Okay, so my brother and I are diving deep into Thaumcraft for 1.7.10 for the first time. And honestly, I have no idea what's going on with nodes anymore. Node stabilisers, node energisers, centi-vis, vis relays - I'm thoroughly confused. Can someone break down what I need to do in terms of node manipulation, please? How many nodes do we need for a good setup? What do we need to do to them? How big do we want to make them?
Thaumcraft node manipulation - what?
- Thread starter Heliomance
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Phew, this is a big question. Obviously there are wikis and so on, but I'll see if I can condense it down a bit:
In Thaumcraft 4 for 1.7.10, nodes are as they were previously; they generate in the world, with certain aspects (mostly primal - aer, terra, aqua, ignis, perdito and ordo), and you can drain primal aspects with your wand to refill it. And they will slowly recharge the aspects drained over time (unless you drain an aspect completely). Brilliant.
Nodes can do what is referred to as "bullying", whereby they drain aspects from nearby nodes, with a chance to increase themselves in the aspect drained - bigger nodes bully smaller ones. Because you can move nodes about, this allows you to use small nodes to build up a bigger node. Ideal.
Node stabilisers come in two types, the basic ones stop a node from bullying and from being bullied, so you can have a bunch close together (say, for charging wands for example) without them eating each other. The advanced node stabiliser allows a node to bully without being bullied itself. Handy. But, both types cause the rate at which the aspects recharge to be decreased - either in half (basic) or almost completely (advanced). Less handy.
This is all fairly standard. But, a new type of node behaviour was introduced: Energised nodes. Instead of having a pool of an aspect that is drained and refilled, these instead generate a small amount of one or more of the primal aspects constantly, in the form of "centi-Vis". This stream of energy can be sent (via vis relays) to certain machines and items to either make them work or make them function more effectively. It can also be used to charge wands and other vis-holding items. The Node Transducer is what turns a node from a normal one to an energised one; the final amount of centi-vis it generates is dependent on how much of the aspects it had before it was energised. Tidy.
Hope this is useful!
EDIT: Edited to give the item that energises nodes the correct name: Node Transducer.
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So the ideal amount of nodes would be one huge (preferably Bright) node for wand recharging, and one huge node to energise to power your stuff?
Well that's an interesting one - I would agree about the large energised node for the most part - you can channel the centi-vis needed around.
But, for wand recharging, I don't think its necessarily that simple - bearing in mind that the aspects only recharge at a certain rate, you might find it more beneficial to have multiple nodes, and these will all be replenishing simultaneously when not being used! Also, the wand recharge pedestal with a compound recharge focus allows you to use the complex aspects in nodes to recharge too, so that is also a factor.
Also bear in mind that when your wand or scepter (this doesn't work for staves alas) is in an arcane worktable with a vis charge relay on top, it can receive centi-vis from an energised node and be charged as well.
but if you have multiple nodes, then won't they bully each other until you only have one - unless they're stabilised, which cuts the replenish rate anyway?Well that's an interesting one - I would agree about the large energised node for the most part - you can channel the centi-vis needed around.
But, for wand recharging, I don't think its necessarily that simple - bearing in mind that the aspects only recharge at a certain rate, you might find it more beneficial to have multiple nodes, and these will all be replenishing simultaneously when not being used! Also, the wand recharge pedestal with a compound recharge focus allows you to use the complex aspects in nodes to recharge too, so that is also a factor.
Also bear in mind that when your wand or scepter (this doesn't work for staves alas) is in an arcane worktable with a vis charge relay on top, it can receive centi-vis from an energised node and be charged as well.
We have Arcane Engineering in the pack, so I'm intending to grow nodes by using the Node Destabiliser to make them hungry, and throw stacks of crafting tables at them. As I understand it, when the Node Destabiliser is turned off, the node stops being hungry, and can then be safely moved into the base.
What you need to understand, in order:
1. You will want to learn to Jar nodes. You will go out and jar nodes with aspects you don't have yet, and unjar them around a Wand Recharging Station. With a minimum of 4 blocks between nodes they will not bully each other so you don't have to worry about Node Stabilizers. If any nodes unjar as "fading" you need to place them in an Advanced Node Stabilizer that will eventually repair it to "weak".
Any large bright nodes you get you will save.
