Equalise Botania-TC integration with Base Thaumcraft

[LazyFleshWasTaken]

Botania is a magic mod that isn't very integrated yet, and feels like a side project with rewards solely within itself, unlinked back to the other magic mods.

In sight of that, I want to decrease the nerfing of botania tc-wand stuff, like the livingwood core and manasteel cap, two early-game core/caps that are equivalent to thaumium and silverwood respectively, and should therefore hold a similar, if not cheaper cost to reward branching into botania.

Make no mistake, while this is making the recipes cheaper, it is only doing so to bring parity to their 'equals' in the main TC mod.

Starting with the cores, here are the current recipes for the wands 'equal' to silverwood, and livingwood's upgrade, dreamwood:

You may notice that the livingwood core requires all the elemental runes, mana, and season runes, which is far more expensive (and a much lenghtier fetch quest, but that's a gripe with base botania, not the integration) compared to the crystal clusters of silverwood. It then also needs to be thrown in a mana pool. The aspects, at least, are fine. The wand below silverwood is witchwood, which just needs mutandis, a wtiches oven, and a bunch of alchemy to make vinteum, all doable with just a bit of witchery.

All have 100 vis capacity.

Dreamwood is the upgrade to livingwood, yet it has literally the same recipe except for a different block in the centre.

My proposed recipe is :

This removes the season runes, bringing it more in line with the solely elemental-themed inputs of silverwood, and leaving dreamwood to take both, as an upgraded wand. Frankly, i'd take off the elemental runes for dreamwood and leave it with just the season ones, but I didn't think of it until just now.

Manasteel caps are 'equal' to Thaumium. I mean, Vinteum too, but they're a shortcut to Thaumium and so I feel their recipe is fine. Anyway, base recipes:

Not only does manasteel take an extra infusion, its infusion cost is increased. This is for an 'equal' to thaumium, which has 1 arcane crafting and 1 infusion. Manasteel begins as inert silver, then the silver caps have to be charged with an infusion, then infused again to transform to manasteel, to then be thrown in a mana pool to be charged.

Again, this is a cap equal to thaumium.

My proposed recipe is such:

First, remove 1 infusion by transforming an inert silver to an inert manasteel, then bring the infusion cost to be in line with thaumium, since astral silver is a mix of silver and thaumium, and lastly, change silver caps to require steeleaf screws, to be in parity to how thaumium require knightmetal screws. Frankly, steeleaf is more annoying to get than knightmetal, but that may just be my opinion. Also, if you can get steeleaf, you can get aluminium, hence I don't feel that it makes that much difference between the two.

And once again, while this is making the recipes cheaper, it is only doing so to bring parity to their 'equals' in the main TC mod.

[Dream-Master]

I am not sure buffing all stuff is a good solution . You remove also complex recipes and simplifying it. Balancing is good but not at any price . I will check the or later ingame

[LazyFleshWasTaken]

I am not sure buffing all stuff is a good solution . You remove also complex recipes and simplifying it. Balancing is good but not at any price . I will check the or later ingame

I wouldn't say I did it at any price, nor that the recipes are any less complex, just less cluttered (which I think is a mistake being made a lot when designing recipes, in that more items is more complex). The end result was meant to have similar complexity to the parallel item in base TC, as mentioned, and since those were nerfed once and not touched again, to my knowledge at least, it seemed like a good place to base It off of.

The new recipes should parallel well to their counterparts, livingwood rod to silverwood, and manasteel caps to thaumium. After all, if they provide the same purpose, but are more complex/annoying/expensive to craft, then there's no point in making them.

[combusterf]

My personal take on this subject is that I'd personally rather see the WG wand items have capacities different from the default progression. That rewards users by allowing less intermediate wands to be made before obtaining core progression goals (like the silverwood scepter) or getting there with less wand hacking enchants.

Also, the base ingredients come with tiering restrictions. dreamwood/terrasteel/elementium come relatively late in Botania progression so "buffing" the recipes overlooks that you can't make them anyway. Again, a better argument to buff their base stats instead.

[Dream-Master]

My personal take on this subject is that I'd personally rather see the WG wand items have capacities different from the default progression. That rewards users by allowing less intermediate wands to be made before obtaining core progression goals (like the silverwood scepter) or getting there with less wand hacking enchants.

