Read at your own risk!
Ordinary Items
A few ordinary items have non-standard forms. Most notably, iron ingots can be crafted to and from iron nuggets, just like gold with gold nuggets. As well, Rotten Meat can be crafted 9:1 into a Block Of Flesh. This can be disassembled by placing and mining it.
Ores and Minerals
There are several new ores, and one wrinkle for some existing ones:
- Amber Bearing Stone -- Unsurprisingly, yields Amber, one piece per ore block. (The Fortune enchantment does not work on Amber.) Amber is used in certain advanced recipes. Amber can be crafted to and from an Amber Block, 4 pieces to the block.
- Cinnabar -- This mines as ore blocks, which can be smelted into Quicksilver. Quicksilver is used in advanced crafting, notably for essentia tubes and magic mirrors.
- Aspect Infused Stone (six kinds) -- These appear very different from other ores, with glowing traceries that are visible in the distance and darkness. There are six types for the six Primal Aspects, each with its characteristic color. When mined, they yield Aspect Shards, used for magical crafting and enchanting. (Fortune does improve the yield for these.) Six shards can be combined into a "crystal cluster", which helps with research and infusion enchanting. The shards in a cluster must either be all the same type, or one of each type (for a "mixed cluster").
- Iron, Gold and Cinnabar ores can be mined (or purchased from Pech) as "native clusters". These smelt faster and produce twice as much material as blocks of ore. The Pickaxe of the Core can produce native clusters when mining the corresponding ores.
- A number of new materials can be crafted, but one warrants mention here: Thaumium can be made with a Crucible, and can be crafted into armor and tools (including swords) which nearly match diamond. Thaumium tools can also be enchanted by Infusion into Thaumcraft's special tools, with unique capabilities. Thaumium armor and tools, as well as the special tools, can also receive the Repair enchantment, which lets them recover durability over time.
Caps
- Iron Cap
- Gold Cap
- Copper Cap
- Silver Cap
- Inert Silver Cap
- Charged Silver Cap
- Thaumium Cap
Mob Drops
Thaumcraft has several new monsters, with new drops.
- Angry Zombies (and their big brothers, Furious Zombies) drop zombie brains, which can be broken down for essentia or (for advanced players) crafted into a Brain In A Jar.
- Wisps drop "ethereal essence", which is otherwise available only by breaking a node. These precious items (each imprinted with one of the 50 aspects) can be used in magical crafting, or broken down for essentia -- in addition to their visible aspects, all ethereal essences contain the rare Auram aspect.
- Thaumic Slimes drop "tainted goo", as do certain Tainted monsters. The Taintacle also drops "taint tendrils". Both of these are difficult to collect, as after every 45 seconds in a player's inventory, one will dissolve (infecting the player with taint status). However, they can be stored in a chest, or a donkey's or mule's pack, and will not decay there. They can also be tossed through a magic mirror, or brought home by playing "hot potato" -- dropping them and picking them back up every 30 seconds or so.
Wand Foci
The beginning player may be frustrated with the few uses for wands. Using them for crafting and building is all very well, but where are the wands that go zap? For that, you need to get hold of some Nether Quartz and craft wand foci. The several types produce a variety of offensive or utility effects, powered by the vis within the wand. Wand Foci can also be enchanted with a number of focus-specific enchantments to improve their performance. They can even be enchanted on the vanilla enchanting table, but note a bug: High-level enchantments will frequently give them Unbreakable, which is useless for foci and makes infusion enchanting them afterwards that much harder. You can also craft a Focus Pouch which stores all of your wand foci in one inventory space, and allows easily switching among them.
The Special Tools and Armor
Once the player has started extracting essentia and performing infusions, a variety of special items become available. Much of this is "machinery" that gets placed in the world to work, and there's also the advanced wands and foci. But there are also several "special tools", and a few unique items that are worn in place of armor.
The special tools are made by infusing "standard" tools made from Thaumium: sword, axe, pickaxe, shovel, and hoe. These are all quite easy infusions (though each requires a single diamond), and each gives very useful abilities:
- All: The thaumium tools have durability and effect rivalling diamond, and their infused forms keep those capabilities. Unlike the "vanilla" tools, both the thaumium and the special tools can be enchanted with the Thaumcraft-special enchantment Repair, which allows them to recover durability over time while worn or on the hotbar. Note that any enchantments on the thaumium tools will be erased by their transformation. All the abilities of the special tools cost durability. The tools can also be enchanted on the enchanting table, but this may give them Unbreaking, which Repair is incompatible with. (Infusion Enchantment is safer.)
