, school progression, equipment bonuses, cross-casting, resonance, unified cooldowns, Blood Magic costs, and Ars spells inside Iron's spellbooks? You can do that too.

The goal is to make Ars Nouveau and Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks feel like parts of the same magical ecosystem while still giving players and modpack authors control over how closely the two systems are connected.

Ars 'n' Spells

Ars 'n' Spells bridges Ars Nouveau and Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks into one seamless magic experience. Unify your mana, share progression between spell systems, scale your power across both mods — and even weave Ars spells into real Iron's spellbooks, cast straight from Iron's native spell wheel. All fully configurable.

Works with Minecraft 1.20.1 on Forge.

Requirements

(Curios is required by Ars Nouveau, so it is always present.)

Mana Unification

The core of Ars 'n' Spells: five configurable modes that control how the two mana pools interact.

Conversion rates between the two mana systems are fully configurable, and cross-system mana regen is unit-converted properly (Iron's percentage regen vs Ars flat regen) so stacked regen gear never spirals out of control.

The mod automatically hides the redundant mana bar so your HUD stays clean.

Changing the mode (applied live, no restart): in singleplayer, open Mods → Ars 'n' Spells → Config and click the Mana Mode row to cycle it; server operators can run /ans mode set <mode>; or edit the config file directly. Confirm the active mode with /ans mode.

Gear & Spell Integration

• Gear perks cross over — Ars armor bonuses apply to Iron's mana pool (and vice versa), depending on your active mode.
• Curios & Apotheosis affixes — Mana stats on worn curios (rings, amulets, belts) cross over too, including those rolled by Apotheosis / Apothic Curios affixes and sockets (and by Magical Jewelry, Jewelcraft, and similar). The read is generic — no hard Apotheosis dependency — and can be turned off with the read_curio_attribute_modifiers config. (Combat-only stats like crit or armor pierce are not mana/spell-power and are not bridged.)
• Spell scaling — Ars spell potency scales with Iron's spell power attributes using additive stacking (not multiplicative). Elemental bonuses are applied based on your first glyph. A configurable spell_power_cap (default 3.0) prevents extreme values.
• Enchantments — Mana-related enchantments from both mods are respected regardless of which pool is active.

Resonance

When your mana is nearly full (above 95% by default), you gain a Resonance bonus that boosts spell damage. A reward for mana-efficient play. Configurable per mod, with adjustable strength, linger duration, and a damage cap.

Source Jar Synergy

Standing near Ars Nouveau Source Jars passively boosts your mana regeneration. The bonus is configurable via source_jar_synergy_multiplier (default 5.0), with tunable scan interval and radius plus a dedicated off switch (enable_source_jar_synergy). The scan is position-cached for performance and never force-loads chunks.

Cross-Mod Progression & Affinity

• Progression sharing — Casting Ars spells grants Iron's school progression, and vice versa.
• Affinity tracking — The mod tracks your spell school usage over time, with optional decay for unused schools.

Cross-Spell Inscription

Cast spells from either mod using items from the other mod through a tablet-driven inscribe / uninscribe ritual flow. Both ritual tablets are crafted at the Enchanting Apparatus and are fully datapack-defined, so pack authors can retune ingredients without code.

Spell Transcription — bind a foreign spell onto an item

1. Craft the Spell Transcription tablet. Reagent: a novice Ars Nouveau spellbook. Pedestals: any tiered Iron's spellbook, an archwood log, and a source gem block. Costs 2000 source.
2. Set up the brazier. Place the tablet on a Ritual Brazier and drop two items within ~3 blocks:
   • exactly one source — a filled Ars Nouveau spell parchment, focus, or spellbook, or an Iron's Spellbooks scroll
   • exactly one blank target item to receive the inscription

• Activate. Strict disambiguation: more than one of either category, or any already-inscribed item in range, fails the ritual with a chat message that names the items it saw and the rule. Items that already carry an Ars Nouveau spell at root NBT are rejected as targets so right-click resolution stays unambiguous. On success the source is consumed, the target gains the cross-cast inscription, and a binding theme of enchantment-glyph particles + the enchantment-table sound marks the inscribe.
• Cast. Right-click the target. Sneak-right-click cycles between multiple inscriptions on the same item.