Also, the base ingredients come with tiering restrictions. dreamwood/terrasteel/elementium come relatively late in Botania progression so "buffing" the recipes overlooks that you can't make them anyway. Again, a better argument to buff their base stats instead.

so you suggest buff wand values instead of recipes?

[Miklebe]

so you suggest buff wand values instead of recipes?

To make them not meme and viable? Maybe.
Terrasteel cap has like negative 50% vis discount, so it just exists there, uselessly.
And the wand rods outside of main progression most of the time are just not worth it compared to cheap Silverwood. (At least from my point of view when I wand to progress wands, but all alternatives are 500 times more complex and costly, giving no benefits besides questionable property)
I think by making botania wand parts cheaper players could get an option to invest in botania to get a bit cheaper wand parts that could help in wand progression. Right now it's mainly just "get first wand, get greatwood wand, make scepter, make transmitative scepter, make silverwood scepter, the end"
There are some splits based on how deep in magic you are, but the only worth considering wand parts are either base thaumcraft, or maleficia with shadow metal stuff (and maybe infernal rod, forgot from which mod it is)
Unless vis recharging from mana is just that OP, since both wand cores have the same capacity and recipe, i never tried to craft them when silverwood exists

[LazyFleshWasTaken]

My personal take on this subject is that I'd personally rather see the WG wand items have capacities different from the default progression. That rewards users by allowing less intermediate wands to be made before obtaining core progression goals (like the silverwood scepter) or getting there with less wand hacking enchants.

Also, the base ingredients come with tiering restrictions. dreamwood/terrasteel/elementium come relatively late in Botania progression so "buffing" the recipes overlooks that you can't make them anyway. Again, a better argument to buff their base stats instead.

The problem with this, is that if they're buffed enough to go into another tier, they'll be gated again. If they're barely buffed, but retain the same recipe, there'd be no point, because no one is going to make them anyway.

That's why I want to make the cost relatively equal to the parallel item in base thaum, the reward of special abilities coming because we want to encourage branching out to the other magic mods. Witchwood has it down fairy alright, if a bit of an annoyance with the vinetum since you have to make 81 nuggets of it to make a block to then hammer it down into gems, as it is both an ingot and a gem. Or mine it from Mars, ig.

This pr only touches livingwood rod and manasteel caps, because I wasn't sure if I wouldn't be immediately dismissed if I did all of the cores at once. The blood magic rods and the tainted rod are also far more annoying-- sure it was an attempt at making it expensive/complex, but it does little more than have the person check it out, blanch at the recipe, and dismiss it entirely-- to craft, one because it needs all the alchemical essences, one of which needs titanium iirc, and the other because it needs you to mine tainted stuff with the shove of the purifier, which for some reason needs a silverwood rod and exquisite gems now.

[combusterf]

(Almost all non-vanilla cores are in forbidden magic, thaumic bases has the other two, bearing the nonstandard capacities)

So currently:

• Livingwood rod: 100 vis (=silverwood-tier) + mana recharging
• Dreamwood rod: 100 vis (=silverwood-tier) + mana recharging
• Manasteel cap: -10% (=thaumium)
• Terrasteel cap +80% (=useless)
• Elementium cap: -20% (=void)

A full mana tablet charges about 1.5 wands with all vis types. That is very useful if you lack in nodes, but it's not particularly cheap in mana terms. The key mana charging feature is also not advertised for the Dreamwood version in the thaumonomicon, and not mentioned for either in the GTNH spreadsheet. That seems to be a core failure of the system and should be fixed independently of what's proposed here. If you ask me, the transmutative core in comparison has the best QOL value of all rods in the pack, just lacking in capacity.

Base Livingwood is accessible at the start of Botania, the rest of the current recipe makes it HV, in a more annoying fashion than silverwood, so silverwood would typically be felt as superior.

Dreamwood is way worse, the stats are equal to livingwood, and requires late-IV tier technology, making it absolutely useless in comparison. The only improvement is that dreamwood can be made into a staff.

And then there's the rod progression, that progress can be made easier if there are more variety in capacity values available and could encourage people into delving into other mod flavours.

