Ex Nihilo Omnia: The Ultimate Skyblock Companion Mod
Skyblock survival in Minecraft has always been about turning nothing into everything. The Ex Nihilo Omnia mod takes that philosophy and injects it with a massive dose of creativity and automation. Born from the legacy of the original Ex Nihilo, this mod is your ticket to a fully playable skyblock experience, providing ways to generate resources from the void itself. Whether you are a veteran void-dweller or just starting your floating adventure, Ex Nihilo Omnia adds the tools, blocks, and mechanics to transform a single tree and a piece of dirt into a sprawling industrial empire.
Getting Started with Resource Production
At the heart of the mod lies the humble hammer. With a wooden, stone, iron, gold, or diamond hammer in hand, you can pulverize cobblestone into gravel, gravel into sand, and sand into dust. This simple chain is the backbone of early-game material generation. Do you have unwanted sandstone? Just hammer it back into sand. Tired of that static netherrack? Hammer it into falling nether gravel. The same logic applies to end stone, making every block in the End a potential gravity hazard. This process is not just about breaking blocks; it is the first step in a long line of refinement.
Ore Processing: From Dust to Ingots
Once you have sifted gravel and obtained broken ores, you can pack them into ore gravel blocks. A hammer then breaks these apart into crushed ore bits. Repeating the process yields ore dust, and every extra step increases the chance of getting more ore. Smelt any of these stages directly into ingots. This multi-tier processing chain rewards patience and gives you control over your metal output, making every piece of cobblestone potentially valuable.
Crooks and Silkworms: Leaf Management Evolved
A crook might look like a simple tool, but it is a game-changer. Right-click an animal to pull it toward you, away from dangerous ledges, buying time to fix fences. In combat, a crook deals zero damage but shoves enemies backward—perfect for voiding them off your island. Its real magic, though, is in leaf harvesting. Breaking leaves with a crook doubles the drop rate of saplings and apples. Occasionally, you will uncover a silkworm. Release it on a tree, and it will infest the leaves, turning them white as it produces silk. The whiter the leaf, the more silk you get. Once all leaves are infested, you can use a crook to extract more silkworms. If you end up with too many, they are a decent source of protein.
Porcelain and the Art of Clay
Burn sticks to get ash, which is packed with nutrients for growing plants and saplings. Mix ash with clay from a barrel and bonemeal to create porcelain clay. This material unlocks a suite of advanced items. Shape porcelain clay into an unfired bucket, then smelt it in a furnace to create a bucket that holds liquids just like metal. You can also hammer smooth stone to get throwable stones, perfect for ranged defense or crafting back into blocks. Porcelain clay is also the key ingredient for the mighty crucible.
The Crucible: Melting Your Way to Progress
Craft a large porcelain basin and fire it in a furnace to get a crucible. Place it over a heat source—the higher the quality, the faster the melting. Add cobblestone or other materials, and over time they will liquefy into lava or other fluids. This is your primary source of lava for obsidian, netherrack creation, or fueling furnaces. The crucible transforms passive waiting into a steady resource stream.
Sieves and the Sifter: Automating Luck
Sieves are crafted from any wood and fitted with a mesh after placement. Currently, two mesh types exist, differing only in durability. Sift dirt, gravel, sand, soul sand, or nether gravel to obtain seeds, stones, ores, and rare drops like diamonds, ghast tears, and spores. The full list of siftable materials is extensive, covering nearly every basic resource. To escape the monotony of manual sifting, build a sifter. This piston-powered device shakes the sieve for you, and different head materials adjust the speed. You can hold a sifter in either hand while sifting to speed things up even more. Barrels, sieves, and crucibles all work with WAILA, and hammer and sieve recipes are JEI-friendly, making the modpack integration seamless. For those who want a streamlined modding experience, you can easily install Ex Nihilo Omnia via the foxygame.net launcher, a modern and flexible Minecraft launcher that lets you download mods right from its menu without hunting through external sites.
Barrels: The Multipurpose Workhorse
Barrels can be crafted from almost any material. Their uses are vast:
- Composting: Toss organic matter in, wait, and get dirt.
- Rainwater Collection: Barrels fill with water when it rains.
- Clay Production: Add dust from hammering into a water-filled barrel to create clay.
- Netherrack and Endstone: Mix lava with redstone or glowstone in a barrel to congeal it into netherrack or endstone.
- Witchwater: Add spores to a water barrel to ferment it into witchwater, which mutates mobs and transforms sand into soul sand.
- Slime Creation: Combine milk and water, let it sit, then extract a slime with a crook.
Dolls: Summoning Friends and Foes
With gems and porcelain, you can craft dolls that, when placed in a barrel of lava or witchwater, summon special entities. A doll in lava brings a fiery companion, while one in witchwater calls a goth-like friend with sticky fingers. These dolls add a quirky, interactive element to your skyblock isolation.
Configuration and World Generation
Ex Nihilo Omnia is incredibly configurable. Almost every aspect can be tweaked via the config file, including hopper/pipe interaction with sieves. Use JSON to create custom recipes for composting, hammering, sifting, melting, and crucible heat sources. You can even disable all built-in recipes and start from scratch. The command /enoreg reload lets you reload custom recipes in-game without restarting. The mod can generate a world as the classic skyblock 2.1 map, a hardcore single dirt block with a tree, or a middle-ground version with no grass. You can choose a single biome for the entire world or keep the default biome variety.
Compatibility and Ore Integration
The mod automatically detects many ores from other mods, but if something like Nickel is missing, you can force it in the config. Ore blacklist, whitelist, and custom metadata files give you full control over which ores appear in sieves and hammering. Crooks and hammers are Veinminer-ready, and all added ores work in the Tinkers’ smeltery. The mod’s open permissions allow use in any modpack, and the source code is available for further development.
Conclusion
Ex Nihilo Omnia is the definitive skyblock enabler, turning the void into a canvas of industrial possibility. Its deep resource chains, automation options, and extensive configurability make it a must-have for any skyblock modpack. From the first hammer strike on cobblestone to the automated hum of a sifter, every mechanic feels rewarding and purposeful. Whether you are crafting porcelain buckets or summoning dolls, this mod ensures that your skyblock journey is never dull. Install it, configure it to your liking, and watch your floating empire rise from absolutely nothing.