The Soul Shards mod is part of FTB's Magic World, Direwolf20, Yogcraft, Ultimate, [1]Modsauce, Mindcrack and Unleashed mod packs. It allows you to create a Soul Shard that absorbs the souls of monsters you kill to be inserted into a Soul Cage later. This Soul Cage is a special block that can spawn the type of mob your Soul Shard that absorbing, usually at much better rates than a vanilla monster spawner. The Soul Forge is a special block that corrupts metals and diamonds when fueled by Corrupted Essence - a necessary process in the creation of a Soul Shard.
This mod's cages can spawn monsters normally unavailable with vanilla spawners. In addition, higher tier shards can spawn mobs regardless of the light level, and tier 5 can react to a redstone signal.
The soul of most vanilla mobs, passive or hostile, can be stored in shards. However, Villagers, Iron Golems, Snow Golems, Squids, the Ender Dragon, the Wither, and all Twilight Forest mobs cannot. All Thaumcraft mobs (Wisps, Angry Zombies, and Firebats) CAN be stored in shards. It is unknown why Witch souls can be captured even with their apparent relation to villagers. The most probable reason is the fact that Witches are more akin to most other mobs than villagers.
Pre 1.5 - In order to craft a Soul Shard, you will need Corrupted Essence. Corrupted Essence is made by cooking Soul Sand in a furnace and combining the resulting Vile Dust with Glowstone Dust on a crafting grid. The actual Soul Shard must be made in a Soul Forge by putting in a diamond in the top slot and 8 Corrupted Essence in the fuel slot. It takes a long time (about 11 minutes) but creates 3 Soul Shards at a time. Once a Soul Shard is made, you can begin to gather souls. There are 5 tiers of Soul Shards, each tier requires an exponentially increasing number of souls.
Post 1.5 - In order to craft a Soul Shard you need to place one glowstone block, surround that by four netherack, then surround those with 8 endstone. Once this structure is built, right click the glowstone block while holding a diamond to turn it into a Soul Shard.
FTB Ultimate Reloaded - To craft a Soul Shard, you must place one glowstone block, surrounded by four quartz blocks, with four obsidian blocks in the corners.
There are currently two methods to gather these souls: Hunting the mobs or destroying a vanilla spawner to absorb the souls within.
Hunting Mobs[]
In order to charge your Soul Shard through this method, you must place the Soul Shard on your hotbar. Next, find the mob in which you want to "tie" the shard to and kill it. Your Soul Shard will now be linked to that mob type and will only gain charges by killing that mob. For example, if you want an Enderman Soul Shard, you must kill an Enderman.
Destroying Mob Spawners[]
Right-clicking on a vanilla mob spawner with a Soul Shard in your hand will destroy the spawner and add 200 souls to the shard. Note that the shard must already have at least one of the mob's soul inside for you to be able to right click a spawner.
Note: Attempting to destroy a creeper spawner in the Twilight Forest will destroy the spawner and collect 200 souls.
Here are some videos (if you like videos better than text) for Minecraft 1.4.7. What was explained in Part Two didn't change.
Part One http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cUQ-Jo vac&list=PLeKt7nL41BHQG2ONRkpobWCwZ5SkiuOso&index=1
Part Two http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9WfZRoYNHg&list=PLeKt7nL41BHQG2ONRkpobWCwZ5SkiuOso&index=2
This video demonstrates both tactics being used to easily create a Tier 5 Blaze Soul Shard:
Tiers[]
| Level | Souls | Mobs per spawn | Spawn latency1 | Players nearby2 |
Other worlds3 |
Ignore Light Level |
Redstone4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 64 | 2 | 20 | Yes | No | No | No |
| 2 | 128 | 4 | 10 | Yes | No | No | No |
| 3 | 256 | 4 | 5 | No | No | No | No |
| 4 | 512 | 4 | 5 | No | Yes | No | No |
| 5 | 1024 | 6 | 2 | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
1 Seconds between mob spawns
2 Players must be within 16 blocks to trigger mob spawns
3 Mobs from other worlds can be spawned (Example: Blazes or Enderman spawners in the Overworld)
4 Soul Cage spawner can be powered on and off by a redstone signal
Placing Your Spawner[]
Once you have the desired tier Soul Shard, you next craft a Soul Cage. Place the Soul Cage in the world and then right-click your Soul Shard onto the cage. Attempting to insert an inappropriate Soul Shard (such as a Tier 1 Endermen Shard) will do nothing. If you mine up the Soul Cage, you will receive the appropriate Tier Soul Shard back, as well as the Soul Cage.
Mobs from the Soul Cage will spawn in mid-air next to it if you wish to make a fall damage trap.
Making an efficient mob trap:
Mob spawning mechanics per mob spawners actually have a limit of the number of mobs allowed to spawn within a certain area of the spawner. Using this mechanic one can place the spawner in the air around 10-12 blocks to yield a higher number of spawns than one would if they were to place it on the ground. This is extremely useful for Blaze rod farms in the overworld. Normally, if the damage trap is placed close the spawner; there would be a buffer period before the blaze die and the next potential spawn. Placing the spawner 10 blocks in the air, however; would allow for the full 5-6 Blaze to spawn per 2 seconds as they continually fall out of the spawners detection range.
Video[]
Known Bugs
If you have two soul shards, you can combine them in an anvil and create a soul shard with 124 kills. This means that if you have ten soul shards filled with one soul each, you can combine them all in an anvil and end up with a level five soul shard. - No longer possible in latest update.
If you unload the chunk that the soul forge is in whilst it is making a shard, all progress on making the shard will be lost. The corrupted essence that has already been used will not be returned.