How Thaumcraft 4 research notes work

Aspects and research points

Thaumcraft describes everything in the world with aspects. A torch has some Lux, a feather has Volatus and Aer, a zombie has Exanimis. When you scan a block, item, or creature with the Thaumometer for the first time, you learn its aspects and gain research points in them. Those points are the currency of research.

Six aspects are primal: Aer, Terra, Ignis, Aqua, Ordo, and Perditio. Every other aspect is a compound made from exactly two aspects, which may themselves be compounds. Lux is Aer plus Ignis. Tenebrae is Vacuos plus Lux, and Vacuos is Aer plus Perditio, so one Tenebrae is really two Aer, one Ignis, and one Perditio.

At the research table you can combine one point each of two aspects into one point of their compound. This is how you top up an aspect you have not scanned much of, and it is why a deep compound is expensive: every level of the recipe tree adds to what you spend.

What a research note asks for

A research note is a grid of hexagons. A few hexes already hold aspects that you cannot move. Some hexes may be missing altogether. Your job is to fill empty hexes with aspects from your pool until every printed aspect is joined into a single connected network. When the last link forms, the note is complete and can be turned into the finished research.

Each aspect you place costs one research point of that aspect. The points are spent when you place them, so a wrong guess is a real loss. That is the whole reason to plan a note before touching it.

Notes come in different sizes. The solver models three: a small grid of 19 hexes, a medium grid of 37, and a large grid of 61.

The connection rule

Two neighboring hexes link only when one aspect is a direct component of the other. Nothing else counts.

• Aer next to Lux links, because Lux is made from Aer.
• Lux next to Ignis links for the same reason.
• Aer next to Ignis does not link. Neither is made from the other, so you need Lux (or a longer chain) between them.
• Lux next to Motus does not link either. Both contain Aer, but sharing a component is not enough.
• Tenebrae next to Aer does not link. Aer is in Tenebrae’s recipe tree, but two levels down. Only direct components count.

A useful way to picture it: draw every aspect as a dot and draw a line from each compound to its two components. A valid research path is a walk along those lines. Each aspect’s page lists exactly which lines leave it.

Why some notes cost so much

In the solver, a primal costs 1 and a compound costs the sum of its two components. That number is how many primal points one point of the aspect is worth if you had to build it from nothing. The spread is wide:

The most expensive base aspects are Meto (24), Fabrico (21), Pannus (15), Lucrum (14), and Machina (13). Most of that cost comes from Humanus, which sits under nearly every tool, craft, and trade aspect and is itself worth 10 primals.

You rarely get to avoid a printed aspect, but you usually get to choose what goes between two of them. A route through Lux and Motus costs 4 primals. A route through Instrumentum and Fabrico costs 32.

Cost is not the only thing that matters

The synthesis number treats all primals as equal and assumes you build everything from scratch. Your actual pool is lopsided. If you have scanned every tool and machine in your base you may be sitting on plenty of Instrumentum and Machina while being nearly out of plain Perditio. In that case the “expensive” route is the one you can afford.

That is why the solver has three rankings. Cheapest minimizes synthesis cost. Simplest minimizes how many different aspects you need to find in the pool. Common prefers aspects you have marked as plentiful. The guide explains how to set those sliders, and the worked examples show cases where the rankings disagree.

What changes in GregTech: New Horizons

GTNH runs Thaumcraft 4 with addons that register extra aspects, such as Electrum, Magneto, and Radio from GregTech and the sin aspects from Forbidden Magic. They follow the same rule as the originals: each has two components and links only to those components and to anything built from it. Research notes in the pack can print these aspects as fixed endpoints, and some of them open up shorter bridges between base aspects.

Packs can also change recipes. The solver’s library is a fixed dataset, compared against pinned source files where possible, and the recipes page says which entries were checked.

Next steps

Read connection strategy for bridges between the primals and ways to fill long gaps cheaply, or go straight to the solver and map the note in front of you.