Getting Started (Thaumcraft 3)

Getting Started (by IAmHydrocow)
This is a community created article by IAmHydrocow

Introduction
Thaumcraft is a useful mod to use in conjunction with mods like IC2 and Buildcraft because one of the first things one can do with it is to convert different materials into gold, copper, lead, tin, and iron. It also allows for automation of things like farms once Golemancy has been researched.

Your First Wand
To start, you will need a shard of any kind (which can be found while mining), a gold nugget, and a stick. You will use these to create your first wand.

Most wands store magical energy, called ‘vis’, and the amount stored is determined by the grade of the wand (Apprentice, Adept, and Thaumaturge). The additional wands are unlocked as you research the various theories in Thaumcraft.

Thaumonomicon
Once you have a wand, you will need to place down a bookshelf and then right-click on it with the wand. This will replace the bookshelf with a book called the Thaumonomicon. It functions as a reference guide to all items currently you have access to in Thaumcraft and how to make them, as well as a reference to what you need to research in order to advance in Thaumcraft. Pick it up and right-click with it in your hand. This will take you to an achievement-like screen. Hovering over any icon gives you the name of the item it represents and clicking on it will give you information on that item and how to craft it. The icons in the top left of there to give you information on Thaumcraft terminology and environments and to the right of those is a set of basic items used in Thaumcraft. The tree under the basic items is the research tree. You cannot create any item from the tree until you research its recipe using either a research table or experimenting with a crucible.

Research
Once you are done looking through the Thaumonomicon, you will need to start your research. It is recommended that you start by crafiting a cauldron (used to make a crucible), two scribing tools (one for a research table, another to keep for experimenting.), and three tables (two for a research table, one for an arcane workbench).

Place two tables next to each other and right-click on one of them with scribing tools to create a research table. Right-click with your wand on the cauldron to create a crucible and on the other table to create an arcane workbench. The crucible will need to be above a heat source such lave or fire as well as to be filled regularly with water buckets in order to work so be careful will flammable materials and keep an infinite water source nearby. Right-click on the research table to open up it's menu. On the left are slots to place items to be consumed while researching. To the right of those slots is a slot for paper and a output slot. A single piece of paper is used for each formula. Above the output slot is the button to perform research. Research is done in incremental steps and the button needs to be clicked each time. On the right is a circle. While you are researching a formula, different aspects (the magical components of items) show up in the center of the circle. These are the aspects the formula contains any you should continue to use items with these aspects in your research. To know which aspects an items has hold shift and hover the mouse over the item. As you research an aspect that is in the formula the aspect will move to the outer edge of the circle and hovering you move over it will show you the percent completion of that aspect. Once the research of a specific aspect is complete it will gain a multicolored outline. When an aspect list on the left hand side of screen grays out, that means that that aspect is not in the formula and you should not waste materials that contain those aspects that are grayed out. Once the research is finished the scroll in the output slot will closed. Remove the scroll from the research window and place it on your hot bar and exit the research window. With the scroll in your hand, right-click and it will be added to your Thamonomicon. Once it is added to your Thaumonomicon you can look up how to use/create that item. It is recommended that you finish and use any research you start before starting a new one to prevent duplicate research from forming.

I would recommend starting by researching 'gold transmutation' (metallum, permutaio, and carus) first, as it is needed before you can learn to transmute other metals.

Tips

 * When using iron for the metallum (metal) aspect in the crucible, break it into the nuggets first to gain an extra metallum aspect.
 * While iron transmutation has a one to one aspect conversion, other transmutions tend to have some aspect loss.
 * Eggs and wheat seeds are a good renewable source of the Permutatio(trade) aspect, saving you copper ore and valuable gems.
 * Magic tallow takes four corpus (flesh) to create and has that plus 1 praecantatio (magic) aspect, giving you a cheap and renewable source of the praecantatio aspect for research and crafting.

Getting Started (by Shalen)
This is a community created article by Shalen

Thaumcraft 3 – Getting started
What is this mod about? This mod, made by Azanor, is all about magic things. Your goal using this mod is to research a lot of magic items and use them to improve your base. Using this mod, you will discover a lot of new toys to mine, fight, build a safe home and create beautiful golems.

