These are sad news to hear, but understandable. Thank you Azanor, for all the memories and good experiences you've brought. It wouldn't have been the same without you and your work.
Best of wishes to you! "May you find your worth in the waking world."
It's been a while since i last posted ideas, But i just came up with some regarding taint and had to write them down.
This idea was born, partially by my dismay that taint destroys trees, as well as from a sudden image i formed in my head.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
The crux of the idea is to diversify taint by separating it into three "types": Light Taint, Heavy/Deep Taint, and Growing Taint.
-Heavy Taint:
Heavy Taint Biomes are steeped in taint, Painting it a familiar shade of dark purple. They are always surrounded by Light Taint biomes.
While it does not spread, the Heavy Taint biomes are functionally the same as previous versions of taint. It is the matured form of taint and within this land, trees over time deteriorate and becomes hives, and animals becomes living tools to spread and maintain its presence.
There is little presence of nature in heavily tainted areas, even the ground and water having been heavily suffused with taint.
Heavy Taint can sometimes be found naturally, likely as the mishap of some ancient thaumaturge that grew out of control.
-Deep Taint:
Deep Taint is functionally and visually the same as heavy taint, only entirely underground. It is always found directly below Heavy Taint.
This 'biome' usually forms when Heavy Taint takes root, growing down into the ground, and through the caves, as the stone becomes converted.
Deep Taint biomes can also rarely be found in the wild, Recognizable as a opening in the earth reminiscent of a sinkhole. A lightly-purple mist spewing out from its depths and into the air, surrounding it with a biome of Light Taint that's settling around the opening.
-Light Taint:
Light Taint biomes, as the names suggest, are lightly tainted. Light Taint biomes always surround Heavy Taint biomes.
A Pale, grey-ish purple reminiscent of the mushroom biome covers the land, a light, grey-ish mist hanging in the air.
The Light Taint biome is not a precursor to Heavy Taint biomes however. It is actually the off-shoot and overflow of a vast amount of taint, blanketing the land in taint-spores. Like a layer of fine ash from the aftermath of a erupted volcano.
The minds of lesser animals seems to be affected by the spores, becoming slower when within the biome. The player is not noticeably affected however.
Although the trees still remain unharmed in Light Taint, their bark noticeably darken and their leaves fills with spores, making them pale.
Light Taint biomes does not spread, and will slowly disperse over time if there is no Heavy/Deep taint to support its presence.
-Growing Taint:
Lastly there's Growing Taint. It is the most similar to current and past versions of taint, following the same behavior.
It is aggressive and dangerous. Devouring the land in its vicinity as it spreads and consumes to perpetuate itself.
The occasionally explosive growth-spurts of Growing Taint has been the bane of many a reckless Thaumaturge and their careless experimenting in the past.
Once it is born it spreads fast, but it still only becomes difficult to remove once it has gained sufficient mass to take root. This difficulty stems from the fact that while growing it spews out all manner of defenses to preserve itself. The longer it stays, the bigger it gets. And the bigger it gets, the more defenses it can create.
While still at a small size, this is rather manageable. But if it is allowed to fester for long enough its voracious growth will feed the creation of more and stronger defensive measures, eventually overrunning anyone but the most prepared Thaumaturges.
While it is young however it is not much of a threat to a prepared Thaumaturge. But if it is allowed to take root, the best course is to simply leave it be.
Growing Taint, if given time, will eventually calm and settle. Maturing into Heavy Taint. Itis much more easily removed in this state as it's more spread out, preventing it from mustering a more concentrated effort to protect itself.
Once it has settled into heavy Taint it will cease to grow. Only maintaining its current size, slowly spreading Light Taint at its edges.
Other ideas:
-Chests and containers become turned into 'Crusted Boxes/Blocks' when tainted, which will drop their contents when broken. Any machines will also drop their contents when broken.
-When the aura is sufficiently suffused with Vis it can sometimes form blocky veins of crystallized Vis. These blocks can be mined and either used as decoration, or converted into crystals.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
Anyways, that's it.
On a side note, Anyone else here heard of Hytale? From its style alone, i could easily imagine Thaumcraft belonging in it.
I just had an idea. What if you combine the golems with the wispy lantern?
Golems are a hollow frame, the lantern imbues them with life (And acts as a convenient tether for information).
