Just a moment of your time. (Thaumcraft Research Puzzle)
- Thread starter Zuthilios
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God damn that's annoying, I used up so many research points on it. Thanks for your help though.
It can be very annoying, but it is possible to limit how many research points you waste.
When you get a new research note, try to "guess" if its possible, If it looks too hard, trash, rinse and repeat.
You can usually tell with some confidence if a research will be impossible by activating one aspect and counting the number of lit nodes. With the help of the thaumcraft cheat sheets on these forums, you can do some simple multiplication to determine how many lit nodes you will have to work with. With a magic marker (KIDDING!!!) you can plot the desired paths across your screen and see if you'll have enough nodes.
Frankly, it's usually worth it to trash a research and try again if it's questionable. Especially if you primed it with a research you have a ton of.
Frankly, it's usually worth it to trash a research and try again if it's questionable. Especially if you primed it with a research you have a ton of.
Reminds me of the bad old days, when games with any sort of random generation regularly had stuff spawn in such a way that the game itself was rendered unwinnable, or special stuff was rendered inaccessible, so on and so forth.
Heck, one or two of the Civilization games actually had a shortcut added so you could completely recreate the map before taking your first turn, since people often found themselves making ten new games for every one they played.
Heck, one or two of the Civilization games actually had a shortcut added so you could completely recreate the map before taking your first turn, since people often found themselves making ten new games for every one they played.
Unfortunately, I believe that as long as impossible research continues to be a thing, people will keep coming to the forums to post about it, whether they believe it to be a bug or their own inability to solve it.
It'd be nice if the mod itself indicated that impossible research was a possibility, and we could try putting up a sticky, but I think this is just one of those recurring topics that every forum has.
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It'd be nice if the mod itself indicated that impossible research was a possibility, and we could try putting up a sticky, but I think this is just one of those recurring topics that every forum has.
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It's still randomized on the ones that you play mini games for ( I believe ). But your research is no longer randomized and you don't have to play the mini game for ALOT of stuff just click and spend a set amount of research.
The randomization is there so even though there are cheat sheets out there you still have to do some work. So the impossible puzzles should not go away they will just be few and far between.
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The randomization is there so even though there are cheat sheets out there you still have to do some work. So the impossible puzzles should not go away they will just be few and far between.
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The "is this puzzle solveable" question is a difficult one for a computer to solve. It's "travelling salesman" time, but the small number of nodes and fixed starting point may mean that it doesn't get too bad. Lets see, if there are 5 nodes on the board, that makes 24 possible paths. I don't think I've seen any more than that. Not too bad. If there were any puzzles with 6 nodes, there would be 120 paths. So I guess Azanor could write a check to see if the puzzle is solveable. I see the unsolveable puzzles as just part of the challenge, though - can I work out that it is unsolveable without wasting too many points?
I'm pretty sure there have been threads with similar discussions about TC4 "impossible" research before, but my opinion is that it's just part of research. In the real world, the vast majority of research is dead-end. Having a little dead-end research in TC4 is not a huge deal, IMHO. It adds to the risk/randomness that permeates Thaumcraft.
If you're looking for certainty 100% of the time, Thaumcraft is not the mod for you.
I do, agree, though, that learning about impossible research the first time is usually more **FUN !**** than actual fun/enjoyment.
If you're looking for certainty 100% of the time, Thaumcraft is not the mod for you.
I do, agree, though, that learning about impossible research the first time is usually more **FUN !**** than actual fun/enjoyment.
Spent so much time last night trying to get research for axe of the stream ......... Finally got it and solved it after about 30 other researches came up for other aqua based stuff. 
No biggie. I'm making it harder by picking and choosing, I should just research something when it comes up accidentally so that it doesn't keep popping up.
After hearing about the new stuff, I decided to just take the plunge and get my research done before the change. Hope I don't find out it nullifies my old research and I just need to start it over. heh, universe knows how to punish the Fuzz.
No biggie. I'm making it harder by picking and choosing, I should just research something when it comes up accidentally so that it doesn't keep popping up. After hearing about the new stuff, I decided to just take the plunge and get my research done before the change. Hope I don't find out it nullifies my old research and I just need to start it over.
heh, universe knows how to punish the Fuzz.Spent so much time last night trying to get research for axe of the stream ......... Finally got it and solved it after about 30 other researches came up for other aqua based stuff.
After hearing about the new stuff, I decided to just take the plunge and get my research done before the change. Hope I don't find out it nullifies my old research and I just need to start it over.
Azanor is fixing this in upcoming TC4.1 . Research will be targeted. Yeah !
He also soft-nerfed scanning, but now that research is able to get targeted, the nerf should not be a big deal.
I just watched his video at
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
In the real world I also don't need semi-limited magical points to continue studying a subject, in thaumcraft you do. It wouldn't be so bad except when you get these notes and run out you look up at the points you lost and remember the last several hours or days you spent gathering them and realize you now have to go twice as far as last time to find new nodes, or wait a few weeks as passive singular points accumulate, as well as be there to combine them up so you can get a few more.
It's for this reason that I build a Deconstruction Table ASAP and always keep a stack of mossy cobblestone burning away in it. You can get all primals from mossy cobblestone and it's material free, and not much energy per tick when you combine the following TE3 machines:
1. Aqueous Accumulator (AA) feeding into IE and LT
2. Igneous Extruder (IE) set to cobblestone and output into LT
3. Liquid Transposer (LT) accepting water from AA and cobblestone from IE and outputting into Deconstruction Table
Put that Decon table in a central location in your base and always click on it when a symbol pops up. I don't condone staring at it for hours on end, but just click it when you see a symbol. It's free research points.
Also, make sure to scan *everything* you build, including the intermediate crafting components. And, don't hesitate to build cheap stuff just to scan.
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I just find it's a giant pain when you need a bunch of T4+ aspects. That 200 primals turns into not much of anything after a certain point, and both harvesting the primals and crafting the later tiers takes a TON of clicking for not much return.
That being said, next version features major changes in research, so here's hoping for good things.