2. When you have Jar'd a large node containing pure aspects, which remains "bright" when jar'd, you will create a room to house it: You will place the large node in the center of the room, and around it you will arrange 4 to 8 smaller - also primal aspected nodes. These will be in the corners of a 7x7x7 space with the large (bright) node in the center. The central node will bully the smaller corner nodes. When the central node has at least 20 in all aspects, you will place it in an Advanced Node Stabilizer, then a Node Energizer, then - using a redstone block, apply a permanent redstone signal to the stabilizer. Some fireworks will happen and you will now have an energized node.
This will provide cv/t for Thaumcraft devices that require - or use it:
The advanced alchemical furnance requires Ordo and Ignis, and the focus manipulation table requires the aspects the wand focus upgrade requires.
Additionally the Arcane Bore uses Ordo, essentia crystalizer uses terra, the Infernal Furnace uses Ignis to accelerate their operation, and the Arcane Workbench can be upgraded to recharge wands automatically.
This is what you *NEED* to do to progress through Thaumcraft. There are additional things you can do with Hungry or Tainted nodes that actually serve no real purpose other than the satisfaction of doing them. Your actual crafting and wand recharging needs will be met by the above.
1. You will want to learn to Jar nodes. You will go out and jar nodes with aspects you don't have yet, and unjar them around a Wand Recharging Station. With a minimum of 4 blocks between nodes they will not bully each other so you don't have to worry about Node Stabilizers. If any nodes unjar as "fading" you need to place them in an Advanced Node Stabilizer that will eventually repair it to "weak".
Any large bright nodes you get you will save.
2. When you have Jar'd a large node containing pure aspects, which remains "bright" when jar'd, you will create a room to house it: You will place the large node in the center of the room, and around it you will arrange 4 to 8 smaller - also primal aspected nodes. These will be in the corners of a 7x7x7 space with the large (bright) node in the center. The central node will bully the smaller corner nodes. When the central node has at least 20 in all aspects, you will place it in an Advanced Node Stabilizer, then a Node Energizer, then - using a redstone block, apply a permanent redstone signal to the stabilizer. Some fireworks will happen and you will now have an energized node.
This will provide cv/t for Thaumcraft devices that require - or use it:
The advanced alchemical furnance requires Ordo and Ignis, and the focus manipulation table requires the aspects the wand focus upgrade requires.
Additionally the Arcane Bore uses Ordo, essentia crystalizer uses terra, the Infernal Furnace uses Ignis to accelerate their operation, and the Arcane Workbench can be upgraded to recharge wands automatically.
This is what you *NEED* to do to progress through Thaumcraft. There are additional things you can do with Hungry or Tainted nodes that actually serve no real purpose other than the satisfaction of doing them. Your actual crafting and wand recharging needs will be met by the above.
Hmm. When you put it like that, good point!
I think I've missed a trick there. I guess it depends on how many nodes you collect up - when you've got over a dozen, the cut rate from the stabilisation may be compensated for, I honestly don't know!
Ahh nice! I've just started a pack with Arcane Engineering in - I'm quite hoping to get into that myself, so I'd be interested to hear how that goes for you!
All in all though, do you feel like you understand the system better now? Have I helped or just confused things? I don't explain well, so if the latter is true, you can tell me - I won't hold it against you
- GwnG
Some times a pic is worth a thousand words. Below are some of my last thaumcraft play through. The first pic show my recharge pedestal. The second show my energized node. I have at least two wands and one of them stays in the arcane crafting table to be charged. The other is usually with me and I swap them as needed. The 1st pic shows one of my staves.
Actually, I was planning on using Blood Magic teleposers to move my nodes around. Far easier than jarring them, and doesn't damage them. The JABBA dolly is also an option, as I understand it.
I think so, yes. Enough to start trying to play with it, anyway.Hmm. When you put it like that, good point!
I think I've missed a trick there. I guess it depends on how many nodes you collect up - when you've got over a dozen, the cut rate from the stabilisation may be compensated for, I honestly don't know!
Ahh nice! I've just started a pack with Arcane Engineering in - I'm quite hoping to get into that myself, so I'd be interested to hear how that goes for you!
All in all though, do you feel like you understand the system better now? Have I helped or just confused things? I don't explain well, so if the latter is true, you can tell me - I won't hold it against you
- GwnG
A Note:
Unless you are space constrained - the area around a Wand Recharging Station that it can be recharged from is a 17x17x17 box. You can place 16 nodes in a layer, or if you go 3D, 64 nodes around the station without having to use Node Stabilizers to prevent bullying.