So the golems body defines what they can do and how smart they can be, like it is now. But the lantern holds the golems "lifeforce" that animates them. The Lantern itself however, works with the seals and acts as the golems A.I., telling their bodies where to go and take things. The lantern basically holding the golems instructions.
Later on the lantern might be upgraded to be able to handle wisps as well.
((The lantern stores the information on the golems within itself, preserving them when unloading and loading the world. acting as a sort of pseudo-spawner when a connected golems body is missing when they shouldn't be.))
EDIT:
Picture this: The room is silent, golem frames standing inactive around the room awaiting life. Then a note plays, or perhaps a redstone signal is emitted, and tiny wisps of flame flies out of the lantern and finds it place in each of the golems cores. The light in their eyes flickering to life as the tiny flame awakens the golems and they go to work.
Another note, or signal, is emitted and the flame leaves the golems chest and returns to the lantern. Work ceases, and the room is quiet again.
Perhaps the vitium problem could be solved by making alchemy or such occasionally produce chunks of vitium? like an by-product that pops out sometimes.
I just realized that with the gauntlet in the off-hand there's an potential focus use going untapped, mainly using them with bows.
Perhaps using one of the focii mediums you can imbue elemental or status effects to the weapon you're wielding. as such using the gauntlet with a bow lets you enhance the arrows with ice, healing, or wind for example. Imbuing them with the elemental effects from the focus.
It could either be a function of the touch medium, or there could be a new "Imbue/Enhance/Enchant" Medium. Allowing you to use your focus on whatever is being held in the opposite hand.
it would synergize well with bows, as you could give arrows anything from elemental to status effects. It wouldn't improve the arrows actual damage, but it would be a nice return of the elemental arrows.
It makes sense. Instead of crafting special arrows, you just imbue normal ones with magic while you draw them. Much more efficient.
If he means holding the thaumometer crashing the game, that happens in overworld as well, least it did in the creative test-world i crated to check out the new stuff.
Man, i just encountered with a crimson rift and it was downright comical.
I saw the portal on top of a mountain pillar in the cliffs biome, and of course i built a cobble-pillar to get up to it.
Just as i try to scan the portal, cultist start popping out! and i throw my thaumometer away just as they knock me off my cobble pillar. I survived the drop, but in my panic i must have clicked outside the window because i cannot move. My thaumathurge being obviously too flabbergasted by the shock of the event to move. And then just as i regain control and begin running away i'm killed.
Overall, it was fun! One heck of a way to first be introduced to the crimson cultists though.
My thaumaturge will probably remember that encounter for a while.
Can you use an exchange focus to remove tainted blocks?
Though what we really need is a ward modifier that can be used for shields, barriers, and warding blocks, or even a modifier for it that prevents the passage of taint, perhaps by placing down a near invisible block that taint can't affect. (heck, better ways to manage and exploit taint would be better, but i guess that shall come in time. would really like if flux processing took cues from tc2 though. A man may dream.)
Gotta say, pipes are looking good in this version. nice work on them! (I've also noticed they seem small enough that you could potentially fit four of them in the same space.)
Aah, and the "research complete" banners that pops up are fancy, so that's nice too.
I get it now--vitium = "defect" = whatever spreads (I suppose). Makes sense, onwards to silk touch pickaxeing...!
It's likely more because both things grows by "corrupting" their surroundings into something else, and "taint" the natural with more of itself. I mean grass spreads and you don't see grass blocks having vitium.
So its likely more that it has vitium because it overwrites whats there with itself. Essentially tainting it by doing so.
So wisps end up becoming these sorta living pipelines sorta thing?
Yeah! I though the idea of wisps flitting around inventory to inventory through the air around the base was really cool.
Obviously it would be a lot of smoke and mirrors going on, like the sprite of a wisp with a item flying through the air, but meanwhile the item is actually just being deposited into another inventory after X ticks and such and the wisp is just a (semi-?)independent visual.
In that case the lanterns would probably act as a independent inventory that hold, take, and deposit the items that the wisps "carry".
i personally enjoy the idea of wisps being,,, networkers? so to speak. wisps are the brains and golems are the brawns, sort of deal. but even then i'm not sure how to execute or expand on that idea.
Perhaps then the wisps are only used for their transport capabilities early on, and as you learn more about them you can set them to more complex tasks. Like how the first computers assemblies were made of vacuum tubes and stuff, the Thaumaturges version is animated clockwork and wisps.
