While I fing injecting nanomagitech thaumic bees into your body really weird and stuff, I like the idea of runes inscribed on your body (even if that victus one is hella OP).
I'd prefer something like injecting yourself with liquified voidmetal and implanting yourself with vis shards, than taking a bath in essentia or something, to be able to be a living vis gauntlet, being able to use spells without gauntlets, you just hold a focus and use it.
Imagine a Thaumaturge just clutching a wand focus in their hand, bare, and then zap, out comes its effects in a gesture.
Also runes are cool. There's already (Temphis font?) runes in Thaumcraft, though they have no specific meanings on their own.
Why not? If you don't want complex spells, just don't use em.
Redundant or unused features make development altogether harder and more time-consuming. It's best to measure demand for certain things alongside the complexity of implementing them, and how they work thematically (Thaumcraft being all about tonal/thematic consistency).
I personally think that hand-sign type things would be best as something late/endgame, more 'symbol of power', eldritch sort of a thing than just waving your hand around. Foci are a better way to go for actual spellcasting, as is upgrading them for variety-- while Witchery's wand-gestures were relllatively robust in what you could do, they were also mercilessly finicky to do with any speed or regularity since they were step-by-step, specific combinations. Challenge in Thaumcraft has, if I reclal, never been about getting the controls to behave properly.
The "vis battery" concept suggested to work in pairing with Gauntlets also is good for other things. Being able to store and transport vis is something I think a lot of people have wanted at some point or another, and 'maigc containers' has a lot of logical springboards for things like, say, anti-taint bombs.
What? No, I'm not crossing my fingers for better ways of fighting the expanded Taint. That would be silly of me.
I love the gauntlet idea, but really like having wands too. So...make gauntlet offhand and limit the type of foci that go into it, maybe defensive or functional while the staff does offensive or other staff like foci spells. It'd be pretty cool to be using a shield focus or something and then dropping it to attack with your staff in the other hand.
Either way, keep up the amazing work!
This. I think this compromise is perfect. Use wands/staves for the heavy lifting, powerful blasts, terrifying power etc. and use gauntlets as an offhand for manipulation, defense, and functional stuff. Thus, you can still be doing useful things with your gauntlet while using a sword-- picking up enemies to slice them, tossing them away with bursts of force, putting up shields to block arrows, et cetera.
From a lore standpoint, the slightly slower and more focused usage of gauntlets makes it more permissible that they have a different vis system, like direct, passive accretion and manipulation or storing vis in a different place than the gauntlet itself, like a shoulder pack thingy or a backpack a-la the Thaumostatic Harness.
Certain foci could be limited to one or the other, or get buffs depending on where they're placed. After all, it's better to have a shield in your off-hand so your main isn't hindered, so you'd want it on a gauntlet rather than a staff. But some might be better suited in shape, like manipulation being aided by mobile fingers in the glove.
Yeah, I like the idea of gauntlets being a sidegrade better at doing certain things, or doing things the others can't. As an off-hand, I enjoy it a lot. I can't stress how much I'm glad you're considering doing off-hand stuff, it has a lot of magical potential for little gizmos and devices that could be used without hindering the player's main function.
EDIT: Staves are your heavy lifters with foci, not necessarily just combat.
Maybe gauntlets as a sidegrade/lategame thing, compressing the Wand Stuff into something wearable? Hmm. Neat stuff. Glowy stuff. However, stuff that will probably look super-goofy unless it's rendered in 3d rather than a sprite-- not that you're unfamiliar with that, Az. Either way, godspeed and good tidings (also happy new year, belatedly)!
On things that can go wrong, There's quite a lot.
Power fluctuations could easily have a chance to cause your connection to 'jump' to another gateway, Switching what portal it is linking.
Maybe it might even jump to one you didn't make, Whether that leads to a forgotten workshop, Temple or a crimson cult outpost.
Another idea would be to use the Device to enter the outer lands, Using some ad-hock addition to allow it to breach its defenses and punch a figurative hole through to the inside, Though i'd imagine that you'd have to place something around the obelisk, Like a gateways version of the eyes. Perhaps it would even take you to places within you aren't meant to be. Or maybe somewhere else entirely? The outer lands were made as a test after all, What happens after you complete it? Mayhaps the obelisks could serve multiple functions?
Also keep in mind that a gateway is a two-way door. If they can get into your home, Then you can get into theirs and vice-versa.
I like the idea of an enterprising/masochistic thaumaturge purposefully miswiring their gateway to go to a random one in search of distant treasures.
