not the mention wasting resources trying to find the correct 3rd element.
Wow, This is one of my favorite things about thaumcraft.. No sarcasm at all.. "What is it? What *IS* it? Hrms..> Have we tried this yet? Perhaps a dash of this? No... That's all the aspects I have here... Time to go get more resources..."
And off I go on a world-racing adventure to find this elusive piece of data.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Compatability is King, but configuratiblity is Queen" - InfinityRaider
[size=medium]Wow, This is one of my favorite things about thaumcraft.. No sarcasm at all.. "What is it? What *IS* it? Hrms..> Have we tried this yet? Perhaps a dash of this? No... That's all the aspects I have here... Time to go get more resources..."[/size]
[size=medium]And off I go on a world-racing adventure to find this elusive piece of data.[/size]
Well said, it's a mod that fun because it forces ya to, at times and I enjoy doing so, pack up a camping kit, load up the trail food and head off to dig up half the worldt o find one harder than hell to find item, and use it to make a golem. XD but seriously It's what makes the mod worth using and well minecraft more fun.
Ridiculously funny idea: not sure where it can be used (research / stationary spell casting - rituals) but maybe force player to move in order to achive something. For example to boost something make steve go around cauldron and jump once. Imagine how hilarious it would look on server: You walk to Your friend and he is running, jumping, crouching and then everything is obvious - magic in progress
Or a machine that infuse crystals with different levels of aspects (this would be a much more flexible system with your lower level of aspects). An added bonus is that this feels more magi-punk like.
I like this idea.
My spin on it would be that you gather the Aspects somehow and condense them into the Essences and then store them into containers which you then can strap 'em onto yourself in something like a bandolier and you could then tap into them for spell-usage or by tools that might require them for special features?
Perhaps the Core Pick now requires you to have at least 2pts of Fire Essence on yourself to do the L-Click proc and requires 2pts of Visum for the R-click feature?
You'd have a GUI which expands on hotkey/click that displays your Thaumturge's Bandolier and the Essence Containers in it (creating each one to expand your arsenal) and it would tell you how much of whatever Essence is in each Container and which one. This would allow for quick and easy swapping out of Essence Containers and would let us store away excess or ones we don't need right away.
You could use the Condensed Essences for spell-craft, unique item abilities, mixing to make a Essence Grenade that could duplicate certain effects, and heck we could have our own potion system or link into the pre-existing one.
The potion system, if a new one is made, could even have it's own research system! Because how on earth did we know what mushrooms and sugar do before drinking it?
The limited amount of aspects is really good as some of them were not much used and crowd up in the phials chest... less aspects means that all of them are essential and I like that (I will not drop the time aspect could be fun for some spells).
For the aspects completely take over on vis and the comeback to the TC1 worldgen I dunno what to say it could lead back to some "errors" of the past... the TC1 regression could lead to the downside of TC1 that before you could go with high tier stuff you had to find a specific world-generated structure that was at least boring and somewhat frustrating.
also the aspect to take over to vis seems like a sort of "liquid vis comeback" with different kinds of vis but wasn't that what made you drop TC2 in the first place? to me the node dynamics are fine but you need a better node management. I might come back with some other ideas later
Personally I do like the current system but I do also agree that the sheer number of aspects is at times unwieldy (I have jars in chests full of "destructive" aspects that currently I cannot use up, the non destructive ones I've dumped into the aura) so a reduction in the number of aspects would be a good idea as it would allow all aspects to be used. The aura nodes while graphically and mechanically insanely good do cause a fair amount of overhead so scrapping them would probably go a long way toward greater computational friendliness.
Ideas for funner research and also the possible method of powering your thaumaturgical endevours, there has been an idea kicked about in the TC3 thread about phenomenon based research, I kinda thought that with the scribing tools already in place it would be neat to be able to go and directly observe something to gain a theory to then research which would remove some of the lottery aspect of current research. The current research mechanic itself is fairly good at having the aspects that make up the theory make sense and you can discover the aspect required through logical thought in most cases, it is a bit of a puzzle solving mini-game in the initial phase to discover which aspects are in the theory the latter phase is more like a random lottery in that I burn X amount of resources = I gain the theory. That part of it could be done differently though exactly how I have no real idea though possibly it could require a certain amount of distilled essentia to meld with a theory before it is active.