Mana costs flow through the active unification mode and respect your configured conversion rates. In Separate mode, costs split between both pools according to your dual-cost percentages. Cross-cast spells pay an overhead set by cross_cast_cost_multiplier (default 1.25 = 25% extra) — applied symmetrically to both directions, once per cast, before mana deduction.

Spell Uninscription — strip an inscription cleanly

If you change your mind, the Spell Uninscription ritual returns an inscribed item to a bit-identical fresh-blank state so it can be re-inscribed cleanly.

1. Craft the Spell Uninscription tablet. Reagent: a blank parchment. Pedestals: a water bucket, a source gem, and an archwood log. 500 source.
2. Activate with exactly one inscribed item in range and nothing else — sources or stray blanks fail the ritual rather than risk stripping the wrong stack.
3. The cross-cast NBT is removed cleanly (spells list, cycle index, and any empty residual tag), with an ash + smoke dissolution theme.

The uninscribe ritual works without Iron's Spellbooks loaded, so legacy inscribed items can still be cleaned up after Iron's is removed.

The Spell Loom — Export Ars Spells into Iron's Spellbooks (3.0.0)

Design a spell with Ars Nouveau's tools, weave it onto a real Iron's scroll at the Spell Loom, bind it into a real Iron's spellbook — and cast it from Iron's own native spell wheel, right alongside your Iron's spells. The Ars spell rides as an Ars 'n' Spells sidecar on the real Iron item, so the book's own Iron's spells are never touched. This leg requires Iron's Spellbooks.

1. Weave. Craft the Spell Loom (gold ingot, 2× lapis, a book, and 3× obsidian on a crafting table) and right-click it. Drop your Ars spell source (parchment, focus, or spellbook) and a blank Iron's scroll into the slots, then give your spell a name, pick a nature, choose an icon, and press Inscribe. Out comes a real Iron's scroll carrying your spell. (Ops can also use /ans export_to_irons_scroll for a quick, metadata-free export.)

2. Bind. Run the Spellbook Binding ritual (its apparatus tablet appears only when Iron's is installed — 2500 source), or hold both and run /ans bind_scroll_to_irons_book. The ritual works on dropped items, not your inventory: throw the scroll and an Iron's spellbook on the ground within three blocks of the brazier, then right-click the brazier with an empty hand to light it. Nothing else may be lying in that radius — a single stray item aborts the ritual rather than risk binding the wrong stack. The scroll is consumed and the spell is appended to the book with your chosen name and icon; re-binding the same spell is rejected (dedup by spell payload).

   ⚠️ Not Ars Nouveau's own "Binding" ritual. Ars ships a ritual named literally Binding, which makes Bound Scripts for familiars and ignores scrolls. You want Spellbook Binding.

3. Cast. Your Ars spell shows up as its own entry in Iron's native spell-selection wheel. Select it and right-click like any Iron's spell — it casts the real Ars spell through the full cross-cast pipeline (mana mode, cost multiplier, scaling, cooldowns). Up to 8 Ars spells per book, and your native Iron's spells cast exactly as before.

Pack authors: gate the whole feature with allow_ars_spells_in_irons_spellbooks, or cap spells per book with max_ars_cross_spells_per_irons_spellbook.

(Generic inscribed items that aren't Iron's spellbooks still cast via right-click, with sneak-right-click to cycle.)

Unified Cooldowns

An optional system that groups similar spells across both mods into shared cooldown categories. Prevents spell spam by locking out related spells when one is cast. Disabled by default.

Covenant of the Seven Integration

When Covenant of the Seven (Sanctified Legacy) is installed, two powerful ring systems unlock.

Ring of Seven Curses — Life Point Casting

Wearing the Cursed Ring converts all mana costs into Life Points (LP).

• Blood Magic Priority (default) — Draws LP from Blood Magic's Soul Network first, falls back to player health.
• Blood Magic Only — Soul Network only.
• Health Only — Always costs health (100 LP = 5 hearts).

If you run out of LP:

• Safe Mode (default) — Spell is cancelled, you take minor damage (you will never die from this).
• Death Mode — The spell casts... but it kills you.

LP costs scale with configurable base multipliers, per-tier scaling for Ars glyphs, and per-level plus rarity scaling for Iron's spells. The whole system has a master toggle (enable_lp_system) that every LP path honors — scrolls included.