The issue with Taint was that even at high level play, it was an exercise in futility to deal with beyond using absolutely egregious numbers of purifying blooms or an entire forest of pure nodes. Not to mention that in 5, the Taint also disintegrated the ground, so if you used enough blooms to actually cure it, they would often break each other's bases via disintegration and pop them off into the sea of dust.
When you make something a threat, but never give a good reward for trying to find ways to fight it and instead make it sheer busywork, it goes from interesting to frustrating. I'd rather it be a setpiece than something that was irritating to deal with even when you're tearing worlds asunder with your magic power.
I must say, I do like the idea that, since vis is now being chopped back down to one singular thing and not several types, Thaumaturges view every other form of mana as just vis, collected in different ways. Given that it means "power", it is quite literally the power-stuff, the raw energy of magic, and so is mana, or essence, or altar power.
I have a somewhat far-fetched idea about golemancy: larger, ridable golems. This could take the form of a large (crimson cult boss size) suit of mystically animated armor, or a clockwork steed. Both of these would require a substantial amount of materials, research and essentia to create and possibly require some form of fuel to operate, similar to the thaumostatic harness. Magic-based transportation has been one of my favorite parts of TC and I'd love to see it further expanded.
I support the idea of a Thaumic Powersuit, personally. After all, what Thaumaturge would be able to resist reverse-engineering the joints and the animating forces within a Crimson Cult's golem to their own purposes? Put some heavy-duty thaumic machinery on it, like a node-capturer. Add some tanks to contain & direct essentia for catastrophic destructive feats in the form of basically advanced wand foci/limbs. It'd basically be the Golem Press, but you'd actually ride around in it for great justice.
Could even add some kind of thaumic imaging to the viewport, setting the precedent for things like new forms of vision (think Thaumic Horizons' goggle lenses) earlier down the tech tree. Enchanted glass and such.
(Who wouldn't fight the Wither in a specially shielded mech, using thaumostatic/essentia-powered jets to fly up and punch it in the face? I would do that. That would be awesome.)
EDIT: Also, I hope Thaumcraft 6 does include some special enchanted shields. I don't think I've seen any 1.10 mods that do anything interesting with them, even though there were plenty of unofficial shield mods that had a lot of variety. Really, there's a lot of potential for TC6 to explore the off hand slot.
I support the idea of golems working with the world, while wisps work more with entities (affecting breeding, deploying potion effects, helping crops grow, buffing/healing/etc, directing entities, and general logistics/direction).
Plus, wisps are just too cool and colorful to be nothing but enemies and nuisances forever.
(also multiblock arcane crafting is always cool in my book, table/altar/etc upgrades are neat. Something I always loved about the infusion altar is that it really forced you to set aside space, to make you prioritize an area for Thaumcraft, since it took up quite an area. That, and the stability mechanic encouraged some cool designs.)
EDIT2: Nodes acting as a rarer treat to find would really help enforce the idea that they are loci of immense power. If the aura recharges itself more ambiently, and it means less fussing with nodes and more "HECK YES, A NODE! INFINITE POWER" then I would absolutely support that they become more of a worldgen exploration thing rather than being every few steps comparatively and having to be collected en masse/sort of babied. It makes them that much cooler if they're the capstone of your freaky magic construction.
EDIT3: More varied flux also yep okay. I'm basically trawling Azanor's history.
Minecraft is limiting, but limitations breed creativity. Thaumcraft exists AROUND Minecraft. It creates new solutions, new problems, new dynamics that INTERACT with Minecraft. Those things make Thaumcraft what it is. They make it distinct because it works within its limitations to define and expand them. Magitech and thaumaturgy are great themes, but it'd be similarly a betrayal to those themes & dynamics to jettison off into an entirely new game.
Also, "work smart, not hard" is a bit deceptive, because no matter how smart you are there is so much sheer grinding determination necessary in order to make a fully fleshed out mod from the ground up. No one wants to admit that it's a grind, that it takes effort and persistence and pain to make something, but Rome wasn't built in a day. It's not as simple as just looking at a success story that happened for many different reasons and with the help of many different people.
And even then, talent in one field may not imply availability, or ability to communicate soundly with others, or other things needed to really turn a loose band of ideas into a project. Game development is complicated. Just development for an existing game is terribly complicated. It would be both a logistics & practical nightmare, and a betrayal of Thaumcraft's roots and its reason for existing, to cartwheel it into a different game.
Furthermore, Thaumcraft has been improving and redefining itself so long. Is the way to make it better really to thrust it into a vacuum and expect it to expand outward? Without losing what makes it so novel and so precious? I sincerely doubt it.
Being somebody who does a lot of aesthetic/test builds, I'm not especially frustrated if the essentia mechanics change somewhat; worldgen is neat, especially what I've seen you do with it, and I like practical items and flavor. Taint, eldritch shenanigans, thaumic shenanigans, you know. Still, I do kind of like the motif we have right now with items' value and inherent energies. I wonder what method would be used to combine essentia? Would electricity catalyze a reaction between them somehow?
