The Thaumcraft 4.1 Experience

MigukNamja

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Azanor made some significant changes in Thaumcraft 4.1. The changes are larger than a simple 4.05 --> 4.1 "oh, just 0.05" would imply. I'm enjoying most of the changes, but not everything is sunny side of the street. Here is what I've experienced so far:

Lower Barrier of Entry
Azanor addressed a major complaint about TC -it's an awesome mod, but it takes too long to get started. The starter aspects (16 or 32 of each, I think ?) and the much, much easier-to-make Thaumometer have helped.

In previous versions, the Thaumometer required 1 shard *of each type*. This was usually a PITA and an exercise in finding that missing shard type that effectively delayed TC entry until late early-game or early mid-game

Also, I noticed I got somewhere between 16 and 32 of each primal aspect to start with. This, combined with the easier and more intuitive research makes starting TC 4.1 much easier than previous versions. Still hard to master, but much easier to get into.

Finally, my TC 4.1 world seems to have slightly larger and more frequent nodes. I can recharge my gold-capped Greatwood wand without wandering across 5 different biomes. But, this may be RNG at work. There might be no changes to the node composition or frequency.

Research
Overall, I'm very pleased with the changes. We can now pick what we want to research next and the mini-game rewards knowledge of the aspects. It's also not just an ink-burning symbol-moving exercise. And, no more "impossible" researches topics, at least not in my experience.

I've also noticed things in my Thaumonomicon like Golem Visor that used to be only unlocked with Lore Fragments. I will not be sad if we can leave Lore Fragments by the side of the road.

All is not perfect, though. I had a [TT] research topic that had just 1 Aspect and it was completed when I placed a single valid aspect down. I got my research, but it's clear there are still bugs in either TC 4.1 or [TT] for TC 4.1 .

New Blocks and Items
Powered armor, staves, the animal "love" lamp, and more ! There's a decent amount of new content in TC 4.1 . I haven't found it all yet, but I like it so far.

Essentia Distillation
I think Azanor finally "fixed" the OP Essentia tubes. One can no longer simply connect a huge chain of Warded Jars to a distillation setup and expect it work. There is apparently one 1 kind of essentia allowed in the network at a time and other essentia in the pots will be blocked until that essentia is cleared out. You can see this as Essentia "steam" coming out of the pipes and Azanor introduced a new tool to help troubleshoot it.

While I was disappointed at first, I see that Azanor is encouraging people to use the top-tier alchemy/distillation golems. I had always wondered what the point of those golems were in TS 4.0.5 since the tubes were so efficient. I see now the overly-efficient tubes were somewhere between a bug and an uncompleted feature.

Other
I noticed "taint swarms" when I found a particularly taint about 400m from my base. They were immune to melee attacks from my TiCo scythe. I'm assuming they are harmed by wand-based damage like Shock. Will have to re-visit when I have a decent wand.

What has your experience been in TC 4.1 ?
 
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DREVL

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I like 4.1. Much more than I did 4 or 3. *- I am only doing it in easy mode. I'm not interested in the research mini games anymore and I am using a cheat sheet of scan progression as I don't want to dick around and have it leave me stuck lucking for a step while wasting scan points that are up against my cap because I'm searching for anything that will get me passed my current wall.

I don't mind scan craft as I actually do want a mechanic that enables me to know what aspects each item has and the way it posts in the thaum book is really cool. I of course being able to pick and choose topics is exactly where the mod needed to be. Great new powers and equipment. I actually don't want the cheaters thaum as I want some form of progresssion. Better game play, but also I don't want to get 1 upper teir thing and forget necessary or needed lower teir prerequisites.

Easy just seems perfect for me because the buying knowledge is perfect for my expectations of game play.

tl;dr
In easy mode, and a scanner progression chart, this mod is around perfect for what I want out of it.
 

Golrith

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I'm always amazed at the scope of the changes. Not just little tweaks, but big overhauls combined with new content. Does he sleep?

Haven't started 4.1 yet, but I'm more excited for that then I am for the old system. Disliked it as soon as I saw it, and did mention my concerns here months ago. These appear to be all addressed.
 

