Belowkeeper Glowcap Nurseries

What it is

Glowcaps are cave mushrooms that only open when a Sporeback Snail browses them. Grow them, shelter snails, craft cave gear, and follow Mara’s notes in the optional investigation Mara’s Three Breathmarks.

A Glowcap on a covered clay bank beside cave water and hanging vines

How to get it

Find Glowcaps in newly generated lush or dripstone caves, on damp moss or clay. Break one to take a cutting.

How to use it

Growing a nursery

Plant the cutting on moss or clay beside water, with a solid roof within 8 blocks above and light level 8 or less. Dry or bright plantings stay dormant.
The bud slowly prepares itself. A Life spell prepares it at once.
A Sporeback Snail must browse the prepared cap for 2 seconds to open it.
Use a mature cap with an empty hand for Dried Glowcap Gills. The plant goes back to a bud. Breaking it only gives back the cutting.

Hungry snails head for any mushroom, so keep other mushrooms away from your caps. Rootmolt Striders also eat mature caps and then guard the patch.

Fungal Nursery

A Sporeback resting beneath a woven canopy on four posts, beside a cap it opened

Craft 2 sticks + paper + Dried Glowcap Gills. Place the canopy over a spot snails can walk to. Its posts reach the floor and leave a gap in the middle. A snail carrying dew can rest under it for a short while, giving you time to gather. It doesn’t make dew faster.

Cave Breather

Craft Mycelial Dew + Dried Glowcap Gills + leather + copper ingot. Hold it in your off hand and use it while poisoned to clear the Poison. Each use costs 1 of 32 uses, slows you for 3 seconds, and starts a 10-second rest.

Mara’s Three Breathmarks

Crouch with an empty hand to gather a Sporeback’s dew.
Find and read a root Breathmark, then an open-air Breathmark, on moss or clay in caves. Each gives a journal once.
Harvest a cap that a snail opened.
Craft and place your own Nursery, then craft a Cave Breather.
Show the Breather to your Nursery. You get Mara’s last journal, Three Breathmarks, and 3 Blank Runes, once.

Using a Breathmark or Nursery shows a hint for your next step. Progress survives death.

Tips and counterplay

Keep a covered garden with low walls so visiting snails stay near your caps.
Each harvest needs a fresh prepared bud and a rested snail.
Next, try Mara’s Drainhouses.