Minecraft – GT:NH Stone Age Thaum Guide

GT:NH Stone Age Thaum

This guide covers an early Thaumcraft 4 start in GregTech: New Horizons, allowing you to access Thaumcraft content as early as possible while still in the Stone Age. It was written using GT:NH version 2.1.2.3QF.

The guide relies heavily on villages, villagers, and loot. Keep useful villagers alive whenever possible, particularly those with trades you want. Emerald acquisition is not covered, as villagers are intended to be the source of emeralds.

The guide assumes some familiarity with Thaumcraft 4. Players unfamiliar with Thaumcraft may want to keep the Thaumcraft 4 wiki available for reference.

The Start

At the beginning, prioritize obtaining the following:

• A Heretic villager, preferably one with an initial Iron Capped Profane Wand trade
• One or more Wizard villagers, preferably with an initial shard trade
• A source of iron
• A phial, obtainable from Roguelike Dungeons or from glass bottles plus rubber
• A cauldron

Optional:

• A sugarcane farm for paper
• A renewable water source such as cactus

Before starting the Thaumcraft progression, establish basic food, shelter, and a bed. Settling in the village containing your Heretic or Wizard can be advantageous.

If the two villagers are in separate villages, staying with the Wizard may be preferable because you are likely to trade with that villager more frequently. Keep both villagers safe, as they are integral to the progression.

Cookie arrows can be used to create more villagers faster.

The Iron Capped Profane Wand

The Iron Capped Profane Wand is the most important component of the early Thaumcraft progression described in this guide.

It has several advantages:

• It costs emeralds and a stick instead of aluminum and lich bones.
• It has a capacity of 50 vis, or 45 vis when accounting for the 110% vis cost. This is comparable to a Greatwood Wand rather than the starting Wooden Wand.
• It has a large, quickly used pool of excess vis that replenishes spent vis. This is displayed as Contract points in the wand’s tooltip.
• It does not require a node to obtain vis.
• It allows wand skipping.
• Its drawback is that using enough Contract points to replenish vis gives you a small amount of warp.

The Iron Capped Profane Wand is the cornerstone of this type of run.

Obtaining the Basic Materials

Iron should be relatively easy to obtain through normal progression. It is recommended to find both an iron vein and a coal vein so that you are not completely dependent on primitive resources.

A phial is required for Thaumcraft research because it is used to craft Scribing Tools. Possible sources include:

• Glass bottles obtained from lootbags or elsewhere, which can be emptied from potions
• Glass bottles found underneath cauldrons in a specific variety of village house
• Rubber combined with a glass bottle
• A Phial of Enchanter’s Concentrate, which can be drunk to empty it and leave a phial

Rubber is also useful for Warded Jars.

Cauldrons can be found in a couple of varieties of village houses or in hobgoblin huts, or they can be crafted with iron.

Paper is required for research. Sugarcane provides a convenient source without requiring wood to be used for paper.

Setting Up Thaumcraft

Use your iron to make a set of GT crafting tools. A screwdriver is required to turn Tables into an Arcane Worktable and Research Table.

Once you have an Iron Capped Profane Wand:

1. Obtain a Thaumonomicon from a village library.
2. Make a Crucible from the cauldron you found or crafted.
3. Turn one of your Tables into an Arcane Worktable.
4. Once you have a phial, craft Scribing Tools.
5. Finalize your Research Table.

Near-Immediate Research Problems

The main early problem is obtaining research points.

To make a Thaumometer, you need a Diamond Lens. A Diamond Lens requires an LV Lathe, which is considerably beyond the earliest stage of progression.

Without a Thaumometer, you cannot scan things, and without scanning things, you do not obtain research points. Therefore, research points need to be managed carefully. Running out of them prematurely can leave you unable to continue researching.

There are several possible sources of research points.

Inspiration

You can rely on Inspiration to provide primal aspects, but you are unlikely to obtain all of the primals through this method.

