So....I've finally built everything but one item from Thaumic Tinkerer KAMI. It's been a memorable experience, one worth sharing here I think. If anything, this will tell anyone who wants to go there what kind of setup and resources you should have before starting with this. Has it been worth it? Well, if you don't want to know the story just skip to the end of this post, where I'll say what I think about that.
Chapter 1: Getting there
Thaumic Tinkerer KAMI may have the most elusive set of features in modded Minecraft, requiring to research everything in Thaumcraft 4 including the hidden research, everything in Thaumic Tinkerer plus everything added to the Thaumonomicon by other mods such as Railcraft or Magic Bees. The most elusive piece of research is one of original Thaumcraft, namely the Staff Core of the Primal, which is unlocked by scanning the projectile coming out of a Wand Focus: Primal. [Note: It appears that you only need to scan the wand focus itself. I haven't been able to confirm this yet, but it's worth checking out].
One thing that may help others getting there: I recommend setting research to hard mode when starting out with Thaumcraft. Why? Well, because hard mode is actually easier than normal mode. Yes, you will need to play the research game for every single research item, but since there are multiple paths for manual research, you will be able to select the aspects you use, in many cases avoid using up rare ones and route your research through more common aspects. Be very stingy with spending Aqua and everything based on it, moderately stingy with Aer, go out of your way to spend Ignis, and generally route research through the Ordo/Metallum/Saxum/Terra chain where possible without going too far out of your way.
Once you've researched that elusive "everything", you will find a new research item in the Thaumic Tinkerer tab: Ichor. In some mythologies, this is a name for the blood of the gods, an indication of what you will find on your way.
Note that research points will very soon cease to be a problem, since if you scan what you build, the TTKami items and resources give you a metric ton of research points. The mod maker must be a sadist, giving you enough research points to redo the whole Thaumcraft tree from scratch, at a point where you'll be unable to use it for anything after you've finished here. TTKami research, once unlocked, is not difficult. At least, not more difficult than regular high-end Thaumcraft research.
Chapter 2: Resources, resources
Resources, however, are a different matter. Looking at the Ichor recipe, it takes a Nether Star, an Eye of Ender, an Ender Shard, a diamond and a Nether Shard for every 8 pieces of Ichor you create. In order to create everything in TTKami, I estimated I'd need about two stacks of the stuff, which turned out to be suprisingly accurate. That means, among other things, 16 Nether Stars....
The Nether Stars, however, turned out to be the least of my problems. The shards only drop from specific enemies, namely Zombie Pigmen and Endermen, which are killed in their respective dimensions, and they will not drop if you kill them with a Grinder as I wasted a few hours to find out. My first attempt to locate an End Portal failed as the first fortress didn't have one, and I had to go out almost 2000 blocks to the next one, which I found at the bottom of an ocean (I didn't know they can appear there. Cool). Killing the dragon didn't present a problem with me in my MPS powersuit and a nice TC sword that does 19 damage, and after I was done with it I plonked down a Magnum Torch, linked the Unlinked Linking Book I had brought to my location, killed the remaining Endermen and set out to built a mobtrap based on an auto-spawner, a Corporeal Attractor and an Autonomous Activator containing a RotaryCraft bedrock sword. Well, actually, I build a Grinder trap first but that didn't work. Anyway, it took a few hours to collect the stack of Ender Shards I wanted. Nether Shards appear to drop rather more frequently, since I already had about 30 from earlier exploration. I wonder if that's a bug, since I don't recall having killed that many Zombie Pigmen. Anyway I decided to forego mobtrapping in the Nether which turned out to be a timesaving decision since I didn't need more than I had. As for the Nether Stars, I've fought the Wither once without a Warded Room and twice in a Warded Room, and I didn't care to do it again, nor did I want to build a Wither spawner, so I cheated by switching to Peaceful and using the crafting recipe. You still need the Wither Skeleton skulls, and you also need two diamonds for the sword, so it's not too much of a cheat. Fortunately, I already had a safari net with a Wither skeleton in it, I just had to put it into the mobtrap I had built for the Endermen and wait. A little more time, and 16 Nether Stars were in my possession.
