Blood Magic Altar

The Blood Magic altar is an altar that is added by the Blood Magic: Alchemical Wizardry mod. The altar is a large multiblock structure that serves as a storage for the modpack's currency/energy(blood or Life Essence). The Blood Magic altar also has capability to craft various items used in the mod by infusing them with the Life Essence. The altar has 6 stages of progression, each of them becoming more complex. There are notable changes in the GTNH version of the altar, which will be detailed below.

Starting The Mod
Starting Blood Magic requires several other mods to be progressed:


 * GTNH will need to be progressed through the MV tier. This is required to make an implosion compressor for the compressed cobblestone, access the precision laser engraver for the arcane stone, and access to HV circuits.


 * Thaumcraft will need to be progressed far enough to access the Arcane Workbench, and will require multiple low-tier Thaumcraft items as detailed in the crafting section. You will also need access to a wand that can hold 20 of each aspect.
 * Witchery will need to be progressed far enough to access the Attuned Stone.

Crafting the Altar
The Blood Magic altar can be initially crafted as a single block, which acts as Tier 1. This most basic form of the altar can be crafted using the recipe below. The list of items in the recipe are as follows, with their requirements:


 * Attuned Stone - Requires introductory Witchery or access to a Witches Oven.
 * Arcane Stone Bricks(x2) - Requires MV power for the Precision Engraver.
 * Double Compressed Cobblestone(x2) - Requires MV tier to create the Implosion Compressor multiblock.
 * Crucible - Requires introductory Thaumcraft
 * Pulsating Crystal - Requires an EBF at MV power
 * Alchemical Furnace - Requires introductory Thaumcraft

Once you have crafted the altar, it only needs to be placed without any other dependent blocks to start using it.

Upgrading the Altar
If you have been progressing through the Blood Magic quests, you will have already made a Weak Blood Orb and some blank slates. If you do not recall how to make these, or have not yet, refer back to the quest book. Now, the primary way of upgrading the altar is through the use of Runes. At first, the most basic rune, the Blood Rune, do not offer any meaningful upgrades to the altar other than the tier of the altar. However, you will be able to follow through the quest line to make new Runes that do give you bonuses to your altar.

Creating the blood runes is fairly easy, and will not require any further progression from the previous tier of altar. The recipe for the blood rune is as follows:

This only requires 1152L of Wet Concrete, made in an LV mixer, and the previous slates and orb that you have already made. You will need 8 runes for your first altar upgrade. The first altar upgrade will consist of simply creating a ring around the base altar structure.



Going forward, all of your altar upgrades will require blood runes, as well as occasionally some new items. Each section following this will focus on the structure itself, and any new items.

Tier 3 Altar
The Tier 3 altar adds in a new structure to your altar -- The pillars. These pillars are created with new materials, which will be overviewed below as well as the basic structure. At this point, your structure will reach a total size of 7x7x4(WxLxH). The pillars that you will be creating are going to have a Blood-Soaked Thaumium base with a Glowstone top. This tier of Blood Magic will not require any new requirements over the previous -- Just access to some Glowstone and a lot of Thaumium Ingots. At this point in Blood Magic, you should be familiar with how to infuse items with Life Essence, and that is all you will be doing with the Thaumium blocks to create blood-soaked Thaumium Blocks. The recipes are as follows:

Once created, you will now need to construct the altar. Unlike the previous tier, you will not put these blocks diagonally adjacent to the previous set of Blood Runes. Instead, you will place any cosmetic block that you like, and then attach the blood runes at each end. In the corner of the Tier 3 ring, you will have 1 pillar each. It is important to note that the pillars do not need to be on Blood Runes, and can also be placed upon cosmetic blocks. For the example picture below, Ancient Diamond Blocks were used as a cosmetic block to contrast the rest of the blocks, but you are free to replace them with any block of your choosing, including no block at all.



Tier 4 Altar
The Tier 4 altar is substantially more involved than the previous altar tiers, and comes with a much higher requirement of progression in GTNH to access.

Requirements:

 * Access to a Runic Matrix in Thaumcraft. This will require an eye of ender, which can either be purchased through villagers if you are lucky, or created in an HV Chemical Reactor with Blaze Powder and an Ender Pearl. Although not required, it would be helpful to have a high stability on your Runic Matrix, as you will be using the Matrix quite frequently from here on out in Blood Magic.
 * You will want to have progressed far enough to make a significant amount of void seeds and turn them into void ingots. This can be a tedious process if you have not set-up a Thaumcraft infrastructure to handle essentia yet.

Building the Tier 4 Altar
The Tier 4 altar expands on the concept of the Tier 3 altar with more pillars made from new blocks. This time, you will be making Blood-Soaked Void Blocks. The recipe for these is straightforward, place void blocks into your Tier 3 altar to infuse them. These will be topped with Bloodstone Bricks, which are created using an Alchemic Chemistry Set. The recipes for each of these is shown below: Constructing the altar will look like this, again, with Ancient diamond blocks as the cosmetic blocks.



Tier 5 Altar
The Tier 5 Altar does not have a significant jump in requirements, although it does require some Nether Stars, which may be difficult at lower tiers. However, the wither can be safely killed with the right tools. The only addition to the altar at this point is the addition of 4 beacons. The recipe for the beacons is as follows in GTNH: This time, the notable difference in the Altar structure is going to be that you skip two rows instead of one. Again, the cosmetic blocks are Ancient Diamond Blocks.



Tier 6 Altar
This is the final tier of altar for Blood Magic in GTNH as of the time of writing. This also contains the largest jump required so far, requiring some fairly substantial upgrades. This will take quite a few more nether stars, and some dangerous infusions.

Requirements

 * Ichorium Ingots take nether stars + dangerous infusions. The recipe themselves is not that difficult, but requires a significantly upgraded wand. You will need a wand that can hold 100 Vis with significant vis% discounts, or you will need a wand or scepter that can hold 125 vis. In my opinion, this is not something that you will mess with until late EV or early IV, as you will need tungstensteel screws for most of the wands that can hold the amount of Vis that you require.
 * You will need to be sufficiently far into Twilight Forest to make one of the wands above.
 * You will need to have completed the ritual 'Convocation of the Damned' for the soul crystals required.