Well, I kinda like the idea, though I do see one potential issue with it; it would mean that the only aspect of difficulty for getting any form of essentia would be how many stirring steps it takes, and how long/how difficult it is to get all of the essentia types in one place. This may or may not be a problem, depending on how easy all of the above is, though it also does mean you have much more control over the balance of the whole process. So everyone can blame you if it's too OP.
I kind of like this, mainly because of how difficult it can be to get the more exotic human and subseqent essences for infusion, particulary the late game runic armor infusions, and the whole procese could be made more simple by mixing the base essence together to make compound ones rather than requiring 496 pieces of leather.
I like the idea. Though perhaps have a system for mixing essentias separately?
That is the idea - the crucible will be the early game method for mixing essentia, but later there will be dedicated machines to do so in an easier manner. The opposite of a centrifuge possibly.
The idea is sound but i would like to know how you make compounds. If you only need the primals than it would be a bit cheap for the high tier essentia. If you could give an example for the basic compound creation process, the idea would be easier to judge. Though bringing back the thaumic condenser concept is cool. If this does happen will you do the phase of the moon again? It was probably the only thing that benefited from the moon phases(which most people don't even know minecraft has).
The idea is sound but i would like to know how you make compounds. If you only need the primals than it would be a bit cheap for the high tier essentia. If you could give an example for the basic compound creation process, the idea would be easier to judge. Though bringing back the thaumic condenser concept is cool. If this does happen will you do the phase of the moon again? It was probably the only thing that benefited from the moon phases(which most people don't even know minecraft has).
Currently this is still very high concept - I haven't even thought of working out the details yet.
Using the lowest tier tools as an example and with thumb-sucked output/cost numbers:
You will place a crystal in the condenser (that is the old name for this). It will draw vis from the aura and create crystallized essentia. Lets say that at the lowest tier a single vis shard will be able to produce around 10 essentia before becoming dull. It will roughly use twice the that amount of vis from the aura.
Now you wish to craft some nitor. This costs 3 ignem, 3 potentia and 3 lux along with glowstone as a catalyst (exact same costs as now). The ignem is not a problem as you can get that directly from the condenser. However potentia and lux requires some work.
For lux you throw 3 air and 3 fire crystallized essentia into the crucible and give it a whack with a wand. Out comes 3 lux crystals. You do the same for potentia.
Now you just proceed as usual, throwing in all 9 essential crystals and finishing up with the glowstone dust.
So using the low tier stuff like the crucible it will take quite a bit of crafting to produce the more complex compounds with multiple crafting steps.
So, by that idea, the condenser makes crystallized essentia instead of liquid essentia now? Or will it make liquid essentia that you pipe into a block (which, now that I think about it, would better called the condenser if this second option is the case) that solidifies it into crystals?
Also, will there be tiers of condensors, then, that draw less vis from the aura than the amount of essentia they make, say 8 vis for 12 essentia? And for certain tiers of essentia, will it be, instead of one of each ingredient to make one product, it's 2 of each ingredient to make 1 product, or vise versa?
Currently this is still very high concept - I haven't even thought of working out the details yet.
Using the lowest tier tools as an example and with thumb-sucked output/cost numbers:
You will place a crystal in the condenser (that is the old name for this). It will draw vis from the aura and create crystallized essentia. Lets say that at the lowest tier a single vis shard will be able to produce around 10 essentia before becoming dull. It will roughly use twice the that amount of vis from the aura.
Now you wish to craft some nitor. This costs 3 ignem, 3 potentia and 3 lux along with glowstone as a catalyst (exact same costs as now). The ignem is not a problem as you can get that directly from the condenser. However potentia and lux requires some work.
For lux you throw 3 air and 3 fire crystallized essentia into the crucible and give it a whack with a wand. Out comes 3 lux crystals. You do the same for potentia.
Now you just proceed as usual, throwing in all 9 essential crystals and finishing up with the glowstone dust.
So using the low tier stuff like the crucible it will take quite a bit of crafting to produce the more complex compounds with multiple crafting steps.
