[1.12.2] [B16] [mild irritation] no use for herba in alchemy :(

[Azanor]

From @MalkContent on June 7, 2018 12:3

Edit: This is issue is only regarding the crucible.

In the TC6.0 versions there still was the cobblestone -> mossy cobblestone recipe so you had a sponge for all the excess herba. Right now it is borderline impossible to figure out any "clean" hedge alchemy recipe combinations with the crucible, because you almost always end up having to use something with herba and since herba has no use in alchemy as of now, you either throw in more quartz or let it out into the aura. I'd really like any kind of alchemical recipe that uses herba in some capacity, because I always felt that figuring out a fitting combination or recipes was a fun part of crucible alchemy.

I can see why the Moss Stone/Mossy Stone Bricks recipe got removed (they vanilla recipes now), but how about some regular old dirt -> grass/mycelium/podzol or some more fancy stuff like leaves -> respective sapling, doubling mushrooms, turning ferns/grass into their double tall versions, poppies to roses, pink tulips to peonies. these recipes could contain any number of other essentia requirements, as long as I can sink the herba into it somehow :/

Copied from original issue: Azanor/thaumcraft-beta#979

[Azanor]

From @Miral007 on June 8, 2018 18:49

If you want to get rid of it safe and fast, put a lamp of growth on your herba jar.

[Azanor]

From @MalkContent on June 8, 2018 18:55

Doesn't work for the crucible. Updated the initial post. Should have been more clear about this.

[Azanor]

From @Miral007 on June 8, 2018 19:40

That's true, but I think the crucible is meant to be inefficient, then you move on to the smelter and thaumatorium.

[Azanor]

From @MalkContent on June 8, 2018 21:35

Crafting with the crucible without creating waste essentia was always difficult, but it's much more so now. I'm not asking for easy mode, I'm just being like "woah there" now that you basically can't use any plants in crucible crafting without creating flux/using quartz. Moving to the smelter and the thaumatorium is not so much more efficient as it is a looot easier and also automatable.

[Azanor]

Any suggestions? (Beyond those in the OP I mean)

[Azanor]

From @Cenotaffio on June 12, 2018 10:55

maybe a process that use herba in order to multiply seeds? for example put one seed in a crucible with 20 herba to obtain 2 seeds. In my opinion is quite balanced: in early game allow players to get rid of exceeding herba while speeding up the process of creating a farm, or obtain a consistent amount of rare seeds. in mid/late game can be still useful if you have mods like immersive engineering for oil production.

Another thing can be a way to produce magical related plants, like visroom. Or maybe use herba and precantatio to turn normal wood in a magic counterpart (like oak wood to greatwood).

[Azanor]

From @Cenotaffio on June 12, 2018 11:9

Another suggestion (i think in the almost-op realm) could be a special soil or totem that can make mushroom grown regardless of light level. obviously also done with dark essentia.

[Azanor]

From @MalkContent on June 12, 2018 11:29

I had this idea where it would just make seeds grow their plants, (insert WOOSH sound) right out of the crucible, because I thought that was a kind of funny and reminded me of the plant scientist villain from Darkwing Duck. Same thing for saplings, but the tree shape would be custom, in a multi-pronged tentacly, warpy shape, and not instant, but very quickly grow it block by block, consuming herba for each block. At the end it does an instant WOOSH (insert breaking wool sound) where the leaves grow at the end \^\^

Bottom line, it's just funny in my head. It might be sort of useful in the early game, but it also makes it difficult to use more than 1 seed/sapling for their essence. (And also you'd probably drop the grown item right back into the crucible while mining a lot :x)

[Azanor]

From @gerbilfat on June 12, 2018 13:54

There's some good suggestions in here. The crucible was always meant to be inefficient, but there's two hurdles that combine to make the crucible an Achilles heel for the budding thaumaturge. Many of the recipes are no longer clean combined with no way to deal with flux buildup in the environment (yet). The research for doing an alchemy lab is more expensive than it used to be. Players are relying on the crucible for a longer than in previous versions of Thaumcraft. It's been a problem in SMP where multiple people need to use the crucible. We're all afraid of a rift opening up in our woodland mansion.

Giving us more recipes to soak up extra essentia is one way to solve the problem. Another is to implement some way to clean aura, either by player action or by monster spawns, thunderstorms, etc. consuming the flux over time.

[Azanor]

From @MalkContent on June 12, 2018 16:49

Maybe there could be some kind of fertilizer that could be crafted with herba (and maybe some other aspects). Or just a regular old duplication recipe for bonemeal. Fertilizer Items are very useful early on, and later in the game, they would still be relevant for other mods. For example Immersive Engineering Garden Cloches use Fertilizers.

Or maybe "Fertilizer Sponge" that you can soak with herba.

