How to Install and Get Started with the Botania Minecraft Mod
Last modified on Nov 22, 2023 in Mods
Overview
Minecraft has a lot of flowers, but they don’t have a lot of uses. It’s nice to be able to dye your bed or give a poppy to your favorite golem, but it would be nice if they could be used for more. This is where mods like Botania come in to help budding botanists flourish. Botania is a unique tech mod that uses mana and flowers to generate energy and build new machines. It is possible to use mana as a new energy source and simplify machines with new functional flowers that can create ores and replace hoppers. In this guide we will go over how to install and get started with Botania on your Apex Hosting server.
Downloading the Mod
There are several different versions of Botania available to download. Which one you need will depend entirely on the version of the game you want to play on.
- Navigate to the Botania page over on CurseForge.
- Click on the
Filestab at the top of the page.
- Click on the
View Allbutton on the next page, then find theGame Versionyou are wanting to play on from the list of files. - Click on the download button next to the version you want to download immediately.
You should now have a file named something similar to Botania.jar. This is the file for the mod itself. You will need it to install the mod on both your server and your client.
Server Installation
- Open your server’s control panel and change the Game File to Forge
- Restart the server so the changes can take effect.
- Open your server’s control panel and click on the FTP File Access tab.
- Login using your control panel password, then click on the “mods” folder
- Use the
uploadtab to add the mod to the mods folder. - Download Forge from the Forge Download page.
- Install Forge according to our guide here.
- Once installed, start the game and click on the new
Modsbutton on the main menu. - Click on the
Open mods folderbutton, then drag the mod into your mods folder.
Once the upload is completed, head back to the main page of your control panel and restart the server one more time. The server will load the mod for you as it restarts.
Client Installation
Once you have placed the mod into your mods folder, restart the game to complete the installation. The game will load the mod for you and you can see which mods are installed by clicking on the Mods button again.
Getting Started
The best way to jump into Botania is to use the Lexica Botania. This is the official guide book for the mod and it has a lot of useful features and information you can use to learn more about it. Vazkii, the creator of the mod, put a lot of effort into making sure it is very thoroughly documented. The Lexica Botania is where you can see all of that hard work.
The Lexica Botania can be made by combining a book with any sapling as shown in the recipe above. Items listed in italics are essential for using the mod. These are the basic mechanics and features you will need to use to progress through the mod.
Search and Bookmarks
A really useful feature of the Lexica Botania are the search and bookmark functions. If you start typing while the book is open, it will automatically search the entire guide for the words you have entered. You can also bookmark specific pages by clicking on the bookmark tab on the right side of the screen.
Finally you can search the guide for items in your inventory. While you have the Lexica Botania somewhere in your inventory, hover over an item and press the Ctrl key. This will cause the book to open on the page for that specific item. In some versions of the mod it will provide a link to the Minecraft wiki page for vanilla Minecraft items.
Picking Flowers
Botania is all about flowers. As you explore the world, you will notice a plethora of new flowers starting to spawn. These are essential to everything you do with this mod, so gather as many as you can. The flowers and their petals are the base resource used to generate mana and build the machines added by this mod. Most flowers added by Botania will have a slight glow and small floating particles to help them stand out.
Flowers come in 16 different colors and every color has both a short 1 block high version and a tall 2 block high version. The short flowers can be harvested just like any normal Minecraft flower. The tall flowers can only be harvested with a pair of shears.
Farming and Fertilizer
If you are having trouble finding a flower you need, you can create them with Floral Fertilizer. You can make fertilizer by combining four pieces of dye with a single piece of bonemeal as shown in the recipe above. Once you have the fertilizer you can use it on the ground to grow more random flowers until you find the one you need.
Flowers can also be farmed once you have their petals. Use the petals on any grass or dirt block to planet them. You will see the ground start shimmering where you have placed the petals. Use bonemeal on the ground to cause new plants to grow for you to harvest.
Flower Powder
Flower Powder is an important ingredient that is fairly easy to get. After harvesting a flower for petals, you can place the petals into a crafting table to create powder. You can create more powder by placing a Pestle and Mortar into the crafting table with them. A Mortar and Pestle can be crafted from a bowl, a stick, and a wooden plank block using the recipe shown above. These powders can be used to dye items such as wool and Mana Pools.