The new system seems awesome, with far more intricate crafting options.
But. Gating. If all aspects can be crafted, other than the mixing costs there is no apparent gating preventing access to the high tier essentia. At the moment (assuming TC addons havn't fsked with it) certain essentia ARE harder to get than other essentia. Alienis, Aruam, Permutatio all come to mind.
The most difficult thing to make in the new dispensation - if the current combination rules remain in place - would be anything derived from Meto (iirc). Something like 22 primals would need to be combined over 15? steps to produce 1 Meto. And Meto doesn't feel like it should be that special. Ironically I would hope that Auram and Alienis are the hard to craft essentia but their current recipes make them far far easier than the humanus derived ones.
So, by that idea, the condenser makes crystallized essentia instead of liquid essentia now? Or will it make liquid essentia that you pipe into a block (which, now that I think about it, would better called the condenser if this second option is the case) that solidifies it into crystals?
Also, will there be tiers of condensors, then, that draw less vis from the aura than the amount of essentia they make, say 8 vis for 12 essentia? And for certain tiers of essentia, will it be, instead of one of each ingredient to make one product, it's 2 of each ingredient to make 1 product, or vise versa?
You can grow other crystals from a seed crystal - that is what the "condenser" does, though the name is obviously not correct. The old device it is based on created liquid directly. Crystalizer is probably a better name for it, though higher tier versions that turns it into liquid directly is an obvious upgrade path.
As for the rest of your questions: Yes. Condensers/crystalizers with lower costs and/or better shard-to-essentia ratios are a given in a system like this.
The new system seems awesome, with far more intricate crafting options.
But. Gating. If all aspects can be crafted, other than the mixing costs there is no apparent gating preventing access to the high tier essentia. At the moment (assuming TC addons havn't fsked with it) certain essentia ARE harder to get than other essentia. Alienis, Aruam, Permutatio all come to mind.
The most difficult thing to make in the new dispensation - if the current combination rules remain in place - would be anything derived from Meto (iirc). Something like 22 primals would need to be combined over 15? steps to produce 1 Meto. And Meto doesn't feel like it should be that special. Ironically I would hope that Auram and Alienis are the hard to craft essentia but their current recipes make them far far easier than the humanus derived ones.
Yeah, that is something that I will have to take a close look at.
I have already flattened the aspect progression quite a bit for TC 5. For example Humanes is at the end of a branch with nothing above it, and meto (currently) doesn't exist at all. Instrumentum is now just metallum and motus. Etc, etc.
The thing that worries me is needing to collect huge numbers of shards for the complex aspects used in crafting. To work an example, consider a golem:
Given 10 points produced per shard, a wood body would end up costing in shards: 0.8 Aer, 2.0 Aqua, 0.4 Ignis, 0.8 Ordo, 0.8 Perditio, 2.0 Terra.
Motus is (Ordo+Aer), Spiritus is (2 Aqua + Perditio + 2 Terra), Humanus is (Aer+ 3 Aqua+Ignis+Ordo+Perditio+ 3 Terra).
Nitor for the blank core, that's 0.3 Air, 0.9 Ignis, 0.3 Ordo.
A Gather core: 5 Terra, and ...oops, need 5 Lucrum. and shard cost for going from blank to Gather core is 1.0 Aer, 2.0 Aqua, 0.5 Ignis, 0.5 Ordo, 1.0 Perditio, 2.5 Terra
Lucrum: (2 Aer+Ordo+Ignis+ 2 Perditio+ 4 Aqua + 4 Terra).
Total shards needed to drain for a low-tier Gather Golem: 2.1 Aer, 4.0 Aqua, 1.8 Ignis, 1.6 Ordo, 1.8 Perditio, 4.5 Terra. Seems a bit much to me, compared to scraps of rotten flesh, coal and golden trash.
At a minimum, this idea would need major flattening of the aspect tree (admittedly, several of the high-tier aspects can easily be spared), and I'm not wild about it anyway. I suspect all that combining will be a bit of a PITA in itself (not that distilling and centrifuging aren't sometimes).
