I need to get myself to bleeding in a safe and controlled way. I’ve tried stepping onto bear traps, but my DEX and Trapping Skill are way too high to set them off and I highly doubt I’d survive stepping on a Landmine. Monsters won’t work as well because I’m so powerful that they can barely touch me.
The reason for this is that I need Blood-Soaked Rags for the Arcana Mod, and waiting for my allies to bleed is too risky.
Fall into spike pit trap maybe?
Speaking of the Arcana mod, how do you even ‘get into’ that mod? It’s installed, but i don’t know what I must do to delve into the depths of magic.
There are books and locations. Most books can be found in regular libraries.
The Arcana mod has a tool/weapon called the “Silver Athame”. When activated, you get a message that you used it to cut yourself, and one of your body parts begins bleeding. You can then use rags to try to stop it and every attempt, whether succeeding or failing, yields a bloody rag. Occasionally, you can forage a bloody rag as well, but those are too rare to be terribly useful. I think there’s a way to make the Athame, but I’ve never done so. They are not terribly uncommon in the Arcana locations, though. There are also arcanist basements in the mod, so if you can’t find one of the locations, you can always keep checking basements. I’ve also seen Necromancer zeds and maybe Masters drop them, as well.
Edit: You can still kill yourself bleeding like this, so don’t overdo it.
As DeWolf said, there are overmap locations that you might find. I won’t spoil what they’re like, but they’re called “Curious Structure”, “Strange Grove”, “Floating Temple”, “Island Temple”, “Ruined Shrine”, and “Impact Site”.
The books almost always spawn in the Arcana structures, have a decent spawn rate in Mansions, mostly by virtue of their sheer size, and do occasionally show up in Libraries and Regional Schools. I’ll hold off on spoiling the book names for now, but they are fairly unique in title, so you’ll probably recognize one when you happen upon them. Bear in mind that some of them have a steep morale penalty, so you won’t be able to read them for very long at one time without some Prozac.
Unless the bleeding is really bad, I think I’ll be fine. I have 231 HP per body part.
That’s a lot of HP. Did it come from mutations, or do you just have absurd strength? Regardless, keep some first-aid kits or bandages handy, since you don’t get to decide what part bleeds every time you use it; it’s random.
If you’re farming bloody rags for essence, then you should know that it’s going to take a short while to get an appreciable amount of it. Bloody rags have a 3/1 conversion rate with Blood Essence, which has the same for conventional Essence, so you’re going to be cutting for a while. You may just need all 231 HP. Shady zeds have a decent chance of dropping a few charges of conventional Essence (the one that’s equivalent to 9 bloody rags), so I would go hunting them before I stayed home cutting myself all day. I’ve also never seen Necromancers not drop some, I think Masters do, and I know that Survivors do.
A few more things on the Athame. You may find one on Survivor zeds, and it can be forged, but you need Silver to do it, so don’t throw it away if you find any. In fact, keep all the precious metals and gems you find. They probably all have a use somewhere.
What skills do I need to forge an Athame? If its anything higher than Arcana 1, I’m in trouble…
Update: After raiding a town, I got the Alchemy book, which now got my Arcana to 3, meaning I now have a Silver Athame.
Now I can cut myself for fun AND science! YAY! 
Where’d you find it?
On a Survivor Zombie. I was really disheartened too, because I’d just gone through a bookstore, a library AND a magic basement to no avail…
Did it drop any other magic goodies, or just the book? And is the Silver Athame auto-learned? The only Athame(s?) I ever really played with were drops, since they were comparatively common for arcane items.
It was in the Sanguine Codex. If you’re playing Ascension, however, it shouldn’t be too hard to find…
I knew it was in there, given what it does. I was just wondering if it was auto-learned as well.
Back to a topic I forgot about though; how did you get 231 HP on every body part? I could really use those kinds of numbers.
Chimera Mutant with PK’s Rebalance (among many things, adds and alters a lot of mutations). Chimera has access to Solidly Built, as well as Unbreakable.
I also have Stats Through Skills (giving me a +5 Bonus to STR), Extremely Strong, Inconveniently Large, Burgeoning Presence, (+4, +2, +3 respectively). I also have a +2 bonus from Muscle Augmentation, but enhancement bonuses don’t count. I started with 12 Strength.
That totals out to a whopping 26 base Strength. And that’s without going to get Freakishly Huge/Huge.
I tried calculating it out, but it turns out that all my calculations end up with 234 instead of 231.
Also, if you go Cattle or Ursine, you can get TAANK, which is a plus 40% instead of plus 30%. It’s a miniscule bonus, but if you want it…
How long did it take to get all that?
Chimera Mutagen is slightly easier to get, because you can use different mutagens instead of just the four that it requires base game, AND that one craft gets you four doses.
I was post-thresh by the first Fall, on fourteen season days (with Lab start, so I had a head start on finding the Chimera design binder).
With 14 day seasons? And did you get very many harsh negative mutations from that? I’ve read that Chimera is a double-edged sword.
Fully going to admit I’m a save scummer. 
So I got only a few.
Granted, if you know how to handle them, some of Chimera’s mutations aren’t as bad. I desperately avoided Carnivore, because on a test run I found out it was practically impossible to sustain yourself with Carnivore pre-Eater of the Dead, especially with Fast Metabolism or any of its descendants. Also can’t do Freakishly Huge (which Chimera gets in PK). That mutation’s negatives are too big.
IMO, the mutation system has too many mutations that are purely negative, stuff you want to avoid like the plague. I like the mutation that are double edge swords like Large Talons or Hooves, or Fast Metabolism.