[Thaumcraft 4.2] Mana Bean Farming

[Zerro]

Greetings,

I am on the hunt for Auram for my Thaumium Wand Caps and heard Mana Bean Farms is the best way to get the aspect (well used to be; don't know anymore).

Either way, I'm hoping to make a Mana Bean Farm automated by Golems and was curious about a few things:
1. How far off of the ground can the Wood be in order for the Golem to harvest the Bean? (From underneath)
2. Do Mana Beans have to be directly adjacent to each other in order to mutate or is there a radius?
3. Upon mutation, do I get any of the original aspect back or is the aspect gone (Which means I should probably grind up the aspects before trying to mutate)
4. Any pics on a 4.2 Golem ran farm would also be helpful since everything on YouTube seems to be based off of the older version.

Thanks!

 

[Pyure]

I'll take a stab at this.

1) 1 space (just tall enough for a golem)
2) Directly adjacent
3) Unclear on your question. If you get an auram bean, it will have only auram. A parent may remain unchanged.

My farm (no pics or vids) has 2-block-tall "aisles" so I can wander through and keep an eye on things. I find it hard to manage multiple bean-types in a single farm: even separated by aisles, the beans tend to spread around and mix in your other "fields" due to quirks in the harvest-golems behaviour. (Could probably be mitigated with a planting Use golem, not tried)

 

[Zerro]

Well that sucks. So what do you recommend? Manual farming? I doubt it would be feasible to have 48 golems; one for each aspect.

Why must Thaumcraft be overly complicate? :\ first the Essentia Tubes, now this

 

[PierceSG]

Mana beans is just one of the way you can farm essential.

The way I do it is with a mob and crop farm, cooking their drops in an Advanced Alchemical Furnace and then having the golems sort them out to their individual jars.

I uses two jars for each aspect. A normal jar and a void jar.

You could use an array of crystallisers to convert them into crystals too for mass storage if you want to.

 

[Pyure]

Well that sucks. So what do you recommend? Manual farming? I doubt it would be feasible to have 48 golems; one for each aspect.

Why must Thaumcraft be overly complicate? :\ first the Essentia Tubes, now this

If your goal is Auram, you don't need 48 golems. Its ok if your fields mix up a bunch while you're mutating. Its a really gradual process, you wont even notice it for a while.

Once you have your auram seed mass-produced, you just need enough golems to farm that one bean.

 

[Zerro]

I'd rather have all aspects so I don't have to worry about fiddling with multi-aspect items

 

[Inaeo]

If the goal is an easy source of Auram, mana beans are an option, but not the easiest. All Ethereal Essence contains Auram, so breaking a few small or otherwise unneeded Nodes can net you what you need to start (well before a mana bean farm produces reliably).

The other way to obtain Ethereal Essence is killing Wisps. If you can find a particular TC altar, usually up high, it will have a Wisp Spawner on it. If this is enclosed, it makes farming for Essence pretty simple. Depending on the other mods you have running, you can really trick it out to be a major source of a number of different Essences that fills itself constantly.

My last world, I moved a Wisp Spawner using a JABBA diamond dolly onto a single block of Cursed Earth. This ensured it would spawn Wisps even if a player wasn't in the proximity. The farm was finished off with a few OpenBlocks Fans and an MFR Grinder.

The Essence collected was melted down the usual way, with any complex essentia that overflowed going to a Centrifuge, then being sent back around again. Only the primal aspects needed Void Jars, as anything not a primal was spun down until it either found a jar in which to store it or it reached the primals.

My mana bean farm was overly complicated, but the basic idea was having the base of the farm on Sticky Pistons. This allowed it to run a 9x9 farm while being one block tall, but a lever would make it two blocks tall (by pulling the floor down a layer) for manual maintenance. I only grew one aspect per 9x9 (I grew most of my iron at that point), and I used three golems per farm. Harvest Golem without the upgrade to replant, as that mechanic has been bugged at a few different versions when regarding beans. Gather Golem to clean up the mess. Use Golem targeting each space on the wooden ceiling, whitelisted for the bean of choice. I did all my crossbreeding by hand, mostly as a Zen Garden experience to relax from other mods.

Oh, and when you crossbreed beans, there is a chance that either of the beans will mutate, or both, or neither. If a bean mutates, you get the new aspect, but not the original back. I crossbred my last Aer bean into other things more than once by accident - don't make that mistake by always having at least one of each bean you own in a safe place (Filing Cabinets are great for TC beans, Essences, Phials, etc.)

 

[Zerro]

here is my current Mana Bean far (manual atm):
Question about the Lamps of Growth: Does more == faster growth or will I get the same growth whether a Mana Bean is covered by 1 or 144 Lamps? Also, what is the height limit of the Lamp of Growth? All I know is the LxW is 12x12 Hex

 

[GreenZombie]

I hate smashing nodes. They are a bit of a rare occurrence as it is.

Bean breeding I've always found impossible in 4.2.3.5 as every magical forest i've searched yields loads of Aer, Terra, Aqua beans, but between Ordo, Perdito and Ignis I can just not find any at all. This somewhat limits my ability to get further down the tree. In my last game I resorted to capturing and trading with Pech who eventially gave me some intermediate beans that I could breed to obtain Sano and Auram - the two essences I seem to need beans for.