I did some CraftTweaker scripts for Mystical Agriculture. They fill in a couple of small gaps in MA, and also let you make or duplicate not only vanilla plants, but the blocks, plants and wood from Quark and Biomes O'Plenty. Also spawn eggs for most vanilla mobs! The scripts are here on Github.
What if combining essentia needed specific catalysts of some kind for them to be drawn together to mix with each other, like with other alchemy? That would allow some kind of gating. And in the early tiers, maybe the catalyst is used up, but as you advance perhaps you develop a way to section the catalyst off to be used up more slowly and thus be more efficient, sort of like an arcane teabag?
What if combining essentia needed specific catalysts of some kind for them to be drawn together to mix with each other, like with other alchemy? That would allow some kind of gating. And in the early tiers, maybe the catalyst is used up, but as you advance perhaps you develop a way to section the catalyst off to be used up more slowly and thus be more efficient, sort of like an arcane teabag?
Yeah - but you want the catalyst to be consumable, otherwise the player just needs to get 1 ender pearl to produce infinite Alienis. But a consumable catalyst isn't a catalyst - its now just a complicated essentia decomposition from items mechanic in disguise.
From a pure concept standpoint, this idea is solid. It starts with a timely but cheap process that can improve with progress through the mod. Then, you make higher tier material by using the initial product through a process that can easily be balanced and changed on a whim. It also has the possibility of bringing new and interesting gameplay options in the process of making essentia and intricate crafting possibilities.
However from a logistic perspective, it will be quite a hassle.The main issue is accessibility and how intuitive the new system might be.
The process you mention seems to require time to make any reasonable amount of essentia in the early game. This coupled with the already time gating research might turn people off on starting thaumcraft. It also seems that it also uses vis which with the TC3 style aura making a come back might make the vis issue people are concerned with much more justifiable.There's also the cost balance problem between making higher end ones(Auram, Alenis,etc) vs derivative ones(Humanus, Fabrico).
I personally like the concept but this to really know the feasibility of a change like this we might need a clearer view of whats coming in TC5 in terms of the aura node changes and aspect combination situation. Hope this little rant of mine has helped you in any way Azanor.
Currently this is still very high concept - I haven't even thought of working out the details yet.
Using the lowest tier tools as an example and with thumb-sucked output/cost numbers:
You will place a crystal in the condenser (that is the old name for this). It will draw vis from the aura and create crystallized essentia. Lets say that at the lowest tier a single vis shard will be able to produce around 10 essentia before becoming dull. It will roughly use twice the that amount of vis from the aura.
Now you wish to craft some nitor. This costs 3 ignem, 3 potentia and 3 lux along with glowstone as a catalyst (exact same costs as now). The ignem is not a problem as you can get that directly from the condenser. However potentia and lux requires some work.
For lux you throw 3 air and 3 fire crystallized essentia into the crucible and give it a whack with a wand. Out comes 3 lux crystals. You do the same for potentia.
Now you just proceed as usual, throwing in all 9 essential crystals and finishing up with the glowstone dust.
So using the low tier stuff like the crucible it will take quite a bit of crafting to produce the more complex compounds with multiple crafting steps.
This sounds as though low-level alchemy becomes possibly quite a bit more time-consuming, but on the other hand a lot cleaner and less wasteful. It's also going to make it much more important to be able to reasonably readily find all six primal shards, because without a good supply of all necessary shards you won't even be able to get off the ground with alchemy (alchemy itself being doubtless an early-game discovery). I mention this because it has historically been a frequently-reported problem in the past, with many players well stocked on five of the six primals and scouring their world searching for the sixth. Ordo is typically one of those that has left players gasping "A shard, a shard, my kingdom for a shard!" And Ignis (now called Ignem, I see) has sometimes been hard to find.
Could we possibly have (or return to, if memory serves) vis shards required as an ingredient for wand and staff cores? It both gives a trigger for discovery of how to make a wand ("You wonder whether there is some way you can turn the energy of this strange crystal shard to some use"), and provides a rationale for why wands have arcane power in the first place — there is magic bound into their creation right from the start, instead of just being an otherwise unexceptional metal-capped staff or baton that inexplicably acquires magical potential.
