Thaumcraft Wands

Wands are a Thaumaturge's greatest tool. They are used to craft magical objects, activate blocks such as the crucible, initiate infusion crafts, leverage foci, etc. There are a few different types of wands, listed below, for specializing in either arcane crafting, equipping foci, or storing vis. The research for their components are primarily under the Thaumaturgy and Apocrypha tabs in the Thaumonomicon.

• Wand - Basic tool for arcane crafting, equipping foci, and storing vis. Requires 2 wand caps.
• Scepter - Specializes in arcane crafting. Provides +50% vis capacity and -10% vis cost, but cannot equip foci. Requires 3 wand caps & primal charm.
• Staff - Specializes in equipping foci. Often provides +150% vis capacity, but does not support arcane crafting. Requires 2 wand caps.
• Staffter - Specializes in storing vis. Provides +275% vis capacity and -10% vis cost but does not support arcane crafting and cannot equip foci.

Wands are crafted with a rod (or staff core) and 2-3 wand caps depending on the type. The rod material determines the VIS CAPACITY and the cap material determines the VIS COST. There is no restriction on which rods and caps can be crafted together so there is an incredibly high number of possible permutations. Staffters are crafted by using a staff core in the scepter recipe, but there is really no reason to make one anyway.

The rod/core material determines the VIS CAPACITY of a wand and sometimes provides additional benefits, as seen in the following table. The tier is an artificial label for identifying the Twilight Forest boss drop and screws needed to craft a rod into a wand. Staff cores are always one tier higher than their base rod material. For example, a greatwood rod is tier 2 but a greatwood staff core is tier 2.5. Reed, blazing, obsidian, icy, quartz, bone, and transmutative wand cores are all very similar and often collectively referred to as the "RBOIQBT" wand cores.

Not included in this list is the disposable crystalline wand which is obtained by throwing an inert crystal wand into a planar vortex. As the name suggests, the wand is single-use, starting at full capacity and unable to be recharged. However, it boasts an impressive 250 vis capacity and 90% vis cost--enough to skip directly to a warpwood wand/scepter.

The Twilight Forest bosses only drop enough loot for 1-2 wands, but their trophies can be used to craft as many drops as the player needs. Simply combine the trophy (not-consumed) with salis mundus in an assembler. They can also be obtained through bees if necessary.

The cap material determines the VIS COST of a wand, and sometimes provides additional benefits, as seen in the following table. A lower vis cost is always better because that makes using a wand significantly cheaper and more efficient. Some wand caps have varying discounts for different aspects, and some even increase the overall vis cost. The crafting cost only affects crafting a wand or upgrading a wand. It does NOT multiply the cost of normal arcane crafting.

There are three augments, listed below, that can be permanently added to a wand or scepter to improve it. The research notes can be found under Thaumic Machina in the Thaumonomicon. All three augments are added through Arcane Infusion and cannot be removed. Multiple augments can be added to the same wand and are preserved when substituting parts. The thaumium ingot in the vis channels infusion must be from Thaumcraft specifically, not GregTech.

As of GTNH 2.8, wand cores and caps can both be substituted directly without having to create a new wand every time you upgrade. The two research notes are under Thaumaturgy in the Thaumonomicon. Substitution destroys the original parts and costs as much vis as it would to craft the final product directly, but it transfers augments and saves on primal charms. The arcane worktable can even use the vis stored in the wand being upgraded to make the substitution so only 1-2 wands are ever needed to progress. The only thing substitution cannot do is upgrade a wand into a scepter or staff.

The following are some of the fastest and most efficient ways to improve your wand. They minimize the total number of upgrades/substitutions while maintaining a low vis cost for miscellaneous arcane crafting. CB & VC refer to the charge buffer and vis channel augments, respectively. The CB augment does not work on the disposable crystalline wand so its capacity cannot be increased beyond 250.

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Augment Discount}}={\begin{cases}1.0,&{\text{if No Vis Channel }}\\0.9,&{\text{if Vis Channel }}\end{cases}}}}$ ${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Scepter Discount}}={\begin{cases}0\%&{\text{for Wands/Staves}}\\10\%&{\text{for Scepters/Staffters}}\end{cases}}}}$

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Wand Vis Cost}}(\%)=(100\%-{\text{Cap Discount}})\times {\text{Augment Discount}}-{\text{Scepter Discount}}}}$

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Total Vis Cost}}(\%)=(100\%-{\text{Cap Discount}})\times {\text{Augment Discount}}-{\text{Scepter Discount}}-{\text{Armor Discount}}}}$

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Focus Vis Cost}}(\%)=(100\%-{\text{Cap Discount}})\times {\text{Augment Discount}}-{\text{Scepter Discount}}-{\text{Armor Discount}}-(10\%\times {\text{Frugal level}})}}$