Congrats on the 1.8.9 update, Nuchaz! I look wholly to the 194/1910 updates (they should be MUCH easier from what I hear), excited to get to use one of my favorite quality-of-life/aesthetic mods again. Good work!
so, ive been stalking this thread the last couple month in hope of a status update. now i got to the point where im a bit worried and have to ask if everything is alright with the radio silence from azanor going on.
He was on the forums as recently as a week ago, you can check someone's last activity/login on their forum profile. I'm certain the guy's just plugging away at Thaumcraft development in between any personal and/or professional life he's got, and doesn't want to give promises or estimates due to a number of features already having to be reined in for the update to 1.9 to be more feasible/arrive faster.
EDIT: If I was concerned for anyone, it'd be the guy who makes Thaumic Horizons, whose last post was in November.
1
Imagine a Thaumaturge just clutching a wand focus in their hand, bare, and then zap, out comes its effects in a gesture.
Also runes are cool. There's already (Temphis font?) runes in Thaumcraft, though they have no specific meanings on their own.
1
Redundant or unused features make development altogether harder and more time-consuming. It's best to measure demand for certain things alongside the complexity of implementing them, and how they work thematically (Thaumcraft being all about tonal/thematic consistency).
I personally think that hand-sign type things would be best as something late/endgame, more 'symbol of power', eldritch sort of a thing than just waving your hand around. Foci are a better way to go for actual spellcasting, as is upgrading them for variety-- while Witchery's wand-gestures were relllatively robust in what you could do, they were also mercilessly finicky to do with any speed or regularity since they were step-by-step, specific combinations. Challenge in Thaumcraft has, if I reclal, never been about getting the controls to behave properly.
0
The "vis battery" concept suggested to work in pairing with Gauntlets also is good for other things. Being able to store and transport vis is something I think a lot of people have wanted at some point or another, and 'maigc containers' has a lot of logical springboards for things like, say, anti-taint bombs.
What? No, I'm not crossing my fingers for better ways of fighting the expanded Taint. That would be silly of me.
6
This. I think this compromise is perfect. Use wands/staves for the heavy lifting, powerful blasts, terrifying power etc. and use gauntlets as an offhand for manipulation, defense, and functional stuff. Thus, you can still be doing useful things with your gauntlet while using a sword-- picking up enemies to slice them, tossing them away with bursts of force, putting up shields to block arrows, et cetera.
From a lore standpoint, the slightly slower and more focused usage of gauntlets makes it more permissible that they have a different vis system, like direct, passive accretion and manipulation or storing vis in a different place than the gauntlet itself, like a shoulder pack thingy or a backpack a-la the Thaumostatic Harness.
Certain foci could be limited to one or the other, or get buffs depending on where they're placed. After all, it's better to have a shield in your off-hand so your main isn't hindered, so you'd want it on a gauntlet rather than a staff. But some might be better suited in shape, like manipulation being aided by mobile fingers in the glove.
0
Yeah, I like the idea of gauntlets being a sidegrade better at doing certain things, or doing things the others can't. As an off-hand, I enjoy it a lot. I can't stress how much I'm glad you're considering doing off-hand stuff, it has a lot of magical potential for little gizmos and devices that could be used without hindering the player's main function.
EDIT: Staves are your heavy lifters with foci, not necessarily just combat.
0
[delighted shrieking]
Maybe gauntlets as a sidegrade/lategame thing, compressing the Wand Stuff into something wearable? Hmm. Neat stuff. Glowy stuff. However, stuff that will probably look super-goofy unless it's rendered in 3d rather than a sprite-- not that you're unfamiliar with that, Az. Either way, godspeed and good tidings (also happy new year, belatedly)!
2
I like the idea of an enterprising/masochistic thaumaturge purposefully miswiring their gateway to go to a random one in search of distant treasures.
1
The issue with Taint was that even at high level play, it was an exercise in futility to deal with beyond using absolutely egregious numbers of purifying blooms or an entire forest of pure nodes. Not to mention that in 5, the Taint also disintegrated the ground, so if you used enough blooms to actually cure it, they would often break each other's bases via disintegration and pop them off into the sea of dust.
When you make something a threat, but never give a good reward for trying to find ways to fight it and instead make it sheer busywork, it goes from interesting to frustrating. I'd rather it be a setpiece than something that was irritating to deal with even when you're tearing worlds asunder with your magic power.