You think this was the end? Of the first step at least? Well, no. In order to create 8 pieces of Ichor, you need essentia: 64 Spiritus, 32 Humanus and 32 Lux. Which means 16 jars of Spiritus and 8 each of Humanus and Lux. Torches, zombie brains....and four stacks of skeleton skulls I didn't have. Up to the mobtrap, deactivate "Exact Copy", replace the bedrock sword with my Beheading III TC cleaver, set the Autonomous activator to aim high and wait... Oh, and just make sure you have a couple of a hundred buckets of mob essence if you set out to do this... If you have automated essentia distillation without knowing about all this in advance, chances are you will still need to do a lot of manual distillation. I guess I could've used soul sand for the spiritus, but that would've taken four times as long.
All right, off to the serial infusions. I had built my Infusion chamber with this in mind. The following screenshot is from a later point where I already had the Ichorcloth armor pieces, but replace the jars of Iter, Alienis and Volatus I set up for the Celestial Portals with Spiritus, Humanus and Lux and you'll have an impression of the essentia quantities burned just to create the raw material for further infusions:
Note that this setup has 198 crystal clusters, and I *still* got a few minor instability effects while infusing the Awakened tools, though everything else went without any problem whatsoever.
Chapter 3: "Just" Raw materials....
As I mentioned, the 16 infusions went without any problem whatsoever, but the next step was to create Ichorcloth. This is done at the Arcane Workbench, and turning three Ichor, three diamonds and three enchanted cloth (which you'll have to make first) into three Ichorcloth cost you....125 of every aspect of vis in your wand. You need the Thaumium-capped Silverwood wand for this and a full set of Thaumaturge robes, boots etc..
Which is obviously not a process I wanted to repeat a number of times without giving me an additional edge, given how long it takes for an empty wand to recharge if the nodes around the recharge focus are empty. So....there is this shiny new wand I researched which can hold 1000 vis of every aspect. Making it was actually not too difficult, in spite of the number of infusions I had to do. Filling it, however, presents another problem. Of course my wand was empty at this point and my poor aura nodes already overtaxed. But...there is this nice new "Wand Focus: Experience Drain" which will drain XP and turn it into vis on a right-click. This needs a few not too rare resources....and among other things, 16 Vitium essence. Crap. A look into my mana bean store revealed a stock of....*scream* 15. A look into my infusion chamber revealed....a jar with 5 left over from another project *phew*. One of the components for the new focus is a Wand Focus Distortion, which needs to be created by infusion with one of the components being a Wand Focus Uprising, which needs to be created by another infusion....you get the picture. The process is rather involved, and not for the last time, but a little later I had a shiny new and insanely capacious wand in my hand. I'll skip over the Ichorium caps since it was pretty straightforward, made using Thaumium and Ichor and diamonds etc... I should mention that every single recipe in TTKami requires a diamond. It doesn't look like much, but since it includes the raw materials, creating everything in TTKami may have set me back two stacks.
Off to an extended session of.....eating. Eating essence berries, to be precise. Eat a stack, let the wand turn it into vis, repeat until wand is filled. This may have taken about 2000 essence berries. All right, now I could proceed at least to create all the cool things offered by TTKami. Not that the wand isn't cool in itself, but in the end it was all preparatory work until now.
Chapter 4: Armor and Tools
The creation of the armor dídn't present much of challenge, except for the need to distill essentia by the jar again. The names of the items indicate what they can do for you: the Cowl of the Abyssal Depths, the Robe of the Stratosphere, the Leggings of the Burning Mantle and the Boots of the Horizontal Shield. I first create the ichorcloth items in the workbench and then go on to infuse them. An unusual stumbling block presents itself. The Cowl infusion needs.....a cake? Did I ever create a cake in Minecraft? Oh, and it needs milk. I had a tank of the stuff in my old base but didn't bother to recreate it after moving to this shiny new world. I don't even have cows. Sigh. Off to create a pen and collect some cows with the golden lasso. I'll need them anyway. Oh, and....a raw fish? I have about 4000 fish in my ME network but they're all cooked, and I don't have a running fishery. Sigh. Off to plonk down my MFR fishery for a few minutes. Back to infusing stuff. I'm getting a little light-headed now. I've done nothing but infusions for almost two playing sessions now.
