Hexerei Witchcraft

Hexerei Witchcraft is the magic, alchemy and companion system added by the Hexerei mod. It is not a single item but a chain: herbs are grown and dried, ground in a pestle and mortar, and combined with fluids in a Mixing Cauldron, while candles, brooms, tameable crows and owls and a courier network extend the same theme. The mod also adds three wood families, storage blocks and Witch Armor, which are covered on their own pages.

Players care about this chain because it supplies most of Hexerei's crafting hub, the candles that apply potion effects to nearby living entities, and the flying brooms used for travel. Its structures, the covens and witch huts, are among the horror structures that Fear Nightfall places more densely, so the witch-themed locations are common in swamps and forests.

Herbs and plants

The alchemy chain starts with five herbs: Sage, Mandrake, Belladonna, Mugwort and Yellow Dock. Sage is grown as a crop from Sage Seeds. Sage Seeds also drop from short and tall grass with a 10% chance, unless the grass is broken with shears or silk touch. Hexerei adds Swamp Flowers to swamp biomes, and the Willow Swamp biome (see Willow Swamp) generates mud patches, so herb patches are most common in swamps. Mandrake Plant is compostable with a 100% chance in the compost data map.

Harvested herbs are processed in one of three ways. A Herb Drying Rack dries them into dried forms. A pestle and mortar grinds them into powders and dyes. A Mixing Cauldron uses them as ingredients in fluid recipes.

Animal Fat is a global loot addition: cows, pigs and sheep, in all colour variants, have a 45% chance to drop it in addition to their normal drops.

Drying racks

The Herb Drying Rack exists in a full state and an empty state. It has 13 recipes. Its most notable recipe converts Rotten Flesh into Leather in 2000 ticks (100 seconds), which is a source of leather that does not depend on cows. The rack accepts herbs and other items through its item handler, so hoppers and pipes can feed it.

Pestle and mortar and Mixing Cauldron

The Pestle and Mortar has four recipes, all of which grind herbs into powders or dyes.

The Mixing Cauldron is the central crafting station of the mod. It holds one fluid at a time from water, lava, tallow, blood, quicksilver and potion fluid. It has 36 mixing recipes, which are the largest group of Hexerei recipes, and four filling and four emptying recipes that move water, lava, tallow and blood between the cauldron and bottles. The cauldron has an item and fluid capability, so it can be fed and drained automatically. Its recipes are shown by JEI when that mod is loaded.

Tallow is a fluid, so it counts as water for any mod or vanilla check that uses the water tag. Blood is also a water-tagged fluid. Quicksilver is tagged as lava.

Candles

The Candle Dipper dips wicks into wax and dye, and has 15 recipes. Candles come in about ten colours. Add-in items stacked onto a candle change its behaviour: they add melting, radius, amplifier and cooldown multipliers, and they supply the herb, glow and swirl variants.

A lit candle with an effect runs a cycle every 8 seconds (160 ticks). Each cycle does the following.

• Potion candles apply their effect to every living entity inside a box about 5 blocks around the candle, extending upward about 20 blocks. Base duration is 10 seconds, scaled by the duration multiplier. Instant effects get a duration of 1. Potion candles exist for fire resistance, instant damage, instant health, leaping, luck, night vision, poison, regeneration, slow falling, slowness, speed, strength and water breathing.
• Sunshine sets the weather of the whole level to clear, with a rain delay. The effect is level-wide, not local to the candle.
• Growth bonemeals up to three crops near the candle.

In Fear Nightfall the Sunshine candle's recipe is disabled, because its effect permanently clears weather. The other candle effects are unchanged.

Sage Burning Plate

A lit Sage Burning Plate vetoes natural hostile spawns of monsters within 48 blocks by default. The range is set in the server config, and 0 disables the effect. The check runs on the server during the natural spawn placement check, so it affects only spawns that the game would otherwise make near the plate. It is a practical way to keep a base free of hostile spawns in a horror world.

Brooms

Brooms come in three woods: Willow, Mahogany and Witch Hazel (see Brooms). A broom is a rideable vehicle with a speed multiplier set by its broom type. Brooms are ridden with the Broom Up, Broom Down and Broom Dismount keys. The Broom Whistle recalls a bound broom to the rider.

Brushes add speed to a broom. The Thruster Brush adds 1.5. The Moon Dust Brush adds 1.0 when the moon is full and the time of day is between 0.25 and 0.75, and adds 0.25 at other times. Default durability values are:

• Broom Brush: 100
• Enhanced Broom Brush: 200
• Moon Dust Brush: 200
• Thruster Brush: 400
• Waterproof Tip: 800
• Netherite Tip: 200

Owls, crows and cats can ride on a broom, and a player on a broom is forced into the sitting pose.

Crows

The Crow is a tameable flying companion with 12 health. Naturally it spawns in forests in groups of 2 to 5. A tamed crow takes one of four commands: Follow, Sit, Wander or Help. Help has three modes.

• Gather picks up dropped items within a 24-block range.
• Harvest breaks crops and crop-like plants within a 24-block range. The target set is the crow whitelist, which the player sets with the Crow Whitelist overlay. If the whitelist is empty, the crow uses the crow_harvestable tag, which covers all crops, sweet berry bushes, cave vines and Hexerei herbs. Harvested items are deposited into nearby Coffers and Herb Jars.
• Pickpocket robs a villager using the crow pickpocket loot table. The cooldown is 1800 ticks by default.

