ok thanks <3, that means we have a lier on the server that has boosted his base damage to 50, and is using a plugin to take stuff out of our inventory.
What plug-ins are you using? You're running an MCPC server, correct? Sounds like someone may have added a plug-in recommended by your mystery user that does nothing but op him so he can troll. Check your op list and see if his name is there. If it is, find the plug-in that may be masquerading as a legitimate plug-in (like No-Cheat and its copy-cat fake plug-in, No-Cheat++), remove the fake plug-in, and ban the mystery user who was abusing his ill-gotten op powers. And after that's all done, have a discussion with your other ops and/or people who have access to the inner workings of your server about adding new plug-ins without checking them first.
Berry, Desert, Gourd, Grass, Ground, Herb
Leafy, Mushroom, Stalk, Textile, Tropical, Water
Desert, Mushroom, and Textile look like what they drop because they only have one item to drop.
Water gardens look like Rice because I can't think of a way to represent rice, seaweed, and cranberries.
Give me your opinions on colors and stuff please.
Yay Tropical bushes made it in! My only suggestion is to make a colors a bit brighter, so they contrast with the ground better and show up easier. Gourd, Stalk and Tropical in particular blend in with the vanilla grass very well.
I get the feeling that you may not have actually read my post, because I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly. You've written massive paragraphs about the benefits of research, when I've already made my stance clear that I I want to keep research, but see it reworked.
I sure am one to talk about massive paragraphs.
I don't know if I'm just being silly here or not, but it just feels like you haven't actually understood my post, because your response seems... irrelevant, apart from the very beginning since we were talking about Mystcraft ages. I understand the benefit of it, but on servers it's not a viable solution unless you're in cahoots with the server owner to periodically take the server down, sort through which ages are which (assuming other people are using Mystcraft) and then deleting those. Single player, it's all up to you so it's not that big of a deal.
Analyzing the System
The point of my post is that when we consider the issue of the research system (again, the research system's concept is not bad; I vastly prefer it to microcrafting, and I greatly enjoy the puzzle systems), we have to be aware of its flaws and faults. You've clearly outlined its benefits, but what are the drawbacks of the current system, especially compared to previous systems? Nearly all of the systems have had a single, massive flaw across the whole lot of them, which is GAMBLING.
Scanning for points did make it a much more deliberate system, which I very much appreciate - and a nearly wasteless one for those of us who actually know how to use it through multiple worlds - but not everyone has a good memory for the aspects and would usually prefer to take the easy way out, which is typically just doing Primal, Compound, Primal aspect chaining to connect their nodes. Also - many players, especially new ones, will waste points and then have to constantly feed their deconstruction table. This is a band-aid solution to a core issue with the overall system. The scanning, as deliberate as it may be, provides a limited number of resources unless you go out of your way to generate new dimensions via such mods, looking for aura nodes, or otherwise explore for miles outside of familiar territory. Then, it falls back on the old, flawed system of gambling away massive quantities of items as a crutch, a tedious and boring one at that.
Providing Suggestions
What the system really needs is to rely on a renewable resource, with no chance for failure in acquiring new points. Preferably a resource that would be used by things other than the research system! Dumping stacks of logs into a block to generate a chance at research points is a trying experience, but on the flip side, dumping stacks of logs into a block to generate some kind of fuel or crafting material that could also be used for research is a good system, because you're going to be generating and stockpiling that stuff anyhow.
To prevent people from just burning through the tech tree without actually touching anything but the most basic things, one could make certain research branches say "You require a better understanding of this / these things before you can continue" or somesuch, which means you'd have to make and scan certain items in-world. Not like lost research, which is invisible, but locked research that provides a simple clue or even outright names something, such as needing to scan the... Alchemical Furnace before you can move on to create the Infernal Furnace.
Scanning and deconstructing could be relegated to identification (such as seeing which items give what resources), and the actual 'research points' as such could be considered to be bonuses to make the system easier, not to provide a way to work through the system in the first place.
Gambling as a necessity to progress is boring; gambling as an option to make things easier, as a personal choice, is enjoyable.
People can and will mess up with research. Yeah, sure, they'll get better at it if they keep making new worlds or joining new servers, but that doesn't eliminate the flaws - they're just getting better at dancing around them.
