Warp is required for progression through TC, but many shy away from Warp under the mistaken impression that it’s any sort of actual threat. This is not helped by the fact that Warp’s mechanics in GTNH are best described as “quirky” due to there being two systems in play simultaneously - more on that later. Of course not diving into Warp means never figuring out early ways to resolve said Warp, no early ways to resolve Warp means waiting until at least IV to start dealing with it, and by the time one is in IV magic progression will have long been cast aside in favor of focussing solely on tech. Only for magic to rear it’s now long left behind head circa UMV, when suddenly it becomes necessary for progression, and what you’re left with a giant pile of long forgotten homework whos merits and values were obsoleted long ago. If you want magic to pay off you’ll have to invest into it early. And that means dealing with Warp early
Warp comes in three different flavors - “Permanent” (not really), Sticky/Normal, and Temporary warp. Similarly, Warp events comes in two flavors - Vanilla TC effects and Warp Theory effects. The latter is an add-on mod, and its event mechanics work (and operate) separately from vanilla TC’s Warp event mechanics
To first cover the different flavors of Warp in greater depth: Permanent Warp is exclusively the result of doing research. In the Thaumonomicon you’ll find research with a dark cloud surrounding them, and the text Forbidden Knoweldge followed by an indicator of how warpy the research is, from Mostly Harmless to Taboo. Completing those types of research yields Warp Sticky/Normal Warp is largely the result of doing research - the amount of warp gained is split between permanent and sticky warp - but can, on occasion, also come from doing something particularly Warp-y. Or, in some cases, rarely from doing something that normally yields temporary warp more often than not Temporary Warp is exclusively the domain of doing things that give you temporary Warp - things like eating Zombie Brains, getting hit by the Primal attack of Eldritch Guadrians, using a Flux Scrubber Focus with the Warping enhancement, etc. The chance of getting temporary warp depends on the source
And next, to try and cover the two different systems for Warp events, at least as far as I understand it: Vanilla TC Warp events have unknown, but generally very low thresholds for occurring. This mechanic is responsible for all of the warp events that are not listed in the questbook and the Thaumonomicon, which only list the events caused by Warp Theory - things like Flux Flue, Unnatural Hunger, Sun Scorned, etc. Vanilla TC events fire hard and fast whenever the player gains Warp - including donning Warping equipment, which gives the player Temporary Warp equivalent to the listed level of Warping - but will naturally reduce in frequency and severity over time, until the player gains more Warp to reset the event timer. This is why after equipping a set of new Warping equipment you’ve suddenly got two vanilla TC effects active at once at all times, but after 10-15 minutes at the most the circus just unceremoniously grinds to a halt entirely. I’m not sure if that event timer ticks down while the player is under the effect of Warp Warding
Warp Theory Warp events have listed thresholds in both the questbook and Thaumonomicon, and are much higher than vanilla TC’s thresholds (needless to say vanilla TC was not expecting >1000 points worth of permanent/sticky warp in various add-on mods). Warp Theory events don’t have an event timer that slowly ticks down to zero until the player gains more warp and resets it, instead Warp Theory events simply fire periodically (thankfully at a much more reasonable pace than vanilla TC’s events). It serves as a constant reminder that you’ve got Warp, and that you should make an attempt to deal with/alleviate it
So why did I say Warp isn’t a threat? Well, because it isn’t, really. Vanilla TC events, as stated, can be incredibly disruptive with the frequency of their events…for the 15-odd minutes they last before going away on their own. And even than there are solutions to ride out that wave, for the most part. Warp Theory, on the other hand, gives you a consistent string of things to deal with…but it takes a lot of Warp for it’s events to even be able to cause actual problems at all, let stand cause problems the player couldn’t mitigate the severity of (even if constantly staying on guard like that could be a threat to one’s patience)
