Thaumcraft Infusion Guide/tips

[DarthCuddlefluff]

           I noticed a lack of a guide to infusion in these forums and since the information on it is sort of scattered, I thought I might make a little post to help those new to thaum or who need a refresher on how infusion works. Most of this information is directly from the Feed the Beast wiki article on thaumcraft 4 but I noticed some things that pertain to our modpack in particular that were simply missing from the article.

                                                             SETUP: 
           The setup for the infusion altar is pretty simple. You will need 13 arcane pedestals, a runic matrix, 4 arcane stone bricks, 4 arcane stone and a wand to activate it.  Place a pedestal where you want your altar to be and the runic matrix two blocks above it.  Next place the 4 arcane stone bricks in the 4 closest spots diagonal to the middle pedestal and the stones on top of those. At this point you can right click the matrix itself and the altar will be formed at the cost of 25 of each primal essentia from your wand. The runic matrix is henceforth considered the center or your altar. After that you need to place the remaining 12 pedestals around the altar on the same level as your middle pedestal. These can be placed up to 7 blocks away in each cardinal direction but it is important to note two things. First they need to be placed in a way that is symmetrical meaning you need to place them in pairs where each pedestal has a corresponding twin on the opposite end of the altar but in the same position in terms of where it is compared to the altar's position. If you are confused just make a circle with them. Secondly you need to make sure that nothing is between the pedestals and the matrix. If something is blocking the way the ritual will not work. Essentia jars or mirrors need to be within 12 blocks of the runic matrix in each cardinal direction and do not need to be placed symmetrically. Personally I only ever use the jars themselves or an infusion provider from thaumic energetics.

                                                            Stabilization:
         If you look in the thaumonomicon at the recipes for each item you make in the altar at the bottom of the page there will be an indicator of it's instability. The higher the instability the more likely things will go wrong in your ritual. It is however not hard to make your altar so stable that it should hardly if ever mess up no matter how dangerous the ritual is. This is done through stabilizing blocks. These blocks include cobblestone, bedrock, bricks, moss stone, nether bricks, end stone, blocks of coal, thaumcraft crystal clusters,  thaumcraft nitor, thaumcraft tallow candles and floating candles, mana pylons, natura pylons, Gaia pylons, any glimmering botania flowers, any botania floating flowers, any botania shimmering mushrooms, and most importantly heads. Heads are your best bet as they stabilize the most, look awesome, and are easy to come by. However not all heads in this modpack will work. You will specifically need either vanilla or ender IO heads as witchery, botania, and hardcore ender expansion heads will not work. I highly recommend using ender IO enderman heads as they drop frequently especially with looting III and the endermen can be farmed easily by flying above them via whatever means you have looking at a bunch of them until you have a group below you and then killing spamming them with a weapon on an even surface until they are all dead. This will also get you an ample supply of ender pearls, experience, and ender shards the latter of which are needed for endgame thaum stuff. Two stacks of heads should take you less than an hour to acquire and ought to do the trick for almost total stabilization. Keep in mind that stabilization blocks need to be 5 blocks above and 10 blocks below the runic matrix, and 12 blocks each way horizontally, for a total area of 25x25x15 blocks.


        The rest of the important information can be gleaned simply by reading your thaumonomicon.  If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask them to me by commenting on this post and I will do everything I can to help you.

        My sources are: https://ftbwiki.org/Infusion_Altar_(Thaumcraft_4)    https://thaumcraft-4.fandom.com/wiki/Infusion_Altar    and my own tests

Edited March 17, 2019 by DarthCuddlefluff

[Karnthis]

I am not much of a Thaum user, but from what I do know this looks to be a rather complete and detailed collection of both common and obscure information. get job, thanks for putting this together.

[DarthCuddlefluff]

2 minutes ago, Karnthis said:

I am not much of a Thaum user, but from what I do know this looks to be a rather complete and detailed collection of both common and obscure information. get job, thanks for putting this together.

Thanks I will be writing one on research next. Probably tomorrow. I did all the research in two days and it was only split because I had other things to do. I know how to get it done quickly and explain it well.

[NeroxTheNoFace]

Nice idea, good to know what enderio enderman heads work  

[TattooGamer]

Very nice guide, exceptionally detailed for those who are just starting with Thaumcraft. Thank you for this guide. 

[Pharais]

Very well done but a suggestion I have for future guides would be to provide screenshots of setups etc. 

[DarthCuddlefluff]

On 7/26/2019 at 5:19 PM, Pharais said:

Very well done but a suggestion I have for future guides would be to provide screenshots of setups etc. 

You are right. I will try and do that in the future. I was so focused on other things like precise wording that I neglected to think of that. Thank you for the suggestion.