So if you want to buff recipes, you can, but I'd also drop the livingwood core below 100 capacity, 75 would put it where similar rods are, but maybe deviating in the 85-90 range perhaps? Lorewise it makes sense that silverwood is the better material.

Dreamwood can keep the recipe and go up a lot. 150's the same as the infernal core, the difference being that the current ingredients are higher tier but much more predictable to source. We could also put it at 125 capacity for that reason.

About the caps, I think elementium is fairly ok where it's at. Manasteel has the advantage over thaumium that it doesn't need knightmetal and is easier to source as a result. If you want to buff the recipe, maybe also nerf its stats correspondingly from 10% to 8%. That again also helps with the wand progression options available.

Terrasteel caps are a trap and could be entirely replaced, possibly adding mana recharging to rods that that don't and tripling those that do? Plus maybe a 10% discount for being a decent material?

Spreadsheet for reference: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EIZtJU5eBbnUlrg7fD_ZyIzsr9sn4l4no9ek6M_iSVM/edit?gid=612517417#gid=612517417

[LazyFleshWasTaken]

(Almost all non-vanilla cores are in forbidden magic, thaumic bases has the other two, bearing the nonstandard capacities)

So currently:

* Livingwood rod: 100 vis (=silverwood-tier) + mana recharging

* Dreamwood rod: 100 vis (=silverwood-tier) + mana recharging

* Manasteel cap: -10% (=thaumium)

* Terrasteel cap +80% (=useless)

* Elementium cap: -20% (=void)

A full mana tablet charges about 1.5 wands with all vis types. That is very useful if you lack in nodes, but it's not particularly cheap in mana terms. The key mana charging feature is also not advertised for the Dreamwood version in the thaumonomicon, and not mentioned for either in the GTNH spreadsheet. That seems to be a core failure of the system and should be fixed independently of what's proposed here. If you ask me, the transmutative core in comparison has the best QOL value of all rods in the pack, just lacking in capacity.

Base Livingwood is accessible at the start of Botania, the rest of the current recipe makes it HV, in a more annoying fashion than silverwood, so silverwood would typically be felt as superior.

Dreamwood is way worse, the stats are equal to livingwood, and requires late-IV tier technology, making it absolutely useless in comparison. The only improvement is that dreamwood can be made into a staff.

And then there's the rod progression, that progress can be made easier if there are more variety in capacity values available and could encourage people into delving into other mod flavours.

So if you want to buff recipes, you can, but I'd also drop the livingwood core below 100 capacity, 75 would put it where similar rods are, but maybe deviating in the 85-90 range perhaps? Lorewise it makes sense that silverwood is the better material.

Dreamwood can keep the recipe and go up a lot. 150's the same as the infernal core, the difference being that the current ingredients are higher tier but much more predictable to source. We could also put it at 125 capacity for that reason.

About the caps, I think elementium is fairly ok where it's at. Manasteel has the advantage over thaumium that it doesn't need knightmetal and is easier to source as a result. If you want to buff the recipe, maybe also nerf its stats correspondingly from 10% to 8%. That again also helps with the wand progression options available.

Terrasteel caps are a trap and could be entirely replaced, possibly adding mana recharging to rods that that don't and tripling those that do? Plus maybe a 10% discount for being a decent material?

Spreadsheet for reference: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EIZtJU5eBbnUlrg7fD_ZyIzsr9sn4l4no9ek6M_iSVM/edit?gid=612517417#gid=612517417

While I agree that some capacity tweaking can absolutely go a long way, especially paired with recipe tweaking, your suggested capacities would make livingwood and dreamwood basically the same as thaumium and void cores from bases, at 80 and 160, respectively, which are, frankly, easier. By a lot. Botania runes are too much of a fetch quest compared to 6 thaumium and 6 salis, between the random materials, the mana cost, and the altar needing an infusion matrix to make, which is a weird progression gate for a lower-complexity magic mod. Should be the other way around, frankly, but that's a different discussion.