The resource-gathering tools present another lengthy process - all need two of their lower-tier equivalents from Thaumcraft as components which of course need to be infused. I also need to create Ichorium, a straightforward process in the worktable using thaumium, ichor and the inevitable diamonds. The basic un-infused version of every tool is made with Silverwood rods instead of sticks, which...you guessed it, have to be infused as well. Which means that every Awakened tool is made with five infusions.
Also, every tool need one full jar of Perfodio essence among a great lot of other stuff. I'm definitely not going to stand beside the furnace feeding it iron pickaxes one by one, and I don't have enough Perfodio mana beans for even two jars. I create a minor piece of automation with a chest and an item conduit, running two furnaces at the same time. Meanwhile, I'm off to my Mystcraft mining age, visiting the giant tunnel left behind by my array of boring machines. There should be enough gold and iron left to see in the walls that I won't have to look for it long. Because I need....native clusters? Who the hell keeps those and doesn't immediately smelt them? Not I. And I need them for the infusions, along with cinnabar clusters which I do have since I don't have much uses for Thaumcraft cinnabar.
At last I have enough stuff gathered. There are 16 jars standing in front of the infusion altar in preparation for creating the gathering tools and the Awakened sword. Until now, in spite of the fact that I've done more infusions than in the whole of my Thaumcraft career in sequence, *and* that every single one of those infusions was a full order of magnitude more complex, and longer, than anything else I've ever done, there have been no instability effects whatsoever. I guess my going all-out with crystal clusters paid off. However, while creating the Awakened Tools I actually have some instability effects, as two components are knocked off from their pedestals and I got a minor injury from flux. Anyway, this set of tools easily requires the most complex creation process of anything else I've ever created. They are really nice, though. I'll get to what they do for me later.
Chapter 5: Celestial Gateways
This is actually why I started out with TTKami in the first place. Celestial gateways may present the most compact teleportation system in modded Minecraft. They consist of one block set into the floor, and every gateway can connect to up to 10 others. All other gateway-like features I know either require frames, or only connect in pairs, or both. Also, the whole magical style appeals to me. I'm find of a "crystal towers and togas" building style with invisible technology, and these play right into my preferences. Unfortunately, one major feature - or rather its lack - prevents these gateways from being the perfect teleportation network: they will not work across dimensions, which is rather disappointing given the effort it takes to get here.
All right, back to work. While the infusions are definitely not as difficult as the creation of the tools, the amount of essentia required is insane. Iter and Alienis by the jar, and only a little less Volatus and Aer. I intend to create ten gateway stones, and since I also need the celestial pearls which serve as link items there is more to be done that just to infuse the paving stones of travel. I also need Transvector Dislocators, which thankfully are created in the Arcane Workbench. Thankfully, both Alienis and Iter is neatly provided by Ender Pearls, of which I have a few thousand in my ME network, and Volatus by feathers of which my chicken farms in the old world had made a few thousand as well. All it takes is some time.
The last item of this chapter is the Wand Focus: Celestial Recall, which will let me teleport to a location linked to a Celestial Pearl in my hotbar from anywhere. With the items I wanted most now in my possession, all that's left is wrapping up by creating the auxiliary tools, which are actually nothing to scoff at...
Chapter 6: Wrapping up - and was it worth it?
I go on to create the Black Hole Talisman. Which needs....tainted goo? What the hell is that? I a little research reveals that this is dropped by tainted slime - I didn't know those even existed - and that tainted slime spawns out of cauldrons if you overfill them drastically. In hindsight, perhaps I shouldn't have done this in my basement, since the flux goo knocked off my Magnum Torch and it took less than half a second for a Creeper to spawn and damage - of all things, my mobtrap. I also got the message that I was infected by flux taint. Thankfully, that does not appear to be permanent. It would seriously cramp my style to walk around as a moving taint source. Even so, I planted a few Ethereal Blooms to be sure to leave behind no taint. I just hope it did not leave anything permanent behind. Anyway, I got my two pieces of tainted goo. Two, because I need two Black Hole talismans, the second one being an infusion component for the Worldshaper's Looking Glass.
I create the Wand Focus: Shadowbeam and the Bottomless Pouch almost as an afterthought. I now have some really cool toys to play with, and I am so sick of doing infusions that I'm quite glad to move on to Magical Crops for a while.