The distilled essentia part of it fits in with the next idea I have, I like the idea of a single wand that you use to focus certain magics through (spellcasting by any other name) powered by a store of essentia you have incorporated into your own being, I don't much like the idea of an XP driven leveling system however as XP is becoming more and more a limiting factor in many mods and one of things I have always liked about Thaumcraft is it's utter disregard of XP. I would probably work more on the idea of tiered wands allowing you to access a tiered store within yourself, from an item\gameplay perspective possibly a single use focus (composed of essentia\clusters and some rare item\items) that "sets" your personal ability to store essentia or it could be an item you must have on you to power your wand.
As for powering your thaumaturgical devices a possibility would be an altar tied to a specific aspect which allows devices under that aspects research tree to function within a radius of it (small\med\large multiblock structures composed of blocks which represent the aspect and the current crystal clusters, since they just look cool) how you gain the research to set up these altars though is tied to observing a (worldgen) locality which serves as a template for your own altar (scribing tools and in the field research again).
I could see your list of aspects as enough with the addition of Eldritch (which is in opposition to everything, hey it has to come back, the alien old ones are too cool to pass up).
The opposition\affinity idea could also be more fleshed out as well, having opposing types of essentia either in your personal store or having their altars too close together (world gen localities could have a very very large range which is considered "too close" to give back the oh crap this area blows feel) could cause all kinds of interesting effects ala the current flux effects having compatible essentia altars within close proximity could have beneficial effects (a return of limited more unwieldy seals :D)
Anyway just a few ideas, what ever you do I'm certain the result will be enjoyable and unique in it's implementation since you haven't let us down yet.
I am bored, so how about these ideas.
Elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light, Dark, Life, Death, Chaos, Order.
Mortar and pestle - Used to grind out elemental essence at a 5% rate.
Natural energy nodes, 5% or less chance to spawn in a chunk, cannot spawn within 3-10 chunks from another node, only fire, water, earth, air, nature, light, dark, and life spawn in overworld. Nether gets fire, earth, dark, chaos, and death. End gets Air, dark, death. Order is a synthetic element only obtained in experiments.
Keep the research partially, but require elemental essence to be used.
Get rid of vis, instead, use elemental nodes as power, or artificial nodes known as a fount or something similar where energy is gathered slowly.
Return forbidden and Eldritch studies.
Skeletal minions, necromantic arts and means to combat them.
Make wisps spawn near their correct nodes, maybe there is some way to collect them and harvest their energy, make them passive until provoked.
Who needs a wand, give me a staff of power and an orb of domination, heh.
Other then that, I am sadly too tired to think, might pop in later to see what happens.
You know what i want in thaumcraft. More ruins, Signs that you weren't the first one to discover the
Art of Taum.
Maybe something like abandoned temples and complexes. Floating island magically suspended, long lost secrets, plans and mechanisms.
A large crater with crystal spires flowing from the center, Great vortices of arcane power invisible to the naked eye
Ancient soul wells, creators long since lost to time.(anyone remember in LoTR, when Minas Morgul lit up and that sickly green vortex spire appeared, yeah something like that vortex is what i imagine a soul well to look like).
As for spellcasting, I imagine a Thaumcrafty "gun"(probably more of a cannon) of sorts That condenses and then expells a projectile/beam of Pure awesome energy/aspect.
But whatever, I'm pretty sure ThaumCraft is going to be awesome(Thaumsome?) either way, So good luck.
What do you want to change with Aspects
I think reducing the amount of Aspects is a terrible idea. One of my favorite aspects of Thaumcraft is the sheer amount of potential directions to go, both for the core mod, and for those who may consider extending said Mod via the API. The sheer complexity of Thaumcraft, and promises of further complexity make it one of my favorite Mods to play with, and has inspired a couple of interesting lines of thinking regarding Mod updates.
One of my many projects involves finding Mods that are in common circulation and making them 'Thaumcraft compatible', because I found the diversity of the aspects so interesting, and finding the rarer ones has been one of the many things to get me out of my comfortable village, and into the depths of the world and across the bounds of worlds into the nether... The "You can't get that here" direction.
What do you want to change with Auras
My big desire for these has always been for there to be more *types* of them. They're an amazing and interesting facet, and those on my server talk about them all the time. It's always fun to go looking for them, or to find them by accident. There was a mutual groan when we realized that our village had decided to set up camp not near one, but two unstable nodes, and one regular node. They are the subject of much discussion.
