Mana Essence Bridge

Mana Essence Bridge

A bridge between Botania mana and Mystical Agriculture essence.

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.

No new blocks. The mod extends the Mana Pool you already have.

How it works

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

Five tiers

Each catalyst unlocks the next essence level and demands its own rung of Botania progression:

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 and beaten the Gaia Guardian. Until a rung is cleared, its entry stays hidden in the Lexica Botania and its catalyst stays hidden in JEI.

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.

Configuration

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

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.

Changed your mind?

The 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, the same as buying one essence of that tier. Sneaking is required, so a stray click can't undo your progress.

A pool mined while upgraded keeps its tier in the item, and the tooltip says which one, so you can carry an upgraded pool somewhere else without losing anything.

Also included

• Pools are tinted by tier — the colours match the essences themselves, and so do the particles that burst out on every conversion
• Essence tooltips show what one essence is worth in an upgraded pool
• On-screen readout — look at a pool to see its tier, rate and stored mana
• JEI tab showing every exchange rate
• Lexica Botania entries, filed alongside the rest of Botania
• Advancements — a chain of six, one per tier
• English and Russian — fully localized, chat messages included

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 and 1.20.1, both on Forge. Pick the file that matches your pack.

Requires: Botania and Mystical Agriculture

Optional: JEI

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.

Can I apply a tier 5 catalyst straight away?

No. Strictly in order, starting from tier 1.

Does it work with Botania addons?

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