No, I did understand your post, you want something more concrete and renew-able than the current stratagem of 'throw research points at a puzzle until it goes away'. I'm glad that we both agree that we need research, but I am of the opinion that the band-aid fixes, the deconstruction table and ghost points, more than cover the gap with a little effort. Netherwart provides every primal in the game and netherwart farms are incredibly easy to make, as well as providing a primal research point with almost every piece of netherwart. Yes, checking the tables for every point is rather annoying, and I wish you could use tubes of some sort to 'pipe' them into your research table, but having to go and check the tables by hand is the price paid for being able to get easier research points than having to go out and scan nodes or create an incredibly complex object that you have no other use for other than scanning. Have your golems set up a small netherwart harvesting system and you'll have more than enough research points with less effort than killing the ender dragon to scan its egg for research points or roaming several thousand blocks from your base to scan for nodes.
Unfortunately, not all of us use Mystcraft, and the fewer mods we use in general the more difficult it's going to be. A lot of this is based off of Thaumcraft as a standalone mod, as it's fairly clearly designed with being standalone in mind. Can you honestly say that you wouldn't be using it more if you had Thaumcraft, and ONLY Thaumcraft (maybe NEI) as the one mod when you play Minecraft? Plus, any solution that requires spamming Mystcraft worlds is going to be a massive strain on servers.
I say all this as someone who knows his way around Thaumcraft 4.1. I know the vast majority of aspect combinations and can pretty much scan the rest. I habitually scan new items for more research points, but I rarely ever use the vast majority of them except for primals and primal compounds, and running out to try and find nodes to scan just for research points is a trying experience, especially when I want to actually expand and upgrade my base instead of go a million miles to get what I need. Funnily enough, the "easy" researches, the purchasable ones, are actually proving to be more trying to get through than regular research, although I'm specifically picturing golemancy research here.
I genuinely enjoy the research mechanic as a puzzle and a concept, but it has its flaws, and people who end up dismissing them in favour of just saying "Lol, I've NEVER used the Deconstruction Table " is... well, I can't really say anything nice about that kind of mentality. It's nearly as bad as just being grouchy and only ever complaining, possibly even worse because instead of making developers aware of issues, these people give them the idea that it's perfectly fine as is. Whether being positive or negative, it is important to actually analyze the system, especially from the eyes of a first time player or better yet, a multiple time player, and use these angles to give constructive criticism.
Here's how I see it:
~New player: Everything is shiny and new, if a bit confusing. Misuses research points and relies heavily on the deconstruction table. Moderate risk of becoming bored with a slow, tedious system. Once again pointing out that it's the research points, not the puzzle system or the idea of needing to research to progress, that are research's biggest drawback.
~Experienced player: Knows their way around well enough to not misuse research points heavily, uses the deconstruction table far less, but repetition starts to bare its fangs whenever they join a new server or new world, but overall still enjoy the mod and what it brings to the table.
~Master player: Can claim to never use the deconstruction table (honestly, a bit skeptical about this, considering how heavily Golemancy for instance relies on aqua for Victus and Motus and how difficult it is to actually find aqua research points unless you're actively going out and hunting down nodes that you'll nearly never use other than for research points) and can make highly efficient farming setups. Yet, the repetition has finally bitten in deep, making it so that they loathe the system just because they have to start all over to do things that they've done plenty of times before. May actively avoid the mod until they can just brute force it after having set up other mods first.
All Mystcraft did was save me from having to discover more chunks on my main map, if I didn't have it in my modpack, then I'd just have ranged out more on my main map. Same solution, I just prefer not having an enormous primary world map, the Mystcraft dimensions are easy enough to delete if they get too big. Yes, I preferred the old research, if you used common sense then you could definately trim down how many research points you needed to burn to solve research, and as research stands now compared to how it was then, you hemorrhage points to solve the same researches, while getting even less points from scanning things. Nothing is perfect, and each system has its faults. However, Thaumcraft needs to have research because it desperately needs some kind of hard gating, otherwise anyone could have a Thaumostatic harness within minutes of booting up the mod.
Research is another reason why, on average, the recipes are so cheap, you've already put in all the time and prerequisites to learn the recipe, so once you've melted down some items for essentia and filled out your infusion alter with the needed paltry materials, you're good to go unless some pieces explode, adding to the cost. The recipies and essentia costs for all crafted items would, I imagine, go up by leaps and bounds as a re-balancing act to the removal of research, and I am not ok with that. I'd much rather make a wool or netherwart farm (netherwart includes the fire that wool lacks) and feed deconstruction tables than have to melt down more items, and use more rare, high-quality materials in a crafting, or worse, have to infusion craft multiple materials for an item like the Thaumostatic Harness, to then be used as components in THAT infusion crafting. If one of those exploded due to the chaotic nature of infusion crafting, you'd have no choice BUT to stop the crafting, losing all your invested essentia, and having to start from scratch again.
