As the one handing out the cheat sheets, I say that's the most bull I've seen since I left the farm.
Okay well allow me to join in. I am not having fun with TC4. So much so that I have a great piece of research sitting on my table and I just don't care enough to finish it. I feel quite abused by TC4 research.
Let's just address the concerns I have and that I've seen raised:
- The research system is poorly documented. How you farm research is a mix of undocumented special effects (stuff near table), just generating a huge sum of worldgen and hoping the RNG is great, or even worse standing next to an extremely boring block that you have to manually intervene with to get a single research point that you probably weren't even hoping for.
- It is difficult to actually target specific things to research. Often times the way the table works is that it randomly chooses something associated with the aspect, with biases towards lower-tier research. This means that it's difficult to spike specific research that you're interested in UNLESS you've already know the specific unique aspects to target. Without a cheat sheet, it's very hard to get the things you want.
- Even with research mastery, it costs research points to research each thing. These points can generally only be reclaimed by making the thing you just researched and then scanning it. This means you're often in for a very long ride if you just want to get golems or some other specific aspect of TC4. Cheatsheets help, but don't really solve this problem.
- Given 2 & 3, Thaumcraft forces you to build lots of stuff. Lots of stuff you might want, but also might not. You really need to make all the things to keep your research point totals high. And if you DO find a way to spike to what you want, you might be screwing yourself over since highly combined research aspects tend to be a net loss for more basic research.
- Experiences vary on how reliable the table is at generating valid research. I've had runs where I've generated 4 verified impossible pieces of research in a row, and I'm well above the 20% mark for total research pages generated that are not possible. Experiences vary; I know people less lucky than I am and people who've had many 2 impossible researches in the whole tech tree. That is not a good experience.It is strange that impossible research even exists; it's a trivial geometry problem for the system to check if the research is possible. But this aspect of it is one of the major flaws in TC4 research. Unless you have a cheat sheet, it is difficult to have confidence that you can complete research. You need to light up every node in advance and then carefully check to see if it's possible.
All in all, Thaumcraft is very RNG driven in its 4th incarnation, and at the same time doesn't actually offer a lot of new post-process content over 3. While infusion crafting is a novel (if somewhat forced and time consuming) plan, the things you actually get out of TC4 are mostly just refined TC3 content.
So, in summary... Thaumcraft doesn't let you get what you want. It doesn't reliably give you what it claims to give you. Research point acquisition can be gamed, but it's very difficult to do correctly (or requires generating lots of new chunks, which on a server can either be a non-issue or a very obnoxious thing to do). Finally, the actual
content doesn't feel very new; with most of the new research coming from Thaimic Tinkerer and new, slower and more involved ways to craft existing things.
And it looks like the author actually agrees that the current research system is not ideal. It's due to be replaced with a more Ars2-esque point buy system.
How hard is it to know that Wand Foci use Praecantatio and a primal aspect respective of the name? Or that a Silverwood Wand Core uses Praecantatio, Arbor and Instrumentum?
If you're not intimately familiar with Thaumcraft 3? I submit it is very difficult. It's even more difficult if you're low on research points. My very first playthrough with Thaumcraft I got about half of all the tech trees done and I was constantly scrabbling for research points. I got unlucky and just could not find ordo nodes.There was only weak one in a tainted biome within 4km radius of my base. Ordo shards were also very rare, and stacking clusters really doesn't solve the problem.
You had an external goal (your guide) that helped you play through it. For me... why would I bother with the unfun and consistently unrewarding part of Thaum? I'm perfectly willing to grind a whole bunch (as evidenced by my multiple T4 and T5 blood altars), but I am not willing to have an RNG slap me in the quill and ink over and over again.
I'm sad about this too... I
liked TC3 and was hoping for more of the same. But it feels to me like TC4 is TC3 with a series of new particle effects and a bunch more RNG. I'm not sure I enjoy that style of play.
