[Thaumcraft] Growing Nodes

[TheLittlei]

So if I am not mistaken, you can grow nodes with more vis total by feeding nodes with less vis total. So what I did is I went and find some normal nodes (which had turned into pale) to feed my bright node (which had turned into normal). Am I doing the right thing? I also got a node stabilizer to control the big node so that the smaller nodes can generate vis.

Right now I got a 'perfect node' with all the primal aspects in it.

 

[rouge_bare]

The things to bear in mind here:

The more of an aspect the larger node already has, the less likely it'll actually gain that aspect from bullying. This will generally start to be noticeable around 30 size in an aspect, and the bigger it is the more diminishing returns you'll find.

This is a slow process, and is never going to be efficient, you will almost always lose some vis in the process. This is due to the bullying effect possibly removing vis capacity from the smaller node, and the point I mentioned above.

This process is usually done to make a node for energization, for wand/staff charging via the pedestal, many smaller nodes tend to be better as they will recharge vis quicker than one large one. If you energize a node, the CV/t the node makes in each primal is based on the square root of the capacity of the node in that primal (If you get compounds, they count for all primals they contain, but only the highest count actually works, so if you have 25 ignis, 16 lux node, the 25 ignis works for ignis, and the 16 lux works for aer, as the primal ignis is larger in size.) Bright nodes get a 20% bonus, pale get a 20% penalty. After this the resulting number is truncated.

 

[Dragennd]

You mentioned that your nodes that you obtained went from Bright to Normal and Normal to Pale. That is a side effect that has a very high chance of occuring from when you put a node in a jar. If you have the option (and the patience) it is better to use the Blood Magic Teleposers. They can teleport the node from one location to another and you won't degrade the node at all. The only real downside to using this method is that it requires a Tier 4 Blood Altar to be able to make the Teleposers but that's why I said you need some patience

 

[GreenZombie]

In Thaumcraft 4:
Node bullying happens on random ticks - this means you can accelerate it using tick accelerators.
A node gets one chance to bully per tick - this means that if there are multiple potential victims, each victim has a reduced chance to be picked to be bullied.
Range also (somehow) comes into the equation, where bully events happen more often for nodes closer together.
There is only a 25% chance that a node will not be damaged when bottled: Damage means it moves down the scale from "Bright", to "Normal" to "Pale" to "Fading".
Also - if you bottle a node after draining it with a wand, the vis capacity you bottle it at becomes its new max when unbottled.
Fading nodes can be repaired back to Pale by placing them in a node stabilizer or advanced node stabilizer.
There are a number of bully events - each time the bully ticks it gets to choose to: choose an aspect on the chosen victim and: Add one to its own total for that aspect (if it is drained then it will just recharge rather than increasing its capacity), drain the target node for one point in that aspect, or (and this is a rather low chance really) reduce the target nodes max capacity for that aspect.
If a node has an aspect reduced to zero, and a bully event tries to drain that aspect, that aspect will be damaged by having its max capacity of that aspect reduced.
The actual chance of a bully node increasing one of its own aspects is proportional to 1/current_aspect_capacity - so a node with 100 Ignis, will be growing ignis 10x slower than a node with 10 Ignis.
A node can bully (or be bullied by) any node in a 7x7x7 box centered on itself.
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Taking all that - to make a really big node, hassle free:
Bottle bright nodes until one survives the process - or use a teleposer to get one.
At the corners of the 7x7x7 space with it at the center, place additional nodes.
The nodes in the corners are too far from each other, and can only be bullied by the center node. There are 8 corner spots, so each corner node has a 1 in 8 chance of being bullied - giving even pale nodes ample time to recharge depleted aspects.
Do this with nodes with only primal aspects, as bully events on compound aspects will be a waste of time as only the largest source of a primal counts, and you are unlikely to be able to create a node with more (for example) Cognito than Ignis.