The only difference would be mana recharge, which as you said, isn't even that good due to the conversion rate, unless paired with mana caps' 25% discount on it. Only thing I'd need to check is how quickly it goes up from a band of aura compared to the thaumium and void cores' 10% refill, or amber's 100%. A Mana mirror is also a way, which is probably a lot more powerful, too.

On the matter of wand progression, so long as the screw material is tied to the capacity of the wand, there won't really be that many different ways of progressing. Thaumium Sceptre remains the best for a long while, what with Silverwood being behind Vibrant alloy, a mid-late hv mat, since you can sometimes find stainless as loot.

Which is good, don't get me wrong. You WANT to be able to progress as much as possible in magic as early as possible, since the return falls off the longer it's put off. Also, it's found in the Twilight Forest, which is great lorewise, since with Dream's changes it mostly originates from there, between the ore and boss drops needed.

Anyway, with the new cap swapping, you no longer need 5-8 wands to get to warpwood or woven silverwood, which is fine, and very good. Magic deserves a buff always.

I retain that magic should be tied less to technological progress and more to exploration, or otherwise a different progression line. Maybe I could work out one later to suggest. Again, out of scope, so ill stop here.

As for manasteel caps, I disagree they need a change. The nested recipe alone makes it unpalatable, hence me changing it to use an uncharged silver cap instead, and the new recipe is completely equal to thaumium's, if with an extra, effortless step. I don't think it needs to be made inferior, because we want to encourage branching out to the other magic mods. Hell, thaumium has one of the best conversion costs to manasteel. Lore even calls it a botanist's thaumium, tho that might've been more "Manasteel is to a botanist as Thaumium is to a Thaumoturge."

You can look at Vinteum for an example of an alternative to thaumium caps, gated only by titanium. Leaving manasteel gated by silver's need for stainless steel would be a disservice, especially since the recipe is so much worse than thaumium, hence change to steeleaf and removal of a step.

Frankly, as of right now, even with this recipe there's little incentive to go for it, unless you're going to use it with a botania core, since its so far to the side. Making it slightly cheaper to make a wand compared to Thaumium might be best. Otherwise, making the recipe even cheaper, and letting it take the same slot as Taitned Magic's cloth cap at 5% is another, but not my preferred.

The only reason Elementium is fine is because Void is also gated by tungstensteel. Actually, elementium is worse, because it needs gaia, which needs naquadah, which is hard mid-iv since it needs hss-g coils and a iv laser engraver iirc. Thauminite, on the other hand, is 15% discount, and is only one extra infusion on Thaumium, so those two should really be gated earlier, not later.

And please don't take this as an invitation to nerf Thauminite, it's fine where it is. Barely used as is, in fact, since gold is more than enough usually to go to the next tier. Tainted Magic also has a 15% one, but I forget how it was made. Crimson Cleric cloth iirc, but not the full recipe.

Terrasteel mentions in its entry why it's so bad, and I do agree with the sentiment/lore of 'too much mana pushes out vis'. Lowering the severe nerf down to gold's 0%, however, seems more appropriate, and a discount to recharge rate at 50-60% on a botania rod, and 25-30 on any other rod also sounds good.

I do have to ask where such changes would have to be made, however. GTWands?

Also, adding vis discount to other mods' equipment would be ideal in pushing for more integration, though it'd have to be less than the purpose-made thaumoturge's. I went to add a 6% to the manasteel helmet of revealing, but once finding out it shouldn't be in botania directly, I fear I no longer have any idea how to do it. Took me like a day of work to figure out how to do it and the tooltip too :fail:

Also, that spreadsheet looks to be severely outdated.

[LazyFleshWasTaken]

ah fuck, i just realised astral silver is an hv mixer recipe. Gonna need to change that before merging, or its gonna remain hv for manasteel caps.

hm... no silver material looks appropriate, so would one thaumium dust, 2 silver dust be fine? or 2 silver 1 salis? No, wait, manasteel is already a magic metal, and silver caps are theoretically a vis-charged metal already, so then just 3 silver dust? That's not really any more expensive than 3 thaumium dust. 3 salis to match thaumium caps is the other option ig.

[Nikolay-Sitnikov]

My personal take on this subject is that I'd personally rather see the WG wand items have capacities different from the default progression. That rewards users by allowing less intermediate wands to be made before obtaining core progression goals (like the silverwood scepter) or getting there with less wand hacking enchants.