Regarding Viz and Essentia, again, I've always loved that there were two requirements for creation. The Viz to power the magic, and the essentia to shape it. If one must change one of my favorite aspects of Thaumcraft, perhaps you can go the direction of giving the individual nodes essentia aspects themselves, and making it possible to tilt the direction of these nodes aspects. See that pool of Lava? There's likely a Node over it attuned to Earth/Fire, that autumn forest glade? Seasons, Plant, Lignum, etc.
I'll touch on this again below, but...
I love the fact that Thaumcraft is not swords-and-sorcery magic. It's Artificery, it is shaping the bounds of the universe through Alchemical style magic. Aspects of this and twists of that warped together to create something altogether different. Nothing is self-powered, you are altering the reality of the universe around you, not flinging fireballs from your hands.
So basically, my thought wrapped up is: "Doing away with Aura's completely alters the feel of Thaumcraft, and Thaumcraft is pretty fantastic as is. Alter them a little, make more varieties that alter how the thaumaturge interacts with their environment, and make different perils in destabilizing the different types."
What do you want to change with Research?
Going with my above statement, I would think keeping the aspects, and turning down the path of Alchemical experimentation would be good. Using the tools and processes of Alchemy, the Thaumaturge would have to extract the vital essences of the components of the world around them, and experiment with THOSE to learn new things. These would also be used to focus the Vis focused by the Thaumaturge into shaping the things they desire.
Ok, if you are getting rid of vis, what will power our stuff?
This whole section saddens me greatly, as Thaumcraft has been one of the greatest encouragements to dispose of XP entirely. Trying to get a Mod put together that works the standard enchantments into Thaumcraft and does away with the in-game XP completely. It's always felt tacked on, and Thaumcraft is, at least, complete and well-thought-through.
Sticking to items as a focus and channel for Vis and Aspects is part of what gives Thaumcraft it's feel for me. And also what makes it feel very minecrafty.
RE: Griefing of Nodes
Unfortunately trying to mod something to be griefproof is... nearly impossible.
We have officially banned Thaumaturgical experimentation within 500 blocks of our population center on our server. Our Thaumaturges have built their labs in the distance, because the common townspeople will have none of them. We don't want their fallout. This truth actually helped shaped our community and local area, and has added a great deal of fun to our server.
"... That's a wisp... Have you been experimenting near here?!" - Actual quote.
The thaumaturges also get called for problem solving. "There's this really nice place I'd like to build... We also think it also happens to contain an unstable node.. Could you help me deal with this?" And off we go to remove that node to make the area safer.
So by trying to make them less 'griefable', it would also serve to make them less interesting.
In Summary
My opinion is, keep the aspects, keep the nodes, but expand on the concept. Increase the number of potential fallout effects from Flux, because Flux is awesome. Give Nodes more aspects, make altering the aspect balance of your local node something worthwhile and interesting, steer away from spell-casting as 'Sword and Sorcery' spell-casting, and lean more towards the 'Magic side of Steampunk'. Where mad science is still very much a thing, but you're messing with the fundaments of the universe, rather than steam and clockwork.
You seem to have started down the road of Alchemy, with research, keep playing with it. Add the tools, make them used in research, and managing the chemistry set mid-process part of the game. In a way, the aspect system already adds a game. "I need an object that produces this aspect... Now I have to go find it and bring it back." It's become one of the foundations of trade on my server, as the thaumaturges are always needing the weirdest stuff.
As far as the research table goes, give us tabs in something like the Thaumcraft journal. Each of these represents a path of research 'Golemancy', ''Ferremancy', ''Transmutation'. And have these appear as the prerequisites for them are discovered. Further, don't reveal the necessary research path to FIND that particular branch, but let that also be discovered through research.
"Golemancy requires knowledge as yet unacquired from paths A and B." Which will eventually reveal not just the path required, but what level, much like you occasionally get random aspects in research now.