To go over the relevant warp events, and how to deal with them (starting with vanilla TC’s warp events): Flux Flue, and the stronger counterpart Flux Phage, can be cured with Rosehip Syrup or just waited out. Flux Flue reduces your Vis Discount, Flux Phage does the same and is able to spread Flux Flue to other entities. Unless you’re in multiplayer with multiple people doing TC at once that is irrelevant Sun Scorned makes the game look like a parody of what PS2 era people thought PS3 era games wanted to look like, and is supposed to set you on fire when in direct sunlight. Remember that Pigman Adventure Backpack you crafted that gives you passive Fire Resist? Yeah. Rosehip Syrup can’t cure it, though Blurred Vision reaches a hand through my screen and attempts to take off my glasses, except my vision sans glasses is worse than Blurred Vision makes it, so frankly the joke’s on it. I guess this effect is bad for people who aren’t used to worse, but I - literally - fail to see the problem. Not sure if Syrup works Blindness is literally just the vanilla potion effect. Remember that Terra Wart you keep in some backpack or another to remove potion debuffs from moving GT tanks? Well, guess what, it’s got another use. Alternatively you could also cure this with Rosehip Syrup, but frankly Terra Wart is cheaper Unnatural Hunger steadily reduces your food and saturation bar, while only allowing you to eat Rotten Flesh or Zombie Brains without risking the effect being extended. This effect can actually be quite problematic in combination with Spice of Life, since this effect can fire more rapidly than you are able to cycle Rotten Flesh/Zombie Brains out of your recently eaten food pool, and the latter risks gaining more Warp also. Thankfully a Fames shot - see Seroconverter in the TC (Tools) tab - completely counteracts the reduction in food/saturation, and if that’s not enough Rosehip Syrup can be used to cure the effect outright Eldritch Guardians are probably the most dangerous vanilla TC warp event, purely because their primal attack can inflict temporary Warp, and given they bring a bank of fog with them it’s likely they’ll be able to take pod shots before you’re able to see and shoot them. That said Eldritch Guardians are relatively rare mobs and very lucrative to make a spawner out of, considering they have a chance of outright dropping Eldritch Eyes, so I would recommend keeping some Soul Vials on you. The biggest danger migh very well turn into the biggest profit instead, and Temporary Warp is very easy to wash off afterwards anyway Mind Spiders are, frankly, more of a threat to people who think they’re cute than people who want them dead. And rest assured, there are tools to accomplish the latter very quickly and efficiently - see how to deal with Warp Theory’s bats further down. You should be used to far, far worse mobs by now Deadly Gaze makes you give a short lived Wither effect to any entity you look at. If you still have livestock or keep pets (including villagers, whichever you’d classify them as) this can be a problem, but otherwise the world is more filled with entities you want to see wither than die than those you don’t. So…yeah Thaumahria generates small flux pools, which is likely to end up giving you Flux Flue in the process. Beyond that, remember the part where you use a Flux Scrubber focus to help clear your warp? Well, here’s a warp event that gives you flux to clean up to help clear your warp. Otherwise just dirt/cobble will work
In total the one event that could deal any sort of lasting damage is Eldritch Guardians - they are always infernal, so beware of ones that summon lightning or shoot fireballs near noticeably less fireproof GT machines. That said there is nothing stopping you from, say, getting a safe distance away from your base and than shooting them. Or, as most people I imagine abuse the living daylights out of /home, using that to zap yourself away 1000+ blocks in an instant and despawning the mobs (if they have special mechanics RE: sticking around that would be news to me). You might see a few waves, but only a few before it ends
(Rosehip Syrup is a product of Thaumic Bases Briar seeds, essentially a stackable milk bucket that also works on some, but not all Warp effects)