A crow has a hand slot, a hat slot and a misc slot. A Crow Ankh Amulet in the hand or misc slot is consumed on lethal damage instead of the crow dying. The crow's health is set to 1, and it gains Regeneration II for 900 ticks, Absorption for 100 ticks and Fire Resistance for 800 ticks, and it plays dead. The Crow Flute makes a crow perch on a chosen block or land on its owner's shoulder.

Owls and the courier network

The Owl is a tameable flying courier with the same 12 health as the crow. It spawns in dark forests in groups of 2 to 5. A tame owl delivers Courier Packages and Courier Letters between Courier Depots and players. The Owl Send Screen selects a player or a depot as the destination. Owls are tamed with salmon and cod.

During a delivery, a tame owl force-loads the 3x3 chunks around its start point and its destination. The loaded chunks are stored in saved data and are released when the owl's task is cleared or the owl dies, so a long delivery keeps those chunks active on the server. A depot that is already full sends back a "depot too full" message, and a failed delivery posts a "could not deliver" message.

Witch Armor

The Witch set has three pieces made from infused fabric: a Witch's Hat, a Witch's Robe and Witch's Boots. There are no leggings. Defense values are 3 for the helmet, 8 for the chestplate and 3 for the boots, with 0 toughness and an enchantability of 25.

• With two or more pieces worn, witches stop targeting the wearer, and their last-hurt target is cleared. Magic damage taken by the wearer is halved.
• With all three pieces worn, magic damage dealt by the wearer is multiplied by 1.25, and the wearer heals 15% of the base damage dealt.

The bonuses apply to any damage of the magic damage type, not only to witch attacks.

Storage

The Coffer is the main item store, and it blocks shulker boxes of every colour and itself by default through its item blacklist. The Herb Jar holds only herbs by default. The satchels come in Small, Medium, Large, Ender and Replacer forms.

Dowsing Rod

The Dowsing Rod points toward the nearest swamp or jungle. The search covers a 6400-block horizontal radius on the server, so it is a large search and is not instant.

Books

The Book of Shadows is the main book of the mod, and the Book of Colors and Notebook are its companions. In all three, the Show Recipe and Show Uses keys work on the hovered item. A Crow Ankh Amulet is applied to or removed from a crow with its own recipes.

Woodcutter recipes

The Woodcutter has no recipes in data files. The server generates them at startup from every plank, log, stripped log and derived item that the game knows about, including planks and logs from other mods. Hexerei's own wood sets also have explicit recipes.

Structures and biomes

Hexerei adds five structures to vanilla forests and swamps.

• The Dark Coven spawns in swamps and the Nature Coven in forests.
• The Hexerei Witch Hut spawns in swamps, and is excluded near the Dark Coven.
• The Owl Post Office spawns in forests and is excluded near the Nature Coven.
• Baba Yaga's Hut spawns in forests and is very rare.

The Witch Hut is a shared structure set in Fear Nightfall, which also includes Luki's, YUNG's, Terralith and D&T mangrove huts. The covens and huts are also horror structures that the pack spaces about 30% closer and gives 6 times weight in shared sets.

The overworld swamp biome is replaced by Willow Swamp when TerraBlender is loaded and the rarity setting is above 0. The Willow Swamp biome is rainy and humid, and it has mud patches and willow trees.

Fear Nightfall changes

• The Sunshine candle's recipe is disabled, because its effect permanently cleared weather.
• The Hexerei recipe-book root advancement pointed at itself, which orphaned every recipe advancement. The pack restored the vanilla root.
• The Willow Vines loot condition was changed to the NeoForge version.
• Hexerei chests are shared containers that Lootr cannot make per-player. Every player in a shared chest takes from the same contents, first come first served.
• The pack changed default keybinds to resolve a clash that involved the Hexerei book recipe key.

Tips

• Break grass with your bare hand or a non-silk-touch tool to get the 10% chance at a Sage Seed. Shears and silk touch never give one.
• Set a crow's whitelist before sending it to harvest, because an empty whitelist makes it harvest every tagged crop.
• Put a lit Sage Burning Plate in a base. It stops nearby hostile spawns, so it is a cheap form of protection at night.
• Wear two pieces of Witch Armor to halve magic damage and stop witches from attacking you.
• Check that a Courier Depot has room before sending an owl to it. A full depot refuses the delivery with a "depot too full" message.

Hexerei
Items and blocks	Belladonna · Book of Shadows · Brooms · Candles and Candle Dipper · Coffers · Crystal Ball and Dowsing Rod · Herb Drying Rack · Herb Jar · Hexerei Decorative Wood Blocks · Hexerei Miscellaneous · Infused Fabric · Mandrake · Mixing Cauldron · Mugwort · Pestle and Mortar (Hexerei) · Sage · Satchels · Selenite · Waxing Kit · Witch Armor · Witch Hazel Wood · Woodcutter (Hexerei) · Yellow Dock
Structures	Baba Yaga's Hut · Covens · Hexerei Witch Hut · Owl Post Office
Mods	Hexerei
Mobs	Crow · Owl
Biomes	Willow Swamp
Mechanics	Hexerei Witchcraft