MigukNamja

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About the only area/thing he hasn't "fixed" yet is the Crucible. The purple goo that is easily dealt with using brute-force (how uncivilized for a Mage !) by placing blocks or simply flowing water is not becoming of a beautiful mod like Thaumcraft. The crucible experience in TC3 was much more polished, ignoring the major differences between TC3 and TC4 for essentia distillation of course.

Sure, you can use mana beans or phials of essentia and get the exact amounts, but that's working around the problem rather than solving it. I rather liked the way TC3 handled the Crucible and would appreciate a similar (but of course different) experience in TC4.

It would be nice if there was a golem to cleanup the mess, or something similar to the TC3 alembics that could mitigate it. Or, how about being able to gather the purple goo to force spawn taint slimes or other taint creatures ? There's a lot of potential for that purple goo that's being wasted currently, IMHO.
 

Golrith

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I'd have to agree. The Taint (and previous flux) doesn't really seem to do anything really in the current version. There isn't any real "risk" unlike previously (make a mess, have a ton of wisps spawn around your base).
I've always thought that there should be two paths to mid/late game, where you go "dark" and embrace taint, or go "light" and avoid taint. But you can only choose one path.
 

MigukNamja

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I've always thought that there should be two paths to mid/late game, where you go "dark" and embrace taint, or go "light" and avoid taint. But you can only choose one path.

I like ! Being able to role-play with TC would be sweet indeed.

Certain research topics and items would only be obtainable / usable if you were dark (chaotic) or light (orderly) enough to use it. Nothing critical should be an either/or mind you, but the kind or weapon and armor would definitely be chaos vs. order. And, chaotic mages would have more offensive options and orderly would have more defensive options. Order mages might use nature, life, growth, etc.,. for their strength whereas chaos mages would use taint, death, fire, and destruction for their strength.

At the least, light mages should get a big discount on Order-related stuff and a minor discount on Earth and Aqua whereas chaos mages would get similar discounts on Chaos, Fire, and Aer. The discounts would mainly apply to wand Vis, but might also apply to Infusion Altar crafting involving those Primals and their derivatives (ex. Victus for light mages and Vacuous for chaos mages).

Aspects the opposite your alignment would have an increased cost (penalty).
 

DREVL

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I like ! Being able to role-play with TC would be sweet indeed.

Certain research topics and items would only be obtainable / usable if you were dark (chaotic) or light (orderly) enough to use it. Nothing critical should be an either/or mind you, but the kind or weapon and armor would definitely be chaos vs. order. And, chaotic mages would have more offensive options and orderly would have more defensive options. Order mages might use nature, life, growth, etc.,. for their strength whereas chaos mages would use taint, death, fire, and destruction for their strength.

At the least, light mages should get a big discount on Order-related stuff and a minor discount on Earth and Aqua whereas chaos mages would get similar discounts on Chaos, Fire, and Aer. The discounts would mainly apply to wand Vis, but might also apply to Infusion Altar crafting involving those Primals and their derivatives (ex. Victus for light mages and Vacuous for chaos mages).

Aspects the opposite your alignment would have an increased cost (penalty).
lol someone already did that! Arse Magica
 

RedBoss

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I don't like the essentia tube change, but that's just me. I'm not into overly complicated system creation at all. Golems are good but they are still somewhat inconsistent in pathfinding. The choices beyond manual distillation are nerfed pipes or golems with a YMMV caveat. I have dealt with the golem issue a bit by putting all my stability items like skulls and shards, beneath my infusion altar. This is better anyway because I hate the floor clutter.

I'm liking that there are options for the research minigame. I was thoroughly done with the old system. When news of 4.1 came around I was a hair's breath away from enabling the cheaty thaumonomicon. I tried the new research on normal mode and it reminded me of games I played in gifted classes from grade school. Interesting and better than the old rune system. I went to easy mode and surprisingly there's still challenge in gathering points and making sure you have enough to purchase research. The rewards from research are usually great but I'm not a fan of difficult research.

