Essence of Life looks like a rare drop the first time you see it in Hytale, but it’s closer to pocket change than a legendary crafting material. It sits at the center of several early-game systems, shows up constantly as you play, and quietly pushes you toward the game’s first major hub.
What Essence of Life is in Hytale
Essence of Life is a green orb of “overflowing life energy” that appears around plant life on Orbis. In practical terms, it serves two roles:
- Primary role: a universal currency used with specific NPC traders.
- Secondary role: an ingredient in a few farming-related items that manipulate animals.
It is not a general-purpose crafting material for weapons or armor. You don’t smelt it, refine it, or slot it into gear. Treat it as money that also occasionally fuels specialty tools tied to life and creatures.
How to unlock Essence of Life trading (Forgotten Temple Gateway)
The first major way to spend Essence of Life is locked behind a short dungeon-style encounter. Reaching that point is part of normal early progression and lines up with the broader beginner path outlined in Hytale’s own early access structure.
Step 1: Open your world map and look for the Forgotten Temple icon. It appears as a large spiral or portal marker, usually near a river, tied to a massive three-winged stone structure in the overworld.
Step 2: Travel to the structure, walk past the outer statue, and descend into the temple interior using the staircase that leads underground.
Step 3: In the lower chamber, fight the stone Golem mini-boss. With copper gear, a shield, and cooked food, you can beat it by landing a few hits, then either blocking or backing away, and sprinting out of range when it charges a large spinning attack.
Step 4: After the Golem dies, loot the room, then enter the large blue portal that appears. This sends you to the Forgotten Temple Gateway HUB, a safe area full of friendly NPCs.
Step 5: In the HUB, walk to the central altar. Around it, you’ll see traders, including the Rootling Merchant, who accepts Essence of Life as payment for goods.
From this point on, any Essence of Life you’ve been stockpiling can be spent directly, and the HUB’s altar also lets you start using the separate “Memories” system for scanning creatures and redeeming rewards.
Where to spend Essence of Life: Rootling Merchant and HUB traders
The core spending sink for Essence of Life is the Rootling Merchant, a plant-like NPC found in the Forgotten Temple HUB and in Kweebec trading contexts. This merchant treats Essence of Life purely as money.
The shop focuses on consumable and food-adjacent items rather than weapons or high-end crafting components. Expect to see:
- Raw food and cooking ingredients
- Prepared meals and snacks
- Other basic supplies that support exploration and survival
The stock isn’t infinite. Each item has a limited quantity. Once you buy it out, that specific entry disappears until it refreshes. Two timers are important:
- Sold-out items come back after roughly three in-game days.
- Even if nothing is sold out, the merchant’s entire inventory refreshes every third server day with a new selection.
That cadence makes Essence of Life feel closer to a living economy than a one-time sink. You’re encouraged to check back periodically and convert your surplus orbs into food and supplies instead of letting them pile up.
How to get Essence of Life fast
The drop rates for Essence of Life are deliberately generous. It’s meant to be something you passively earn by playing, not a rare grind.
You gain Essence of Life from most everyday actions tied to living things and natural resources, especially during the day. Typical sources include:
- Picking flowers and other plants
- Harvesting crops such as carrots
- Chopping trees and interacting with foliage
- Defeating animals
- Occasionally, killing enemies and looting chests
Almost any route that combines light exploration, basic gathering, and hunting will generate a steady stream of orbs. As a result, dedicated Essence of Life farming routes are largely unnecessary. By the time you reach the Forgotten Temple Gateway, you generally have enough on hand to start trading immediately.
Using Essence of Life in animal tools (Feed Bag and Capture Crate)
While Essence of Life isn’t part of weapon or armor recipes, it is baked into tools that control animal behavior. Those tools substitute for full “taming” in the current early access build.
Crafting a Feed Bag (animal lure)
The Feed Bag is a placeable item that lures animals into an area, useful for farming setups or gathering meat and byproducts like feathers and leather.
Step 1: From your Pocket Crafting menu, create a basic Workbench using 4× Any Tree Trunk and 3× Any Stone. Place it in the world and interact with it.
Step 2: In the Workbench menu, open the crafting tab and build a Farmer’s Workbench using 6× Any Tree Trunk and 20× Plant Fiber. Place this structure down and interact with it.
Step 3: In the Farming tab of the Farmer’s Workbench, craft a Feed Bag. The recipe requires:
– 10× Wheat
– 5× Any vegetable
– 5× Any fruit
– 10× Essence of Life
Step 4: Put the Feed Bag in a quick slot and place it on the ground in an open space near your base or intended pasture.
Once deployed, animals in the area will gradually wander toward the Feed Bag. It doesn’t tame them or give you ownership; it simply clusters them where you want, either for slaughter or for makeshift ranching.
Crafting a Capture Crate (moving small animals)
The Capture Crate lets you pick up certain small animals and transport them back to your base. It also relies heavily on Essence of Life as part of its cost.
Step 1: Interact with the same Farmer’s Workbench used for the Feed Bag and open the Farming menu.
Step 2: Craft a Capture Crate using:
– 4× Any Wood
– 50× Essence of Life
Step 3: Equip the crate in a quick slot and use it on eligible small animals in the wild to capture them.
Step 4: Return to your base and place the crate to release the animal where you want it.
Like the Feed Bag, the Capture Crate is about control and relocation, not taming. You don’t gain mounts or pets from it, but you do gain the ability to curate your own pens and farms without herding across long distances.
How Essence of Life fits into broader progression
Essence of Life sits alongside two other key late-early-game resources: Essence of Void and Voidheart. The three form a loose trio that splits responsibilities:
- Essence of Life funds trading with friendly NPCs in the Forgotten Temple Gateway and fuels life- and creature-focused tools like the Feed Bag and Capture Crate.
- Essence of Void comes from hostile night or Void-aligned creatures and is used to unlock more advanced crafting stations such as the Arcanist’s Workbench and high-tier armor recipes on the Armorer’s Workbench.
- Voidheart is tied to demonic enemies and supports the highest-tier weapon recipes at the Blacksmith’s Anvil.
That division keeps Essence of Life firmly in the “civilian” lane. It greases the wheels of your food economy and animal management while more dangerous combat pushes you into the Void side of the tech tree.
Should you save Essence of Life or spend it?
The sheer number of ways to earn Essence of Life strongly pushes you to spend it freely in the early game. There is no indication of a major late-game blueprint that requires stockpiles of hundreds or thousands of orbs, and the Capture Crate’s 50-orb cost is easy to meet with casual play.
Early on, the tradeoffs are simple:
- Hoarding Essence of Life gives you no immediate power boost.
- Spending it on food, cooking ingredients, and animal tools directly improves your survivability and mobility.
The Rootling Merchant’s rotating stock also means sitting on a big stack of Essence of Life can backfire if you ignore several refresh cycles. You miss out on variety in meals and consumables that might pair well with your current region or boss attempts.
A practical approach is to keep a small personal reserve for future Capture Crates or new Feed Bags, then regularly convert the rest into consumables whenever you visit the Forgotten Temple HUB. Since you keep picking up more as you explore, the opportunity cost of spending now is very low.
Essence of Life ultimately works best when treated as a flowing resource rather than a rare treasure. Let it pass through your hands often, keep an eye on the Rootling Merchant’s changing stock, and use those green orbs to keep your character fed, your farms active, and your early infrastructure running smoothly while the heavier Void materials carry the weight of high-end gear.
