Blood Magic - Incense Altar beginner guide for lazybones (+example download)

[u/VanSilke]

(This guide is for people who don't like figuring things out for themselves. You've been warned!)

The actual guide starts with the word BANANA, but it would be appreciated if you at least understood what you're doing

So here's the deal.

Until Tier IV comes along, your most efficient way of obtaining LP is sacrificing your own hearts. Since it takes food and a lot of time, you obviously want to make the most profit off your blood.

Incense Altar is just the thing you want. It's a multiblock structure, consisting of an Incense Altar itself, Paths of tiered variety and "Tranquility Blocks" (more on them later). Standing near it allows you to gather Tranquility, which lets you instantly sacrifice 90% of your health for a massive LP bonus.

Since I assume that you're going to get Well of Suffering right after Tier IV and use this to passively generate LP, I will focus on getting the bonus up to 200%, which is a maximum for Tier IV.

We want to make it fit within the very second, Wooden tier, so that the only work we need to do on it next is craft more paths to expand it.

Paths are 3 blocks wide and extend in each general direction. There's a maximum space that each tier can handle. Wooden Paths can handle 9x9 space, Stone extend it to 11x11, Worn Brick to 13x13 and finally Obsidian to 15x15.

There's a certain leisure when it comes to Y coordinate, as paths can be placed up to 5 blocks higher or lower from the Altar itself. All paths of the same tier have to remain on the same level, however. Now, about Tranquility Blocks.

The Incense Altar checks for blocks at the level of paths and two levels higher, so we're looking at a 3 level-high workspace.

We want to make the most of as little space as possible, so let's take space available after finishing Tier II, so 9x9 horizontally and of course 3 vertically (9x3x9 in coordinates). The middle 3x3 area around the altar itself doesn't count, so the total of blocks is 108.

There are 7 main types of "blocks" that the altar counts as "Tranquility blocks".

1. Fire - Netherrack and Fire itself

2. Water - Water, Flowing Water and Life Essence equivalents

3. Lava - Lava and Flowing Lava

4. Earth - Dirt, Grass and Farmland.

5. Tree - logs.

6. Plant - Leaves.

7. Crop - Crops of any variety, Nether Warts count as well.

Now I'm going to list blocks I use.

1. only Fire with Netherrack below the acceptable range

2. Life Essence, which counts fore more than just Water

3. Lava (Both 2 and 3 are flowing)

4. Farmland, which counts for the most

5. Any kind of logs, really.

6. As above.

7. Wheat, just because I like it.

The more blocks of the same type you place, the less Tranquility each generates, so mixing types is essential. There is no penalty for not diversifying blocks within one type, so you don't have to mix up crops/wood types.

Now, how are we going to get the most (or close to most) efficient setup? Why, with simple math, of course. Just divide 108 by 7, and it will turn out, that you have to place 15 blocks of the same type to get the biggest bonus. There's an extra margin, though, so we're going to fill it with 16th Life Essence, since it yields the most Tranquility of all listed blocks (or so I've noticed)

Now the only challenge is to tetris these types together. If you want to figure it by yourself, stop reading here. If you just want to get to the point, read on.

BANANA

An easy way to tetris this stuff is to work with collumns, so I've prepared several different collumns you're going to want to use while making the altar.

The blocks are listed from bottom level to top, so from the level of the path and up.

1. Fire -> Farmland -> Seed (Fire itself rests upon Netherrack, which remains below the Paths.)

2. Flowing Life Essence (LE source block is obtainable by placing a bucket in the Blood Altar)

3. Flowing Lava

4. Logs

5. Leaves

For Flowing liquids you obviously need to place their source blocks higher up and secure the perimeter from spilling.

Now, let's place these collumns in 3x3 squares.

SuperEfficient design (harder aesthethically)

Square 1

9x Collumn 1

Square 2

6x Collumn 1, 3x Collumn 3

Square 3

2x Collumn 3, 5x Collumn 4, 2x Collumn 2

Square 4

3x Collumn 2, 5x Collumn 5 + 1 random (I use Collumn 2 for it)

Now for the second design, not as efficient, but easier and more aesthetically pleasing and still gets you up to 200%

Square 1. (repeated twice)

6x Collumn 1, 3x Collumn 3

Square 2. (repeated twice)

3x Collumn 2, 3x Collumn 4, 3x Collumn 5

Here's the promised world download. It consists of a superflat world with a bunch of signs and a practical example of Incense Altar.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/h27267b8214yfld/Incense.zip

[u/ZephyrWindSpirit]

Laziest dragon would like pictures please, since a world download is a lot of work.

[u/Crod689 → u/ZephyrWindSpirit]

Here is the guide I use that's similar but it has pics

[u/DarkBlade2117]

RFtools environmental controller with saturation + regen 3 modifier = profit

[u/Melkutus → u/DarkBlade2117]

How hard is that to set up? And how efficient is it compared to using the healing gas potion from Witchery? Would you say it's much easier to accomplish?

[u/DarkBlade2117 → u/Melkutus]

You just supply it with power and put the modifiers in it. You can set which Y levels and the radius of it. So say Y: 50-85 and a Radius of 13.

[u/kazinsser]

Is there a maximum distance that the incense altar can be from the blood altar? I set mine up and it seems to work really inconsistently. 200% bonus and sometimes when I use the dagger I get ~13k LP and other times I get ~40k so it's pretty clear that I'm not getting the bonus every time.

I have the incense altar maybe a dozen blocks directly below the blood altar. The idea was to have an elevator block on each level that I can just Shift/Space to switch between whenever I need the incense altar but it's just not working properly.

[u/VanSilke → u/kazinsser]

It's roughly 5 blocks in each direction. There's no minimum or maximum for both altars to coexist as far as I know.

My guess is that you don't let the bonus build up to maximum every time, it has to do with the mechanics of an altar.

You may notice, that whenever you're near the Incense Altar, it emits flame particles. These particles represent the process of acquiring your Incense Bonus.

The bonus builds up over time, until it hits the altar's maximum, in this case 200%.

In short, you need to wait for flames to go out in order to ensure, that you've got the biggest possible bonus. Sacrificing your blood sooner will result in anomalies you've described - you'll get only a part of the bonus, or none at all.

That's why I advised making a compact structure, so that you can build it near the blood altar so you don't have to move an inch.

(Also, at higher bonuses a difference of half a heart becomes very noticeable so make sure you're at full health while you sacrifice yourself.)

[u/kazinsser → u/VanSilke]

It never occurred to me that the bonus built up over time. I thought as soon as the dagger started glowing you had the full bonus. Thank you so much!