So...was it worth it? While I am impressed by the armor, and it does have one or two unique features like turning you into a light source (which I switched off immediately since moving light sources create lag very much out of proportion to the usefulness of the feature), on the whole it is slightly less powerful than a fully upgraded MPS power suit. Most specifically, it lacks one important feature: the swim boost. While moving and flying around on and above land takes a little getting used to as creative flight needs to take over where jumping and gliding would be used with the powersuit, the lack of fast swimming is situationally crippling.
So, I will keep this armor and use it, but only out of the water and mainly because I love the style, not because it's superior. There is, however, another consideration: within the context of modded Minecraft as a game, the Infused Ichorcloth armor items can be considered inferior to the MPS powersuit, however, to the more roleplaying-like mindset I like to adopt they are hugely attractive, since they present almost the same power as a powersuit with none of the bulk or the weight, and they look very, very nice. Definitely a great leap in style over the powersuit, though of course that's a personal preference.
Meanwhile, the Awakened Tools are definitely worth considering as the ultimate toolset if you discount AM2/Blood Magic spells which are by their nature more versatile. They can be multiple-enchanted using enchanted books and anvils, unlike their lower-tier versions which need to use the Infusion Enchantment process. They also have their unique attributes like mining a 5x5 area or a 1x10 line. The latter is something I've always wished for every since I played Equivalent Exchange back in the Minecraft beta days. I wonder if there's another manual mining tool which lets you mine a 5x5 area with Silk Touch. Definitely a feature worth considering even in a high end environment. I haven't used the sword in combat yet, but then I don't spend much time fighting.
Now to the auxiliary items which are definitely worth it. The Bottomless Pouch is like a Resonant Strongbox and a Focus Pouch combined, and the Black Hole Talisman is a portable Deep Storage Unit. The Worldshaper's Looking Glass is like a Builder's Wand with the 9-block limitation removed, being able to create up to 11x11 walls with one click, drawing from the Black Hole Talisman if you choose blocks stored therein to build with.
This stuff will definitely stay with me and not rot in my storage. And the Celestial Gateways, in spite of their limitation, will make up most of my teleportation network. So, yeah, it absolute is worth it. The only thing that really hurts is the loss of the swim boost. I will definitely keep both the Ichorcloth set and the powersuit at hand.
Chapter 1: Getting there
Thaumic Tinkerer KAMI may have the most elusive set of features in modded Minecraft, requiring to research everything in Thaumcraft 4 including the hidden research, everything in Thaumic Tinkerer plus everything added to the Thaumonomicon by other mods such as Railcraft or Magic Bees. The most elusive piece of research is one of original Thaumcraft, namely the Staff Core of the Primal, which is unlocked by scanning the projectile coming out of a Wand Focus: Primal. [Note: It appears that you only need to scan the wand focus itself. I haven't been able to confirm this yet, but it's worth checking out].
One thing that may help others getting there: I recommend setting research to hard mode when starting out with Thaumcraft. Why? Well, because hard mode is actually easier than normal mode. Yes, you will need to play the research game for every single research item, but since there are multiple paths for manual research, you will be able to select the aspects you use, in many cases avoid using up rare ones and route your research through more common aspects. Be very stingy with spending Aqua and everything based on it, moderately stingy with Aer, go out of your way to spend Ignis, and generally route research through the Ordo/Metallum/Saxum/Terra chain where possible without going too far out of your way.
Once you've researched that elusive "everything", you will find a new research item in the Thaumic Tinkerer tab: Ichor. In some mythologies, this is a name for the blood of the gods, an indication of what you will find on your way.
Note that research points will very soon cease to be a problem, since if you scan what you build, the TTKami items and resources give you a metric ton of research points. The mod maker must be a sadist, giving you enough research points to redo the whole Thaumcraft tree from scratch, at a point where you'll be unable to use it for anything after you've finished here. TTKami research, once unlocked, is not difficult. At least, not more difficult than regular high-end Thaumcraft research.
Chapter 2: Resources, resources
Resources, however, are a different matter. Looking at the Ichor recipe, it takes a Nether Star, an Eye of Ender, an Ender Shard, a diamond and a Nether Shard for every 8 pieces of Ichor you create. In order to create everything in TTKami, I estimated I'd need about two stacks of the stuff, which turned out to be suprisingly accurate. That means, among other things, 16 Nether Stars....