And to broadly cover the effects of Warp Theory’s warp events, since I don’t feel like there’s much of a meaningful difference between “randomly pick up a TC coin” and “randomly pick up a vanilla MC Egg”: Messages simply display a chat message, if there is something actually behind you it’s purely coincidental timing on the game’s part. Vanilla TC also has some message event variants, but they don’t do anything more noticeable than rarely give you a free research point Fake Sounds are exactly what it says on the tin. You’d think that constant fake noises would grow untenable, but in general you’ll very quickly learn to identify and filter out the fake noises. In particular fake explosions, given that actual GT machine explosions have a very different/distinct sound from Warp’s noise Item Pickups are, likewise, what it says on the tin. However the same machine you need to access the Twilight Forest lets you craft a Voiding Drop Filter, a Random Things item that you can filter to automatically void items that enter your inventory. Coins and eggs, begone - automatically - forever Phantoms, or fake mobs, are completely harmless. The intent is to scare you with a random creeper (or whatever) that’s seemingly in your base, but surely you’ve mob proofed your base by now and thus can easily tell the mob is a fake…right? If you haven’t surely the real creepers are a much bigger problem Bats are nuisance, but even their later upgraded Fire Bat variants still are unable to actually damage blocks. To deal with bat swarms craft a Shock Focus, and enhance it with a Focal Manipulator with Potency 2x -> Chain Lightning -> Enlarge 2x - one very effective bat zapper for all your bat zapping needs Dripping Blood is purely a silly visual effect. Even more harmless than phantoms, since it can’t even pretend to be an actual threat Friendly Creeper spawns a named, non-hostile creeper. A more effective jumpscare than the phantom version, but still harmless unless it gets aggrod by other mobs or lit with flint and steel. If your base is a mob pit you’ve got other issues, and using a flint and steel yourself seems unlikely to happen on accident Vanilla potion effects, if they’re not beneficial, can be removed with a bucket of Milk, Terra Wart, Rosehip Syrup, Talisman of Remedium, etc., etc. Simply be even vaguely prepared and these effects will never cause problems Insomnia prevents you from sleeping, but unless you’re (somehow) living the lifestyle of a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer in an age of electrical industry I don’t know how this effect could actually be a problem. And if it is pray you never end up with a Blood Moon, because if regular nighttime seems dangerous… Vis Drain drains Vis from wands (and possibly other items, like Vis Stones/Amulets of Vis Storage) in your inventory. Never mind the fact that Primal Shrooms and/or Energized Nodes exist, by the time you get these warp effects you realistically should be preparing to deal with warp on a permanent(-ish) basis
That is the full list of Warp Theory Warp effects up to 50 Warp, or enough to get the Eldritch Revelation needed to access Primordial Pearls, which in turn opens up all solutions to dealing with warp on a long term if not outright permanent basis. You will gain at least some additional Warp in the process, but recall that research yields both Permanent and Sticky Warp. Both contribute to unlocking the Eldritch Revelation, which is the final point where Warp actually becomes required for progression. Afterwards you can clean up all your Sticky Warp using regular Soap, which should account for ~33-50%(?) of the total amount of Warp you’ve gotten up to that point. So taking a bath will take some serious sting out of Warp, enough to pursue the path of dealing with Permanent warp before it climbs back up to prior levels. And afterwards, well, Warp will cease to exist outright. Let stand continue to escalate to dangerous levels
Of course that assumes an optimal progresison path, and circumstances if not choices may end up forcing a different situation. So at what levels of Warp does Warp Theory’s events become genuinely dangerous? Livestock Rain (70+ Warp) will, at sufficiently high levels of warp (I’m not sure as to the exact number, but I think 100+ at least), start spawning Tainted livestock. If a Tainted Sheep survives it’s descend from the sky it can than spread the Tainted Lands biome, which in turn will spread and Taint the local area Doppelganger (75 Warp) spawns a shadow of the player that shares any damage it takes with them. Do not shoot Doppelgangers with TiC crossbows unless you want a sense of deja-vu of the last time you shot a Witch Spider. If a Doppelganger spawns near mobs or inside a mob farm it can easily be lethal Ender Pearl (90 Warp) basically throws an Ender Pearl, with all the teleporting that implies. Can be problematic if your base is not OHSA compliant and you end up ender pearling yourself into your own mob farm, but beyond that it’s not really much of any danger. Lava pools? Pigman backpack laughs at that idea Blaze Fireball (95 Warp) causes the player to shoot fireballs like a Blaze, and is the first warp effect (bar spawning aggressive infernal mobs) that can actually damage your base. That said you do get a measure of advance warning, so simply looking at something non-flammable renders the effect harmless Lightning (120 Warp) causes Thor to be extemely angry and dump improbable amounts of lightning on your face…if you’re outside. If you’re inside Thor waits patiently for his time to strike. Could be a problem if you’re lawnbasing in a 0% humidity biome and don’t have a roof, but that’s a rather specific scenario…