0
I must say, I do like the idea that, since vis is now being chopped back down to one singular thing and not several types, Thaumaturges view every other form of mana as just vis, collected in different ways. Given that it means "power", it is quite literally the power-stuff, the raw energy of magic, and so is mana, or essence, or altar power.
0
I support the idea of a Thaumic Powersuit, personally. After all, what Thaumaturge would be able to resist reverse-engineering the joints and the animating forces within a Crimson Cult's golem to their own purposes? Put some heavy-duty thaumic machinery on it, like a node-capturer. Add some tanks to contain & direct essentia for catastrophic destructive feats in the form of basically advanced wand foci/limbs. It'd basically be the Golem Press, but you'd actually ride around in it for great justice.
Could even add some kind of thaumic imaging to the viewport, setting the precedent for things like new forms of vision (think Thaumic Horizons' goggle lenses) earlier down the tech tree. Enchanted glass and such.
(Who wouldn't fight the Wither in a specially shielded mech, using thaumostatic/essentia-powered jets to fly up and punch it in the face? I would do that. That would be awesome.)
EDIT: Also, I hope Thaumcraft 6 does include some special enchanted shields. I don't think I've seen any 1.10 mods that do anything interesting with them, even though there were plenty of unofficial shield mods that had a lot of variety. Really, there's a lot of potential for TC6 to explore the off hand slot.
4
I support the idea of golems working with the world, while wisps work more with entities (affecting breeding, deploying potion effects, helping crops grow, buffing/healing/etc, directing entities, and general logistics/direction).
Plus, wisps are just too cool and colorful to be nothing but enemies and nuisances forever.
(also multiblock arcane crafting is always cool in my book, table/altar/etc upgrades are neat. Something I always loved about the infusion altar is that it really forced you to set aside space, to make you prioritize an area for Thaumcraft, since it took up quite an area. That, and the stability mechanic encouraged some cool designs.)
EDIT2: Nodes acting as a rarer treat to find would really help enforce the idea that they are loci of immense power. If the aura recharges itself more ambiently, and it means less fussing with nodes and more "HECK YES, A NODE! INFINITE POWER" then I would absolutely support that they become more of a worldgen exploration thing rather than being every few steps comparatively and having to be collected en masse/sort of babied. It makes them that much cooler if they're the capstone of your freaky magic construction.
EDIT3: More varied flux also yep okay. I'm basically trawling Azanor's history.
3
Minecraft is limiting, but limitations breed creativity. Thaumcraft exists AROUND Minecraft. It creates new solutions, new problems, new dynamics that INTERACT with Minecraft. Those things make Thaumcraft what it is. They make it distinct because it works within its limitations to define and expand them. Magitech and thaumaturgy are great themes, but it'd be similarly a betrayal to those themes & dynamics to jettison off into an entirely new game.
Also, "work smart, not hard" is a bit deceptive, because no matter how smart you are there is so much sheer grinding determination necessary in order to make a fully fleshed out mod from the ground up. No one wants to admit that it's a grind, that it takes effort and persistence and pain to make something, but Rome wasn't built in a day. It's not as simple as just looking at a success story that happened for many different reasons and with the help of many different people.
And even then, talent in one field may not imply availability, or ability to communicate soundly with others, or other things needed to really turn a loose band of ideas into a project. Game development is complicated. Just development for an existing game is terribly complicated. It would be both a logistics & practical nightmare, and a betrayal of Thaumcraft's roots and its reason for existing, to cartwheel it into a different game.
Furthermore, Thaumcraft has been improving and redefining itself so long. Is the way to make it better really to thrust it into a vacuum and expect it to expand outward? Without losing what makes it so novel and so precious? I sincerely doubt it.
1
Being somebody who does a lot of aesthetic/test builds, I'm not especially frustrated if the essentia mechanics change somewhat; worldgen is neat, especially what I've seen you do with it, and I like practical items and flavor. Taint, eldritch shenanigans, thaumic shenanigans, you know. Still, I do kind of like the motif we have right now with items' value and inherent energies. I wonder what method would be used to combine essentia? Would electricity catalyze a reaction between them somehow?
0
Congrats on the 1.8.9 update, Nuchaz! I look wholly to the 194/1910 updates (they should be MUCH easier from what I hear), excited to get to use one of my favorite quality-of-life/aesthetic mods again. Good work!
0
He was on the forums as recently as a week ago, you can check someone's last activity/login on their forum profile. I'm certain the guy's just plugging away at Thaumcraft development in between any personal and/or professional life he's got, and doesn't want to give promises or estimates due to a number of features already having to be reined in for the update to 1.9 to be more feasible/arrive faster.
EDIT: If I was concerned for anyone, it'd be the guy who makes Thaumic Horizons, whose last post was in November.