Generating Mana
Mana is the energy used by this mod and all of the machines related to it. Luckily, the tools needed to create mana are easy and cheap to make. All you really need are some cobblestone, logs, seeds, and plenty of petals from the new flowers.
Creating Livingwood and Livingrock
To get started you will need Livingwood and Livingrock. These are difficult to find through exploration, but you can create them fairly easily with a Pure Daisy. To make one of these daisies you will need a Petal Apothecary and lots of petals.
The Petal Apothecary is created from a petal, four stone blocks, and two stone slabs as shown in the recipe above. Once you are ready, place the Petal Apothecary on the ground and fill it with a water bucket.
Once the apothecary is full of water, you can use it to create new items. Such as our Pure Daisy. To create the daisy, toss four white petals into the apothecary by pressing the Q key. Then toss in Wheat Seeds. The water will be used up and a new flower will be placed in your inventory.
Place the daisy on the ground, then surround it with wood or stone. The daisy will start to give off magical particles and the resources will be changed after a minute. The wood will turn into Livingwood while the stone will turn into Livingrock.
Crafting New Tools
With the Livingwood and Livingrock in hand you are ready to create the tools needed to harvest mana from the world around you. First up you will need to create a flower that generates mana. The two best options would be a hydrangea or an Endoflame. For this guide we will be using the Endoflame.
The Endoflame is created at an apothecary just like a Pure Daisy. Drop two brown, one red, and one gray petal into the apothecary as shown in the recipe above. After that, you can drop in some seeds to create the flower.
Next you will need to use the Livingwood and Livingrock you created earlier to make a Mana Pool and Mana Spreader. The Mana Pool can be created by using five pieces of Livingrock. The Mana Spreader can be created by using seven pieces of Livingwood and any petal. Both of these items are created at a crafting table using the recipes shown above.
Putting it All Together
Place the Endoflame and the Mana Pool somewhere on the ground, then place the Mana Spreader so it is pointed at the Mana Pool. The spreader will be facing you by default whenever you place it on the ground, but you can use a wand to change the direction it is facing later if needed.
The Endoflame consumes items similar to a furnace. You can drop these items on the ground for it, but it would be easier to create a system to slowly drop items for it over time. A good option would be to connect a hopper clock or other redstone clock to a dropper so items will be dispensed automatically.
The Mana Spreader harvests mana from sources like the Endoflame and sends it in the direction it is facing. The Mana Pool acts like a battery allowing you to store the mana to use later. Normal pools fill very slowly, but a small amount of mana will go a long way. You can also use the Mana Pool to create new items in a similar fashion to the Petal Apothecary.
Addons
Botania has a handful of add-on mods to further enhance your experience and help with creating nature based modpacks. Some only add new configuration options while others enhance gameplay or make it possible to integrate Botania with other mods. Here are some of the most popular addons for the mod:
Garden of Glass doesn’t change too much in the base mod, but it does allow you to generate unique Skyblock worlds to give you an extra challenge.
Botania Additions expands on the base mod by adding three new Botania items to the game. The items include a shovel that can dig a 5×5 region, a bow that shoots multiple arrows, and a new type of Ivy to help with repairing other items.
This mod adds a new All in One tool you can create using the different ores and resources from Botania. These tools have all the same functions as normal Minecraft tools, but come in a single item.
Conclusion
Botania is an excellent balance between tech and magic. It is perfect for both redstone engineers and fantasy roleplayers by enhancing Minecraft’s natural world while giving your players the opportunity to become all powerful sorcerers. Almost every item has an endless number of uses to experiment with and explore. Functional Flowers give a number of quality of life improvements when paired with Mana. Mana itself provides a new form of energy with dozens of uses and mechanics from transfiguring iron into manasteel, to powered simple machines. With the help of this guide and the Lexica Botania you are ready to start a new magical adventure on your Apex server.
Useful Links
How to change your server’s version
How to add mods to your server
Official homepage for Botania