After figuring out my derp with staff crafting, I'm happy with the addition. I've always wanted an adventure purposed wand. I enjoy exploring and 2 things, when using TC primarily, have cut mytrips short; low charge on gear and inventory space. The staves really extend that length of travel and are great for people who don't use TC add-ons which offer higher capacity wands.

I haven't tried the new armor but I like its addition. I especially like that "vanilla" TC now has armored Goggles of Revealing. Its addition to Thaumium armor by TT was great but having a similar protection in the core mod is fantastic. I like how many of the concepts addressed by the add-ons are making their way into the base mod without completely destroying their usefulness in the add-ons themselves.

In all I feel the changes are good. I miss my easier tubes though! There's SO much effort into getting to the infusion crafting stage that I feel punished by its removal. Once I have a few golems working I'll let it go. Over all I like the changes and feel a bit better from much utter frustration with 4.0 research
 

Skyqula

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I realy like this TC 4.1. The new easymode research is awesome.

About the only area/thing he hasn't "fixed" yet is the Crucible. The purple goo that is easily dealt with using brute-force (how uncivilized for a Mage !) by placing blocks or simply flowing water is not becoming of a beautiful mod like Thaumcraft. The crucible experience in TC3 was much more polished, ignoring the major differences between TC3 and TC4 for essentia distillation of course.

Or, how about being able to gather the purple goo to force spawn taint slimes or other taint creatures ?

Well, alchemical construct, its awesome (correct naming is mythical construct, its made from 2 alchemical constructs). No more clunky crucible crafting. Infact, that thing alone makes me realy wanna mess around with all the new tubes, essentia buffer, label options for pipes/alembics and that alchemical centrifuge. So much interesting things to do with it! :) Oh and that essentia mirror... Loving it!

As for the purple goo, I actually tinkered around in a creative world, deliberatly overflowing crucibles to fill an area with liquid flux. Man those slime spawns are HUGE. Containing them, now thats the hard part :D (4 thick walls did not do the trick) Its also more of a "vanilla" build. Its not a "plop magic machine down and winning" kind of deal ;D

The thing that I like most though, is the new armor. It looks so cool! Its a shame it goes at the cost of water breathing, but atleast it absorbs fall/lava damage :)
 
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MigukNamja

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@RedBoss The tubes are a nerf for sure. No two ways about that. I'm embracing the nerf and using it as a goal to building an Infusion Altar room that's golem-friendly. I will most likely keep my jars on one side of the room to avoid pathing issues. In the meantime, I'll do it by hand or by fiddling with the pipes as they are.

Well, alchemical construct, its awesome

Oh ? I'll have to try this tonight !

[DOUBLEPOST=1393349937][/DOUBLEPOST]
"plop magic machine down and winning" kind of deal ;D

*Pictures Charlie Sheen doing a "Lets' Play" video.

upload_2014-2-25_12-33-14.jpeg
 
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RedBoss

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@RedBoss The tubes are a nerf for sure. No two ways about that. I'm embracing the nerf and using it as a goal to building an Infusion Altar room that's golem-friendly. I will most likely keep my jars on one side of the room to avoid pathing issues. In the meantime, I'll do it by hand or by fiddling with the pipes as they are.
I'm feeling that manual is the way to go until you get into crafting items with more than 4 aspects and high volumes of essentia. In the meantime this guy is helping me with setting up my new infusion room.
 

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MigukNamja

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I'm feeling that manual is the way to go until you get into crafting items with more than 4 aspects and high volumes of essentia. In the meantime this guy is helping me with setting up my new infusion room.

LOL, nice. Is that random, or did you coerce/capture him and put him there ?

Is that RC Quarried Block or white stone for the floor ? And, planning on adding another level, or keeping it open air ? I like the open-air setup.
 

RivingtonDown

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I think the essentia tube "nerfs" moved things in the right direction. It was just too simple before.

A couple of things make it not so friendly though. Decoupling tubes with the wand is a hassle and based solely on which block you clicked when you placed the tube. You really should be able to click on different faces of the tube to shut that route off or do something similar to Extra Utilities Pipes or Iron Pipes where you can cycle through which side of the tube is open/closed.