- Sword of the Zephyr: When attacking, this sword can attack several opponents that are close to each other. It can even include some enemies that would otherwise be out of reach, but at least one mob needs to be hit in the usual fashion. The greater powers of the sword appear when it is used to block: Not only are mobs pushed away by the sword's winds, but the wielder gains limited flight. They will slowly rise into the air, where they can also move horizontally at roughly the usual speed (for moving while blocking). This also serves to halt a fall, which is handy once the player has floated up to some dangerous height, or simply wants to descend into a ravine or somesuch.
- Axe of the Stream: This tool acts as a normal axe, except when used against an actual tree. When used on a tree, it will magically chop the topmost blocks of the tree first, effectively cutting it from the top down. More specifically, it will chop the furthest wood block connected by leaves and wood to the block you are chopping. (Be careful in dense forests -- if the trees overlap, the axe can end up chopping down a whole section of forest.) Many of the leaf blocks will also be destroyed in the process, and of course the remaining leaves will be deprived of wood from the beginning of the process.
- Pickaxe of the Core: This has several abilities: Firstly, when right-clicked against a block side, glowing lights will show the location of any ores nearby. However, be warned that most manufactured blocks will also show lights, as will sandstone. This can be awkward in areas you've already explored and set out equipment in, and also in deserts. The second ability is that when mining iron, gold, or cinnabar, this pickaxe can return a "native cluster" instead of an ore block. The native cluster will smelt into two ingots (or pools) of metal instead of the usual one. The Fortune enchantment will sharply increase the chances of getting a native cluster. The user can also repeatedly place and mine any actual ore blocks that were mined, until all the ore is converted to native clusters. Just as a bonus, if the pickaxe is used to attack a mob, it will set them on fire.
- Shovel of the Earthmover: When used to dig appropriate blocks, the shovel will dig a 3×3 section, perpendicular to the block side it was used on. (It can also be used normally, by holding down shift.) The dropped blocks will also be drawn towards the user. The shovel can also be used to "undig": When right-clicked on a diggable block which protrudes from the surface, it will surround that block with more of the same, filling it out to a 3×3 section. The blocks are taken from the wielder's inventory, and this only works if they have enough. Note that this also works with non-diggable blocks, so it's useful for laying stone floors and such.
- Hoe of Growth: This tool will till a 3×3 area of dirt with each click. It can also be right-clicked on a sapling or immature plant for the effect of bonemeal. This effect works on a few plants that aren't effected by actual bonemeal (notably, silverwood saplings).
The armor-like devices are separate and complex infusions, much more difficult than the special-tool infusions. There are three wearable devices in this group:
- The Goggles of Revealing take the place of a helmet, and allow easily seeing nodes in the same fashion as the Thaumometer. Also, when looking at a node, or anything containing essentia (crucible, alembic, warded jar), the icons and strengths of whatever aspects it contains will be displayed in front of it. Note that this does not count as "scanning" a node, and there is no display for ordinary blocks, items, or mobs.
- The Thaumostatic Harness is worn in the "chest armor" slot, and provides full flight, similar to creative mode (and using the same controls). This is powered by a jar of Potentia essentia, which must be loaded into the harness beforehand. (Place the harness in your hotbar and right-click it to open the fuel slot.) The fuel burns fairly slowly, but the harness must be taken off to refuel! (When wearing the harness, there will be a fuel gauge on the screen. When actually flying, the gauge will be crowned with flickering sparks (the player themselves will be surrounded by occasional "lightning" as well). When flying, touching the ground makes a "thump" noise, but unlike creative mode, touching down does not turn the harness off. Note that the infusion to create this device requires a comparator, which implies access to Nether Quartz. The harness can also be enchanted with Haste to increase flying speed.
- The Boots of the Traveller, worn like any other boots, will greatly speed ground travel in several ways: Walking speed is much faster, and the wearer can both jump quite high, and fall from greater distances without harm. In addition to this, the boots allow "walking up" a one-block rise without the need to jump. The boots can also be enchanted with Haste to increase speed even more.
All three of the wearable devices can also receive armor enchantments as usual (including Repair), at the enchanting table and/or by Infusion Enchantment. (However, as above there is a risk of getting Unbreaking, which will prevent adding Repair afterwards.) A pair of thaumium leggings for the last armor slot will provide some extra protection. Note that while thaumium armor is comparable to diamond armor (and can receive the Repair enchantment), the individual pieces do not have transformed versions like the above special tools.