Eventually our creation of wisps expands as they are given their own design like the Golem press, allowing us to utilize their arithmetic functions to create simple "programs" of instructions to imprint into a wisp. these advanced wisps may even be able to impart new instructions to other wisps, allowing you to essentially change a wisps behavior depending on where it goes.
Like say a wisp is carrying an item, in the beginning you can only tell it to take an item to one location and go back, but with the advanced wisps around you can tell it "if you are carrying item X go to A, if you are carrying item Z go to B, if you are not carrying either Z or X go to C." The command change being visualized by the advanced wisp zapping the lesser one.
And you know how some mods got machines like a builders and blueprints allowing them to copy and paste blocks around the world?
What if you could use wisps to do that?
First you tell them to memorize a area, giving you a etched crystal tablet with the area's block information.
Then you can either use wisps to clear out the area, placing the blocks in a designated inventory, or you can use the tablet to instruct wisps to rebuild it elsewhere, transporting the blocks form one location to another, Or just build a new copy, taking the materials from a designated inventory.
I dunno, i just find the idea of a swarm of wisps moving around and and building stuff seems really cool. Like the ancients drones from stargate, But used as a tool to build, instead of just as a weapon alone.
Like, just a 3x3 area of wisp particles that moves around, deconstructing or placing blocks as it moves just seems cool.
Then again, i've even got ideas for something like an Architects Table, that allows you to "digitally" design or view structures. Allowing you to non-tediously design large structures, and once you're done you just put the design onto a crystal tablet, give the instruction to the wisps, and they build it for you. Placing blocks and hollowing out terrain as instructed. How awesome wouldn't that be.
---
Ahh, if only i wasn't so soul-drained, i could force myself to learn the code. But most of my metaphorical spark plugs have burnt out, and i can't exactly drive to the store and buy new ones. Motivation isn't a problem, its just that the soul-juice stores are empty.
Oh well, nothing to do but hope it gets better. But enough about my little pity-party, life goes on.
I've found myself a small thought for golems and wisps. That's a thing we're still discussing, right guys? Guys??
Basically Golems are the early game, or perhaps for more advanced later game, form of labor. Used more for tasks such as chopping trees, butchering, fishing, etc, things that doesn't require them to move much. Wisps are more for picking stuff up, moving them around etc, traveling from lantern to lantern as they carry items from one place to another, serving as the transport system.
Alternatively, wisps could also be used for transporting Aura/Vis from one place to another.
oh, yes, it really is uncraftable, guess noone noticed because noone uses it (it has like one(?) actual usage - being a fuel)
Alumentum might have been used more often if it wasn't used up while there was nothing for it to burn. I think it did that when used in alchemical furnaces at some point in the past.
You know what I would LOVE for TC6 to add in the future?
Nether and end specific Taint structures, or mobs, or just... something unique because of the dimensions' different ways of being. Like, the nether is a cavernous dimension, so have taintacles that extend from ceiling to floor, like gross, fleshy strands. Hell, even having Ceiling Taintacles would be amazing, too.
And in the End? Gosh, I can only imagine what Taint would do to Chorus Plants.
Another thing to note is that when un-tainting Netherrack and soul sand, they still turn into Porous Stone and Dirt, even though those don't quite make sense(netherrack being a fleshy material and soul sand being, well, sand with souls in it).
Reminds me of that time i made a image mock-up in mspaint a long time ago, of a taint structure that absorbed heat from the magma oceans below while it was wrapped around a node like structure.
I like how the pipes allow only one type of essentia to flow through them at once, it makes sense.
What i don't like is how easily the essentia doesn't know where to go, even when there's only one way for it to go. A problem i have frequently had with my Thaumatoriums, As even after i place down the pipes and make sure they don't connect, there's still times where it doesn't seem to want to draw essentia from any of the jars. What annoyances.
It seems almost as if the pipes don't act like they are separated from other pipes, even though they look like they are.
---
You could perhaps also give the pipe system more flexibility by letting it be divided into sections, like Factorio's rail system works.