Completely agree. Less aspects - bad idea Research - good as it now, but adding more mini game features would be awesome. Like combining aspects in certain order after discovering them. Thaumonomicon - after adding a lot of research it become inconvenient to use Nodes - hmm.... Existence of source of magic in the world is required. It's need to be more ways to do aura manipulations, ex. change node size, move and combine. Or create your own node Flux - like was in TC2 - total corruption of area, mobs and plants, destruction and chaos ) Player cast spells - personally I don't like this idea. TC was always implementing spells via items and tools. What to do next? - more golems, more staff, all Eldrich items from TC2 and whatever ) Sky is the limit and to Infinity and beyond
Thanks for all the suggestions and comments so far.
I'd just like to comment on one thing. Some of you are suggesting that the exploration / discovery aspect will be lost with these changes. In fact, they will increase. Exponentially.
Here is an example of what I am thinking of:
Some of the world-gen features I want to add is nodes that will be conceptually similar, but different from TC3 nodes. They will each be linked to a specific aspect and spawn in appropriate areas. Air nodes will only spawn somewhere high up, fire nodes only near lava, nature nodes only in the heart of jungles, etc. Like in TC3 they can only be seen while wearing goggles.
Unlike TC3 nodes they aren't passive sources of vis. Instead you will siphon their aspect from them to use for your own ends, but the amount of essentia they contain will be finite so they can be destroyed if you empty them. Maybe they will replenish very slowly over time, but the idea is that they are something that you will need to actively look for in the world.
That is just one of the ideas I have kicking around in my head.
Another point - spells will still require wands to cast and there will still be various types of wands. What will be changing will be that while there won't be a wand of fire, there might be a wand that reduces the cost of fire spells you cast with it.
Yes, they would be blocks, though they would still look somewhat like they do now.
Hey, Azanor! I got an idea for a new Thaumcraft update! (Not TC 4 but updating to 1.5). How about Arcane Sentries that will attack anything you tell it to? Same as an Arcane Bore just replace the excavation wand with a wand of Fire/Lightning/Frost. Using aura as fuel, redstone to turn on, and a sword instead of a pickaxe that is on the bore? Please reply to this!
Still totally think mercury pools should be a thing. Plus could work for a hypothetical earth/water mix
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Emperor's Rage echoes through the hills. The Emperor's Strength grips this land with fists of iron. The Emperor's Courage burns everlasting. The Endless Army will crush the Emperor's foes.
PLEASE don't change the Aspects. I love there being lots of different aspects, really helps add a bit more to the world, and I gotta say I love bottling them for decorative purposes.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Resident Thaumaturge cake-dragon at your service o:
-Going from a ****-ton of aspects to less than 10 seems a little extreme. Isn't there a middle ground there? Unless research was totally changed, it would eliminate any sort of "gating", it seems to me. One of my favorite things about TC3 is how I had to build mob farms and other such things just to fuel my research/aspect use, and if there was only 10 aspects, with things like nature coming from any plant or animal product, that would sort of turn it into what Flowerchild refers to as "homogenous gruel", where no matter what you're doing, you're getting the same end result - eg, running a wheat farm, a mob farm, or chopping tree leaves all getting nature essentia. Not a big fan of that idea, especially when it seems like the other option is being forced to stop progress and scour the world for potentially hours until you luck onto the type of node you need - there is definately room for trimming the aspects, but this is going a bit too far, IMO.
On the other hand, I could see this part being a lot of fun, assuming item-based aspects totally go away - having to set up bases at remote locations and so on could be pretty cool, and make a world feel more populated, so I guess that depends on how it's implemented. Some sort of native fast-travel system would be a must in that case, though (eg, super-speed roads to encourage building permanent bases, boring old TC2-style portals, or whatever.) Either way, I do agree that the current node system has turned out a bit unweildy.
-The spell stuff with leveling and combining honestly sounds just like the Ars Magicka mod, while TC has always had it's own feel previously. I guess there is room for more than one direct magic mod - but given that that mod has some 80-something spells already AND combining now, and you say this would release with just 10-ish, I hope, if things go this way, that there is a stronger reliance on the "magic-punk/tech" side of things, rather than becoming a traditional wizard.
-I like the research system a lot, the only complaint I personally have is that the "hints" should come at earlier thresholds. IE, it's currently impossible to hit the 75% mark and see the 3rd aspect of a research with 3 aspects unless you have guessed the 3rd aspect already. And getting to 50% for the "clue" is usually the hardest part. I think research could be made "more fun" just by giving more feedback - for example, currently, when you finish a research and get a discovery, you hardly even notice it. A bit more fanfare would be nice. The research tree idea is definately a must, though, especially when/if more addons start coming around, though I guess that isn't a huge concern if TC3 is already history. I think the resource-sink nature of research is great, though - it's nice to have a use for all the crap produced from farms and stuff, something that MC was missing since EE2 went away.
