Early Botania Mana Garden Guide
As of Build 176, this build works again! And the adjacency nerf of 178 does not affect it.
Botania is a really cool mod that has gotten a lot of attention since it was included on Forgecraft. In general, it's a really easy mod to get into, however there's some parts that can be a real time-sink if you don't set it up properly, one of those being mana generation. I've got for you a fairly easy early-game mana generation system you can use to get your mana started.
I had posted a picture of the finished product before, but I wanted to provide a step-by-step guide to making your very own mana garden.
Step 1: Materials
Fortunately, all you need is some flowers, a Mana Spreader, and a Mana Pool to get this build accomplished. You'll also need a Petal Apothacary to get the aforementioned objects, since they require Livingwood and Livingstone, which needs a Pure Daisy that is made in a Petal Apothacary.
Total list of mystical flowers you will need:
12 Dayblooms: 12 Yellow, 6 Light Blue, 6 Orange
12 Nightshades: 12 Black, 6 Purple, 6 Grey
9 Hydrodrangeas: 14 Light Blue, 9 Blue, 5 Pink
Total mystical flowers needed (the ones that sparkle and say 'mystical {color} flower'):
- 20 Light Blue
- 12 Yellow
- 12 Black
- 9 Blue
- 6 Orange
- 6 Purple
- 6 Grey
- 5 Pink
Step 2: Area Layout
Now that we have our materials, we're going to need to set up the lay of the land. Start with a 7 x 7 of flat dirt or grass that can see the sun. Or, if you want to make a border around it, you'll need a DW20 9 x 9.
Once we have our flat land, we will be digging four 2 x 2 holes one deep to make a grid.
Fill them in with water so you have four infinite springs
Now dig a hole at the corner of every water pool. If you end up with water where you are digging, you are in the wrong spot. It should look something like this when you are done. Do note the dirt underneath.
Now for the Mana Spreader. He needs to be directly over the center hole, one extra block up. So, two dirt up behind the direction you are going to be aiming your garden and place your mana spreader, which will be facing you when you place it. Go ahead and place down your Mana Pool outside your little 9 x 9, but in line with the direction the mana spreader is aimed at.
Now to aim the Mana Spreader. Grab your Wand of the Forest, click on your Mana Spreader, then Shift + Right Click it. This may cause it to aim a funky direction, don't worry. Now Shift + Right Click your Mana Pool. Your mana spreader should now be aimed at your mana pool. Shift + Right Click your mana spreader again to turn off the aiming function.
Step 3: Day and Night
We're going to start off with Dayblooms and Nightshade, mostly because you need mana to make the Hydrodrangeas. So, get familiar with your Petal Apothecary. You're probably going to want it right next to a water source because you're going to need to refill it after each plant.
Remember those flowers I told you to get earlier? Get them out. You're going to need your Yellow, Black, Orange, Grey, Purple, and six of your Light Blue flowers. Leave the rest for now. You're also going to need about a half stack or so of seeds.
Craft petals by putting the flowers in your crafting square. We should use all the petals here, so no need to worry about excess. Make sure your Petal Apothecary is full of water. Now, for Dayblooms, put in two yellow petals, an orange petal, and a light blue petal into the Petal Apothecary, then toss in a seed.
Badda bing, badda boom, we've got a daybloom! Now repeat this eleven more times.
Got 12 dayblooms? Excellent! Now do the same with 2x Black, 1x Grey, and 1x Purple plus a seed to get a Nightshade. Rinse, wash, repeat until you have a dozen of them as well.
Now, dayblooms and nightshade doesn't like to be planted next to each other, so there's a pattern to use to ensure maximum efficiency. For myself, it's simple: You see all these two-block pieces of dirt around the water pools? One daybloom and one nightshade goes on each. If you want to get fancy, you can use a left/forward algorithm, making sure that (facing the same direction always) the daybloom is placed on the left dirt block for the horizontal rows, and is placed in the forward block on the vertical rows. But as long as you don't have two dayblooms or nightshades next to each other, it'll work. Here's what mine looks like:
You should also note that the Mana pool is now filling up with mana. This is needed for the next step.
Step 4: Water Power
Now for those Hydrodrangeas. Grab the rest of the mystical flowers on the list and turn them into petals. You should only have one pink and one light blue petal left over when we are done.
If we look in the Botania book for the Hydrodrangea, we'll notice it requires a blue mana petal and a light blue mana petal. These are obtained by tossing a blue or light blue mystic petal onto the mana pool. If it has enough mana, it'll make a mana petal. This can take a while, because dayblooms and nightshades aren't all that spectacular at generating mana.
1 mystic blue + 1 blue mana + 1 light blue mana + 2 light blue mystic + 1 pink and then toss in a seed, and that's a Hydrodrangea. Now you're going to need nine of them. My suggestion here is to start placing the ones you CAN make immediately, because Hydrodrangeas produce much more mana than either Dayblooms or Nightshades do.
They go in the little holes in the corners like so:
Best of all, it's expandable!
This is a low-tech early-game mana garden that provides good mana generation for the space taken up. Obviously, if you have things like Thermalilies and Serenade of the Nether, you're going to be able to out-produce this. However, this can easily be the first mana garden you grow, and it will be able to support your mana habits for quite some time.
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