Though what i really want is to be able to place multiple pipes in the same space, for more compact pipelines and aesthetics. The idea just seems cool and could also open up to much more complexity. And if valves would only respond to redstone from the same side they face, you could probably make some rather intricate mechanisms. ---
Whatever the judgement, i'll still play. I just wish separated pipes acted more... Isolated. (And also that i didn't have to move my jars around just to make it realize where they are/that they are there.)
So long as you add a way of getting it readily. We used to have whisps, but they don't drops wisps of essentia anymore.
Maybe a side effect of Thaumaturgically Artificed Dimensions is that you can siphon auram from within them?
0
These are sad news to hear, but understandable. Thank you Azanor, for all the memories and good experiences you've brought. It wouldn't have been the same without you and your work.
Best of wishes to you! "May you find your worth in the waking world."
Good luck man.
5
It's been a while since i last posted ideas, But i just came up with some regarding taint and had to write them down.
This idea was born, partially by my dismay that taint destroys trees, as well as from a sudden image i formed in my head.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
The crux of the idea is to diversify taint by separating it into three "types": Light Taint, Heavy/Deep Taint, and Growing Taint.
-Heavy Taint:
Heavy Taint Biomes are steeped in taint, Painting it a familiar shade of dark purple. They are always surrounded by Light Taint biomes.
While it does not spread, the Heavy Taint biomes are functionally the same as previous versions of taint. It is the matured form of taint and within this land, trees over time deteriorate and becomes hives, and animals becomes living tools to spread and maintain its presence.
There is little presence of nature in heavily tainted areas, even the ground and water having been heavily suffused with taint.
Heavy Taint can sometimes be found naturally, likely as the mishap of some ancient thaumaturge that grew out of control.
-Deep Taint:
Deep Taint is functionally and visually the same as heavy taint, only entirely underground. It is always found directly below Heavy Taint.
This 'biome' usually forms when Heavy Taint takes root, growing down into the ground, and through the caves, as the stone becomes converted.
Deep Taint biomes can also rarely be found in the wild, Recognizable as a opening in the earth reminiscent of a sinkhole. A lightly-purple mist spewing out from its depths and into the air, surrounding it with a biome of Light Taint that's settling around the opening.
-Light Taint:
Light Taint biomes, as the names suggest, are lightly tainted. Light Taint biomes always surround Heavy Taint biomes.
A Pale, grey-ish purple reminiscent of the mushroom biome covers the land, a light, grey-ish mist hanging in the air.
The Light Taint biome is not a precursor to Heavy Taint biomes however. It is actually the off-shoot and overflow of a vast amount of taint, blanketing the land in taint-spores. Like a layer of fine ash from the aftermath of a erupted volcano.
The minds of lesser animals seems to be affected by the spores, becoming slower when within the biome. The player is not noticeably affected however.
Although the trees still remain unharmed in Light Taint, their bark noticeably darken and their leaves fills with spores, making them pale.
Light Taint biomes does not spread, and will slowly disperse over time if there is no Heavy/Deep taint to support its presence.
-Growing Taint:
Lastly there's Growing Taint. It is the most similar to current and past versions of taint, following the same behavior.
It is aggressive and dangerous. Devouring the land in its vicinity as it spreads and consumes to perpetuate itself.
The occasionally explosive growth-spurts of Growing Taint has been the bane of many a reckless Thaumaturge and their careless experimenting in the past.
Once it is born it spreads fast, but it still only becomes difficult to remove once it has gained sufficient mass to take root. This difficulty stems from the fact that while growing it spews out all manner of defenses to preserve itself. The longer it stays, the bigger it gets. And the bigger it gets, the more defenses it can create.
While still at a small size, this is rather manageable. But if it is allowed to fester for long enough its voracious growth will feed the creation of more and stronger defensive measures, eventually overrunning anyone but the most prepared Thaumaturges.
While it is young however it is not much of a threat to a prepared Thaumaturge. But if it is allowed to take root, the best course is to simply leave it be.
Growing Taint, if given time, will eventually calm and settle. Maturing into Heavy Taint. Itis much more easily removed in this state as it's more spread out, preventing it from mustering a more concentrated effort to protect itself.
Once it has settled into heavy Taint it will cease to grow. Only maintaining its current size, slowly spreading Light Taint at its edges.
Other ideas:
-Chests and containers become turned into 'Crusted Boxes/Blocks' when tainted, which will drop their contents when broken. Any machines will also drop their contents when broken.