Ring of Seven Virtues — Aura Casting

Wearing the Virtue Ring converts your Ars mana costs into Aura — Covenant of the Seven's own regenerating resource, complete with its own HUD bar. Covenant owns the pool, regen, and persistence; Ars 'n' Spells simply maps the mana cost onto it, scaled by ars_virtue_aura_multiplier. Iron's spells under the ring are handled natively by Covenant. If you run dry, the spell simply fails.

Ring Conflict: Wearing both rings at the same time cancels both effects — you'll use normal mana instead, and receive a warning notification.

Blasphemy Curios — School Discounts

Thirteen Blasphemy curio variants (Fire, Ice, Lightning, Holy, Ender, Blood, Evocation, Nature, Eldritch, Aqua, Geo, Wind, Dormant) each provide:

• 15% base mana discount on all spells
• +10% bonus when the spell's school matches the curio's element (25% total)

Discounts stack multiplicatively with ring costs, and a matching Blasphemy also deeply discounts LP costs (blasphemy_lp_discount, default 85% off).

Scroll Cost Enforcement

Iron's Spellbooks scrolls respect your resource costs. This has only actually worked since 3.2.1 — in every earlier build the enforcement silently did nothing and scrolls cast for free.

Configuration

Everything is configurable via the per-world server config <world>/serverconfig/ars_n_spells-server.toml (server-authoritative and auto-synced — on multiplayer the in-game config screen is read-only). Major options include:

• Master toggles for mana unification, resonance, cooldowns, progression, affinity, LP, and aura
• Mana conversion rates, dual-cost split percentages, and cross-system regen conversion
• LP system — source mode, death penalty, base/tier/rarity multipliers, minimum costs
• Aura system — master toggle and mana→aura cost multiplier (the pool itself belongs to Covenant)
• Curio discounts — base discount, matching-school bonus, Blasphemy LP discount
• Curio attribute bridge — read_curio_attribute_modifiers (default on): mirror Apotheosis/Apothic Curios affix & socket mana stats across the unified pool
• Spell scaling — power cap for Iron's attribute stacking
• Source Jar synergy — off switch, regen multiplier, scan interval and radius
• Cross-casting — cost multiplier, spellbook-binding toggle, and per-book spell cap
• Scroll cost mode
• Debug mode with end-to-end cross-cast tracing for troubleshooting

All options ship with balanced defaults — install and play, or fine-tune to your liking.

Commands

FAQ / Troubleshooting

Q: Ars mana isn't changing in ISS Primary mode. A: Make sure Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks (3.15.0+) is installed. Check logs for mixin load failures.

Q: I can't craft the Spell Transcription or Spellbook Binding tablet. A: Fixed in 3.0.1 — update the mod. The recipes accept any tiered Iron's spellbook.

Q: My game crashes when I put an exported scroll in Iron's Inscription Table. A: Fixed in 3.1.0. Older scrolls are repaired automatically the first time the mod touches them. The Inscription Table can't read an Ars spell, so it now refuses politely — use the Spellbook Binding ritual or /ans bind_scroll_to_irons_book instead.

Q: A spell in my wheel does nothing when I select it. A: If you unbound it earlier, that's a leftover ghost entry from a pre-3.1.0 version; bind anything to that book and it gets cleaned up. Otherwise check the log for ars_cross_ warnings, which name the exact cause.

Q: I see weird ars_cross_1 scrolls in JEI/EMI. A: Fixed in 3.1.0 — those are internal plumbing and are now hidden from recipe viewers and the creative menu.

Q: My Ars spells cost nothing while wearing the Ring of Seven Virtues. A: Fixed in 3.1.0. With enable_virtue_aura_system disabled, nothing was charging aura or mana. Normal mana is now used, as the setting describes.

Q: An addon glyph is treated as the wrong element. A: Override it with a datapack — no mod update needed. See the Spell schools section of the README.

Q: I see two mana bars. A: Verify your mana mode is set correctly. Check for overlay conflicts from other UI mods.

Q: "Insufficient LP" even though I have enough hearts. A: Make sure lp_source_mode isn't set to BLOOD_MAGIC_ONLY without Blood Magic installed. The default (BLOOD_MAGIC_PRIORITY) falls back to health.

Q: Scrolls are casting for free. A: Check that scroll_cost_mode is set to full (the default).

License

GNU GPLv3