Beyond that point Warp effects become more problematic for the player and/or the player’s base, up to and including summoning real Withers at 200 Warp. That said, as mentioned you only need 50-odd Warp to get the tools you need to solve Warp, and these Warp effects don’t start to become even theoretically dangerous until 1.5 times that amount, and don’t really start to become scary until 2-2.5x that amount. That’s a lot of wiggle room, although I would - in general - recommend dealing with Warp sooner rather than later. It’s possible to do so much earlier than one might think, if not permanent than at least temporarily
Until you’ve gotten the Eldritch Revelation at 50+ Permanent+Sticky Warp it’s best to sit on the Warp you’ve got and gain more until you no longer need it. Cleaning off your Sticky Warp prematurely means needing more permanent Warp to get the Eldritch Revelation down the line, which will put you in a worse position, Warp-wise. That said once you’ve gotten your Eldritch Revelation (it’s a random chance to get it from a Warp event once you’ve got enough Warp, shouldn’t take too long at all) it’s time to clean house. The question is…how? You’ve got two real options this early to deal with Sticky/Temporary Warp
Sanitizing Soap (or it’s upgrade Trosma Sláintíochta Soap, henceforth “Red Soap”) has a small chance to remove sticky Warp when used, although this chance is increased when you’re under the effect of Warp Ward and increased even further if you’re standing in Purifying Liquid. With both boosts in play it’s sufficiently reliable to act as a solution for Sticky Warp, and will always clear Temporary Warp. Red Soap is even more reliable, though I’m not sure off-hand if it’s guaranteed to work. Not sure where to source bulk amounts of Sano Essentia from? Fresh Milk from Pam’s Harvestcraft is a pure and efficient source, especially with a Thirsty Tank periodically milking cows using it’s Glyph of the Bovine upgrade. Alternatively Soapstone, Magnesium and Gypsum all contain Sano Essentia. Note that Sanitizing Soap and Purifying Bath Salts can both be purchased from the questbook’s Coins tab
The Flux Scrubber wand focus has an enhancement called Calming, that gives it a chance to remove temporary Warp and a small chance to remove Sticky Warp when a player uses it to clean up Flux. To get this enhancement you first have to enhance it with Warping, which has the exact opposite effect, but putting on Calming will negate the effect that the Warping enhancement has. I have heard that this focus in combination with Thaumic Bases’ own Fluxium is “patantly absurd”, though I’ve never personally tested the two together. I find it easier to rely on soap, and given I prefer crucibles I’m not short on flux anyhow
With the Eldritch Revelation in your Thaumonomicon and your warp at the lowest point it’s been in probably a while it’s time to head out to grab a Primordial Pearl, and come back home with plans to either mitigate Warp long term or deal with it permanently. So how does one deal with “permanent” Warp?
Impure Tears are the worst method, and (these days) are a relic of older versions and how poorly balanced Warp used to be. When consumed they will remove 5 Permanent Warp, assuming the player has at least 50+ Permanent Warp. To explain why these things were very poorly balanced, in the olden days summoning a Wither only required 80 Warp rather than 200 (genuinely destructive effects generally started around 50 Warp), and alternative/early means to mitigate/deal with Warp were very few and far between. Every point of Warp was a precious resource, so of course Impure Tears requires an item from RNG IC2 crops, a Warpy plant from Thaumic Bases, a vapor from Warpy Witchery and an alchemical compound from Warpy Blood Magic. Got up to 50+ Warp and didn’t have these items mutated/researched? Hope you either could rush them or chug Warp Ward until post-T2 rocket to get Pure Tears unlocked
Warp Tumors are a better, although not recommended method to mitigate Permanent Warp, using Thaumic Horizons to reincarnate into a body that has been infused with one. A Warp Tumor will store up to 50 Permanent Warp, although this will be returned to the player should they die and not reincarnate into another body with the same augment. In a vacuum this would be a powerful effect, but in GTNH there is simply far more permanent Warp in the Thaumonomicon than 50 is able to make a dent against. It can act as a safety net in case a Soul Brazier setup fails, but personally I’d grab a Silverwood Heart instead