Wand recharge rate will be maximized by not placing any nodes in stabilizers, until / unless you want more than 64 nodes around a Recharge station, or have allocated a very small space to this purpose.
(Obviously, you do need to protect Fading nodes with an Advanced Stabilizer until they repair)
Unless you are space constrained - the area around a Wand Recharging Station that it can be recharged from is a 17x17x17 box. You can place 16 nodes in a layer, or if you go 3D, 64 nodes around the station without having to use Node Stabilizers to prevent bullying.
Wand recharge rate will be maximized by not placing any nodes in stabilizers, until / unless you want more than 64 nodes around a Recharge station, or have allocated a very small space to this purpose.
(Obviously, you do need to protect Fading nodes with an Advanced Stabilizer until they repair)
Woot! Mission accomplished in that case
I think @Chris Becke's advice was a damn sight better than mine, but I'll call it a win anyway.To be frank their is almost no need to use node stabilizers past inducing a node and MAYBE repairing a node. If you cheese it with a blood magic teleposer (don't worry I cheese my vis worse by using Forbidden Magic livingwood wands) you won't need them for repairing nodes.
There's even a TC4 addon that provides a lossless jarring mechanism. Warded node jars IIRC.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
There's even a TC4 addon that provides a lossless jarring mechanism. Warded node jars IIRC.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
For a node that you're going to energize, you definitely want it to be big, since centivis devices can only draw centivis from one source, and there's no such thing (in vanilla TC or any addons I'm familiar with) as a centivis battery or buffer. So if you're eventually going to want to use any specific amount of CV/t, your node has to be big enough to produce it *all the time*. And the charge relay can use all the CV you throw at it (as far as I know), so the bigger your node, the faster your wands and scepters will recharge.
Also worth noting that the CV/t of each primal aspect produced by an energized node is proportional to the square root of the largest aspect within the original node that breaks down into that primal. So, if you manage to find a node with 100 Fabrico or some other aspect that breaks down into all six primals, you may as well go ahead and energize it. It's going to take a long time and a *lot* of crafting tables to get a hungry node up to that size.
Also note that bright and pale nodes give a plus or minus 10% modifier (respectively) to the size of the largest aspect for each primal before taking the square root. It really doesn't make a lot of difference unless you want to get your energized up to a specific size- bigger is always better.
Protip in dealing with hungry nodes: If your Node Destabilizer doesn't dehungrify them, Taint will. Grow the node until it's big enough, toss some bottled taint at a block somewhere near it, wait for the node to stop being a black hole, jar/telepose it, move it to your base, start it energizing, and plant some Ethereal Blooms nearby to clean up the mess. In that order. Energizing a node will nullify its environmental effects, but not if the node eats the stabilizer or transducer before the process is finished.
After all that, you're most likely still going to want unenergized nodes and a recharge pedestal, since staves don't fit in the arcane workbench and thus cannot be charged from an energized node. Bigger nodes don't charge much faster than smaller nodes, so your best bet is to bring in a bunch of naturally-spawned nodes with a range of aspects between them. If you haven't allocated a large amount of space for your recharge room, you're going to need stabilizers to keep the nodes form bullying each other. Yes, this will reduce the rate at which the nodes recharge, but it's really not a big deal- after all, nodes aren't hard to find with the help of Goggles of Revealing, and you're not likely to need more than a dozen even if you do stabilize them. If you're really worried about it, though, you can fit 64 unstabilized nodes within the effective range of a Recharge Pedestal without any of them bullying each other. The Pedestal can draw from any and all nodes in a 17x17x17 cube centered on it, and nodes will not bully each other if there are 4 or more spaces between them in the X, Y and Z directions. Thus, a 4x4x4 grid of nodes with 4 air/stone/whatever spaces between them (and 5 spaces in the middle planes, for symmetry) will fit neatly within the range of a Recharge Pedestal placed at the center.
Jarring nodes works reasonably well to move them to your base. Sure, the vis used to jar each node and the chance of damaging it are annoying, but once again, both can be offset just by moving more nodes to your base. Teleposers work very well: they're cheap, can be reused over and over for virtually no cost, and they will never damage the node. The only real downside, if you've already gone through Blood Magic progression, is that some players consider them to be a little overpowered for those exact reasons.
