Allow Vis Crystal combination through crafting as well as research

[L1GHTN1NG-STR1KE]

Greetings, all! Since I'm new here, I'll explain a little about my experience of Thaumcraft: I first learned of the mod when I saw its fourth iteration in Mianite Season 2 and immediately became very interested but have only actually downloaded it a month or so ago due to a general worry over my lack of modding knowledge. So far, I've done what I always do in a Minecraft world: start work on a massive base that's easily out of my reach before even getting a decent supply of diamonds! (Seems a little more manageable this time, though; maybe due to my increased interest this time around.)

Anyway, I'm writing this ultimately due to the fact that I'm working on the research into Essentia pipes. As of now, I've secured phials of Vinculum, Alienis and Alkimia Essentia and am currently trying to get the necessary phial of Vitium Essentia. Now, since I like playing with Large Biomes turned on, finding and getting Mycelium would be difficult at best; the other option would be to introduce Taint to the world which, especially since there's currently no way to hold it back, isn't an idea that I'm all too fond of. As such, I've resorted to randomly finding cards that allow you to form Vitium crystals in the research table by combining Praecantio and Perditio crystals.

It's taking a little while.

Anyway, one thing that has stuck out to me, and indeed has with other crystal-combining cards, is that the card describes no special process for combination. Apparently, this is something that a reasonably skilled Thaumaturge can just do, which begs the question: why isn’t it possible outside research? It seems to make sense for the player to be able to craft Vis crystals from Vis crystals of their constituent aspects away from the context of the research minigame. I appreciate that this may be for balance reasons; then again, neither is this method particularly efficient (since one sacrifices two crystals for a single crystal) nor, indeed, changes anything about the necessary tech or materials needed (since it’s already possible with the method outlined above and just takes a lot of time). It would also remove the bottleneck that I’ve seen a couple of people say they find that the research for Essentia pipes is. Perhaps it could be a part of Fundamentals research, with getting the cards gated behind that as well? Not sure.

Thank you for reading all of this; feedback would, of course, be appreciated and I wish you all well!

[apmax]

You're supposed to create a flux rift and have a taint seed spawn as part of the natural mod progression. Taint is much easier to deal with now; you kill the seed and it all dries up completely.

[L1GHTN1NG-STR1KE]

Oh, okay. Good to hear that I have that option! It’s a pity, though, that I only read your comment after I’d already walked 5,000 blocks to try to find an ocean… I think I’ll keep looking for now - no point in ruining the natural beauty of the world if I don’t have to. Anyway, I don’t think that this changes the main substance of the proposal, namely that it makes little sense to not be able to combine Vis crystals through ordinary crafting based on what we read of the process in the research cards.

[jvcmarcenes]

I've resorted to downloading the Twilight Forest mod and getting mycelium there

[apmax]

I don't know why you'd go through any such lengths just to get your vitium from mycelium when tainted soil seems to be the intended source for progression.

[jvcmarcenes]

I didn't knew that flux was easy to deal with, I was shit scared of building flux... And I didn't see any way of controlling the flux, soI thoughtit was better to find some other way

[majijn]

I didnt know either, I actually travelled 6000 blocks to get to a mushroom biome, using nature's compass I still dont think ill let taint and flux build up, unless I decide to go all out on figuring out how to properly contain it.

[apmax]

Containing taint is literally as simple as killing the taint seed and watching it all dry up.

[praecipitator]

Combining essentia could easily turn overpowered. IMO, it would be better to get rid of the ability to combine crystals through research alltogether, in order to fix the aforementioned plot hole.

But, combining essentia could still be added, as a somewhat complicated, risky process.

From the way essentia behaves in a crucible, it can be assumed that aspects are more eager to decompose than to synthesize. So, you need to force the reaction to run in the other direction.

-> New block: Essentia Reactor. It must recieve essentia via tubes, and produces crystals of the combined aspect. The reactor can hold one single quartz sliver, and requires 2 points of each input essentia type to turn the sliver into a vis crystal of the combined aspect. The resulting crystal will be output automatically, new slivers can be put in via hopper.

If no sliver is present, but essentia still connected, the reactor will still draw it in, but without anything to bind to, the essentia turns into flux, just as if you were to empty a jar manually. The same happens if the two aspects you connected to it do not result in a compound aspect.

[Geethebluesky]

For the reactor, I really think it would be appropriate for Permutatio to be necessary. It's one of those currently-underused aspects and fits the idea of turning something into something else.

I also support generating Flux with that operation because combining is powerful, and it also feels like it'd be working opposite the nature of magic (where you can break down complex things into simpler ones, but you'd need a boost to do the opposite). That penalty also prevents just endlessly combining Permutatio to fulfill the requirement.

[praecipitator]

You definitely should not be able to produce enough permutatio to keep the reaction running. Or rather, at most just enough to keep it running, but not to be able to do anything useful: You need 1 point of permutatio to produce 1 crystal. So, if you synthesize permutatio and smelt the resulting crystal, the essentia you gain is just enough to create the next crystal. And you wasted 2 ordo 2 perditio.

Alternatively, vitreus could be used as fuel, since you are trying to get stuff to crystallize.

Another, different idea for synthesizing aspects:

• Use infusion crafting to create a crystal seed. Infuse a quartz sliver with two vis crystals holding the two constitutent aspects, vitreus, permutatio, maybe more stuff
• The resulting seed has no aspects besides vitreus. It has to be planted onto rock
• It will then sloooowly grow into vis crystal clusters, similar to the ones we have already. It does so by absorbing vis from the aura, the more complex the aspect, the longer it takes
• In order to accelerate the growth (and to allow the crystal to spread to nearby blocks), it can be sprayed with the two constituent essentia types. This is done with a special machine which needs essentia to be piped in.
• However, this is almost as bad as emptying a jar by hand. Only a part of the essentia actually binds to the growing crystal, the rest turns into flux.

Edit: taint crystals could actually absorb flux in order to grow. This could be a mechanism to handle flux and prevent rifts from forming. To balance this, taint crystal clusters could generate taint seeds on their own, the more of them you have, the greater the chance.

Like: each tick, a taint crystal has a chance to collect some flux from the aura. It then attempts to grow, but has also a small chance to spawn a small taint seed. If it fails to grow, because max size reached, it attempts to spread. If it cannot spread, because all nearby blocks are occupied, it turns into a large taint seed. And/Or it might start growing INTO blocks, breaking and replacing them with more taint crystals.

[Geethebluesky]

Your bullet points remind me of mana bean farms, but without the auto-combining aspect they had. (I miss those.)

I was under the impression that planted Flux crystals already need Flux in the local aura to grow, and that they consumed it as well (maybe the consumption part was just wishful thinking?) I like the idea of a Flux crystal farm growing its own seeds though. Feels like being able to control when and where a Seed appears is a better option for farming anything.

That is, unless there's going to be a way to produce Rifts on command at some point... (?)

If Flux crystals could be used to make new combinations, they would be a good way of getting some harder-to-get aspects like Alienis.

[ShaneCourtrille]

The fact normal research combine things without issue but you can't do it kills the Thaumcraft thematic feeling. I can understand the desire not to make it easy to create aspects but either the research card needs to go or we need some manner of doing it ourselves.

[devtn2001]

With reactor i think that quartz silver isn't a good idea maybe we will get an essentia crystalizer that don't use any quartz.