Is this mod for me? If you like magic, spending a little time working on some research, create army of golems and being amazed from visual effects, this is your mod.

Which mods does this work with? It works fine with a lot of mods (mainly the one included in the various FTB mod packs), but doesn’t require any (except from Minecraft Forge). What world generation does this mod add? This mod does add some world generation. There is a picture of the various blocks/items added to world generation to the right. In the image (left to right and top to bottom) there is; Greatwood Tree, Cinnabar Ore, Air Infused Stone, Fire Infused Stone, Water Infused Stone, Earth Infused Stone, Vis Infused Stone, Amber Bearing Stone, Silverwood Tree, Cinderbloom, and Shimmerleaf. The infused stone are a concentration of the ambient magical elements (air, fire, water, earth, vis) and contribute to the overall vis aura of an area; overmining infused stone can cause local aura to drop while abusing the local aura can cause elements to fade from the stone leaving behind dull infused stone. Mining infused stones yield between 1 to 3 shards of the type of stone mined. Amber Bearing Stone and Cinnabar Ore round out the mix. Amber Bearing Stone yields amber when mined, which aside from some associated aspects has no actual use yet (store it for now). Cinnabar Ore yield cinnabar when mined, which can be smelted down to quicksilver.

Thaumcraft also adds two new types of trees: the Greatwood trees and the Silverwood trees. Both yield wood used in various recipes as well as research. Greatwood trees sometimes have a spider spawner located underneath them, with a loot chest immediately above the spawner. Silverwood trees hold an aura node within them. There are also two new flowers; Shimmerleaf and Cinderbloom. Shimmerleaf often grow around Silverwood trees and yield quicksilver when harvested while Cinderbloom grow in the desert and will yield blaze powder when harvested.

Aspects? Each object is made of different aspects that describe his magical essence. To discover which aspects are contained in an item, mouse over it in you inventory and press the sneak key (default: shift). [Image that shows aspects of an object in an inventory]. These aspects will be very useful with the researches and with some advanced type of crafting. From items you can also get a refined form of their aspects known as Essentias: these will also be very useful in further steps of the game.

You mentioned Aura Nodes: what are them? The Aura is the magical energy added by Thaumcraft. This form of magic is good and pure and can be used to recharge nearly all your magical tools. The Aura, often called Local Aura appears in form of Aura Nodes [Images], which can be generated at the world creation or can be created inside a Silverwood tree. These nodes can be seen only wearing a particular type of goggles, known as Goggles of Revealing. Each Aura Node can have different dimension and can hold different amount of magical energy. When the energy hold by a node is used, it will recharge pulling magical energy from nearby nodes or nearby infused stone (that can turn back in boring common stone). However, this process of recharge and some uses of the magical energy as well as “wasting” aspects [link to the part I talk about the crucible] will produce a variable amount of Flux, the bad and evil form of magic that can be compared to the dark side of the force (from Star Wars). Fortunately, Aura Nodes can clean themselves from Flux in many different ways: they can generate Wisps, evil creature that will attack you throwing dangerous lightning, cause lightning strike or other bad things (If you have already played Thaumcraft 2: Your world won’t be corrupted by Flux. World corruption doesn’t exist anymore). There are different type of aura node, you can check them in you Thaumonomicon (go on reading and you’ll discover what is it). Hint: As soon as you get your Goggles of Revealing, start to keep an eye on the amount of Flux you produce.

So, where do I start from? This mod doesn’t require a lot of resources to start: no diamonds, no massive amount of gold and iron. All you need is going mine a little bit and find a couple of gold ingots and some magical shards (the one you get from breaking the infused stone). After that, you have to craft a bookshelf and your first magical wand: the Wand of Apprentice [Recipe Image]. This wand isn’t very powerful, but you’ll discover more powerful one in further steps of the game. After this crafting stage (yes, using the old boring vanilla crafting table, to quote Direwolf20), you have to place the bookshelf you created before somewhere in the world and right-click them with your wand [Image of a newly created Thaumonomicon with its particle effects]. By doing this, you get your Thaumonomicon, the book that will contain all your discovers. It also talks about Aspects, Aura, Flux and a lot of other things I’ve already mentioned: simply right click it in your hand and then click on one of those nice squares with an icon in it and you’ll get all the explanation (esc key to exit).