Only primals with the white glimmer in the corner are affected by Inspiration. Inspiration provides a research point only after you have completely run out of that primal, and it provides only 1 point at a time.

Obtaining Crystal Clusters to accelerate this process is possible, but is not the recommended route in this guide.

Deconstruction Table

The base Thaumcraft Deconstruction Table may initially seem like an obvious solution because it is close to the beginning of Thaumcraft research.

However:

• It is slow.
• It is inefficient.
• It cannot be crafted without a Thaumometer.
• Even if you have a Thaumometer, there are better things to spend it on.

Whisperweed

For GT:NH versions 2.1.3.x and above, the pack has Botania installed. The Apocrypha tab of the Thaumonomicon contains research for Whisperweed, a plant that uses mana to give the player research points and potentially warp.

The Whisperweed route requires a component made with a titanium ingot, which makes it unsuitable for the early progression described here.

The testing referenced for this route was performed in GT:NH 2.1.2.3QF.

Rosa Mysteria

Thaumic Bases provides another option in the form of Rosa Mysteria.

Rosa Mysteria grows on Crystal Blocks and provides 8 of that primal aspect when harvested. If grown on a Mixed Crystal Block, it provides 2 of each primal.

To access it, research Crystal Cluster Blocks and Aurelia. Aurelia requires Basic Seeds.

You therefore have two main options for continuing research:

• Obtain Rosa Mysteria for a renewable solution.
• Skip it and begin searching for a way to make a Thaumometer.

Researching Rosa Mysteria

Obtaining a Diamond Lens early can require substantial luck, so you may want to use Rosa Mysteria first and make the Thaumometer later.

Rosa Mysteria allows you to perform a large number of researches, but it does not allow you to research Magical Metallurgy because Magical Metallurgy requires scanning an item or block containing Metallum.

This prevents early access to Thaumium and metal duplication through research. Thaumium can still be obtained through villager trades.

Eventually, you will want a Thaumometer, either by progressing to LV or by finding a Diamond Lens.

Research the following:

• Rosa Mysteria
• Shard Transmutation in the Thaumic Horizons tab

Be careful when combining aspects so that you do not consume too many in the process.

To obtain all six primal aspects, you can either:

• Make a Mixed Crystal Block
• Make 6 Rosa Mysterias and create a primal block for each aspect

Either method requires balancing and unbalancing shards.

Keeping an aspect reference available is recommended. Possible references include the spreadsheet from the GTNH Discord server using the !essentia command, another world where you have already scanned many things, or another suitable reference.

Rosa Mysteria growth can be accelerated with bone meal.

What You Can Do at This Stage

Once you have access to Rosa Mysteria and the relevant research, you can access a significant amount of Thaumcraft content.

Examples include:

• Growing Magic Crops
• Creating a Thirsty Tank for early infinite water or milk
• Performing essentia distillation with the Alchemical Boiler

The Thirsty Tank is particularly useful. It is a few times slower than an Ender IO Reservoir, but many times faster than what standard progression would provide at this stage. The Reservoir is an HV-tier option.

Making a Thaumometer

Whether or not you made a Rosa Mysteria, you will eventually want a Thaumometer. You need 3 Thaumometers to have both a pair of Goggles of Revealing and a Thaumometer.

If you are not progressing normally to LV, you can attempt to obtain a Diamond Lens through LootGames.

The Diamond Lens may have been removed from LootGames loot tables. If that is the case, this route is no longer useful for obtaining a Thaumometer, except for potentially attempting to tier-skip toward infusion capabilities.

Finding LootGames Dungeons

If you have not found a LootGames dungeon, you need to locate one.

Once you have made an Ore Finder Wand, finding additional LootGames dungeons becomes easier because you can place one of the dungeon blocks into the wand and use it to search for more.

Use a ceiling or floor block rather than a wall block because it provides better accuracy.

After finding your first LootGames dungeon, save one of its blocks and prepare to play.