-To quote another post:
Love the RPG like outline you have given, all I ask is that if this is the route you take you keep more hotkeys to a minimum.
Hotkey use is getting a bit out of hand, and it's getting hard to find any free ones these days.
-More negative effects would definately be great. I want those evil trees back from nature flux, darnit!
Well, TC3 has been my favorite mod ever, so I guess it is to be expected that I don't want to see it go so soon. It would have been nice to have it fleshed out a bit more (with, say, more advanced sorting golems) before this happens, but oh well. I didn't want to see TC2 go either, so I guess we will see!
As some one who just finished the research tree of TC3 I was personally hoping that TC3 would get some more items and another tier or two before 4 started to be worked on. I want larger capacity vis filters, advanced tallow golems and epic level toys. I've just gotten my arcane bore up and running with self repairing pickaxes and wands.
That said I've got some feed back for you Azanor
1) Research- My biggest frustration with research is that its too random useful and necessary items items get skipped in favor of more advanced items. There is no way to tell the table no I don't want to research that yet, you take out the partially completed theory and it will just generate a new one. I had the arcane bore researched before I had a pick ax of the core. The golems were similarly maddening (no no I don't need an advanced clay golem! I need a tallow golem ect.) This might be working as intended but it makes it likely that you'll try to research every thing before you do anything. I really like the idea of dividing the research tree into several independent trees, it will make targeting research much easier.
A second bit of feedback on research I don't like that your research is completely independent of the status of your lab. For TC4 consider the requiring the player to conduct actual experiments. (Bottle the dying essence of a creeper and summon a ghost creeper with in a summoning circle to learn the secret of nitor or something) Or at the very least have each tier require an upgraded work bench manufactured from things in the previous tier.
2) Aura and Flux- The nodes are neat but I wish there was more you could do with them. I have my base next to a sliverleaf tree so I've never managed to produce enough flux for anything truly bad to happen, (A few whisps, a very occasional negative status ailment) I miss the pure danger of corruption in TC2. Nothing in TC3 risks exploding and that I feel is a serious misstep Magic should be more dangerous to muck about with.
3) Aspects- I love aspects although I also feel there are a bit too much to handle at the moment. I have bottles and bottles of some aspects while others are super rare. They are far more interesting than straight aura is the expansion of their uses is something I would support.
4) Golems- I love these guys, Now if I could only figure out how to make the tallow golem actually fill a the crucible instead of standing around with the bucket looking confused I would be truly happy. (He takes the aspects out of the filters fine but can't see the water pool five blocks away) I sorta feel golems are a bit expensive for what they do. Maybe buff the number of slots of the lower tier stone and clay golems? I'm trying to make a sorting system to sort the output from an arcane bore and I'm going to need so many golems to do it I'm afraid for my server.
5) Enchantments- Bring back the Thaumic enchanter please. I really would like to use aspects instead of xp to create enchantments. xp farming always feels like cheating to me.
Wants for the future:
1) Summoning and summoning circles: The ability to conjure mobs and bosses for research and component purposes. Epic fails will be possible as well. (Giant creepers)
Gotta run. I'll comment on the ideas in the first post as well.
Have you played the mod HackSlashMine? I think you should make the spellcasting like that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CTM maps beaten: Sea of Flame II, Infernal Sky II, Kaizo Caverns, Black Desert, Legendary, Nightmare Realm, Sunburn Islands, Spellbound Caves, Lethamyr, Waking Up
Wow, This is one of my favorite things about thaumcraft.. No sarcasm at all.. "What is it? What *IS* it? Hrms..> Have we tried this yet? Perhaps a dash of this? No... That's all the aspects I have here... Time to go get more resources..."
And off I go on a world-racing adventure to find this elusive piece of data.
Well said, it's a mod that fun because it forces ya to, at times and I enjoy doing so, pack up a camping kit, load up the trail food and head off to dig up half the worldt o find one harder than hell to find item, and use it to make a golem. XD but seriously It's what makes the mod worth using and well minecraft more fun.