The Nether Stars, however, turned out to be the least of my problems. The shards only drop from specific enemies, namely Zombie Pigmen and Endermen, which are killed in their respective dimensions, and they will not drop if you kill them with a Grinder as I wasted a few hours to find out. My first attempt to locate an End Portal failed as the first fortress didn't have one, and I had to go out almost 2000 blocks to the next one, which I found at the bottom of an ocean (I didn't know they can appear there. Cool). Killing the dragon didn't present a problem with me in my MPS powersuit and a nice TC sword that does 19 damage, and after I was done with it I plonked down a Magnum Torch, linked the Unlinked Linking Book I had brought to my location, killed the remaining Endermen and set out to built a mobtrap based on an auto-spawner, a Corporeal Attractor and an Autonomous Activator containing a RotaryCraft bedrock sword. Well, actually, I build a Grinder trap first but that didn't work. Anyway, it took a few hours to collect the stack of Ender Shards I wanted. Nether Shards appear to drop rather more frequently, since I already had about 30 from earlier exploration. I wonder if that's a bug, since I don't recall having killed that many Zombie Pigmen. Anyway I decided to forego mobtrapping in the Nether which turned out to be a timesaving decision since I didn't need more than I had. As for the Nether Stars, I've fought the Wither once without a Warded Room and twice in a Warded Room, and I didn't care to do it again, nor did I want to build a Wither spawner, so I cheated by switching to Peaceful and using the crafting recipe. You still need the Wither Skeleton skulls, and you also need two diamonds for the sword, so it's not too much of a cheat. Fortunately, I already had a safari net with a Wither skeleton in it, I just had to put it into the mobtrap I had built for the Endermen and wait. A little more time, and 16 Nether Stars were in my possession.
You think this was the end? Of the first step at least? Well, no. In order to create 8 pieces of Ichor, you need essentia: 64 Spiritus, 32 Humanus and 32 Lux. Which means 16 jars of Spiritus and 8 each of Humanus and Lux. Torches, zombie brains....and four stacks of skeleton skulls I didn't have. Up to the mobtrap, deactivate "Exact Copy", replace the bedrock sword with my Beheading III TC cleaver, set the Autonomous activator to aim high and wait... Oh, and just make sure you have a couple of a hundred buckets of mob essence if you set out to do this... If you have automated essentia distillation without knowing about all this in advance, chances are you will still need to do a lot of manual distillation. I guess I could've used soul sand for the spiritus, but that would've taken four times as long.
All right, off to the serial infusions. I had built my Infusion chamber with this in mind. The following screenshot is from a later point where I already had the Ichorcloth armor pieces, but replace the jars of Iter, Alienis and Volatus I set up for the Celestial Portals with Spiritus, Humanus and Lux and you'll have an impression of the essentia quantities burned just to create the raw material for further infusions:
Note that this setup has 198 crystal clusters, and I *still* got a few minor instability effects while infusing the Awakened tools, though everything else went without any problem whatsoever.
Chapter 3: "Just" Raw materials....
As I mentioned, the 16 infusions went without any problem whatsoever, but the next step was to create Ichorcloth. This is done at the Arcane Workbench, and turning three Ichor, three diamonds and three enchanted cloth (which you'll have to make first) into three Ichorcloth cost you....125 of every aspect of vis in your wand. You need the Thaumium-capped Silverwood wand for this and a full set of Thaumaturge robes, boots etc..
Which is obviously not a process I wanted to repeat a number of times without giving me an additional edge, given how long it takes for an empty wand to recharge if the nodes around the recharge focus are empty. So....there is this shiny new wand I researched which can hold 1000 vis of every aspect. Making it was actually not too difficult, in spite of the number of infusions I had to do. Filling it, however, presents another problem. Of course my wand was empty at this point and my poor aura nodes already overtaxed. But...there is this nice new "Wand Focus: Experience Drain" which will drain XP and turn it into vis on a right-click. This needs a few not too rare resources....and among other things, 16 Vitium essence. Crap. A look into my mana bean store revealed a stock of....*scream* 15. A look into my infusion chamber revealed....a jar with 5 left over from another project *phew*. One of the components for the new focus is a Wand Focus Distortion, which needs to be created by infusion with one of the components being a Wand Focus Uprising, which needs to be created by another infusion....you get the picture. The process is rather involved, and not for the last time, but a little later I had a shiny new and insanely capacious wand in my hand. I'll skip over the Ichorium caps since it was pretty straightforward, made using Thaumium and Ichor and diamonds etc... I should mention that every single recipe in TTKami requires a diamond. It doesn't look like much, but since it includes the raw materials, creating everything in TTKami may have set me back two stacks.