Alastor’s Soap, the second (and final) upgrade over Red Soap, offer a slow but steady permanent solution. In Purifying Liquid and under the effect of Warp Ward it has a 40% chance to turn one Permanent Warp into two Sticky Warp, giving two Temporary Warp if the conversion fails. Producing enough soap to make a meaningful impact - and clean up the mess of sticky Warp afterwards - requires an Advanced Alchemical Furnace to be even remotely reasonable. It doesn’t require a Primordial Pearl strictly speaking, but even Thaumium Alchemical Furnaces can only churn out bulk amounts of Essentia so quickly
Soul Braziers store permanent Warp in a convenient container, where it only causes mild environmental damage. There is a setup (see below) to build a Soul Brazier such that it should never fail and never cause Taint to spread beyond a containment zone, which should act as a solution to permanent warp until it can be dealt with more directly and on a more permanent basis. One word of warning: Soul Braziers do not have any sort of warning or message when they fail, the Warp they contain just returns to you without any sort of notice. Keep some source of Warp Ward on you at all times just in case, because the last thing you want is to try and solve some problem or another while getting randomly teleported around, bombarded with lightning, your inventory randomly shuffles around nearby inventories and/or Withers spawn everywhere you go
Pure Tears will get rid of all your Warp in a relatively short time, but this comes at the cost of causing all of that chaotic energy to leak into the environment. Or put another way, causing a giant circus of Warp events until the game is satisfied. There are, broadly speaking, two ways to get Pure Tears. One is from a repeatable questbook quest that has a cooldown of one IRL week. The quest demands Osmiridium ingots to turn in for a Pure Tear, which in turn requires an LuV powered EBF, but otherwise does not require any great tasks or research beyond unlocking the quest itself. The other method is crafting Pure Tears, but their crafting recipe - and their research to unlock said crafting recipe, for that matter - requires the player to have access to Ichorium. Unlocking Ichorium is basically the endgame of Thaumcraft, requiring pages upon pages of research in addition to some esoteric materials (and, again, Osmiridium)
Purification Talismans are a better solution if you have access to Ichorium already. This is the final and best solution to Warp, slowly (but safely) removing Warp over time while it’s worn. The crafting recipe requires Ichorium, but beyond that nothing you can’t easily get if you’ve got access to Ichorium itself
Tips and tricks: Thaumcraft Villagers can sell Purifying Bath Salts, which you might find significantly easier than crafting it/buying it from the questbook Botania flasks of Sane Thoughts give a guaranteed 10 minutes of Warp Ward when taken, and have a minimum of four uses when crafted with managlass vials. This is a longer duration of Warp Ward than purifying liquid will give with zero warp, so invest in Botania to stretch your supply of Bath Salts
Soul Brazier Setup, or “Permanent Permanent Warp storage facility…hopefully”
Soul Braziers, as mentioned above, allow you to store Permanent warp at the cost of Vis, Mortuus Essentia, and turning a 31x31 area around the Soul Brazier into Tainted Lands, necessitating Ethereal Blooms in order to contain it. Not to mention the rest. But set up properly it should store warp permanently The shopping list for just the minimum setup is extensive, but of course a permanent solution to permanent warp storage wouldn’t be that simple. An incomplete list includes:
1x Skeleton Druid Spawner 1-9x Diamond Spike (enchanted) (Wrath is an Osmotic Enchanter enchantment from Forbidden Magic/Apocrytha, basically Sharpness that stacks with actual Sharpness. That damage will come into play, but be extremely careful not to kill yourself. A Disenchanter can get Wrath books) 1x Cursed Earth 1x Vacuum Hopper 1x Experience Obelisk 9x Thaumic Relocators 2x Fans 1x Trash Can 1x Advanced Alchemical Furnace 2x Nodes (to be Energized) 2x Node Transductor/Stabilizer 1x Timer Misc. Redstone-related stuff 16-24x Etheral Bloom 3x Void Jar Smattering of Essentia Tubes 1x Alchemy Core/Golem 1x infinite water source 1x Cutting Machine 1x Magic Energy Absorber 952-960x Glass/Tainted Stone (Bricks) Smattering of item conduits/filters 1x Drawer Controller+6-21x Drawers 1x Super Chest