I like this idea.
My spin on it would be that you gather the Aspects somehow and condense them into the Essences and then store them into containers which you then can strap 'em onto yourself in something like a bandolier and you could then tap into them for spell-usage or by tools that might require them for special features?
Perhaps the Core Pick now requires you to have at least 2pts of Fire Essence on yourself to do the L-Click proc and requires 2pts of Visum for the R-click feature?
You'd have a GUI which expands on hotkey/click that displays your Thaumturge's Bandolier and the Essence Containers in it (creating each one to expand your arsenal) and it would tell you how much of whatever Essence is in each Container and which one. This would allow for quick and easy swapping out of Essence Containers and would let us store away excess or ones we don't need right away.
You could use the Condensed Essences for spell-craft, unique item abilities, mixing to make a Essence Grenade that could duplicate certain effects, and heck we could have our own potion system or link into the pre-existing one.
The potion system, if a new one is made, could even have it's own research system! Because how on earth did we know what mushrooms and sugar do before drinking it?
For the aspects completely take over on vis and the comeback to the TC1 worldgen I dunno what to say it could lead back to some "errors" of the past... the TC1 regression could lead to the downside of TC1 that before you could go with high tier stuff you had to find a specific world-generated structure that was at least boring and somewhat frustrating.
also the aspect to take over to vis seems like a sort of "liquid vis comeback" with different kinds of vis but wasn't that what made you drop TC2 in the first place? to me the node dynamics are fine but you need a better node management. I might come back with some other ideas later
Ideas for funner research and also the possible method of powering your thaumaturgical endevours, there has been an idea kicked about in the TC3 thread about phenomenon based research, I kinda thought that with the scribing tools already in place it would be neat to be able to go and directly observe something to gain a theory to then research which would remove some of the lottery aspect of current research. The current research mechanic itself is fairly good at having the aspects that make up the theory make sense and you can discover the aspect required through logical thought in most cases, it is a bit of a puzzle solving mini-game in the initial phase to discover which aspects are in the theory the latter phase is more like a random lottery in that I burn X amount of resources = I gain the theory. That part of it could be done differently though exactly how I have no real idea though possibly it could require a certain amount of distilled essentia to meld with a theory before it is active.
The distilled essentia part of it fits in with the next idea I have, I like the idea of a single wand that you use to focus certain magics through (spellcasting by any other name) powered by a store of essentia you have incorporated into your own being, I don't much like the idea of an XP driven leveling system however as XP is becoming more and more a limiting factor in many mods and one of things I have always liked about Thaumcraft is it's utter disregard of XP. I would probably work more on the idea of tiered wands allowing you to access a tiered store within yourself, from an item\gameplay perspective possibly a single use focus (composed of essentia\clusters and some rare item\items) that "sets" your personal ability to store essentia or it could be an item you must have on you to power your wand.
As for powering your thaumaturgical devices a possibility would be an altar tied to a specific aspect which allows devices under that aspects research tree to function within a radius of it (small\med\large multiblock structures composed of blocks which represent the aspect and the current crystal clusters, since they just look cool) how you gain the research to set up these altars though is tied to observing a (worldgen) locality which serves as a template for your own altar (scribing tools and in the field research again).
I could see your list of aspects as enough with the addition of Eldritch (which is in opposition to everything, hey it has to come back, the alien old ones are too cool to pass up).
The opposition\affinity idea could also be more fleshed out as well, having opposing types of essentia either in your personal store or having their altars too close together (world gen localities could have a very very large range which is considered "too close" to give back the oh crap this area blows feel) could cause all kinds of interesting effects ala the current flux effects having compatible essentia altars within close proximity could have beneficial effects (a return of limited more unwieldy seals :D)
Anyway just a few ideas, what ever you do I'm certain the result will be enjoyable and unique in it's implementation since you haven't let us down yet.
Elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light, Dark, Life, Death, Chaos, Order.
Mortar and pestle - Used to grind out elemental essence at a 5% rate.
Natural energy nodes, 5% or less chance to spawn in a chunk, cannot spawn within 3-10 chunks from another node, only fire, water, earth, air, nature, light, dark, and life spawn in overworld. Nether gets fire, earth, dark, chaos, and death. End gets Air, dark, death. Order is a synthetic element only obtained in experiments.