LootGames uses four loot tables:

• chest1
• chest2
• chest3
• chest4

The more stages you complete, the more loot tables you can access. The Diamond Lens can be found in chest2, so you need to complete at least the first 2 stages.

The four chests correspond to the loot tables as follows:

Chest location	Loot table
North	chest1
West	chest2
South	chest3
East	chest4

Even if you complete all 4 stages and receive all 4 chests, the chests still pull from their respective earlier loot tables.

This means you can obtain chest2 loot while also receiving chest3 and chest4 loot. If the Diamond Lens is your only objective, you only need to check the west chest. The other loot is additional and is still worth attempting to obtain.

Minesweeper

LootGames Minesweeper contains 4 boards, with the radius increasing by 1 each time.

If you beat the first board and fail the second, you receive chest1 loot.

If you beat all 4 boards without losing all 3 lives, you can receive up to chest4 loot.

For the Diamond Lens, the goal is to beat at least the first 2 boards. This gives access to the desired chest2 loot, which can contain a Diamond Lens. You should still attempt to reach chest4.

If you do not know how to play Minesweeper, web-based versions and other resources can be used for practice. The game relies on logic and patterns, although some situations can come down to a 50/50 choice.

Game of Light

Game of Light, also known as Simon Says, follows the same basic progression.

Beat at least the first 2 stages.

You know that a stage has been completed when green particles appear and the dungeon acknowledges your success in chat.

Of the 3 available tries, the loot is determined by your best run.

A useful technique is to record the sequence with your keyboard. You can use the numpad and center the layout around 5. The sequence can be entered into chat or another window if you have multiple monitors.

Without a method of recording the sequence, later stages can be difficult to reproduce.

Identifying the Loot Tier

After the minigame ends, the number of generated chests indicates the highest loot table that will be used.

If you have successfully reached chest2 loot, you should see 2 or more chests.

Continue running LootGames dungeons until you obtain 1 or 3 Diamond Lenses.

LootGames can also provide rubber for Warded Jars and other materials useful for infusion.

Getting the Shards

Once you have at least 1 Diamond Lens, you need the required shards.

If you have not made Rosa Mysteria or completed its research, you will at least need Shard Transmutation.

At this stage, you have not obtained the LV Assembler needed to access the Twilight Forest, so your available source of shards is trading.

Your Wizard should have a trade for some shards, but you are unlikely to obtain trades for all 6 shard types.

Use Shard Transmutation to balance some shards and then unbalance them into other primal shards.

Using the Thaumometer

Once you have a Thaumometer, one of the first things you should scan is something containing Metallum, such as an iron ingot.

This unlocks Magical Metallurgy for research, providing access to:

• Thaumium ingot creation
• Research for metal duplication
• Native cluster creation

Native cluster creation provides some level of ore doubling.

Native Cluster Restrictions

Native cluster creation is limited to pure ores.

Examples include:

• Iron Ore for native iron clusters
• Copper Ore for native copper clusters

You need actual ore blocks rather than crushed or other processed varieties.

The ores must also be in normal stone. Ores in basalt, red granite, and other stone types do not work.

Although the recipes may specify MC or IC2 ore blocks, GregTech ore blocks also work as long as they are pure ores in normal stone.

Improved Native Cluster Processing

Researching the following Witching Gadgets technologies provides improved recipes for native cluster ore processing:

• Cinnabar Purification
• Metallurgic Perfection: Purification

These recipes are more expensive and are harder to find because they do not appear in NEI.

They produce 2 native clusters instead of 1, resulting in four times the original output instead of two times.

They also work with a much wider range of ore types.

Progress and Infusion

Research requires a source of research points. Thaumium production, metal duplication, ore doubling, and the best source of research points, alongside things such as Goggles of Revealing, require a Thaumometer.

Infusion is possible, but obtaining it early is more difficult than obtaining a Thaumometer.

