Mods/Thaumcraft/Magic

Magic in Thaumcraft is used for several sorts of crafting, enchanting, and building, including items which can project various spells or give other abilities. As with vanilla Minecraft, the player's abilities don't change overtly, though they do unlock recipes and gain magic-related skills such as research and node tapping. Thus, there are no "spells" -- everything is done by one of several forms of crafting, producing tools or weapons that can produce various effects. The ../Thauminomicon/ maintains a current record of the information, abilities, and recipes that the player has accumulated.

The "essence" of magic, Thaumcraft's form of "mana", comes in two forms, each of which is "flavored" by various Aspects, which are inherent in all blocks, creatures, and other items. The first form, "vis", is "free" magical energy, which is gathered from the environment and stored in wands for various purposes. Wands can absorb and store only the Primal aspects (see below), but there are devices (the Wand Recharge Pedestal with a Compound Recharge Focus) which can be used to convert compound-aspect energy from nodes into vis of primal aspects. Vis can be used for ../Arcane Crafting/ or to start off more advanced processes, and there are various wand foci that can use it directly for various offensive or utility purposes. The second form of magical energy, "essentia", is extracted from objects (which are destroyed in the process) and stored as a liquid in special ../Warded Jars/. Essentia can be of any aspect, primal or compound. Jarred essentia is used to produce more advanced items with ../Infusion Crafting/, and also to power certain devices. In general, vis and essentia cannot be converted into each other, except in the most destructive and inefficient ways.

There are 6 Primal Aspects, but aspects can be combined with each other pairwise, to produce new Combined Aspects. There are 44 Combined Aspects, for a total of 50 Aspects. The player cannot themselves combine the aspects of vis or essentia, but must harvest the more advanced aspects from the environment. However, proper equipment (Centrifuge, Crucible, Compound Recharge Focus) can break down the advanced aspects into their component types, such as separating Victus into Aqua and Terra. Most such separations are "lossy" -- for each point of compound aspect, you will get a point of one of its component aspects.

Magical energy can be obtained in several ways:
 * When monsters die, along with their experience they drop "aspect orbs" (of primal aspects) which can be collected by a wand.
 * Scattered around the landscape are Nodes, which can be drained with wands or other tools. Again, wands can directly absorb only primal aspects, though nodes can also have compound aspects.
 * With ongoing research, other devices for draining nodes become available. More significantly, almost any object can be broken down in an ../Arcane Furnace/ or ../Crucible/ for the aspected energies they contain, which can then be stored as essentia.

If magical energy is released into the environment (usually from use or abuse of various tools), it can form ../Flux/, which if left alone can ../Taint/ the vicinity and/or spawn ../Thaumic Slimes/. Flux can be gaseous or liquid; either sort can be destroyed only by replacing it with a block, but under the open sky, gaseous flux will float harmlessly upward into the sky.