Keep the research partially, but require elemental essence to be used.
Get rid of vis, instead, use elemental nodes as power, or artificial nodes known as a fount or something similar where energy is gathered slowly.
Return forbidden and Eldritch studies.
Skeletal minions, necromantic arts and means to combat them.
Make wisps spawn near their correct nodes, maybe there is some way to collect them and harvest their energy, make them passive until provoked.
Who needs a wand, give me a staff of power and an orb of domination, heh.
Other then that, I am sadly too tired to think, might pop in later to see what happens.
Art of Taum.
Maybe something like abandoned temples and complexes. Floating island magically suspended, long lost secrets, plans and mechanisms.
A large crater with crystal spires flowing from the center, Great vortices of arcane power invisible to the naked eye
Ancient soul wells, creators long since lost to time.(anyone remember in LoTR, when Minas Morgul lit up and that sickly green vortex spire appeared, yeah something like that vortex is what i imagine a soul well to look like).
As for spellcasting, I imagine a Thaumcrafty "gun"(probably more of a cannon) of sorts That condenses and then expells a projectile/beam of Pure
awesomeenergy/aspect.But whatever, I'm pretty sure ThaumCraft is going to be awesome(Thaumsome?) either way, So good luck.
Completely agree.
Less aspects - bad idea
Research - good as it now, but adding more mini game features would be awesome. Like combining aspects in certain order after discovering them.
Thaumonomicon - after adding a lot of research it become inconvenient to use
Nodes - hmm.... Existence of source of magic in the world is required. It's need to be more ways to do aura manipulations, ex. change node size, move and combine. Or create your own node
Flux - like was in TC2 - total corruption of area, mobs and plants, destruction and chaos )
Player cast spells - personally I don't like this idea. TC was always implementing spells via items and tools.
What to do next? - more golems, more staff, all Eldrich items from TC2 and whatever ) Sky is the limit and to Infinity and beyond
I'd just like to comment on one thing. Some of you are suggesting that the exploration / discovery aspect will be lost with these changes. In fact, they will increase. Exponentially.
Here is an example of what I am thinking of:
Some of the world-gen features I want to add is nodes that will be conceptually similar, but different from TC3 nodes. They will each be linked to a specific aspect and spawn in appropriate areas. Air nodes will only spawn somewhere high up, fire nodes only near lava, nature nodes only in the heart of jungles, etc. Like in TC3 they can only be seen while wearing goggles.
Unlike TC3 nodes they aren't passive sources of vis. Instead you will siphon their aspect from them to use for your own ends, but the amount of essentia they contain will be finite so they can be destroyed if you empty them. Maybe they will replenish very slowly over time, but the idea is that they are something that you will need to actively look for in the world.
That is just one of the ideas I have kicking around in my head.
Another point - spells will still require wands to cast and there will still be various types of wands. What will be changing will be that while there won't be a wand of fire, there might be a wand that reduces the cost of fire spells you cast with it.
Hey, Azanor! I got an idea for a new Thaumcraft update! (Not TC 4 but updating to 1.5). How about Arcane Sentries that will attack anything you tell it to? Same as an Arcane Bore just replace the excavation wand with a wand of Fire/Lightning/Frost. Using aura as fuel, redstone to turn on, and a sword instead of a pickaxe that is on the bore? Please reply to this!
-Going from a ****-ton of aspects to less than 10 seems a little extreme. Isn't there a middle ground there? Unless research was totally changed, it would eliminate any sort of "gating", it seems to me. One of my favorite things about TC3 is how I had to build mob farms and other such things just to fuel my research/aspect use, and if there was only 10 aspects, with things like nature coming from any plant or animal product, that would sort of turn it into what Flowerchild refers to as "homogenous gruel", where no matter what you're doing, you're getting the same end result - eg, running a wheat farm, a mob farm, or chopping tree leaves all getting nature essentia. Not a big fan of that idea, especially when it seems like the other option is being forced to stop progress and scour the world for potentially hours until you luck onto the type of node you need - there is definately room for trimming the aspects, but this is going a bit too far, IMO.
On the other hand, I could see this part being a lot of fun, assuming item-based aspects totally go away - having to set up bases at remote locations and so on could be pretty cool, and make a world feel more populated, so I guess that depends on how it's implemented. Some sort of native fast-travel system would be a must in that case, though (eg, super-speed roads to encourage building permanent bases, boring old TC2-style portals, or whatever.) Either way, I do agree that the current node system has turned out a bit unweildy.