TL;DR: Research is a sorely needed requirement of Thaumcraft in exchange for all the goodies you get with it. It changes from time to time, so you need to also change with it and make full use of all tools available to you, no matter where they come from.
Actually, I've never needed a deconstruction table as anything but a decoration.
Neither have I, when I ran low on points, I just made a random Mystcraft Age and ran around scanning every node I could find, easy easy easy points, as well as being able to find interesting new nodes to jar up!
How about a Repair focus? Slap that onto a wand or staff, and when the call to drain vis for the repair enchant comes into effect, it checks for that focus on the wands/staves in the inventory first and pulls the vis from the wand with the repair focus. Doesn't need to have any other benefits other than designating the tool it's on as the primary target for repair vis drain.
Is there a way to clear affinities, or even turn them off, without resorting to tomes? Just realized I had accrued over 30 nature affinity from my entangle/lightning damage zone spell, and was greatly slowed down. I'd like to clear that nature affinity out.
As a side note, while I had gained nature affinity while farming endermen, no was no gains to lightning affinity, despite my spellcraft book saying it should have been 50/50 gains to each.
I've re-uploaded Weee! Flowers 1.7.2b to make flowers breaking sound like grass instead of glass. Whoops.
Idea for new mini-mod: GLASS FLOWERS! Because beauty is fragile...and splinters easily. Makes place-able glass flowers on any surface by combining dye and a glass block in a kiln block.
I got the Cutting Board item/block/crafting grid and GUI working. =)
I'm doing all the complicated stuff first (GUIs, tile entity stuff for the bees/etc) before I start porting everything else over.
Also, if I can make them look nice, I might be doing a item/block/crafting grid combo for the Pot, Skillet, Saucepan, Bakeware, Mixing Bowl, Juicer, and Mortar and Pestle. If so, the Pot, Skillet, Saucepan, and Bakeware will only be place able on the furnace.
That doesn't mean the furnace will have to be running to cook the food, right? ...I use charcoal for so many things already, I don't want to have to wait for my food to cook! XD
Single Bushes
Blackberry, Blueberry, Cactus Fruit, Candleberry, Cotton, Cranberry, Grape, Kiwi, Pineapple, Raspberry, Rice, Seaweed, Strawberry, White Mushroom
---------- I could combine the berries (blackberry, blueberry, raspberry, and strawberry) but seems weird for some reason.
I would rename stem garden to gourd garden since most of the foods in that list are gourds instead of edible stems, and possibly add kiwi, grape and pineapple together into a tropical garden. Also, the idea for adding the berries into a berry garden is still a good one, three less single bushes.
EDIT: Ninja'd on gourd garden! Curse you AND your tortoise cozy, Sunconure11!
I got an idea for a new casting shape from a game I played. Weapon Enchant. It works like touch except your weapon gets the effect. To balance it out, it only lasts for a little while or only for a few strikes.
Also, I'm having trouble figuring out how to get the silver skills. Can someone at least give one of the components needed for each skill other that the obvious ones? I tried to get firestorm but to no avail.
Because I don't want to post the obvious spoilers here, I will say that the Feed the Beast forums have done a lot of research on the subject of silver spells, and a quick Google search will give you what you're looking for.
if that gives the world a purple tint while wearing the goggles, please no.
it may sound cool now, but it would be really anoying really fast.
I agree with this, and purple is my favorite color. : / If Azanor adds an option to dye the lenses with purple dye to make them give the world a purple tint, that's a happy middle ground, but don't default it to worldwide purple tint while wearing the goggles.
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What plug-ins are you using? You're running an MCPC server, correct? Sounds like someone may have added a plug-in recommended by your mystery user that does nothing but op him so he can troll. Check your op list and see if his name is there. If it is, find the plug-in that may be masquerading as a legitimate plug-in (like No-Cheat and its copy-cat fake plug-in, No-Cheat++), remove the fake plug-in, and ban the mystery user who was abusing his ill-gotten op powers. And after that's all done, have a discussion with your other ops and/or people who have access to the inner workings of your server about adding new plug-ins without checking them first.
