Essentia (Thaumcraft 4)

This article is about the concept from Thaumcraft 4. You may be looking for Essentia from Thaumcraft 3.

Essentia is a magical substance added by the Thaumcraft 4 mod. This article is about mechanics and parameters of Essentia. For information about its usage and how it can be obtained, see Alchemy page.

General Information

Despite Essentia looks like liquid, it is not liquid. It cannot be placed in Buckets or in the world, it is not registered in Forge Liquid Dictionary, it cannot be transported by liquid pipes and ducts. In fact, it does not even exist as itself, and all the player can see is a special data value of the machines/blocks/items that are capable of holding Essentia.

Every Essentia is related to its own Aspect. The aspect determines the color of the Essentia in containers, and in particles when it flies during the Infusion. Almost every mob, block or item has some aspects in it, and this means that this object can be smelted in Essentia of these aspects. For example, Dirt block has 2

aspects in it, and this means that the player can smelt it and get 2

Essentia.

Essentia is required for most of advanced recipes in Thaumcraft 4, so every thamaturge has to know what it is, how to gather and to use it.

Essentia Mechanics

In Crucible

When Essentia is created in Crucible, it can only be used there and not transported anywhere else. This is the biggest difference between Essentia in Thaumcraft 3 and Thaumcraft 4. As the Crucible is meant to be the most primitive machine to work with Essentia, it has some serious drawbacks. Essentia stored in it will slowly evaporate or melt down to the Essentia of more basic aspects. Also the Essentia cannot be extracted from the Crucible without any costs. It can only be done by totally emptying Crucible, but this will create a lot of Flux. Also when the Crucible is already filled with Essentia, adding more will make some of the Essentia to flow out and create Flux.

In advanced Essentia Machines

Advanced Essentia machines are considered to be all machines which manipulate pure Essentia without mixing it with Water. These are Alchemical Furnace, Advanced Alchemical Furnace, Crucible of Souls, Arcane Alembic, Essentia Tube, Warded Jar, Void Jar, Infusion Altar and many others.

Essentia Production Machines

Essentia is either produced in these machines and has to be pumped out, or it is transported by these machines, or it is consumed by these machines. If the Essentia is produced, a fuel source is needed to produce it, this can be Coal, Vis or life energy of mobs. If the fuel is supplied, the machine will work and take what it needs and produce Essentia, which is then stored in its internal buffer. Most of production machines have a buffer value of 32 Essentia and Essentia of any aspects can be held in this buffer at a time.

Essentia Transportation Machines

Transportation machines are named tubes. They can hold Essentia inside (Essentia Buffer) but mostly they don't do this and only help other machines to establish connection between them through this tube, so the Essentia can be "transported". Below is information about how Essentia Tubes really work:

Machines, which can interact with Essentia will connect to the Essentia Tube when it is placed from the side of the machine that is either Essentia input or output. Tubes themselves do not do anything, but if the tubes connect 2 machines, the machine which wants to output Essentia to this tube, will scan all the machines attached to the tube blocks in the tube network which is connected to the export side of the machine. The nearest machine which can import this essentia in it will be marked as a destination for the essentia. After this the outputting machine will add information to all of the tubes along the travel route that the certain type of Essentia is being currently sent through this tube.

If the other machine sets the route which transports different Essentia which passes throught the same tube block, this tube block will be jammed. This can be recognised by a small Essentia fountain going through the tube to the air, and if left for long, will create Flux. The jammed tube block will send information about it being jammed to both machines which try to send Essentia through it. And then both Essentia types will try to change the route, and untill they succeed, or untill one of the routs is terminated, no Essentia will be transferred. When several routes of one type of Essentia intersect, no problem will be created.

When the route stays stable for 1 second and is not jammed, the Essentia will start to flow through this route. The flow speed can vary depending on the complexity of tube network, but is no more than 20 Essentia per second, which is 1 Essentia per tick. Normally this value is much lower, having 8 Essentia per second in average.

Essentia Resonator can show which type of Essentia is currently transferred through each tube, making problem solving much easier.

Essentia Consuming Machines

These machines have an internal buffer for input Essentia, which can hold either Essentia of all aspects, or Essentia of any of the aspects, but 2 different aspects will not be supported. It can also be set to accept only Essentia of one certain aspect. Once there is some Essentia in that buffer, the machines will "work". Different machines "work" differently, one will start mining, another will start repairing items or summoning mobs. Warded Jar is also considered as Essentia consuming machine. It will have one shared buffer for import and export of Essentia.

Essentia in Solid Forms

Despite Essentia is mainly considered to be "liquid" (or at least not solid), there are the following items: Ethereal Essence, Crystallized Essence, Mana Bean and Phial of Essentia, which represent Essentia as an item in the inventory.

• Ethereal Essence is dropped by Wisps and Aura Nodes when the player destroyes them, and consists of 2 of the chosen aspect and always 1
  
  .
• Crystallized Essence is obviously made by crystallizing 1 Essentia in Essentia Crystallizer. It can be smelted into Essentia in not solid form again.
• Mana Bean when grown, picks up one Aspect and will be melted in 1 Essentia of this aspect. So Essentia can grow on trees, very slowly though.
• Phial of Essentia is considered to be a container of this substance. It holds 8 at a time, and can be filled and emptied by clicking it on stationary machines. It can be smelted to get rid of the container and release Essentia into the machine's internal buffer.

The Origin of Flux

Flux is considered as a bad thing, but what it is? There is gaseous and liquid flux, both created when accidents happen while working with Essentia. So it can be considered as parts of Essentia, which are oxidized in the atmosphere and harmful for the player and mobs. So, as the Essentia dissolves into gas and liquid, it should be something between these aggregate states. See Flux page for more info about Flux.