(...And continuing that thought, just for the sake of completeness and consistency, perhaps the baton itself — a simple iron-shod stick — could be added as a non-magical melee weapon, inflicting low damage but possessing high durability. Likewise capping a basic wooden staff core made by crafting together three sticks in a diagonal line could yield a non-magical quarterstaff, again of good durability and doing melee damage somewhere between a shovel and, say, an axe. Both could perhaps be enchantable with Unbreaking, and maybe Knockback for staves, but nothing else. After all, it's basically a piece of wood. It can be a piece of magicallyreinforced wood, but it's still a piece of wood. Wizard's staves, on the other hand, ought to be quite enchantable... Sharpness doesn't really make sense on a staff, but I can quite see a wizard's staff enchanted with Repair, Smite, Looting, Knockback, Fire Aspect, and/or possibly other things as well. Perhaps a new Ice Aspect that chills or freezes enemies instead of setting them on fire? Fire Aspect and Ice Aspect would of course be mutually exclusive. Wind Aspect might hurl enemies into the air when struck, causing them to take additional falling damage on landing. I'm not sure what Earth Aspect — or Stone Aspect — might do. Any given weapon would be enchantable with one and only one elemental Aspect.)
Is there any likelihood of there perhaps being a cryptic and difficult-to-obtain late-game seventh primal shard...? I do like TC4's late-game hints at the existence of a mysterious seventh primal, and seven has always been regarded in Western lore/mythology as a number of magical significance. "I am the seventh son of a seventh son, born under a caul."
Another semi-random thought:
What if the crucible itself offered the chance for serendipitous alchemical discoveries? Perhaps if you get your ingredients wrong, or have excess essentia from a process, and just happen to hit a combination that can make something else you haven't yet discovered, there could be a small chance of discovering the new recipe or creating the new item instead of (or, depending on the quantity of surplus essentia, as well as) creating flux — although you might not necessarily be completely sure of exactly what you did to create it. If the mechanism of intentionally overloading the crucible to generate thaumic slimes is retained, then that too might also yield a small shower of random items spontaneously generated out of the swirling essentia in addition to the expected flood of flux. Just as nothing is completely ordered, everything tainted with at least some tiny measure of chaos, so perhaps even in the midst of a flood of deliberate chaos (flux), random chance can create fragments of order, ex nihilo as it were, unformed chaos striving to somehow become ... something. Anything.
Yeah - but you want the catalyst to be consumable, otherwise the player just needs to get 1 ender pearl to produce infinite Alienis. But a consumable catalyst isn't a catalyst - its now just a complicated essentia decomposition from items mechanic in disguise.
Well, technically, not being consumed is part of the definition of a catalyst. A catalyst is something which facilitates or triggers a reaction without itself being consumed in the reaction.
Perhaps "seed" might be a better word here than "catalyst".
Well, I kinda like the idea, though I do see one potential issue with it; it would mean that the only aspect of difficulty for getting any form of essentia would be how many stirring steps it takes, and how long/how difficult it is to get all of the essentia types in one place. This may or may not be a problem, depending on how easy all of the above is, though it also does mean you have much more control over the balance of the whole process. So everyone can blame you if it's too OP.
I kind of like this, mainly because of how difficult it can be to get the more exotic human and subseqent essences for infusion, particulary the late game runic armor infusions, and the whole procese could be made more simple by mixing the base essence together to make compound ones rather than requiring 496 pieces of leather.
I like the idea. Though perhaps have a system for mixing essentias separately?
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Curse PremiumThat is the idea - the crucible will be the early game method for mixing essentia, but later there will be dedicated machines to do so in an easier manner. The opposite of a centrifuge possibly.
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Curse PremiumCompound aspects is still used in research in TC5 - you just don't scan stuff for them anymore.
I like it! Makes the whole system a lot more connected.
