Alchemy (Thaumcraft 4)

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

Alchemy is a way of manipulating liquid Essentia and using it to create other forms of Essentia or solid objects, imbued with magical power introduced in Thaumcraft 4 mod.

The following article is about obtaining and using Essentia, for its properties and mechanics look Essentia article.

Obtaining Essentia

Liquid Essentia can be obtained from solid items, mobs or other forms of Essentia.

Obtaining Essentia from solid items

This is the most common way of obtaining Essentia. For this operation the player needs the following stuff:

1. Alchemical Furnace or Advanced Alchemical Furnace
2. Items to be smelted for Essentia
3. Fuel for Alchemical Furnace or Vis for Advanced Alchemical Furnace
4. Arcane Alembics for Alchemical Furnace
5. Essentia Tubes or Essentia Import Buses
6. Warded Jars, Void Jars, Essentia Reservoirs, Oblivion Jars or Essentia Storage Cells
7. Arcane Bellows for Alchemical Furnace

Most common setup is using Alchemical Furnace, Arcane Alembics, Essentia Tubes, Arcane Bellows and Warded Jars. It is shown on the picture below. This setup is relatively simple to create, but it suffers from such problems as Essentia jamming and therefore is not recommended for advanced automation setups.

Setup with Alchemical Furnace, Arcane Alembics, Essentia Tubes, Arcane Bellows and Warded Jars

The following setup is used by more advanced thaumaturges, but is far more expensive than the previous one. This setup has problems with the speed of Essentia distribution, but all Essentia will eventually be delivered to its destination. Void Jars are used to prevent Essentia overflow.

Setup with Essentia Buffers, Alchemical Furnace, Arcane Alembics and Void Jars

The following setup is used by the most advanced thaumaturges and is considered endgame. It uses the power of Advanced Alchemical Furnace, an Aura Node to power it with Vis, Item Grate, Hopper and Chest for input automation and Essentia Reservoirs for massive storage of Essentia.

Setup with Advanced Alchemical Furnace, Essentia Reservoirs, Item Grate and Vis supply

The following setup can only be created with Thaumic Energistics addon installed. It allows to automate Essentia production using the power of Applied Energistics 2.

Setup with Advanced Alchemical Furnace automated with Applied Energistics

Obtaining Essentia from mobs

Liquid Death can be used to create Crystallized Essence from the mobs which die in it. This item can be smelted into liquid Essentia using any of the previous setups.

Setup using Blaze Spawner, Advanced Alchemical Furnace and Liquid Death

Any traditional mob grinder setup can be used if the drops from the mobs are smelted into Essentia. Due to massive amount of ways to create this setup no image for this provided, and the reader can use own imagination to create the most profitable setup from the resources they have.

Thaumic Exploration addon has a special machine for this setup called Crucible of Souls. It can directly make liquid Essentia from the slain mobs. Below is a setup using this machine.

Setup using Blaze Spawner and Crucible of Souls

Obtaining Essentia from other forms of Essentia

Alchemical Centrifuge can be used to break Essentia of compound Aspect to the primary Aspect-related Essentia.

Smelting Crystallized Essence and Phials of Essentia can also be a way to obtain the Essentia needed quickly.

Using Essentia

The Essentia can be used to create solid items, to power several machines and to create other forms of Essentia (see above).

Creating Solid Items

Solid items can be made from Essentia in a Crucible and in a Thaumatorium. The setup using the Thaumatorium is described on the page of this machine, and the setup using Crucible will be given below.

The Crucible requires a heat source (Fire, Lava or Nitor) and Water supply. Any pipe can supply Water to it, but the best option is to use an Everfull Urn if it is available. The ingredients can be thrown to the Crucible automatically, but the catalyst must be thrown by the player, or else the recipe will not work. Below is an attempt to automate this machine for a recipe with 2 ingredients. The ingredients can be inserted into the Crucible by pressing the buttons on the left or right side, and the catalyst has to be thrown by the player. The heat source is Nitor.

Setup using Crucible, Nitor, Item Grate and Hopper-Dropper ingredient system, Everfull Urn provides Water

Note: Excess Essentia in a Crucible will break down and sometimes produce Flux. Since the Crucible cannot draw Essentia through pipes directly like a Thaumatorium can, it can be difficult to find ingredients with exactly the right amounts of each aspect and no waste. Two ways to avoid this are to insert filled Phials, which hold exactly 8 of the aspect and nothing else, or use Crystallized Essence, each of which is exactly 1 of the aspect and nothing else.

Powering the Machines

Several machines from Thaumcraft 4 itself or its addons require liquid Essentia to function. Supplying them with Essentia is relatively easy. The player has just to connect the machine and Warded Jar with Essentia Tube and let the Essentia flow to the machine.