As for the build, place the Soul Brazier somewhere such that the 32x32 area around it is within four chunks. Plant the Ethereal Blooms in the outermost ring (the four corners and seven block spaces between each Bloom should fit perfectly), and in the centre if you decided to craft those extra Blooms Place the node for the Soul Brazier somewhere near it, and energize it. Next draw a line of Essentia Tubes from the bottom of the Soul Brazier to outside the containment zone, since you’re not going to be building inside of it. Keep an eye on chunk borders, however, since chances are you’re right next to one It’s best to use an Alchemy Golem to extract essentia from the Advanced Alchemical Furnace, with the three required jars right in front of the golem to minimize the amount of time spend moving the essentia. Essentia Tubes could be used, but repeatedly bugged out during testing so I can’t recommend them Make the all the jars are labelled so there’s no issues with Corpus/Telum ending up in the Mortuus line, and set up the former two such that they can feed the Magic Energy Absorber to power the LV Cutting Machine. Make sure the Mortuus jar is outside the MEAs absorbtion range so it won’t drain it dry You can change the absorption range of MEAs with a screwdriver. The default range for LV is 2, but it can be set to 1/4/8 as well. Note that if you’re using a higher tier MEA to extract more power it’ll have a different default lookup range, so be careful with where it and the Mortuus jar are placed
Next is the mob farm. I trust you don’t need instructions on how to set up an 11x12 box with a spawner and spikes, but I will add that it’s extremely recommended that you add an external redstone toggle for the Thaumic Relocators. Because being pushed into 20+ damage spikes when you’re trying to perform maintenance is not a fun time. You can also add redstone lamps inside the spawner to turn off regular mob spawns, but Cursed Earth Spawners will continue to spawn mobs even in bright light (or at least Skeleton Druids will keep spawning). It will slow down the spawnrate significantly, but it’s not a perfect fix Aside from that just the usual mob farm stuff - place the spikes, place the vacuum hopper and the experience obelisk, extract the items, place the fans so the vacuum hopper grabs everything, item filtering and overflow trash can, etc.
The final step is to place down the Magic Energy Absorber and the Cutting Machine, as well as it’s water source. Do keep in mind that these are GT machines, and will catch fire/explode if exposed to rain. I trust you don’t need my help to figure out how to build a roof (how’d you even manage to get this far if you do anyway?), but the Eldritch monsters beyond the void know I’ve made the mistake of forgetting a roof often enough. Next set up the node for the Advanced Alchemical Furnace and Energize it, and jump-start the system with some essentia (just toss in some regular bones if you didn’t bring a battery) Set up the timer and the Bone Needle dropping mechanism if you haven’t already, and with a Bone Needle being supplied every 55 ticks/2.75 seconds (in theory 3 seconds should be the minimum, though it never hurts to be careful) your Soul Brazier is ready for Warp
NOTE: I’ve encountered multiple issues with Soul Braziers during testing - repeated instances of the setup failing, most likely traced back to multiple Mortuus lines of essentia tubes prioritizing a restricted line over a regular line until a relog, and even a Warp dupe on one occasion. Hopefully the introduction of an Alchemy Golem and no Essentia Tube lines more complicated than A->B solved these issues, it hasn’t failed so far in testing, but considering what this setup is dealing with I think it’s worth mentioning this detail and provide some advice on how to take precautions in case the setup does fail again Unfortunately the Soul Brazier gives zero feedback or warning if/when it fails, let stand why it did, meaning all I have to go on is examining the aftermath. Which is confusing when simply depositing the Warp again afterwards runs just fine. And I don’t even know where to begin RE: Warp Dupe incident