Also, the base ingredients come with tiering restrictions. dreamwood/terrasteel/elementium come relatively late in Botania progression so "buffing" the recipes overlooks that you can't make them anyway. Again, a better argument to buff their base stats instead.

My take on this is that it would be better to un-gate dreamwood & elementium, since everything they gate is completely worthless at IV anyways. (Terrasteel Caps are clearly intended as a joke item - they don't even get an infusion recipe - so they're supposed to be useless.)

[Nikolay-Sitnikov]

(Almost all non-vanilla cores are in forbidden magic, thaumic bases has the other two, bearing the nonstandard capacities)
So currently:

* Livingwood rod: 100 vis (=silverwood-tier) + mana recharging

* Dreamwood rod: 100 vis (=silverwood-tier) + mana recharging

* Manasteel cap: -10% (=thaumium)

* Terrasteel cap +80% (=useless)

* Elementium cap: -20% (=void)

A full mana tablet charges about 1.5 wands with all vis types. That is very useful if you lack in nodes, but it's not particularly cheap in mana terms. The key mana charging feature is also not advertised for the Dreamwood version in the thaumonomicon, and not mentioned for either in the GTNH spreadsheet. That seems to be a core failure of the system and should be fixed independently of what's proposed here. If you ask me, the transmutative core in comparison has the best QOL value of all rods in the pack, just lacking in capacity.
Base Livingwood is accessible at the start of Botania, the rest of the current recipe makes it HV, in a more annoying fashion than silverwood, so silverwood would typically be felt as superior.
Dreamwood is way worse, the stats are equal to livingwood, and requires late-IV tier technology, making it absolutely useless in comparison. The only improvement is that dreamwood can be made into a staff.
And then there's the rod progression, that progress can be made easier if there are more variety in capacity values available and could encourage people into delving into other mod flavours.
So if you want to buff recipes, you can, but I'd also drop the livingwood core below 100 capacity, 75 would put it where similar rods are, but maybe deviating in the 85-90 range perhaps? Lorewise it makes sense that silverwood is the better material.
Dreamwood can keep the recipe and go up a lot. 150's the same as the infernal core, the difference being that the current ingredients are higher tier but much more predictable to source. We could also put it at 125 capacity for that reason.
About the caps, I think elementium is fairly ok where it's at. Manasteel has the advantage over thaumium that it doesn't need knightmetal and is easier to source as a result. If you want to buff the recipe, maybe also nerf its stats correspondingly from 10% to 8%. That again also helps with the wand progression options available.
Terrasteel caps are a trap and could be entirely replaced, possibly adding mana recharging to rods that that don't and tripling those that do? Plus maybe a 10% discount for being a decent material?
Spreadsheet for reference: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EIZtJU5eBbnUlrg7fD_ZyIzsr9sn4l4no9ek6M_iSVM/edit?gid=612517417#gid=612517417

While I agree that some capacity tweaking can absolutely go a long way, especially paired with recipe tweaking, your suggested capacities would make livingwood and dreamwood basically the same as thaumium and void cores from bases, at 80 and 160, respectively, which are, frankly, easier. By a lot. Botania runes are too much of a fetch quest compared to 6 thaumium and 6 salis, between the random materials, the mana cost, and the altar needing an infusion matrix to make, which is a weird progression gate for a lower-complexity magic mod. Should be the other way around, frankly, but that's a different discussion.

The only difference would be mana recharge, which as you said, isn't even that good due to the conversion rate, unless paired with mana caps' 25% discount on it. Only thing I'd need to check is how quickly it goes up from a band of aura compared to the thaumium and void cores' 10% refill, or amber's 100%. A Mana mirror is also a way, which is probably a lot more powerful, too.

On the matter of wand progression, so long as the screw material is tied to the capacity of the wand, there won't really be that many different ways of progressing. Thaumium Sceptre remains the best for a long while, what with Silverwood being behind Vibrant alloy, a mid-late hv mat, since you can sometimes find stainless as loot.