-When the aura is sufficiently suffused with Vis it can sometimes form blocky veins of crystallized Vis. These blocks can be mined and either used as decoration, or converted into crystals.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
Anyways, that's it.
On a side note, Anyone else here heard of Hytale? From its style alone, i could easily imagine Thaumcraft belonging in it.
2
I just had an idea. What if you combine the golems with the wispy lantern?
Golems are a hollow frame, the lantern imbues them with life (And acts as a convenient tether for information).
So the golems body defines what they can do and how smart they can be, like it is now. But the lantern holds the golems "lifeforce" that animates them. The Lantern itself however, works with the seals and acts as the golems A.I., telling their bodies where to go and take things. The lantern basically holding the golems instructions.
Later on the lantern might be upgraded to be able to handle wisps as well.
((The lantern stores the information on the golems within itself, preserving them when unloading and loading the world. acting as a sort of pseudo-spawner when a connected golems body is missing when they shouldn't be.))
EDIT:
Picture this: The room is silent, golem frames standing inactive around the room awaiting life. Then a note plays, or perhaps a redstone signal is emitted, and tiny wisps of flame flies out of the lantern and finds it place in each of the golems cores. The light in their eyes flickering to life as the tiny flame awakens the golems and they go to work.
Another note, or signal, is emitted and the flame leaves the golems chest and returns to the lantern. Work ceases, and the room is quiet again.
1
Throwing something into a rift to create a primordial pearl... That would be an interesting way to obtain it.
0
Perhaps the vitium problem could be solved by making alchemy or such occasionally produce chunks of vitium? like an by-product that pops out sometimes.
1
I just realized that with the gauntlet in the off-hand there's an potential focus use going untapped, mainly using them with bows.
Perhaps using one of the focii mediums you can imbue elemental or status effects to the weapon you're wielding. as such using the gauntlet with a bow lets you enhance the arrows with ice, healing, or wind for example. Imbuing them with the elemental effects from the focus.
It could either be a function of the touch medium, or there could be a new "Imbue/Enhance/Enchant" Medium. Allowing you to use your focus on whatever is being held in the opposite hand.
it would synergize well with bows, as you could give arrows anything from elemental to status effects. It wouldn't improve the arrows actual damage, but it would be a nice return of the elemental arrows.
It makes sense. Instead of crafting special arrows, you just imbue normal ones with magic while you draw them. Much more efficient.
0
If he means holding the thaumometer crashing the game, that happens in overworld as well, least it did in the creative test-world i crated to check out the new stuff.
0
Man, i just encountered with a crimson rift and it was downright comical.
I saw the portal on top of a mountain pillar in the cliffs biome, and of course i built a cobble-pillar to get up to it.
Just as i try to scan the portal, cultist start popping out! and i throw my thaumometer away just as they knock me off my cobble pillar. I survived the drop, but in my panic i must have clicked outside the window because i cannot move. My thaumathurge being obviously too flabbergasted by the shock of the event to move. And then just as i regain control and begin running away i'm killed.
Overall, it was fun! One heck of a way to first be introduced to the crimson cultists though.
My thaumaturge will probably remember that encounter for a while.
0
Can you use an exchange focus to remove tainted blocks?
Though what we really need is a ward modifier that can be used for shields, barriers, and warding blocks, or even a modifier for it that prevents the passage of taint, perhaps by placing down a near invisible block that taint can't affect. (heck, better ways to manage and exploit taint would be better, but i guess that shall come in time. would really like if flux processing took cues from tc2 though. A man may dream.)
Gotta say, pipes are looking good in this version. nice work on them! (I've also noticed they seem small enough that you could potentially fit four of them in the same space.)
Aah, and the "research complete" banners that pops up are fancy, so that's nice too.
0
It's likely more because both things grows by "corrupting" their surroundings into something else, and "taint" the natural with more of itself. I mean grass spreads and you don't see grass blocks having vitium.
So its likely more that it has vitium because it overwrites whats there with itself. Essentially tainting it by doing so.
2
Yeah! I though the idea of wisps flitting around inventory to inventory through the air around the base was really cool.
Obviously it would be a lot of smoke and mirrors going on, like the sprite of a wisp with a item flying through the air, but meanwhile the item is actually just being deposited into another inventory after X ticks and such and the wisp is just a (semi-?)independent visual.