The idea is sound but i would like to know how you make compounds. If you only need the primals than it would be a bit cheap for the high tier essentia. If you could give an example for the basic compound creation process, the idea would be easier to judge. Though bringing back the thaumic condenser concept is cool. If this does happen will you do the phase of the moon again? It was probably the only thing that benefited from the moon phases(which most people don't even know minecraft has).
In that case I support this 100% ouo
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Curse PremiumCurrently this is still very high concept - I haven't even thought of working out the details yet.
Using the lowest tier tools as an example and with thumb-sucked output/cost numbers:
You will place a crystal in the condenser (that is the old name for this). It will draw vis from the aura and create crystallized essentia. Lets say that at the lowest tier a single vis shard will be able to produce around 10 essentia before becoming dull. It will roughly use twice the that amount of vis from the aura.
Now you wish to craft some nitor. This costs 3 ignem, 3 potentia and 3 lux along with glowstone as a catalyst (exact same costs as now). The ignem is not a problem as you can get that directly from the condenser. However potentia and lux requires some work.
For lux you throw 3 air and 3 fire crystallized essentia into the crucible and give it a whack with a wand. Out comes 3 lux crystals. You do the same for potentia.
Now you just proceed as usual, throwing in all 9 essential crystals and finishing up with the glowstone dust.
So using the low tier stuff like the crucible it will take quite a bit of crafting to produce the more complex compounds with multiple crafting steps.
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Curse PremiumSo, by that idea, the condenser makes crystallized essentia instead of liquid essentia now? Or will it make liquid essentia that you pipe into a block (which, now that I think about it, would better called the condenser if this second option is the case) that solidifies it into crystals?
Also, will there be tiers of condensors, then, that draw less vis from the aura than the amount of essentia they make, say 8 vis for 12 essentia? And for certain tiers of essentia, will it be, instead of one of each ingredient to make one product, it's 2 of each ingredient to make 1 product, or vise versa?
The new system seems awesome, with far more intricate crafting options.
But. Gating. If all aspects can be crafted, other than the mixing costs there is no apparent gating preventing access to the high tier essentia. At the moment (assuming TC addons havn't fsked with it) certain essentia ARE harder to get than other essentia. Alienis, Aruam, Permutatio all come to mind.
The most difficult thing to make in the new dispensation - if the current combination rules remain in place - would be anything derived from Meto (iirc). Something like 22 primals would need to be combined over 15? steps to produce 1 Meto. And Meto doesn't feel like it should be that special. Ironically I would hope that Auram and Alienis are the hard to craft essentia but their current recipes make them far far easier than the humanus derived ones.
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Curse PremiumYou can grow other crystals from a seed crystal - that is what the "condenser" does, though the name is obviously not correct. The old device it is based on created liquid directly. Crystalizer is probably a better name for it, though higher tier versions that turns it into liquid directly is an obvious upgrade path.
As for the rest of your questions: Yes. Condensers/crystalizers with lower costs and/or better shard-to-essentia ratios are a given in a system like this.
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Curse PremiumYeah, that is something that I will have to take a close look at.
I have already flattened the aspect progression quite a bit for TC 5. For example Humanes is at the end of a branch with nothing above it, and meto (currently) doesn't exist at all. Instrumentum is now just metallum and motus. Etc, etc.
The thing that worries me is needing to collect huge numbers of shards for the complex aspects used in crafting. To work an example, consider a golem:
Total shards needed to drain for a low-tier Gather Golem: 2.1 Aer, 4.0 Aqua, 1.8 Ignis, 1.6 Ordo, 1.8 Perditio, 4.5 Terra. Seems a bit much to me, compared to scraps of rotten flesh, coal and golden trash.
At a minimum, this idea would need major flattening of the aspect tree (admittedly, several of the high-tier aspects can easily be spared), and I'm not wild about it anyway. I suspect all that combining will be a bit of a PITA in itself (not that distilling and centrifuging aren't sometimes).