Which is good, don't get me wrong. You WANT to be able to progress as much as possible in magic as early as possible, since the return falls off the longer it's put off. Also, it's found in the Twilight Forest, which is great lorewise, since with Dream's changes it mostly originates from there, between the ore and boss drops needed.

Anyway, with the new cap swapping, you no longer need 5-8 wands to get to warpwood or woven silverwood, which is fine, and very good. Magic deserves a buff always.

I retain that magic should be tied less to technological progress and more to exploration, or otherwise a different progression line. Maybe I could work out one later to suggest. Again, out of scope, so ill stop here.

As for manasteel caps, I disagree they need a change. The nested recipe alone makes it unpalatable, hence me changing it to use an uncharged silver cap instead, and the new recipe is completely equal to thaumium's, if with an extra, effortless step. I don't think it needs to be made inferior, because we want to encourage branching out to the other magic mods. Hell, thaumium has one of the best conversion costs to manasteel. Lore even calls it a botanist's thaumium, tho that might've been more "Manasteel is to a botanist as Thaumium is to a Thaumoturge."

You can look at Vinteum for an example of an alternative to thaumium caps, gated only by titanium. Leaving manasteel gated by silver's need for stainless steel would be a disservice, especially since the recipe is so much worse than thaumium, hence change to steeleaf and removal of a step.

Frankly, as of right now, even with this recipe there's little incentive to go for it, unless you're going to use it with a botania core, since its so far to the side. Making it slightly cheaper to make a wand compared to Thaumium might be best. Otherwise, making the recipe even cheaper, and letting it take the same slot as Taitned Magic's cloth cap at 5% is another, but not my preferred.

The only reason Elementium is fine is because Void is also gated by tungstensteel. Actually, elementium is worse, because it needs gaia, which needs naquadah, which is hard mid-iv since it needs hss-g coils and a iv laser engraver iirc. Thauminite, on the other hand, is 15% discount, and is only one extra infusion on Thaumium, so those two should really be gated earlier, not later.

And please don't take this as an invitation to nerf Thauminite, it's fine where it is. Barely used as is, in fact, since gold is more than enough usually to go to the next tier. Tainted Magic also has a 15% one, but I forget how it was made. Crimson Cleric cloth iirc, but not the full recipe.

Terrasteel mentions in its entry why it's so bad, and I do agree with the sentiment/lore of 'too much mana pushes out vis'. Lowering the severe nerf down to gold's 0%, however, seems more appropriate, and a discount to recharge rate at 50-60% on a botania rod, and 25-30 on any other rod also sounds good.

I do have to ask where such changes would have to be made, however. GTWands?

Also, adding vis discount to other mods' equipment would be ideal in pushing for more integration, though it'd have to be less than the purpose-made thaumoturge's. I went to add a 6% to the manasteel helmet of revealing, but once finding out it shouldn't be in botania directly, I fear I no longer have any idea how to do it. Took me like a day of work to figure out how to do it and the tooltip too :fail:

Also, that spreadsheet looks to be severely outdated.

I'll add a configuarable Vis Discount for custom items config option to Salis Arcana.

[LazyFleshWasTaken]

My personal take on this subject is that I'd personally rather see the WG wand items have capacities different from the default progression. That rewards users by allowing less intermediate wands to be made before obtaining core progression goals (like the silverwood scepter) or getting there with less wand hacking enchants.
Also, the base ingredients come with tiering restrictions. dreamwood/terrasteel/elementium come relatively late in Botania progression so "buffing" the recipes overlooks that you can't make them anyway. Again, a better argument to buff their base stats instead.

My take on this is that it would be better to un-gate dreamwood & elementium, since everything they gate is completely worthless at IV anyways. (Terrasteel Caps are clearly intended as a joke item - they don't even get an infusion recipe - so they're supposed to be useless.)

I do believe alfheim was downtiered to EV, so dreamwood should be there now, too, agglomeration plate recipe be damned.

On the other hand, elementium caps need ts screws, and then a gaia spirit, which remains firmly iv due to the pylons. Void caps also need ts, however, so elementium remains firmly worse, by quite a bit. Maybe if it gave a 25% discount instead. That'd make it third best, behind shadowmetal and ichor's 30%, but those are the tip-top of their respective mods, so elementium as 25% wouldn't be amiss. Technically Terrasteel should be the 25%, but with the lore reason for its worse discount, and elementium's demand for gaia, it fits.