-The spell stuff with leveling and combining honestly sounds just like the Ars Magicka mod, while TC has always had it's own feel previously. I guess there is room for more than one direct magic mod - but given that that mod has some 80-something spells already AND combining now, and you say this would release with just 10-ish, I hope, if things go this way, that there is a stronger reliance on the "magic-punk/tech" side of things, rather than becoming a traditional wizard.
-I like the research system a lot, the only complaint I personally have is that the "hints" should come at earlier thresholds. IE, it's currently impossible to hit the 75% mark and see the 3rd aspect of a research with 3 aspects unless you have guessed the 3rd aspect already. And getting to 50% for the "clue" is usually the hardest part. I think research could be made "more fun" just by giving more feedback - for example, currently, when you finish a research and get a discovery, you hardly even notice it. A bit more fanfare would be nice. The research tree idea is definately a must, though, especially when/if more addons start coming around, though I guess that isn't a huge concern if TC3 is already history. I think the resource-sink nature of research is great, though - it's nice to have a use for all the crap produced from farms and stuff, something that MC was missing since EE2 went away.
-To quote another post:
Hotkey use is getting a bit out of hand, and it's getting hard to find any free ones these days.
-More negative effects would definately be great. I want those evil trees back from nature flux, darnit!
Well, TC3 has been my favorite mod ever, so I guess it is to be expected that I don't want to see it go so soon. It would have been nice to have it fleshed out a bit more (with, say, more advanced sorting golems) before this happens, but oh well. I didn't want to see TC2 go either, so I guess we will see!
That said I've got some feed back for you Azanor
1) Research- My biggest frustration with research is that its too random useful and necessary items items get skipped in favor of more advanced items. There is no way to tell the table no I don't want to research that yet, you take out the partially completed theory and it will just generate a new one. I had the arcane bore researched before I had a pick ax of the core. The golems were similarly maddening (no no I don't need an advanced clay golem! I need a tallow golem ect.) This might be working as intended but it makes it likely that you'll try to research every thing before you do anything. I really like the idea of dividing the research tree into several independent trees, it will make targeting research much easier.
A second bit of feedback on research I don't like that your research is completely independent of the status of your lab. For TC4 consider the requiring the player to conduct actual experiments. (Bottle the dying essence of a creeper and summon a ghost creeper with in a summoning circle to learn the secret of nitor or something) Or at the very least have each tier require an upgraded work bench manufactured from things in the previous tier.
2) Aura and Flux- The nodes are neat but I wish there was more you could do with them. I have my base next to a sliverleaf tree so I've never managed to produce enough flux for anything truly bad to happen, (A few whisps, a very occasional negative status ailment) I miss the pure danger of corruption in TC2. Nothing in TC3 risks exploding and that I feel is a serious misstep Magic should be more dangerous to muck about with.
3) Aspects- I love aspects although I also feel there are a bit too much to handle at the moment. I have bottles and bottles of some aspects while others are super rare. They are far more interesting than straight aura is the expansion of their uses is something I would support.
4) Golems- I love these guys, Now if I could only figure out how to make the tallow golem actually fill a the crucible instead of standing around with the bucket looking confused I would be truly happy. (He takes the aspects out of the filters fine but can't see the water pool five blocks away) I sorta feel golems are a bit expensive for what they do. Maybe buff the number of slots of the lower tier stone and clay golems? I'm trying to make a sorting system to sort the output from an arcane bore and I'm going to need so many golems to do it I'm afraid for my server.
5) Enchantments- Bring back the Thaumic enchanter please. I really would like to use aspects instead of xp to create enchantments. xp farming always feels like cheating to me.
Wants for the future:
1) Summoning and summoning circles: The ability to conjure mobs and bosses for research and component purposes. Epic fails will be possible as well. (Giant creepers)
Gotta run. I'll comment on the ideas in the first post as well.
And yes, three yeses for Node"Mako"Reactors :D.
CTM maps beaten: Sea of Flame II, Infernal Sky II, Kaizo Caverns, Black Desert, Legendary, Nightmare Realm, Sunburn Islands, Spellbound Caves, Lethamyr, Waking Up