ETA: OK, Ninja'ed by the dev. No worries! :-)
What if combining essentia needed specific catalysts of some kind for them to be drawn together to mix with each other, like with other alchemy? That would allow some kind of gating. And in the early tiers, maybe the catalyst is used up, but as you advance perhaps you develop a way to section the catalyst off to be used up more slowly and thus be more efficient, sort of like an arcane teabag?
Yeah - but you want the catalyst to be consumable, otherwise the player just needs to get 1 ender pearl to produce infinite Alienis. But a consumable catalyst isn't a catalyst - its now just a complicated essentia decomposition from items mechanic in disguise.
From a pure concept standpoint, this idea is solid. It starts with a timely but cheap process that can improve with progress through the mod. Then, you make higher tier material by using the initial product through a process that can easily be balanced and changed on a whim. It also has the possibility of bringing new and interesting gameplay options in the process of making essentia and intricate crafting possibilities.
However from a logistic perspective, it will be quite a hassle.The main issue is accessibility and how intuitive the new system might be.
The process you mention seems to require time to make any reasonable amount of essentia in the early game. This coupled with the already time gating research might turn people off on starting thaumcraft. It also seems that it also uses vis which with the TC3 style aura making a come back might make the vis issue people are concerned with much more justifiable.There's also the cost balance problem between making higher end ones(Auram, Alenis,etc) vs derivative ones(Humanus, Fabrico).
I personally like the concept but this to really know the feasibility of a change like this we might need a clearer view of whats coming in TC5 in terms of the aura node changes and aspect combination situation. Hope this little rant of mine has helped you in any way Azanor.
wait is 1.8 tc Tc 5? (hopefully the eldritch stuff will still be in there, unlike the what was "left" of tc in tc 3)
This sounds as though low-level alchemy becomes possibly quite a bit more time-consuming, but on the other hand a lot cleaner and less wasteful. It's also going to make it much more important to be able to reasonably readily find all six primal shards, because without a good supply of all necessary shards you won't even be able to get off the ground with alchemy (alchemy itself being doubtless an early-game discovery). I mention this because it has historically been a frequently-reported problem in the past, with many players well stocked on five of the six primals and scouring their world searching for the sixth. Ordo is typically one of those that has left players gasping "A shard, a shard, my kingdom for a shard!" And Ignis (now called Ignem, I see) has sometimes been hard to find.
Could we possibly have (or return to, if memory serves) vis shards required as an ingredient for wand and staff cores? It both gives a trigger for discovery of how to make a wand ("You wonder whether there is some way you can turn the energy of this strange crystal shard to some use"), and provides a rationale for why wands have arcane power in the first place — there is magic bound into their creation right from the start, instead of just being an otherwise unexceptional metal-capped staff or baton that inexplicably acquires magical potential.
Is there any likelihood of there perhaps being a cryptic and difficult-to-obtain late-game seventh primal shard...? I do like TC4's late-game hints at the existence of a mysterious seventh primal, and seven has always been regarded in Western lore/mythology as a number of magical significance. "I am the seventh son of a seventh son, born under a caul."
Another semi-random thought:
What if the crucible itself offered the chance for serendipitous alchemical discoveries? Perhaps if you get your ingredients wrong, or have excess essentia from a process, and just happen to hit a combination that can make something else you haven't yet discovered, there could be a small chance of discovering the new recipe or creating the new item instead of (or, depending on the quantity of surplus essentia, as well as) creating flux — although you might not necessarily be completely sure of exactly what you did to create it. If the mechanism of intentionally overloading the crucible to generate thaumic slimes is retained, then that too might also yield a small shower of random items spontaneously generated out of the swirling essentia in addition to the expected flood of flux. Just as nothing is completely ordered, everything tainted with at least some tiny measure of chaos, so perhaps even in the midst of a flood of deliberate chaos (flux), random chance can create fragments of order, ex nihilo as it were, unformed chaos striving to somehow become ... something. Anything.
Well, technically, not being consumed is part of the definition of a catalyst. A catalyst is something which facilitates or triggers a reaction without itself being consumed in the reaction.
Perhaps "seed" might be a better word here than "catalyst".