In previous games Ive captured Wisps in a safari net to spawn them with MFR - but Direwolf20 was having trouble with that in his last lets play.
If EnderIO is in the pack, simply smash a wisp spawner found in a Hills Biome to create a powered wisp spawner.
If JABBA - or PortalGun - or Blood Magic is in the pack simply Dolly, Portal Gun, or Telepose a wisp spawner into a spawning room in your base. Applied Energistics has Spatial Storage that can move things which should be able to move the spawner as its a vanilla spawner really.

@Inaeo - I tried to do the sticky piston thing but was using vanilla redstone and couldn't get a redstone signal to all the pistons? How did you wire them up?

@Zerro - the mutation happens AS a bean is placed. If you place a bean directly adjacent to a bean, the new bean might cross breed. The existing bean might have to be mature enough to have formed a pod. You will obviously end up with two pods - the original pods aspect and the bred aspect so you will loose an aspect obviously if you place your last bean of a particlar type and it crossbreeds.

 

[rouge_bare]

If you after auram and have forbidden magic - try the Euclidasy, it makes ethereal essence... and guess which is the seemingly most common... aside from it being on every ethereal essence anyway.

 

[Inaeo]

@Inaeo - I tried to do the sticky piston thing but was using vanilla redstone and couldn't get a redstone signal to all the pistons? How did you wire them up?

I used EnderIO Redstone Conduits to link them up. I wanted a vanilla setup, but it didn't work like I expected, and then a small construction accident let water in and convinced me to go modded.

So far as MFR Safari Nets go, I believe Azanor hard coded them to be blacklisted for the sake of not wanting people to cheese their way through his mod. I'm uncertain if this works for EnderIO nets (forgot what they're called), but I remember it being a huge stink on the TC Forums when he decided to veto MFR interaction for Wisp and Pech (likely all of his mobs, but those are the ones people were butthurt over).

 

[Azzanine]

I hate smashing nodes. They are a bit of a rare occurrence as it is.

Bean breeding I've always found impossible in 4.2.3.5 as every magical forest i've searched yields loads of Aer, Terra, Aqua beans, but between Ordo, Perdito and Ignis I can just not find any at all. This somewhat limits my ability to get further down the tree. In my last game I resorted to capturing and trading with Pech who eventially gave me some intermediate beans that I could breed to obtain Sano and Auram - the two essences I seem to need beans for.

In previous games Ive captured Wisps in a safari net to spawn them with MFR - but Direwolf20 was having trouble with that in his last lets play.
If EnderIO is in the pack, simply smash a wisp spawner found in a Hills Biome to create a powered wish spawner.
If JABBA - or PortalGun - or Blood Magic is in the pack simply Dolly, Portal Gun, or Telepose a wisp spawner into a spawning room in your base. Applied Energistics has Spatial Storage that can move things which should be able to move the spawner as its a vanilla spawner really.

@Inaeo - I tried to do the sticky piston thing but was using vanilla redstone and couldn't get a redstone signal to all the pistons? How did you wire them up?

@Zerro - the mutation happens AS a bean is placed. If you place a bean directly adjacent to a bean, the new bean might cross breed. The existing bean might have to be mature enough to have formed a pod. You will obviously end up with two pods - the original pods aspect and the bred aspect so you will loose an aspect obviously if you place your last bean of a particlar type and it crossbreeds.

Are you aware sanno can be derived from milk. Might want to see if mfr bottled milk can be distilled in to sanno. I know in my pack pams harvestcraft milk can be used for one sanno. Haven't tried a bucket though.
My auram needs are sated by forbidden magics eclucidaisy. Probably a bit cheap that one. Uses mana (quite a lot of it too) to spawn wisp essence of random types.


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[Zerro]

"Azanor doesn't want people cheesing Thaumcraft" - I guess that is why Essence Tubes are completely useless.

 

[adamich]

I guess that is why Essence Tubes are completely useless.

Try Buffers

 

[Azzanine]

Try Buffers

Essentia buffers are only a step better plus you still need tubes.
I think when people say tubes suck they mean the whole essentia suction system sucks...
Just realized what I just typed there.
It is a rather undocumented and fickle mechanic. Once you think you have figured it out, you haven't.


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[GreenZombie]

Essentia buffers are only a step better plus you still need tubes.
I think when people say tubes suck they mean the whole essentia suction system sucks...
Just realized what I just typed there.
It is a rather undocumented and fickle mechanic. Once you think you have figured it out, you haven't.


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And, once you know you have figured it out, well, Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

 

[Wraitholme]

Fhtagn! Cthulhu fhtagn!

 

[Azzanine]

Wakka wakka wakka!

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[adamich]

If U replace tubes with buffers it will work as old known tubes.

 

[Lordlundar]

There is something I've discovered while in the process of setting up my uber mana bean farm and that is mana beans HAVE to be a certain distance away or they can end up replacing each other. Some test work I did ended up having the beans taking over each other's spots. If you want isolated concurrent breeding you NEED to have them a fair distance away from each other. I've found a 7 block space between the pods will keep them isolated.