Regrettably it’s a necessary evil because there’s really no equivalent Warp solution, only ones that are worse/better (and more expensive, in at least the latter case). My recommendation would be to check up on the Soul Brazier setup every time you log into the world, and keep Litmus Paper nearby to check for Warp dupe incidents. If this does occur you can use a command to remove the duped Permanent Warp: /tc warp (player name) set 0 perm (/thaumcraft help for a list of relevant Thaumcraft commands if this fails). In addition you can place multiple Vis Relays against the Soul Brazier in the hopes this will prevent the energized node from not connecting to it properly (though I’ve no idea if this is an actual issue, see RE: lack of feedback above), and keep a Vial of Sane Thoughts on you (or in a tool bag) at all times so you can pop Warp Ward quickly at any point in case a warp event informs you the setup failed somehow
Soul Brazier upgrades, or “How to gain more bones/gold/iron/diamond/steel out of your Warp storage”
As said there are ways to expand/improve upon the setup, depending on what you find important. For one all of the enchanted gear that the (always Infernal) Skeleton Druids drop are just going to waste, and if you don’t think Corpus is contributing enough there’s ways to improve that, too
To start with the easier (in theory) upgrade, instead of burning Corpus you can use an Alchemical Centrifuge to process Corpus to get a 50/50 chance of getting either Mortuus or Bestia Essentia. Mortuus obviously will slow down the rate at which you need to consume Bone Needles to feed the Soul Brazier, slowing down the consumption of Bones in turn, and in terms of power production Bestia is actually (very slightly) better than Corpus. On average 6 Corpus will yield 3 Mortuus and 3 Bestia, but 3 Bestia has the fuel value of 9 Corpus, so you get more power and you save Bones. Win/Win/Win The caveat is that working with only Essentia Tubes is misery if not impossible. Given the difficulties (and bugs) I’ve had with Essentia Tubes I frankly wouldn’t suggest trying this until you’ve got Thaumic Energistics opened up, although that’ll more than eat the power profit of burning Bestia over Corpus
The harder, but more rewarding upgrade lies in the enchanted gear. Using MV+ Magic Energy Absorbers you can strip these enchantments off of items in order to produce power, and the items (enchanted or not) can be Fluid Extracted into Iron, Gold and Steel, or Forge Hammered into Diamond Dust The caveat is that filtering this mess is extremely difficult. The problem is that items that had enchantments stripped from them are not identical to the same items never enchanted, or pulled from NEI. This makes filtering a huge nightmare, and that’s not even the end of it. Skeleton Druids also drop slightly damaged Golden Hoes, which need to be voided, and their Infernal mob table also includes Enchanted Books that can likewise be stripped for power and books. In addition Magic Energy Absorbers require Strontio in their Infusion for a reason, because these things cannot input filter themselves at all. You need Robot Arms (MV will suffice) on the MEAs inserting from Any Adjacent Slot into Internal Slot 0, otherwise they’ll insert items into their (supposed) output slot and jam. Use a Cover Copy/Paste Tool to make this bearable, as setting a Robot Arm to “Any” is a puzzle in and of itself (hint: Copy/Paste helps) Finally, Steel armor will not necessarily smelt into whole ingots, so you’ll need either item filtering into a decicated Fluid Extractor/Solidifier combo for steel, or fluid filter the molten steel into a dedicated Solidifier. Not impossible, of course, but it’s yet another detail to work out
I’m sure that all sounds like a decidedly un-fun adventure, so what’s the reward for going through it? That would be a steady(-ish) supply of Iron, Gold, Steel and Diamond Dust, as well as (Enchanted) Books. You can also produce an excess of power, although what you’ll spend that power on is up to you Testing how many MEAs you need is hard, especially when the setup keeps breaking during testing for (un)related reasons, but somewhere between 6-9 MV MEAs might be sufficient to process everything, assuming you can consume all the power. As for how much EU/t that produces, unknown. It’s not just variable in terms of how much power you get per item but also variable in how much power it costs to process a given item afterwards. So it’s really hard to say. Testing tentatively suggests somewhere between 2-3A MV to play with, but again this is hard to test and not stable in any event
You can also (over)enchant your Diamond Spikes with Vaporizing, in order to get crystallized Terra, Exanimus, Venenum, Humanus and Praecantatio Essentia from the Skeleton Druids. If you’re in the business of building mob farms anyway you’d be much better off with a Wisp farm, though (though Exanimus, once again, Alchemical Centrifuges into Motus and Mortuus, so if you’re exceedingly desperate to save every single bone you possibly can that’s another way to get more Mortuus Essentia out of this setup)