Thaumcraft Tips

What is it?
A magic mod which ties together the rest of the magic mods in GTNH. It is based around studying alchemy, wandcraft, nodes, and eldritch secrets.

There are a few core things to understand before starting Thaumcraft:


 * 1) Aspects  These are elemental signs which describe all objects. Ignis represents fire, Aqua represents water, and so on. Primal aspects can be combined to make compound aspects like "Instrumentum" which represents human tools.   The aspects that make up objects can be discovered using a Thaumometer. Not all objects are scannable, and sometimes scanning will be blocked until you have discovered aspects. In the beginning you only know the primals.
 * 2) Vis  These are physical manifestation of aspects used to power wands and certain magical machines. Vis may be found by killing mobs (the other orbs that drop besides experience) or drawing it from nodes found in the world.  You need vis to do magical crafts and cast spells using wand foci.
 * 3) Nodes  These are nexuses of vis power which can be found in the world. The aspects are random. After scanning them with a Thaumometer, their location will be marked down in your node tracker (bound to "I" by default).  Late into your thaumaturgical study, you will learn ways to manipulate nodes - adding aspects, merging them, and finding the true secrets behind them.
 * 4) Essentia  Essentia are a liquid form of aspects. You can acquire them by burning down items in an Alchemical Furnace.  Liquid essentia may be stored in essentia jars, and later can interface with your AE2 system. Essentia are vital for alchemy and infusion.
 * 5) Warp  Knowledge does not come without consequences. Glimpsing the truth behind the world and its dark creatures can lead to insanity.  Thaumcraft uses a "warp" mechanic. Warp is acquired when learning "taboo" researches in the Thaumonomicon and when doing certain actions in world, like eating zombie brains.  You can tell how much you have by using Arcane Litmus Paper, or /checkwarp (if allowed on your server).  You DO NOT want to stack warp until you have the means for dealing with it. It cannot be permanently removed until you reach IV tech progression, so be careful about what secrets you try and uncover...

Progression Tips
Entering Thaumcraft will require aluminum for screws, which is MV unless you find it as loot.

You can do most alchemy recipes and some crafting recipes with a wooden wand, but infusion is locked until you can get stainless screws for the greatwood wand.

Using wands crafted from either impregnated sticks or iron caps will harm nodes if you pull too much vis.

After greatwood wands, you will need to build wands AND scepters to get the better wands.

Change your GUI scale from Large to see more of the Thaumonomicon at once.

Some researches won't appear until you scan certain items in the world. For example, you must scan iron ingots to unlock Thaumium Ingots. Scan EVERYTHING, including non-block items like Portals.

The Quest Pages for Thaumcraft do not walk you through everything, but provide a good guide on what you may want to do next.

The recipes in the Thaumonomicon are not guaranteed to be the actual gregified recipes. After researching something, look it up in NEI to see the real recipe cost.

Finding Nodes
Nodes give off a small amount of light, so switching your Journeymap to night mode may allow you to identify them in areas you've explored. You can also use a Copter Pack to spot them from the air at night. Hives also give off a small amount of light, so it can be hard to tell from Journeymap alone.

Nodes in different biomes tend to have aspects corresponding to their environment. For example, deserts have lots of Ignis-containing nodes.

Nodes often spawn alongside rivers.

You can see nodes much easier through a Thaumometer or Goggles of Revealing (locked behind greatwood wand progression).

Obsidian totems always have sinister nodes, but they may have tough guardians nearby.

You can use the i key to list the nodes you have discovered. Once you get Goggles of Revealing you get an arrow pointing to a selected node.

Build a Nature's Compass and look for a Thaumcraft magical forest. The mushrooms there can be turned into vishrooms using alchemy that grant a little vis for every one you break.

Aspects
Aspects are the types you get back from scanning things (eg "Ordo", "Aer", etc). These can be used to do research in the Research Table. There are some custom aspects that are not needed for progression, but can be found on Galacticraft planets or combined in the Research Table.

Essentia
Essentia are liquid aspects obtained from breaking down items in an alchemical furnace. You can use them for alchemy recipes or running certain machines, like the Lamp of Growth, Arcane Bore, or Thaumic Replicator.

Here is a Google Sheets listing good sources of essentia (among another things).

Clean Crucible
If you don't want to worry about cleaning up flux goo, you can find paths to use up all of the aspects in the crucible. Here's one that gives both Thaumium ingots and Balanced Shards:


 * Throw in 4 Air Shards, 4 Water Shards, 4 Fire Shards, 4 Order Shards, 4 Entropy Shards, and 4 Earth Shards. This should give you 4 balanced shards back and leave 20 Praecantatio and 20 Victus in the crucible.
 * Next throw in 5 iron ingots to get 5 thaumium ingots. This should leave 20 Victus.
 * Now throw in 5 crushed shard powder (aer crystal powder, aqua crystal powder, etc). This will give you 5 shards and leave zero aspects in the crucible.  Nice and tidy!

Warp
The effects at low levels of warp are annoying but mostly harmless. Some researches will require you to have at least 50 warp.

You can edit a file to make warp always displayed on your InGameInfo. You can eliminate all warp with a Pure Tear, which can sometimes be obtained from a lootbag. BEWARE: it will discharge all warp at once, so be far from your base and be prepared to commit die (may not stop it on some servers, in which case you have to wait it out).