There also should be some more readable signals from the tubes, furnaces, and alembics so an automated system could be built. Simply having alembics send a redstone signal when they're full would be useful, or adding a redstone tube that could send a signal when it's clogged. Right now I think OpenPeripherals is the only thing that can read the machines (which is kind of a hack anyways), and as far as liquid essentia is concerned, even OpenPer only can read from Jars.
 

DeathOfTime

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I never really got into the magic mods. Thuamcraft 4 was the most approachable for me. It took a little effort , yet it was worth it.

With Thaumcraft 4.1 I am still trying to figure stuff out. I can't even wrap my mind around the research system. My little brother rage quits often when he tries to attain a new research and I just take a copy from him. I was just figuring out the infusion alter before the update. Now I am back to having no clue with both it and the elimbic.....We tried 4 times last night to make a siverwood wand core and everything went wrong each time and we were absolutely sure we had set up everything properly.

So far 4.1 has just been a headache/frustration. I like a lot of the changes though....the click to get a research note or to instantly complete a research was nice. The ability to quick craft essentia for the research grid was good to.

Of course I haven't really done much with the mod either. It has mostly been my little brother working with it....I have been working on Bees , which I am still not sure of the usefulness of....

I am sure I just need to give Thaumcraft 4.1 time to grow on me. Many of the mods were frustrating to learn at first....
 
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Democretes

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Essentia Distillation
I think Azanor finally "fixed" the OP Essentia tubes. One can no longer simply connect a huge chain of Warded Jars to a distillation setup and expect it work. There is apparently one 1 kind of essentia allowed in the network at a time and other essentia in the pots will be blocked until that essentia is cleared out. You can see this as Essentia "steam" coming out of the pipes and Azanor introduced a new tool to help troubleshoot it.

While I was disappointed at first, I see that Azanor is encouraging people to use the top-tier alchemy/distillation golems. I had always wondered what the point of those golems were in TS 4.0.5 since the tubes were so efficient. I see now the overly-efficient tubes were somewhere between a bug and an uncompleted feature.
I'm with you up to this point. I really hate the new system. It makes a lot of things more difficult that shouldn't be. Golems are cool and all, but there's a better way of upgrading them without downgrading everything else so drastically.
 

James_Grimm

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I'm feeling that manual is the way to go until you get into crafting items with more than 4 aspects and high volumes of essentia. In the meantime this guy is helping me with setting up my new infusion room.

What materials are those walls made of ? I recognize Railcraft Strengthed Glass, but I don't know that type of wood block/stone tops. Is that Carpentry?
 

Revemohl

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The new research actually feels a bit way too easy, or I don't know, maybe simple, for me -- you just open your book, decide "oh today I want to get this golem", click, think a bit and it's done (if you didn't use the research helper to skip the thinking bit). Not that I dislike it, but I liked the feeling of "aspiring magician trying to research randomly, getting ideas and going for them" from all previous versions better than the "follow this recipe book and get magic cake" from 4.1.

At least the new mini-game isn't bad (and more importantly uses less ink than 4.0's), and this system is probably a lot better on repeat playthroughs of the mod, which admittedly did get a bit tiring in 4.0. I didn't mind that mini-game, though, and I still fail to see how so many people could have hated it.
Also, the soft research cap is a lot less annoying than I thought it would be when I first read about it.
 

RedBoss

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What materials are those walls made of ? I recognize Railcraft Strengthed Glass, but I don't know that type of wood block/stone tops. Is that Carpentry?
Towerwood planks from the Twilight forest. I usually turn one of the towers into cobble with the wand of equal trade. Its very tough and takes forever to break with any type of axe.

LOL, nice. Is that random, or did you coerce/capture him and put him there ?

Is that RC Quarried Block or white stone for the floor ? And, planning on adding another level, or keeping it open air ? I like the open-air setup.
He wandered in the first floor then rode my arcane levitator to the second floor. I've not decided what to do about the roof situation. I'll post some pics of what I've don't thus far in another thread so I don't derail this one.