Rituals

Rituals

DragonAltar has two different rituals:

• The initial Dragonborn ritual claims one of the three unclaimed souls at the official altar
• The Mother Soul removal ritual is a player-built four-person ceremony that removes an existing holder's soul

They use different structures, recipes, and recovery rules.

Initial Dragonborn ritual

An eligible non-Dragonborn player right-clicks the configured altar interaction block. If the event has reached the awakened altar, an unclaimed soul remains, and no other initial ritual is active, the recipe screen opens.

The shipped recipe is:

Offering	Amount	Default acceptance
Elytra	1	Any durability, enchanted, renamed, or custom lore; equipped chest slot excluded
Nether Star	1	Any ordinary item stack of this material
Dragon's Breath	16	Any ordinary item stack of this material
End Crystal	8	Any ordinary item stack of this material
Echo Shard	4	Any ordinary item stack of this material

The default Elytra policy consumes the most damaged acceptable Elytra first. Other supported policies are least damaged, first matching inventory slot, and lowest total enchantment level.

All Elytra durability levels are accepted. Enchantment, custom name, custom lore, equipped-slot, blocked-PDC, and selection-priority settings are configurable.

Offering modes

Mode	Source order
INVENTORY_CONSUME	Player inventory only
PEDESTAL_DEPOSIT	Dropped items near configured pedestals only
HYBRID	Inventory first, then pedestal items for the remainder

Pedestal item entities are found within 1.5 blocks of any configured pedestal.

The complete plan is checked before consumption. Immediately before removing items, DragonAltar verifies that every selected stack or entity still matches. If anything changed, it takes nothing.

Initial ritual phases

Phase	Default duration
OFFERINGS_ACCEPTED	40 ticks, 2 seconds
ALTAR_CHARGING	100 ticks, 5 seconds
SOUL_AWAKENING	80 ticks, 4 seconds
PLAYER_BINDING	60 ticks, 3 seconds
ASCENSION	60 ticks, 3 seconds
COMPLETION	40 ticks, 2 seconds

Movement is locked by default while still allowing the player to look around. Taking damage cancels the ritual by default. The player must begin within 4 blocks of the interaction point and remain inside the configured ritual radius.

During Ascension, the player is moved to the configured arrival point. Completion assigns the reserved soul and can also trigger the configured instability fracture check.

Exact refunds

Before item removal, DragonAltar persists cloned copies of the exact selected items. That includes durability, enchantments, names, lore, and other item metadata.

If a ritual is canceled or the server restarts during an active ritual:

1. The soul reservation is released.
2. The persisted exact items are queued as a refund.
3. DragonAltar tries to return them on the next safe player opportunity.
4. Anything that does not fit remains pending.

Players can retry with:

/dragon refunds

Free enough inventory space first. The command reports how many pending refund entries remain.

Mother Soul removal ritual

The removal ritual uses a normal single chest. A double chest does not qualify. Closing a qualifying chest starts structure and participant checks.

Chest offerings

Offering	Amount	Notes
Phantom Membrane	128	Exact material count
Potion of Weakness	4	Drinkable regular or long Weakness potions only
Nether Star	1	Exact material count
Netherite Block	1	Exact material count

Splash and lingering Weakness potions do not count.

Structure

Treat the chest block as (0, 0, 0).

At one block below the chest:

• (0, -1, 0) is Crying Obsidian
• North, south, east, and west adjacent blocks are Obsidian
• All four diagonals are Polished Blackstone Bricks

At chest height:

• Each diagonal has a lit White Candle

At two blocks from the chest and one block down:

• North, south, east, and west are Soul Sand caller pads

One player must stand on each pad. The player who closed the chest must be one of those four and becomes the selection leader.

Choosing and holding the ceremony

The leader receives a GUI listing the current Dragonborn. The default selection window is 60 seconds.

After a target is chosen:

• The chest is locked against normal changes
• All four callers must remain within 0.85 blocks of their exact pad position
• The ceremony runs for 160 ticks, 8 seconds, by default
• The altar, offerings, target, and callers are checked again at resolution
• Offerings are consumed only at resolution

If the target, callers, structure, or offerings change before resolution, the ceremony stops without consuming the recipe.

Every completed cast gives all four callers Weakness XVI for 12 real-time hours. The remaining duration is persisted across restart, join, and respawn.

Backfire

Only Dragonborn callers other than the target count toward backfire:

Dragonborn callers	Backfire chance
0	0%
1	25%
2 or more	50%

On a one-caller backfire, the caller's soul enters limbo. On a successful backfire with two Dragonborn callers, the two caller souls and the target soul all enter limbo. That is the total blackout.

Backfire is checked before instability fracture and ordinary transfer.

Instability and fracture

Every started Mother Soul ceremony increments one global persistent cast count. With the shipped threshold of 6, fracture becomes active starting with cast 7.

Once active, each ceremony that did not backfire has a 20% fracture chance by default. A fracture manifests the target soul as the hostile creature described in Dragon Souls.

The cast count is intentionally not exposed to ordinary player commands.

Normal resolution

If the ritual neither backfires nor fractures, DragonAltar selects a random eligible online player other than the target and transfers the soul.

If no candidate exists, the exact pre-consumption chest contents are restored. If another plugin prevents assignment, the chest contents are also restored.

See Configuration for tunables and Troubleshooting for stuck refunds, expired selections, and fracture recovery.