How to Perform Rituals in GOETY – Complete Beginner’s Guide

Rituals are one of the most powerful systems in the GOETY mod for Minecraft. They allow you to enchant items, transform mobs, craft advanced focuses, and much more — all powered by soul energy. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to build your ritual setup, how to run your first rituals, and how to stack multiple rituals in the same space for maximum efficiency.

What You Need to Build a Ritual Setup

Before you can perform any rituals, you need to gather a few core components and assemble them correctly. Every ritual setup requires the following:

A Cursed Cage – Place this down first. Do not put a spawner inside the Cursed Cage.

A Dark Altar – Place this directly above the Cursed Cage.

Pedestals – Place these within 16 blocks of the Dark Altar. Eight pedestals is a solid number and should cover most rituals.

Once you have the Cursed Cage and Dark Altar stacked, scatter your eight pedestals in the surrounding area, keeping them within that 16-block radius. This gives you plenty of flexibility when placing the additional environmental items that specific rituals require.

Understanding the Black Book – The Rituals Tab

To learn about available rituals, open your Black Book and navigate to the Rituals tab. Here you’ll find every ritual category available in GOETY, including:

Enchanting

Animation

Nakrata

Forge

Frost

Geoturgy

Magic

Sky

Storm

Each ritual category lists its specific environmental requirements — certain block types, biome conditions, or height restrictions that must be met for the ritual to activate.

Powering Rituals with Soul Energy

All rituals are powered by soul energy, which is stored in your Totem of Souls. To power the ritual setup, simply right-click your Totem of Souls onto the Cursed Cage. When you do this correctly, the Dark Altar will light up, confirming it has been charged. In this example, the Totem of Souls contains 350 soul energy.

The Magic Ritual – Enchanting Items and Crafting Focuses

Environmental Requirements

The Magic Ritual is used for enchanting items and crafting advanced focuses. To activate it, you must place the following within 16 blocks of the Dark Altar:

16 Bookshelves

1 Enchanting Table

1 Lectern (with a Book and Quill on it)

Finding Recipes with Just Enough Items (JEI)

To browse all available Magic Ritual recipes, open your inventory, hover over the Dark Altar, and press U. This uses the Just Enough Items (JEI) mod to display all recipes associated with the Dark Altar. From there, use the arrow buttons to navigate to the Magic Ritual section and browse what you can craft.

Performing an Enchantment – Efficiency Example

Let’s walk through a practical example: crafting an Efficiency enchanted book. Each enchantment level costs experience levels from your character — the higher the enchantment level, the more XP required. The recipe for a Magic Ritual enchantment works as follows:

Items placed on the Pedestals act as the ingredients (shown as pedestal icons in the recipe UI).

The item placed directly on the Dark Altar is the catalyst — in this case, a plain Book.

For Efficiency at Magic Level 3 (per enchantment level), you need:

Soul Cost: 10 per operation

3 Iron Ingots (on pedestals)

1 Lapis Lazuli (on a pedestal)

1 Book (placed on the Dark Altar as the catalyst)

Place three Iron Ingots and one Lapis Lazuli on separate pedestals, then right-click a Book onto the Dark Altar. The altar will absorb all the pedestal items, consume soul energy from the Cursed Cage, and convert the Book into an Efficiency I book.

Upgrading Enchantment Levels

To upgrade an enchanted book to a higher level, simply repeat the ritual using the already-enchanted book as the catalyst. Place the same ingredients on the pedestals and right-click your Efficiency I book onto the Dark Altar. Note that upgrading to higher levels consumes significantly more soul energy, so make sure your Cursed Cage is topped up before attempting higher-tier enchantments. Repeat the process to reach Efficiency II, then Efficiency III, and so on.

Crafting Advanced Focuses

The Magic Ritual is also how you unlock more advanced focuses. While basic focuses can be crafted through standard means, higher-tier focuses require ritual setups like this one. Browse the JEI recipes on the Dark Altar to find all the focuses you can create through the Magic Ritual.

The Animation Ritual – Transforming Mobs

Environmental Requirements

The Animation Ritual allows you to transform mobs into new variants. Its environmental requirements, which must be placed within 16 blocks of the Dark Altar, are:

15 Ladders

15 Rails

1 Carved Pumpkin

Example – Converting a Cow into a Mooshroom

One use of the Animation Ritual is converting a regular Cow into a Mooshroom. To do this, you need a live Cow present near the altar during the ritual. The recipe requires:

Soul Cost: 1 per second, for 10 seconds (total: ~10 soul energy)

4 Red Mushrooms (on pedestals)

1 Mycelium block (on a pedestal, as the central ingredient)

A Cow Spawn Egg (placed on the Dark Altar as the catalyst)

Important tip: Wall off the area around your altar before starting this ritual. Mobs will wander away, and the ritual requires the animal to remain nearby for its duration. A simple enclosure prevents the mob from escaping mid-ritual.

Once all items are placed and the ritual begins, the altar absorbs the ingredients. After a few seconds, the Cow transforms into a Mooshroom.

Running Multiple Rituals in the Same Space

One of GOETY’s most convenient features is that you can have multiple rituals active in the same altar area simultaneously. As long as all required environmental blocks for each ritual fit within the 16-block radius, the altar can recognise and perform multiple ritual types without you needing to rebuild anything.

For example, in the setup shown in this guide, both the Magic Ritual blocks (bookshelves, enchanting table, lectern) and the Animation Ritual blocks (ladders, rails, carved pumpkin) are placed in the same area around a single Dark Altar. This lets you switch between ritual types on the fly, saving a huge amount of time and resources.

Other Ritual Types – Quick Reference

Beyond Magic and Animation, GOETY includes several other ritual types, each with unique conditions. Here’s a quick overview based on what the Black Book describes:

Necroturgy Ritual – Requires wooden slabs and other items. Must be performed at night time.

Forge Ritual – Requires specific items. No special time or biome restriction.

Frost Ritual – Must be performed in a snowing biome, OR use 16 ice blocks (any type), 8 snow blocks, and Freezing Lamps as a substitute.

Geoturgy Ritual – The altar must be at or below Y-level 32, OR use the specified item substitutes.

Sky Ritual – The altar must be at or above a certain height, OR use the specified item substitutes.

All of these requirements are documented in the Rituals section of the Black Book. For a full list of craftable items per ritual, use JEI: hover over the Dark Altar in your inventory and press U, then click through the arrow buttons to browse every available recipe.

Summary

Rituals in GOETY are a deep and rewarding system that unlocks powerful enchantments, mob transformations, advanced focuses, and more. The key steps are: build your altar with a Cursed Cage, Dark Altar, and eight pedestals; charge it with soul energy via your Totem of Souls; set up the correct environmental blocks for your chosen ritual within 16 blocks; and place your ingredients and catalyst to begin. You can run multiple rituals from the same altar space, making it well worth building a comprehensive setup early on.

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