You told about some nice magical toys: how do I get them? The answer is Research. To discover the tools Thaumcraft gives to you, you have to research them. In order to do that, you need to craft two Tables [As usual, crafting recipe] and place them side by side in the world, where your research table will stay. After that, craft a Scribing Tool [again the recipe] and right-click with the one of the two tables you have placed in the world and… wait for it… you got you Research Table.[Image of the research table]

Now get some paper, some glowstone dust, some redstone and some coal and we will do our first research together. After getting these items, open your Research Table right-clicking on it and you’ll get this pretty scary interface: [Image of the research table’s interface]

Now put some paper in the central bottom slot, like in the picture below. It will be used to write your researches:

[Image of the research table’s interface with paper]

Now we can start researching putting some redstone in the top left slot. The table will immediately show us which aspects the redstone contains and, moving the mouse cursor over the aspects icon, it will display their name. The bottom left number that appears on each aspect shows how many of them there is in this particular material. There can also be a little glowy number on some aspects: it means that that aspect is gaining a bonus from the surrounding environment.

[Image with some redstone with the mouse over it]

We can also research multiple items at the time, using the different slots in the left side, like shown in this picture (where we can also see the glowy number on the Lux symbol):

However, let’s go on with the research on redstone pressing the little button with the magnifying glass. Now we got some research notes. These will become our discovery at the end of the project. After a few other presses on that button, we will get something to research in the right part of the interface. Continue to click until the question mark becomes “Potentia”, like in this picture:

You can see you have discovered potential for the 37%. Now go on clicking until it reaches 100%. Now you’re done with redstone and you can start with glowstone, repeating the same steps. Once you reached a good point in the research, the table will show you how many different aspects remains to discover, like in this picture:

Even if you researched only glowstone and redstone, you got a third question mark. When your research is near to its end, the table will show you all the aspects you still have to research:

Now, what has Ignis on it? Coal is a good source of the Ignis aspect so go ad research it and you’ll get you first discovery: Nitor.

Now that you have researched it, you can pull it out of the table and watch it like a map. Now right click it in your hand and it will land in you Thaumonomicon. From there you can see it every time you want.

However, some researches cannot be discovered in this way. You’ll have to explore the world and find some knowledge fragments (you can find them in villages and dungeons chests as well as in some particular dungeons added by Thaumcraft [Image]). Once you got at least nine of them, you can craft some Research Notes that can be researched in the Research Table.

The crucible? Now you finished our first research, you can craft your Nitor. In order to do that, you should craft a Cauldron, place it somewhere on the ground and right click it with your wand: now you have your first Crucible. You need to put under it a source of heat (like fire on netherrack or a lava source block) and fill it with water (using buckets or bottles, but also buildcraft pipes works). When the water starts to boil, it’s ready.

Now you can throw in the crucible the amount of aspects we can see in the Nitor’s recipe (4 ignis, 6 lux, 4 potentia) in the form of items that contains those aspects. For example, to craft a Nitor you can throw in the crucible two piece of coal(they give us 2 Ignis and 2 Potentia each) and six torches(each one gives 1 lux). After that, right click it with the wand and you’ll get your first Nitor:

You can also throw quantities of aspect multiple of the one written in the research in order to produce more Nitor at once. However, each item you craft using the Crucible will pull a certain amount of Vis out of your wand. You can’t use more Vis your wand contains, so do your math correctly.

Note: Here it is another way to research things: just keep some paper and some scribing tools in your inventory and throw some items in you crucible. Then right click it with your wand and hope to discover something.

Warning: The aspects you throw in the Crucible but you won’t use in the recipe will become Flux, so be careful.

There are other ways of crafting things? Yes, of course. I’m going to cover only about the Arcane Worktable, one of the simplest. You get your Worktable simply placing another table in the world and right- clicking it with you wand. It acts as a normal crafting table, but if you put you wand in the middle bottom slot, it becomes able to craft some magical items using the Vis contained in the wand. You wand will slowly recharge if left in the table, pulling magical energy from the nearest Aura Node, but this process will be a lot faster if it is in your inventory.

Is this all? Absolutely no. There are a lot of other things, like other ways of crafting things, the golems and a lot of other research you can look up in you Thaumonomicon. Now I can only say «Have fun! »