[LazyFleshWasTaken]

Now that feature freeze is over, can we continue discussion on this?

[Dream-Master]

@combusterf @Nikolay-Sitnikov @Miklebe

[combusterf]

I've already posted my design opinions, so maybe compile a table of suggestions at this point:

Livingwood rod (HV, currently 100 vis + mana charging):

• Suggestion 1: Buff recipe
• Suggestion 2: Buff recipe but nerf capacity
• Suggestion 3: Make this available at MV
• Capacity suggestions: 75, 80, 85, 90

Dreamwood rod (EV, currently 100 vis + mana charging):

• Suggestion 1: Buff recipe
• Suggestion 2: Buff capacity
• Capacity suggestions: 125, 140, 150, 160, 175

Manasteel cap (HV, currently at 10% discount):

• Buff recipe by removing one of the two inert->charged infusions
• Buff recipe by making it MV
• Tweak discount to 7%-12%

Terrasteel cap (EV, currently joke item at 80% penalty)

• Suggestion 1: unnerf to 0% discount
• Suggestion 2: 150%/200% mana charging buff

Elementium cap (IV, Currently at 20% discount)

• Suggestion 1: 25% discount

(Did I miss something?)

Let's start by agreeing which direction we want to take it, then we can hash out the exact recipe details.

[LazyFleshWasTaken]

The compilation looks fine, yeah. It has everything I remember.

The Ender botania integration pr swapped a bunch of recipes to use botania materials, such as manasteel, mana pearls, and mana diamonds, which forces some foray into Botania anyway. This could offset some of the annoyance generated by that by making the botania wand options considerable alternatives to the main thaum or thaum bases.

Livingwood rod definitely needs a recipe buff, regardless of whether it gets a capacity change. Further, changing capacity to 80 or lower would make them on the same use case as thaumium wand core, which is by far easier. Keeping it at 100, with the recipe buff, is best for it. It has mana recharge over silverwood, which would make the more expensive recipe slightly worth it. Runes are still a pain of a fetch quest tho, and the altar is still gated weird, considering its a more primitive magic.

Dreamwood, on the other hand, definitely needs that capacity bonus, it's staff as well. 175, which is slightly larger than the void wand core's 160 would be good, especially considering that it consumes the season runes, on top of the element and mana runes. No buff to the recipe, however, since it's being given such a large capacity. with a 175 base, that'd be a staff of 350, which covers almost all use cases for a staff.

Manasteel caps are the botania alternative to Thaumium, and knightmetal isn't something hard to get, and shouldn't be used as a point of better/worse. A direct recipe buff, between the removal of one infusion step, and gating it mv, makes it equal to thaumium in all but a need for mana as well as infusion, which would make it the preferred cap to go for if you've already done even a bit of botania.

On the other hand, we could keep the current recipe and increase manasteel discount instead, probably to 15%,, which would push for more integration. I think the base recipe is in the same strain of difficulty/cost as thauminite-- a recipe, and two infusions--, so it'd just be a straight shot discount increase. I think this would do more for pushing integration than discounting the recipe, actually.

Elementium, straight discount buff to 25%, with its current recipe. It's way more expensive than void, so it needs it, and it'd fill a slot that no other cap does. Though, I think you can make shadowmetal caps as soon as you have a primordial pearl...

Terrasteel cap, I don't really know how I would code in the ability to give any wand mana recharge capability, nor mana recharge discount/rate increase. However, overall, a 0 to 10% discount, along with the capability on any wand core, and possibly 50-75% mana recharge discount for botania cores would make it the go-to wand cap for people to use for stuff like equal trade, warding, and maintenance, especially paired with a mana mirror, as it'd just recharge as long as its held.

[boubou19]

So what do we do with this PR?

[LazyFleshWasTaken]

So what do we do with this PR?

Dreammaster told me in my dm's that combuster said it needs some steering to get to a consensus before it can be finalised.

I've been relatively busy, so I haven't pushed for much discussion.

[combusterf]

I'm cycling the suggestions through #dev-votes on Discord