The main obstacle is Arcane Stone Bricks.

Infusion requires 12 Arcane Stone Bricks:

• 4 for the Runic Matrix
• 4 for the structure
• 4 for an Alchemical Furnace

Normal Arcane Stone Blocks are easy to make, but converting them into Arcane Stone Bricks requires an MV Precision Laser Engraver and a red lens.

Unlike the Diamond Lens, which is a LootGames loot option, making an MV Precision Laser Engraver requires more than a single LootGames drop.

MV materials come from chest3, so you can continue farming LootGames until you have enough materials to make the machine. However, this is quite tedious, and the machine also needs to be powered.

This route is possible if you are determined to obtain infusion this way. It is also the only option if you cannot or do not want to save-scum.

Arcane Stone Bricks From Magic Novice Lootbags

Another way to obtain the required Arcane Stone Bricks requires progression through the questbook and the pack.

Magic Novice lootbags have a chance to provide 8 Arcane Stone Bricks, which is two-thirds of the 12 required.

The first Magic Novice lootbag available through this progression comes from the Twilight Arrival quest, which requires entering the Twilight Forest.

This is not a problem if you have progressed normally, but it can be inconvenient if you are still in the Stone Age according to the questbook.

After obtaining one of these lootbags, you can save-scum or complete additional quests in an attempt to obtain more.

A second Magic Novice lootbag can be obtained from the Low on Sticks? quest, which requires collecting a couple of common things from the Twilight Forest.

Going to the Twilight Forest also allows you to stop relying on the Profane Wand, which generates warp, and to mine for shards normally.

Progression Beyond the Early Thaumcraft Route

At this point, the major mechanical obstacles of this early Thaumcraft route have been overcome. Your main limitation should now be the types of resources available to you rather than major mechanics.

You can now:

• Research basically whatever you want
• Duplicate ingots found in chests
• Start other mods such as Blood Magic, Witchery, and Botania largely without fear
• Skip the rest of the mining-level progression by making a Thauminite Pickaxe
• Make armor that provides vis discounts

Vis Discount Armor

Thauminite Armor provides a total 11% vis discount:

Armor piece	Discount
Helmet	5%
Chestplate	2%
Leggings	3%
Boots	1%
Total	11%

Goggles of Revealing provide a 5% discount.

Bloodstained Thaumaturge’s Armor provides a combined 9% discount:

• 4%
• 3%
• 2%

It has no helmet, allowing Goggles of Revealing to provide an additional 5%.

Bewitched Armor provides a 9% discount:

• 5%
• 4%

It has no helmet or boots. Goggles and Boots of the Traveler can therefore be used in those slots. Bewitched Armor also requires a Chem Bath.

Returning to Normal Progression

You will probably still be using the Profane Wand. Creating a normal wand that is equal to or better than the Profane Wand can be difficult.

You may find materials such as stainless steel in chests that allow you to make another wand, but this depends on what you find.

From this point, continue progressing through the pack.

Steam Age

If you have not already done so, progress to the Steam Age.

Make an Alloy Smelter of an appropriate tier to reduce your reliance on rubber obtained from loot.

Thirsty Tank

The Thirsty Tank remains useful. Place one next to a water source block to obtain infinite water significantly faster than with a Railcraft Water Tank.

An Everfull Urn would be better, but it requires titanium.

Steam Age Thaumcraft Equipment

In the Steam Age, you have access to a Compressor.

Use it to make Thaumium Blocks for equipment and machines such as:

• Thaumatorium
• Essentia Crystallizer
• Alchemy Catalyst
• Thaumium Anvil

The Alternate Start

This progression is an alternate start rather than a permanent challenge run.

Its purpose is to provide early access to Thaumcraft-gated tools and blocks that can be useful if they are available early enough in the pack.

Once the major early Thaumcraft barriers have been overcome, continue with normal GT:NH progression while using the Thaumcraft tools, machines, research, and resources now available.