What is Malum?
Malum by SammySemicolon is a dark spirit-magic mod with some of the best visual effects in modded Minecraft. Mobs carry spirits — arcane, earthen, infernal, aerial, aqueous, wicked, sacred, eldritch — harvested at death with a scythe and spent as crafting reagents at the Spirit Altar.
It ships for Forge, NeoForge, and Fabric on 1.20.1+, and its in-game tome, the Encyclopedia Arcana, handles the teaching.
Runewood, Spirits, and Soul-Stained Steel
- Find Runewood trees (marked by worldgen shrines); runewood and its Holy Sap (tapped like resin) start every recipe line.
- Forge a Scythe — kills with it shatter mobs into their component spirits, displayed orbiting you until banked in a Spirit Jar.
- Build the Spirit Altar: infuse items with spirit combinations; runewood obelisks placed around it boost speed and capacity as the altar grows into a proper shrine.
- Smith Soul-Stained Steel: the signature metal, forged with spirits, arms scythes, armor, and the Soul Hunter gear line whose kills yield bonus spirits.
- Face the Weeping Well: the void-touched structure beneath the surface produces void-tainted materials and the eldritch tier — Malum's endgame turns appropriately strange.
Totemic rites run parallel: stack runewood totem poles carved with spirit runes to project area effects around your base, from regeneration and speed to mob repulsion.
Malum FAQ
How do I get spirits in Malum?
Kill mobs with a scythe (or soul-stained weapons); their spirits shatter loose and follow you until stored. Different mob families yield different spirit types.
What is Soul-Stained Steel good for?
It anchors the mod's combat identity: scythes and armor with spirit-harvest bonuses and strong magic-adjacent stats, plus crafting components for the higher altar tiers.