In that case the lanterns would probably act as a independent inventory that hold, take, and deposit the items that the wisps "carry".
Perhaps then the wisps are only used for their transport capabilities early on, and as you learn more about them you can set them to more complex tasks. Like how the first computers assemblies were made of vacuum tubes and stuff, the Thaumaturges version is animated clockwork and wisps.
Eventually our creation of wisps expands as they are given their own design like the Golem press, allowing us to utilize their arithmetic functions to create simple "programs" of instructions to imprint into a wisp. these advanced wisps may even be able to impart new instructions to other wisps, allowing you to essentially change a wisps behavior depending on where it goes.
Like say a wisp is carrying an item, in the beginning you can only tell it to take an item to one location and go back, but with the advanced wisps around you can tell it "if you are carrying item X go to A, if you are carrying item Z go to B, if you are not carrying either Z or X go to C." The command change being visualized by the advanced wisp zapping the lesser one.
And you know how some mods got machines like a builders and blueprints allowing them to copy and paste blocks around the world?
What if you could use wisps to do that?
First you tell them to memorize a area, giving you a etched crystal tablet with the area's block information.
Then you can either use wisps to clear out the area, placing the blocks in a designated inventory, or you can use the tablet to instruct wisps to rebuild it elsewhere, transporting the blocks form one location to another, Or just build a new copy, taking the materials from a designated inventory.
I dunno, i just find the idea of a swarm of wisps moving around and and building stuff seems really cool. Like the ancients drones from stargate, But used as a tool to build, instead of just as a weapon alone.
Like, just a 3x3 area of wisp particles that moves around, deconstructing or placing blocks as it moves just seems cool.
Then again, i've even got ideas for something like an Architects Table, that allows you to "digitally" design or view structures. Allowing you to non-tediously design large structures, and once you're done you just put the design onto a crystal tablet, give the instruction to the wisps, and they build it for you. Placing blocks and hollowing out terrain as instructed. How awesome wouldn't that be.
---
Ahh, if only i wasn't so soul-drained, i could force myself to learn the code. But most of my metaphorical spark plugs have burnt out, and i can't exactly drive to the store and buy new ones. Motivation isn't a problem, its just that the soul-juice stores are empty.
Oh well, nothing to do but hope it gets better. But enough about my little pity-party, life goes on.
2
I've found myself a small thought for golems and wisps. That's a thing we're still discussing, right guys? Guys??
Basically Golems are the early game, or perhaps for more advanced later game, form of labor. Used more for tasks such as chopping trees, butchering, fishing, etc, things that doesn't require them to move much. Wisps are more for picking stuff up, moving them around etc, traveling from lantern to lantern as they carry items from one place to another, serving as the transport system.
Alternatively, wisps could also be used for transporting Aura/Vis from one place to another.
2
Something like astroneers air extension system for the aura, daisy chaining vis tethers in the nether through the portal might be neat.
Alumentum might have been used more often if it wasn't used up while there was nothing for it to burn. I think it did that when used in alchemical furnaces at some point in the past.
Reminds me of that time i made a image mock-up in mspaint a long time ago, of a taint structure that absorbed heat from the magma oceans below while it was wrapped around a node like structure.
1
I like how the pipes allow only one type of essentia to flow through them at once, it makes sense.
What i don't like is how easily the essentia doesn't know where to go, even when there's only one way for it to go. A problem i have frequently had with my Thaumatoriums, As even after i place down the pipes and make sure they don't connect, there's still times where it doesn't seem to want to draw essentia from any of the jars. What annoyances.
It seems almost as if the pipes don't act like they are separated from other pipes, even though they look like they are.
---
You could perhaps also give the pipe system more flexibility by letting it be divided into sections, like Factorio's rail system works.
Though what i really want is to be able to place multiple pipes in the same space, for more compact pipelines and aesthetics. The idea just seems cool and could also open up to much more complexity. And if valves would only respond to redstone from the same side they face, you could probably make some rather intricate mechanisms.---
Whatever the judgement, i'll still play. I just wish separated pipes acted more... Isolated. (And also that i didn't have to move my jars around just to make it realize where they are/that they are there.)
1
So long as you add a way of getting it readily. We used to have whisps, but they don't drops wisps of essentia anymore.
Maybe a side effect of Thaumaturgically Artificed Dimensions is that you can siphon auram from within them?