0
Yay Tropical bushes made it in! My only suggestion is to make a colors a bit brighter, so they contrast with the ground better and show up easier. Gourd, Stalk and Tropical in particular blend in with the vanilla grass very well.
0
Soybean + water bucket/barrel = soy milk? A bit of a cheap way to work around it, but an easy one.
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No, I did understand your post, you want something more concrete and renew-able than the current stratagem of 'throw research points at a puzzle until it goes away'. I'm glad that we both agree that we need research, but I am of the opinion that the band-aid fixes, the deconstruction table and ghost points, more than cover the gap with a little effort. Netherwart provides every primal in the game and netherwart farms are incredibly easy to make, as well as providing a primal research point with almost every piece of netherwart. Yes, checking the tables for every point is rather annoying, and I wish you could use tubes of some sort to 'pipe' them into your research table, but having to go and check the tables by hand is the price paid for being able to get easier research points than having to go out and scan nodes or create an incredibly complex object that you have no other use for other than scanning. Have your golems set up a small netherwart harvesting system and you'll have more than enough research points with less effort than killing the ender dragon to scan its egg for research points or roaming several thousand blocks from your base to scan for nodes.
0
All Mystcraft did was save me from having to discover more chunks on my main map, if I didn't have it in my modpack, then I'd just have ranged out more on my main map. Same solution, I just prefer not having an enormous primary world map, the Mystcraft dimensions are easy enough to delete if they get too big. Yes, I preferred the old research, if you used common sense then you could definately trim down how many research points you needed to burn to solve research, and as research stands now compared to how it was then, you hemorrhage points to solve the same researches, while getting even less points from scanning things. Nothing is perfect, and each system has its faults. However, Thaumcraft needs to have research because it desperately needs some kind of hard gating, otherwise anyone could have a Thaumostatic harness within minutes of booting up the mod.
Research is another reason why, on average, the recipes are so cheap, you've already put in all the time and prerequisites to learn the recipe, so once you've melted down some items for essentia and filled out your infusion alter with the needed paltry materials, you're good to go unless some pieces explode, adding to the cost. The recipies and essentia costs for all crafted items would, I imagine, go up by leaps and bounds as a re-balancing act to the removal of research, and I am not ok with that. I'd much rather make a wool or netherwart farm (netherwart includes the fire that wool lacks) and feed deconstruction tables than have to melt down more items, and use more rare, high-quality materials in a crafting, or worse, have to infusion craft multiple materials for an item like the Thaumostatic Harness, to then be used as components in THAT infusion crafting. If one of those exploded due to the chaotic nature of infusion crafting, you'd have no choice BUT to stop the crafting, losing all your invested essentia, and having to start from scratch again.
TL;DR: Research is a sorely needed requirement of Thaumcraft in exchange for all the goodies you get with it. It changes from time to time, so you need to also change with it and make full use of all tools available to you, no matter where they come from.
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Neither have I, when I ran low on points, I just made a random Mystcraft Age and ran around scanning every node I could find, easy easy easy points, as well as being able to find interesting new nodes to jar up!
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As a side note, while I had gained nature affinity while farming endermen, no was no gains to lightning affinity, despite my spellcraft book saying it should have been 50/50 gains to each.
1
Idea for new mini-mod: GLASS FLOWERS! Because beauty is fragile...and splinters easily. Makes place-able glass flowers on any surface by combining dye and a glass block in a kiln block.
0
That doesn't mean the furnace will have to be running to cook the food, right? ...I use charcoal for so many things already, I don't want to have to wait for my food to cook! XD
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I would rename stem garden to gourd garden since most of the foods in that list are gourds instead of edible stems, and possibly add kiwi, grape and pineapple together into a tropical garden. Also, the idea for adding the berries into a berry garden is still a good one, three less single bushes.
EDIT: Ninja'd on gourd garden! Curse you AND your tortoise cozy, Sunconure11!
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Congrats! Now, back to programming for your game of virtual Legos.
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Because I don't want to post the obvious spoilers here, I will say that the Feed the Beast forums have done a lot of research on the subject of silver spells, and a quick Google search will give you what you're looking for.
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I agree with this, and purple is my favorite color. : / If Azanor adds an option to dye the lenses with purple dye to make them give the world a purple tint, that's a happy middle ground, but don't default it to worldwide purple tint while wearing the goggles.
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lol that was quick.