Mana pool keeps shifting dramatically

[Killjoy]

Why does my max mana keep jumping down so wildly? Is it somewhat tied to mana quality? I'll have a max mana pool that will be around 100k and then it drops down to 30kish when I click on an upgrade but there's nothing that seems to explain it. The mechanics of this game seem really difficult to understand for me sometimes.

[CptR3dB34rd]

The only thing that comes to mind is that you might be spending thaumaturgy or thaumaturgy scrolls. They are not simple resources, they also boost mana capacity.

If you mouse over them the game tells you the bonus associated to each resource. Pressing ALT sill display the overall benefit obtained from that particular resource (much like you can get the overall boost of an attribute if you mouse over it pressing ALT)

[Cryten]

Mana pool is also effected by spells that effect magic resources AND resting rate. As such it can also bounce when you use some spells that temporarily raise max caps like cube.

[Killjoy]

Originally posted by CptR3dB34rd:

The only thing that comes to mind is that you might be spending thaumaturgy or thaumaturgy scrolls. They are not simple resources, they also boost mana capacity.

If you mouse over them the game tells you the bonus associated to each resource. Pressing ALT sill display the overall benefit obtained from that particular resource (much like you can get the overall boost of an attribute if you mouse over it pressing ALT)

This looks to have been it. I started a new save after noticing the tooltip for this and it's much more controlled now.

[Slimurgical (Stormy)]

Yeah, Thaumaturgy gives you almost all of your max mana capacity up to a certain point, then it kinda doesn't do remotely anything afterwards compared to what Everything Else is doing. I do remember having at one point having that concern, but I usually read tooltips as a rule of thumb.

[Killjoy]

Originally posted by StormyStrife:

Yeah, Thaumaturgy gives you almost all of your max mana capacity up to a certain point, then it kinda doesn't do remotely anything afterwards compared to what Everything Else is doing. I do remember having at one point having that concern, but I usually read tooltips as a rule of thumb.

I've moved on from that situation since the post, but I still find myself getting confused with the new changes in 0.6 and the aggregation of resource types. I can't seem to find tool tips that call these out specifically. Hopefully that gets addressed in later releases.

[KhalunQalli]

Recently started a new save in the beta so I'm going to use numbers there to hopefully explain what I believe you're talking about here regarding raw mana numbers. I think what you're overlooking are the Reserve levels, Thaumaturgy, and Thaumic Scrolls. They're located on the "Casting" tab along with your casting level.

Currently on this save I have Reserve level 3 unlocked.
With Reserve at max level I have 563K mana.
Dropping Reserve to level 2 I have 751K mana.
At Reserve level 1 I have just over 1 million mana.

With regards to Thaumaturgy, if I spend that down as far as I can, that 1 million mana drops to around 818K, and then builds back up as Thaumaturgy refills.

On to Thaumic scrolls! On spending those down as far as possible, and resetting Reserve levels I now have 624K mana. Now, I'm going to create as many Thaumic Scrolls as I can in one go at the moment due to my paper stockpile...
Okay so now I've gone from 0.42 T-scrolls to 984. Maximum mana went from 624K to 817K!
If I go and spend those on something other than Thaumic Volumes in the workshop tab, my base mana level is gonna drop back down depending on how many I spend. Thaumic Volumes increase your Magic Resource Cap, so purchasing more of these would see my mana increase instead.

There are multiple different modifiers that will increase your base mana capacity, so increasing any of those is going to see your mana pool increase.

[54x]

Originally posted by Killjoy:

Originally posted by StormyStrife:

Yeah, Thaumaturgy gives you almost all of your max mana capacity up to a certain point, then it kinda doesn't do remotely anything afterwards compared to what Everything Else is doing. I do remember having at one point having that concern, but I usually read tooltips as a rule of thumb.

I've moved on from that situation since the post, but I still find myself getting confused with the new changes in 0.6 and the aggregation of resource types. I can't seem to find tool tips that call these out specifically. Hopefully that gets addressed in later releases.

You should be able to hover over each resource to see what "tags" it has that apply, and I think you can search the tag for more information, although I don't really use the search.