Blood Pools, Slicing and Ether Ashes

The Blood Pools, Slicing and Ether Ashes system is the central mechanic of the Sons of Sins mod. It links three things: slicer weapons that kill creatures in a way that yields organs and Bottles of Blood, Osseous and Sinful tools that turn kills into Ether Ashes for storage in Urns, and blood pools that transform dropped items and spawn hostile creatures when players or villagers enter them.

The system is the core of the mod's horror theme. Blood pools convert items and spawn creatures next to the people who enter them, organ foods change how a player fights for a set period, and the creatures that come out of the blood (Blud, Ether Ghost) are hostile to players. Early progression runs through Osseous tools and Ether Ashes; later progression runs through Soul Steel, Sinful tools and the organ buffs.

Slicer weapons

The Sickle of Struggle and the Butcher Cleaver are the mod's slicer weapons. A slicer hit sets the victim's invulnerable time to 0 on mobs and players, which removes the short immunity window that normally follows a hit. Repeated slicer strikes therefore land every time. A slicer kill drops organs, and it also counts toward Bottle of Blood collection.

The Butcher Cleaver adds 2 damage for each point of health the wielder is missing, so it deals the most damage when the wielder is close to death. The Sickle of Struggle lowers the wielder's entity interaction range by 0.5, and the Butcher Cleaver raises it by 1.5.

Organs from slicing come from dedicated loot tables for creeper, spider, cave spider, enderman, blaze, iron golem, ravager, slime, snow golem and strider. The tables are separate from the mobs' normal drops and are rolled by slicer kills.

The Glass Bottle can be used on a slicer kill to collect a Bottle of Blood. The bottle is not produced from aquatic or humanoid creatures, and it is not produced from Nibblers. The Bottle of Blood's description names the kind of creature it came from.

Sinful tools

The Sinful sword, pickaxe, axe, shovel and hoe are unbreakable and fire resistant. They deal four times their normal damage to creatures in the Sons of Sins family, which are tagged as sins: Blud, Butcher, Curse, Kelvin, Prowler, Walking Bed and Wistiver.

Ether Ashes and Urns

Killing a creature with an Osseous or Sinful tool spawns Ether Ashes. The amount equals 10 percent of the victim's maximum health, rounded up.

The Urn is a block and an item that stores up to 9 Ether Ashes. It is crafted with bricks around Ether Ashes, and it opens a GUI showing the stored count. Stored ashes have several uses:

• Ether Sword hits have a 30 percent chance to draw on the Urn's ashes.
• The Puppet of Strife needs either an Ether Engine in the inventory or a filled Urn.
• The Shape-Shifting Tool checks the Urn's ashes when a block breaks.
• The Touch of Greed deals 4 to 9 magic damage. When it is used on a player who has an Urn, it pulls a Bottle of Blood out of that player's inventory.

Ether Ashes are also the input for several recipes. They combine with iron into Soul Steel and Iron and Ether in shapeless crafting, and they become Crystallized Ether in a blood pool.

Blood pools

Blood is a custom fluid with a bucket and a block form. It is extremely resistant to explosions and updates every 10 ticks, and placing a block can replace it. A blood pool pulls in nearby item entities, except Flesh Carcasses, and processes them with the Etheric Blood Imbibation recipe type. The recipes are:

• Ether Ashes become Crystallized Ether.
• Osseous tools become Flesh tools.
• Bone becomes Flesh of Demise.
• Cobblestone becomes netherrack.
• Items in the sand tag become soul sand.
• Iron ingots become Soul Steel.
• Any vanilla music disc becomes the Sins music disc.

A pool therefore works as a converter, not just as a hazard. Iron dropped into a pool is turned into Soul Steel, and an Osseous sword dropped into one becomes a Flesh sword.

Blud spawning

When a player or a villager enters blood, a Blud Trade or a Blud Aggressive spawns. No new one spawns if one is already within a 2-block box. Both variants are fire immune.

Deaths in blood

Blood also changes how entities die in it:

• A chicken that dies in blood is restored to full health.
• A player who dies in blood loses the blood block at that spot, and an Ether Ghost spawns. Ether Ghosts have six visual variants.
• A villager who dies in blood converts entities within 8 blocks into Ether Ghosts or Blud. Some of those entities are removed instead.

Blud and blood-linked creatures

The Blud has 540 health and deals 30 damage. It targets players and applies Insanity, Darkness and Slowness to players within a short range. Ether Ghosts have 10 health and deal 3 damage.

Fear Nightfall places the Sinful Church closer to other structures than vanilla spacing, and weights it 6 times higher where it shares a structure set with other structures, as it does for the pack's other horror structures. The church is in forests. Its chest holds Ether Ashes, Iron and Ether, the Sickle of Struggle, Osseous tools and a Nibbler Bucket.

Organ foods

Organs are edible items with a nutrition value of 4 and a saturation value of 0.3, and they can be eaten at any time. Each one grants a timed effect. The durations below are shown in seconds, at 20 ticks per second.

• Ribs, Muscle, Heart and Flesh of Demise grant Allure for 60 seconds. Monsters within 4 blocks of the player target the player.
• Creeper Ribs grant Last Breath for 60 seconds. Charged Creeper Ribs grant it at level III.
• Strider Muscle grants Fire Resistance and Hydrophobia for 30 seconds each.
• Slime Rear grants Confusion for 10 seconds and Stretchy Tendons for 5 seconds.
• Ice Heart grants Arctic Cells for 30 seconds.
• Ravager Muscle grants Slowness III and Hercules Fury for 30 seconds each.
• Blazing Heart grants Boiling for 30 seconds. It is also furnace fuel for 6000 ticks (5 minutes).
• Spider Heart grants Acid Bloodstream for 30 seconds.
• Enderman Muscle and Golem Cuirass grant no effect.

The combat effects apply to the player's attacks or to attacks on the player:

• Hercules Fury adds 6 damage plus 2 per amplifier level to each hit.
• Arctic Cells freezes the target for 16 to 32 seconds.
• Acid Bloodstream gives the target Poison IV for 5 seconds.
• Boiling sets the target on fire for 6 to 16 seconds.
• Instinct multiplies incoming damage by 0.7, and each hit has a 15 percent chance to teleport the target to a sturdy block near the attacker. The teleport does not happen in water or at zero health.

Other effects add their own rules:

• Greed prevents fall damage and jumping, and it slows the descent.
• Insanity changes the camera and the fog on the client. The server applies it to players within 8 blocks of a Curse.
• Hydrophobia deals 2 damage to a creature while it is in water or rain. Fear Nightfall changed this from every half second to once per second, because the original rate killed a player in about 9 seconds.

Tips

• Keep dropped iron and Osseous tools away from blood pools, or the pool will convert them.
• Store Ether Ashes in an Urn as they drop. An Urn holds up to 9.
• Eat Ravager Muscle before a fight that needs a damage boost, since Hercules Fury adds damage to each hit.
• Use a slicer on a mob you want to harvest, and use a Glass Bottle on the kill if you want a Bottle of Blood.