Also worth noting that the CV/t of each primal aspect produced by an energized node is proportional to the square root of the largest aspect within the original node that breaks down into that primal. So, if you manage to find a node with 100 Fabrico or some other aspect that breaks down into all six primals, you may as well go ahead and energize it. It's going to take a long time and a *lot* of crafting tables to get a hungry node up to that size.
Also note that bright and pale nodes give a plus or minus 10% modifier (respectively) to the size of the largest aspect for each primal before taking the square root. It really doesn't make a lot of difference unless you want to get your energized up to a specific size- bigger is always better.
Protip in dealing with hungry nodes: If your Node Destabilizer doesn't dehungrify them, Taint will. Grow the node until it's big enough, toss some bottled taint at a block somewhere near it, wait for the node to stop being a black hole, jar/telepose it, move it to your base, start it energizing, and plant some Ethereal Blooms nearby to clean up the mess. In that order. Energizing a node will nullify its environmental effects, but not if the node eats the stabilizer or transducer before the process is finished.
After all that, you're most likely still going to want unenergized nodes and a recharge pedestal, since staves don't fit in the arcane workbench and thus cannot be charged from an energized node. Bigger nodes don't charge much faster than smaller nodes, so your best bet is to bring in a bunch of naturally-spawned nodes with a range of aspects between them. If you haven't allocated a large amount of space for your recharge room, you're going to need stabilizers to keep the nodes form bullying each other. Yes, this will reduce the rate at which the nodes recharge, but it's really not a big deal- after all, nodes aren't hard to find with the help of Goggles of Revealing, and you're not likely to need more than a dozen even if you do stabilize them. If you're really worried about it, though, you can fit 64 unstabilized nodes within the effective range of a Recharge Pedestal without any of them bullying each other. The Pedestal can draw from any and all nodes in a 17x17x17 cube centered on it, and nodes will not bully each other if there are 4 or more spaces between them in the X, Y and Z directions. Thus, a 4x4x4 grid of nodes with 4 air/stone/whatever spaces between them (and 5 spaces in the middle planes, for symmetry) will fit neatly within the range of a Recharge Pedestal placed at the center.
Jarring nodes works reasonably well to move them to your base. Sure, the vis used to jar each node and the chance of damaging it are annoying, but once again, both can be offset just by moving more nodes to your base. Teleposers work very well: they're cheap, can be reused over and over for virtually no cost, and they will never damage the node. The only real downside, if you've already gone through Blood Magic progression, is that some players consider them to be a little overpowered for those exact reasons.
Add on wise, we have: Automagy, Thaumic Tinkerer, Thaumic Exploration, Thaumic Horizons, Node Mechanics, Gadomancy, Forbidden Magic, Arcane Engineering, Magic Bees, and potentially one or two others. I think there's another one to do with eldritch/forbidden stuff?
That's Forbidden Magic. It also adds a couple of wands charged by Botania mana, and maybe a couple other magic mods as well.
I always make two wands so one is always on the table fully charged, even if my node is very small. For a gadget that uses a specific type of centi vis, I would consider finding another node just for that.
Don't know if anyone has tried this- but I saw a youtube video where a guy used a hungry node, feeding it loads of crap via tubes etc -
And then when he had it fed to the right size / strength, he was able to bottle it in an even easier way than the difficult bottle technique.
You can use Bottled Taint, to change the biome to Tainted Lands, which then changes nodes to be Sinister nodes.
Apparently they retain their numbers, but just change type.
So they stop sucking.
Could be a good way to get the perfect node - keep feeding that hungry node until its big and fat, then infect it with taint, capture, then move and stabilize.
And then when he had it fed to the right size / strength, he was able to bottle it in an even easier way than the difficult bottle technique.
You can use Bottled Taint, to change the biome to Tainted Lands, which then changes nodes to be Sinister nodes.
Apparently they retain their numbers, but just change type.
So they stop sucking.
Could be a good way to get the perfect node - keep feeding that hungry node until its big and fat, then infect it with taint, capture, then move and stabilize.
If you add the mod torcherino to your pack, you can speed up node bullying 4x and make some big nodes that way too. Its possible to have a node feed off of another node forever without damaging it if you speed up the bullied one x4 and the bully x3
Reika's tile entity accelerators in Chromaticraft should be able to accelerate node bullying/regeneration as well... but by a factor of 256. Or was it 512? I don't remember what the highest one is offhand.