Thaumcraft Research Tips (Revised, v3)(spoilers)

[zooqooo]

So, I did some testing, attempting to find the best way to get all Thaumcraft research. This is what I came across as the complete set of items you need for any and all Thaumcraft research (for real this time).

I tried to go for cheap and as few items as possible. For instance, I don't use dirt or cobble, I use soul sand and furnace instead. Also I try to condense, while you would generally use iron, bread, or vis shards, I don't list any of them because they are redundant.

The items are listed in order of how much you need relative too each other, most used items first, least used, last.

Spoiler: List of Items

Really, that's it.

You need many of each item, but some more than others. Here's the basics of how it works. (List of Aspects)

Flint: Instrumentum (you could also use stone tools)
Feather: Aura, Volito
Rubber (IC2): Imperito, Motus (Imperito also comes from levers, Motus also comes from boats)
Leather: Corpus, Pannus, Tutamen, Bestia (Tutamen also comes from armor, Pannus also comes from wool, Corpus also comes from meat and eggs)
Ender Pearls: Praecantatio, Vitreus, Alienis, (you could also use vis shards)
Seeds: Herba, Permutatio (Permutatio also comes from eggs)
Copper: Metallum, Victus (Metallum also comes from other metals, Victus also comes from food)
Soul Sand: Animus, Vinculum and Solum (Solum also comes from dirt)
Arrow: Telum (you could also use stone swords)
Paper: Aqua, Cognitio
Silverwood: Purus, (you could also use silverwood leaves, diamond or refined iron)
Glow Stone: Lux and Visum (Lux also comes from torches, Visum also comes from carrots)
Nikolite (RP): Machina and Potentia (you could also use redstone torches)
Crafting Table: Fabrico
Furnace: Fractus, Ignus, Saxum (Fractus also comes from cobble and saxum from all rock. Ignus also comes from coal)
Bowl: Vacuos, Lignum
Nether Wart: Mutatio
Zombie Brain: Malum, Mortuus (Mortuus also comes from bones or rotten flesh) (only used once, and for knowledge fragment research)
Note block: Sonus (only used twice)
Spider Eye and Flower: Only for theory of everything (only used once)
Snowball: Only for wand of frost (only used once)
Chiseled Stone: Carus (you could also use gold or lapis) (only used once, and for knowledge fragment research)

Spoiler: Tips

Research is split into 3 tiers based on thaumic field/wand research (tier 1 ends at Wand of the Adept, tier 2 ends at Wand of the Thaumaturge).

Teir 1 is dominated by the transmutation research, be prepared to go through lots of Metallum and Permutatio.

All of the wands feature either Instrumentum or Telum, most of the the rest tier 2 research feature either Imperito, Motus or Permutatio

Portable Hole is the only research requiring Alienis, meaning you can use vis shards instead for all other research.

 

[Chthon]

Forget Silverwood for Purus, just use the silverwood leaves. I'm sure you can find other uses for the wood. (Mystcraft has infinite trees to chop anyways)

Also, I prefer seeds for Permutatio (it's PERmutatio not PRE) but you can't get corpus from them so I guess Eggs might be better. However with only 16 in a stack it's a bit of a pain IMO.

 

[zooqooo]

I was thinking about seeds, escpecially since I also use bread, but eggs have 2 permutatio so I finally settled on that

 

[Korenn]

eggs have 4 permutatio. But seeds was indeed better for me.

For some of these I used even cheaper solutions:
I used nikolite for machina and potentia, it has two each and there's tons of it to spare anyway.
For cognitio and aqua I used paper, tons of it is much easier than making maps.
For carus use lapis or chiseled bricks.
For visum use carrots
For lux use torches.
For praecantatio I used greatwood as I had a small greatwood orchard going. potions are another good source.
For Vacuous phials or glass bottles are cheaper, or wooden bowls.
You need lots of motus, and you may be low on rubber at the start, in this situation I used piles of hatches.
For ignus I used netherrack, furnaces are cheap but are more effort

 

[DoctorOr]

Refined Iron is Purus as well.

Zombie Brains are MUCH better for Malum
Bone or Rotten Flesh are also easier to aquire than Ghast tears for Mortus.

 

[zooqooo]

nikolite is a good suggestion, as with paper, in hindsight going for maps was stupid.
carus is kind of meh, you only need a bit
visum and lux are plentiful in glowstone, and I have quite the nether presence
I generally use vis shards for it, but I only list ender pearls because you don't technically need the shards
I am aware of wooden bowls
Rubber also has vmperito so you need hatches and levers
I used netherrach initially, but this experiment was all about reducing redundancy.

great wood is renewable and more pure

as said, reducing redundancy, you only use those aspects 2 or 3 times for the very end teir research

 

[zooqooo]

Alright, I've revised the OP, but for the record, here is the original item set

Spoiler

 

[Chthon]

I personally used boats for motus. IMO it's easier to build a boat than start a rubber farm, but I can see your point there. Rubber stacks after all.

 

[Toraxa]

I personally used boats for motus. IMO it's easier to build a boat than start a rubber farm, but I can see your point there. Rubber stacks after all.