Off to an extended session of.....eating. Eating essence berries, to be precise. Eat a stack, let the wand turn it into vis, repeat until wand is filled. This may have taken about 2000 essence berries. All right, now I could proceed at least to create all the cool things offered by TTKami. Not that the wand isn't cool in itself, but in the end it was all preparatory work until now.
Chapter 4: Armor and Tools
The creation of the armor dídn't present much of challenge, except for the need to distill essentia by the jar again. The names of the items indicate what they can do for you: the Cowl of the Abyssal Depths, the Robe of the Stratosphere, the Leggings of the Burning Mantle and the Boots of the Horizontal Shield. I first create the ichorcloth items in the workbench and then go on to infuse them. An unusual stumbling block presents itself. The Cowl infusion needs.....a cake? Did I ever create a cake in Minecraft? Oh, and it needs milk. I had a tank of the stuff in my old base but didn't bother to recreate it after moving to this shiny new world. I don't even have cows. Sigh. Off to create a pen and collect some cows with the golden lasso. I'll need them anyway. Oh, and....a raw fish? I have about 4000 fish in my ME network but they're all cooked, and I don't have a running fishery. Sigh. Off to plonk down my MFR fishery for a few minutes. Back to infusing stuff. I'm getting a little light-headed now. I've done nothing but infusions for almost two playing sessions now.
The resource-gathering tools present another lengthy process - all need two of their lower-tier equivalents from Thaumcraft as components which of course need to be infused. I also need to create Ichorium, a straightforward process in the worktable using thaumium, ichor and the inevitable diamonds. The basic un-infused version of every tool is made with Silverwood rods instead of sticks, which...you guessed it, have to be infused as well. Which means that every Awakened tool is made with five infusions.
Also, every tool need one full jar of Perfodio essence among a great lot of other stuff. I'm definitely not going to stand beside the furnace feeding it iron pickaxes one by one, and I don't have enough Perfodio mana beans for even two jars. I create a minor piece of automation with a chest and an item conduit, running two furnaces at the same time. Meanwhile, I'm off to my Mystcraft mining age, visiting the giant tunnel left behind by my array of boring machines. There should be enough gold and iron left to see in the walls that I won't have to look for it long. Because I need....native clusters? Who the hell keeps those and doesn't immediately smelt them? Not I. And I need them for the infusions, along with cinnabar clusters which I do have since I don't have much uses for Thaumcraft cinnabar.
At last I have enough stuff gathered. There are 16 jars standing in front of the infusion altar in preparation for creating the gathering tools and the Awakened sword. Until now, in spite of the fact that I've done more infusions than in the whole of my Thaumcraft career in sequence, *and* that every single one of those infusions was a full order of magnitude more complex, and longer, than anything else I've ever done, there have been no instability effects whatsoever. I guess my going all-out with crystal clusters paid off. However, while creating the Awakened Tools I actually have some instability effects, as two components are knocked off from their pedestals and I got a minor injury from flux. Anyway, this set of tools easily requires the most complex creation process of anything else I've ever created. They are really nice, though. I'll get to what they do for me later.
Chapter 5: Celestial Gateways
This is actually why I started out with TTKami in the first place. Celestial gateways may present the most compact teleportation system in modded Minecraft. They consist of one block set into the floor, and every gateway can connect to up to 10 others. All other gateway-like features I know either require frames, or only connect in pairs, or both. Also, the whole magical style appeals to me. I'm find of a "crystal towers and togas" building style with invisible technology, and these play right into my preferences. Unfortunately, one major feature - or rather its lack - prevents these gateways from being the perfect teleportation network: they will not work across dimensions, which is rather disappointing given the effort it takes to get here.