---

Ooor, and this might be not in line with the fluff, you could use a lot of herba (+ a little of fitting other aspects like Praecantatio and Metallum) to "grow back" durability on thaumium items. Y'know, since we don't have repair anymore (and because Mending was a mistake :x). This could be behind a very early warpy inspiration (as in "you get your first perma warp, also you scanned thaumium and plants at some point) and en route to void metal (which is the true "i grow back by myself" metal), and offer a place to spend an Eldritch Observation :)

[Azanor]

From @MalkContent on June 12, 2018 18:35

Or! A fertilizer liquid with buckets as catalist. The liquid would spread like water and after a couple of ticks, the source block would vanish and cause a small aoe bonemeal effect around all blocks touched by it and the connected non-source blocks. Could grow grass on dirt and moss on cobblestone/bricks. Could turn coarse dirt into podzol. Could turn dirt into mycelium if there's some flux in the air (seeing as mycelium has Vitium now). When clicking plants directly with it, it could just apply a couple doses of bonemeal to that single plant, to get around the "i have to build a trench, so this liquid doesn't wash away my plants" issue. It could be called "Liquid Life", and affect animals, too, and be a prerequisite for the Lamp of Fertility/Growth, and be in front of Liquid Death :)

[Azanor]

From @Geethebluesky on June 12, 2018 22:21

Going in a different direction... Herba is the TC essence of plants, and what plant was most beloved in previous versions (besides Silverwood Saplings of course): Ethereal Blooms!

I would love to see the return of the Ethereal Bloom as a Herba sink, especially if Taint is supposed to be nasty + a normal part of the progression; at least, as an early-game method of moderating areas of Taint a bit until the player can figure out how to deal with the newbie mistake of crucible-dumping too early and creating Rifts... This could be an early stage of Flux-mitigating research, since Flux is such a big deal overall it seems normal there would be multiple ways of combating it.

Perhaps Herba can be used to craft an antidote or preventative to Taint Poison. Or to make some kind of mentally-stabilizing juice necessary before dropping yourself into the Eldritch as a result of warping yourself silly. :)

[Daderic]

I like to use herba for the vitium filter from B17.

[webwraith]

Would it be possible to draw the herba out somehow, make the lamp of growth easier to get (gotta do something with all this essentia) but when being used to boost plant growth, give a chance to get a Void plant instead of the original if there's any warp in the local aura?

[MalkContent]

@Daderic the issue is mostly regarding crucible alchemy :)

[enderger]

Just melt down the slivers

[EvilDylan]

My own suggestions for Herba use in alchemy, just throwing stuff out here:

1) Perhaps with a significant amount of herba and victus, one could use it to make logs or leaves of a given tree into saplings. This could be something that it provided in the api or applied dynamically so that it can apply to modded trees as well, and would be particularly useful for trees that do not have many leaves or rarely drop saplings. 2) Similar to 1, here could be an alchemy recipe to turn chorus fruit into chorus flowers; in case one accidentally forgets to harvest the flowers first, they don't need to go to the nether to find it. 3) Melon slices > full melons 4) If TC 6 ever continues on to 1.13 (which is a tall order), it could be used to regrow bark on stripped logs. 5) It could provide mossy variants of some Thaumcraft blocks, similar to how Botania has a mossy variant of the petal apothecary, perhaps? (Mossy greatwood golems come to mind). 6) Ethereal Blooms; perhaps instead of erasing taint, though, the bloom could prevent extra taint seeds from spawning within a radius. This would allow the thaumaturge to more reasonably defeat a messy taint spill where multiple taint seeds keep respawning the others, as well as potentially working as a barrier. Naturally, however, they would not be so easy to obtain.

[enderger]

Perhaps herba could be used to create Alchemical Paper, which can be used 10 times in a research table (40 herba with paper to get 1 Alchemical Paper). This could be placed in an Arcane Journal (8 Alchemical Paper around a piece of leather for the paperback journal that stores 64 pieces of the paper, a Paperback Arcane Journal surronded by thaumium yielding a Thaumium-enhanced Arcane Journal that can store 128 pieces of Alchemical Paper) to make research much easier.

[Thunder-Nova]

A use for herba... One thing that pops in mind is bonemeal. Just throw bonemeal in the crucible with herba and get an upgraded version of bonemeal.

If the bonemeal is use on grass there is a chance for shimmerleaf to pop up. If in a desert or beach biome and used on sand cinderpearls. If in an area with lots of flux vishroom will pop up.

[MalkContent]

After having it let simmer in my head for a bit, i actually kind of like the idea of repairing thaumium items with herba (in combination with some other aspects), as a precursor to true void metal. It would help keep thaumium based stuff like the elemental tools and the fortress armor in a competitive position to void metal as well as offering a very repeatable way to get rid of excess herba. Potentially would require an alternative way to handle alchemy recipes though. Unless you wanna throw the item into the crucible for every single point of repair. :x

[Frontrider]

@EvilDylan can you make an issue with your last post here? It looks like something that would fit. Some of it is like something that I'm planning.

@Thunder-Nova I have a bone meal alternative that is made out of herba. (herba use is inclined towards mass production) @enderger herba+ordo+arbor is going to be my recipe for paper. I'll need to find a good catalyst tough. (make an issue on that link)

Outsourcing the problem won't solve it for thaumcraft itself, but can give a perspective for different solutions.

[enderger]

@Frontider a question and a suggestion:

Would you think about the Alchemical Paper/reusable paper system

And maybe the paper recipie could drop 2 paper with paper as the catalyst.

[Frontrider]

Go for the link.