Me too, but I also have over 10,000 wood blocks sitting in a barrel from my wood farm, because I felt I needed lots of barrels and never turned the auto farm off. If you don't have a large supply of wood, boats can be pretty expensive. They don't give all that much research gain, but like to be consumed. I was using them a dozen or two at a time.

Also, imperito is easy to get from levers, which should be readily available by the time you get into thaumcraft.

 

[Chthon]

Me too, but I also have over 10,000 wood blocks sitting in a barrel from my wood farm, because I felt I needed lots of barrels and never turned the auto farm off. If you don't have a large supply of wood, boats can be pretty expensive. They don't give all that much research gain, but like to be consumed. I was using them a dozen or two at a time.

Also, imperito is easy to get from levers, which should be readily available by the time you get into thaumcraft.

Oh right, I used levers as well XD. Honestly I didn't have rubber at the time I did all the research as it was in magic world anyways.

Might want to do a list for each of the modpacks come to think of it, and list what mods you need minimum for each XD

 

[zooqooo]

Working on pushing v3 now, here is the v2 image:

Spoiler

Levers and boats will get a shout out in v3 but I'm sticking with rubber.

Also ICountFrom0, I am aware records have some rare aspects, but they are just so hard to farm. And what about the other guide? I don't quite understand the request/queston.

 

[zooqooo]

I am aware of the old guide, I used it quite a bit in the making of this guide, but you are correct about it not being maintained, I may copy it and begin maintaining it myself but... its a long post.

Feel free to use this guide!

Still, its kind of unnecessary

I left stone in for v3, I'm not particularly inclined to change it, as most have more ready access to smooth stone than sandstone

 

[zooqooo]

Copper nuggets don't have the food symbol.

Storage = vacus
Torch = lux
Water = aqua

Those are the ones I can name off the top of my head

 

[Korenn]

grass floor = lignum
high Y = aura, volito
no light = dark

I recently put a skeleton skull on my research table, because let's face it, what self-respecting wizard doesn't have a skull on his desk. Turns out that gives a boost to Telum and Cognitio!

 

[Eunomiac]

A few of my observations from my own thaumic tinkering:

For Alienis, I use Obsidian Totems rather than Ender Pearls: I find they're easier to acquire, since those totem circles with the chest/spawner in the middle show up rather clearly on the minimap. They were EVERYWHERE on a MystCraft Extreme Hills+Dungeons+Dungeons world; I dug up three or four stacks of them just wandering around for a few hours -- plus the contents of the chests, which was my main goal at the time.

You are an easy source of Corpus: Just stand in your Crucible and take damage.

Static Boots (if you have them) are my go-to source for Tutamen: Each one is Tutamen 4, period, so they divide cleanly into 8 for easy siphoning. And depending on your use of Quarries, it can be easier to get those in large numbers than Leather.

Grass is the best source of Aura (I'd save the Feathers for Volito, which is annoyingly difficult to get absent an annoyingly loud chicken farm).

Glass Phials are the cheapest source of Praecantatio, though Greatwood Logs are a solid alternative once Axe of the Stream lets you chop them down fast enough (add a Stick to round up the Lignum).

Severed Heads are fantastic sources of Malum and Animus: They're easy-enough to get with RedPower's Vorpal enchantment, too. They also provide research bonuses to Malum, in addition to Telum and Cognitio as Korenn mentioned.

I forget the exact aspects, but I remember a "Eureka!" moment when I took another look at Wand of the Apprentice---it's merely a stick, a nugget and a shard, after all.

Awkward Potions are "Aqua 1", which can be very helpful in rounding-to-8 the Aqua in those potions you're throwing into your Crucible. Ditto on Sticks for rounding-to-8 that pesky Lignum.

Wispy Essences shouldn't be overlooked either; if you're like me, you probably had a chest full of them until figuring out this "trick" to easily-nabbing their Essentia: Throw them into a Crucible a pair at a time, until you've processed eight. You'll have 8 Mutatio, 8 Animus, and 8 each of whatever Aspects the WE's were (e.g. 2x Lignum WE's, another 2x Lignum WE's, 2x Malum WE's, and finally 2x Aura WE's = 8 Animus, 8 Mutatio, 8 Malum, 16 Lignum, ready for bottling).

As for research bonuses, Bookshelves (obviously) give big Cognitio bonuses. Silverwood Leaves provide Purus, and Nitor flames provide Praecantatio bonuses (less sure about that last one; plenty could be giving me my Praecantatio bonus, but that seems most likely).

I also suspect that nearby Warded Jars filled with Essentia boost the research of the Aspects they contain. It makes sense, I can't figure out what else is boosting my Pannus research (don't ask why I have a Warded Jar full of Pannus...), and there's no other reason to put Essentia in Warded Jars (so, even if this isn't true yet, it's kind of an obvious future development for Azanor to implement).

 

[Malachai8827]

Hey just thought i would add that if you have the twilight forest mod you can use cicadas as sonus research its more efficient and less costly that a jukebox