Guide to Alshanex's Familiars: Finding and Taming Your First Companion
This guide explains the basics of Alshanex's Familiars, including how to find and tame your first familiar. Alshanex's Familiars adds new mobs called familiars that are found throughout the world. These familiars can be tamed to follow you and assist in combat using spells.
Familiars
Familiars are mobs that can be found scattered around the world. Once tamed, they will follow you and fight alongside you, utilizing powerful spells.
To tame a familiar, you will need 
Arcane Essence. Once tamed, a familiar will become your companion.
Transporting Familiars
Familiars can be transported using a Familiar Tome. This item allows you to carry your familiar with you.
If your familiar's health is low, you can place a Familiar Tome into a 
Familiar Bed to help your pet recover its health.
Crafting Alshanex's Familiars
To craft the core item for Alshanex's Familiars, combine two magic_cloth, one 
Netherite Ingot, one druidic_spell_book, and one conjurers_talisman.
Shrinking Recipes
The mod includes a shrinking recipe system, identified as alshanex_familiars:shrinking_recipe, which has 7 distinct recipes. These recipes convert an unknown input into various useful items. Some of the items that can be created through these shrinking recipes include:
Diamond Plating
Iron Plating
Lesser Magic Resist Essence
Netherite Plating (available through two different recipes)
Tiny Shield
Tiny Totem
Check your version first
This is the rare mod where the two builds differ so sharply that the version decides what you can do at all. On 1.21.1 the mod carries rituals (11 recipes), shrinking (7), smithing transforms (4), alchemist cauldron brews (2) and 13 crafting recipes. On 1.20.1 it carries 11 crafting recipes and nothing else — all four of the other categories are empty.
Nothing about that is a broken install. The systems simply were not present on the older line.
The scale of the mod
Seventy-five pages, 66 items, 9 blocks and 4 structures. The low block count tells you the shape: this is about companions and the items that support them, not about building.
The four structures
- Graveyard — spacing 20, separation 5, underground decoration. The most common and the one you will find first.
- End Laboratory — spacing 25, separation 10, surface.
- Hunter Campsite — spacing 40, separation 10, surface, and the rarest of the three.
- Origin Island — placed as a top-layer modification, so it does not follow the usual spacing grid.
A first-hour plan
Work through the crafting recipes with materials you already have, then go caving with an eye out for a Graveyard — at spacing 20 it is the structure you are most likely to meet early, and on 1.21.1 it feeds the ritual system that the rest of the mod is built on.
Covers the mod’s in-game guide topics: Alshanex's Familiars alshanex_familiars:shrinking_recipe
Alshanex's Familiars
Magic Resist Essence