All right, back to work. While the infusions are definitely not as difficult as the creation of the tools, the amount of essentia required is insane. Iter and Alienis by the jar, and only a little less Volatus and Aer. I intend to create ten gateway stones, and since I also need the celestial pearls which serve as link items there is more to be done that just to infuse the paving stones of travel. I also need Transvector Dislocators, which thankfully are created in the Arcane Workbench. Thankfully, both Alienis and Iter is neatly provided by Ender Pearls, of which I have a few thousand in my ME network, and Volatus by feathers of which my chicken farms in the old world had made a few thousand as well. All it takes is some time.
The last item of this chapter is the Wand Focus: Celestial Recall, which will let me teleport to a location linked to a Celestial Pearl in my hotbar from anywhere. With the items I wanted most now in my possession, all that's left is wrapping up by creating the auxiliary tools, which are actually nothing to scoff at...
Chapter 6: Wrapping up - and was it worth it?
I go on to create the Black Hole Talisman. Which needs....tainted goo? What the hell is that? I a little research reveals that this is dropped by tainted slime - I didn't know those even existed - and that tainted slime spawns out of cauldrons if you overfill them drastically. In hindsight, perhaps I shouldn't have done this in my basement, since the flux goo knocked off my Magnum Torch and it took less than half a second for a Creeper to spawn and damage - of all things, my mobtrap. I also got the message that I was infected by flux taint. Thankfully, that does not appear to be permanent. It would seriously cramp my style to walk around as a moving taint source. Even so, I planted a few Ethereal Blooms to be sure to leave behind no taint. I just hope it did not leave anything permanent behind. Anyway, I got my two pieces of tainted goo. Two, because I need two Black Hole talismans, the second one being an infusion component for the Worldshaper's Looking Glass.
I create the Wand Focus: Shadowbeam and the Bottomless Pouch almost as an afterthought. I now have some really cool toys to play with, and I am so sick of doing infusions that I'm quite glad to move on to Magical Crops for a while.
So...was it worth it? While I am impressed by the armor, and it does have one or two unique features like turning you into a light source (which I switched off immediately since moving light sources create lag very much out of proportion to the usefulness of the feature), on the whole it is slightly less powerful than a fully upgraded MPS power suit. Most specifically, it lacks one important feature: the swim boost. While moving and flying around on and above land takes a little getting used to as creative flight needs to take over where jumping and gliding would be used with the powersuit, the lack of fast swimming is situationally crippling.
So, I will keep this armor and use it, but only out of the water and mainly because I love the style, not because it's superior. There is, however, another consideration: within the context of modded Minecraft as a game, the Infused Ichorcloth armor items can be considered inferior to the MPS powersuit, however, to the more roleplaying-like mindset I like to adopt they are hugely attractive, since they present almost the same power as a powersuit with none of the bulk or the weight, and they look very, very nice. Definitely a great leap in style over the powersuit, though of course that's a personal preference.
Meanwhile, the Awakened Tools are definitely worth considering as the ultimate toolset if you discount AM2/Blood Magic spells which are by their nature more versatile. They can be multiple-enchanted using enchanted books and anvils, unlike their lower-tier versions which need to use the Infusion Enchantment process. They also have their unique attributes like mining a 5x5 area or a 1x10 line. The latter is something I've always wished for every since I played Equivalent Exchange back in the Minecraft beta days. I wonder if there's another manual mining tool which lets you mine a 5x5 area with Silk Touch. Definitely a feature worth considering even in a high end environment. I haven't used the sword in combat yet, but then I don't spend much time fighting.
Now to the auxiliary items which are definitely worth it. The Bottomless Pouch is like a Resonant Strongbox and a Focus Pouch combined, and the Black Hole Talisman is a portable Deep Storage Unit. The Worldshaper's Looking Glass is like a Builder's Wand with the 9-block limitation removed, being able to create up to 11x11 walls with one click, drawing from the Black Hole Talisman if you choose blocks stored therein to build with.
This stuff will definitely stay with me and not rot in my storage. And the Celestial Gateways, in spite of their limitation, will make up most of my teleportation network. So, yeah, it absolute is worth it. The only thing that really hurts is the loss of the swim boost. I will definitely keep both the Ichorcloth set and the powersuit at hand.
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