User:Numaris/Thistle Notes

This is a work in progress. It may or may not ever be completed. Thistles are a difficult
subject to try to teach, and I am by no means the premier authority on them.

Introduction

Thistles seem to be a common point of frustration these days. They're complex to make, but difficult to buy, which makes Silk a major road block for certain projects. While there are a number of guides out there that describe the mechanics of the system quite well, there's very little practical information on how to actually go about making the thistle you need. I'd love to say that this guide will change all that, but unfortunately I can't make that promise. Since the rules change all the time, so do the strategies. The best I can do is provide some general pointers based on my experiences, which I will lay out below, along with my own description of the mechanics of the process.

A few things I'd like to get out of the way beforehand:

• I do not sell silk, thistles or thistle recipes. It can be a lot of work, and there's just too much else that I would rather be doing.
• If you're looking for step-by-step guide on how to make a thistle that has certain properties, this isn't it. Such a thing will probably never exist, because the system is just too complex and dynamic. If you're not willing to do a lot of trial-and-error work with a simulator, you're best off outsourcing your silk production.
• Tips/hints/strategies listed below are from my own experience. I would be very happy to hear other folks' experiences, but please use the Discussion page for that, rather than creating long discussion threads on this page.

This guide is divided into two sections. In the first, How Thistles Work, I present the mechanics of the thistle system. This is the same information presented in several other places, put in my own words. If you're already versed in the inner workings of the system, you can skip this section. In the second, Tips and Strategies, I'll provide you with some information that will hopefully give you a better idea of the direction to head in to get what you're looking for.

How Thistles Work

What Are Thistles?

Thistles are created by planting a Thistle Seed in a Thistle Garden and tending it for a few minutes while it grows. Once finished, you can harvest 5 debens of Thistle with seven specific attributes. These attributes represent the final values of the major nutrients in the thistle, and are what determines whether or not the thistle is appropriate for any given use.

Nutrients

Thistles are identified in your inventory or storage container by a string such as "A-B+C~F+N-P+T-". This represents the levels of the seven nutrients in the thistle. The nutrients are:

• Ascorbin
• Biotin
• Carotene
• Folin
• Niacin
• Pyroxidine
• Thiamine

During the growing process, each nutrient is represented by a value between 0 and 99. When the thistle matures, the nutrients' final values determine their level as displayed:

Descriptor	Symbol	Value
Low	–	< 22
Average	~	>= 22 and < 80
High	+	>= 80

(TODO: I still need to verify these values. I stole them from the T3 thistle guide.)

Inputs and Controls

If you open the Thistle Garden's interface and start growing, you'll see the following:

The columns on the right represent the levels of your nutrients as described above. Unfortunately, you can't directly add or remove those nutrients. Instead, you use the buttons atop the columns on the left to set up the appropriate conditions to get what you need.

Nitrogen and Potassium

Nitrogen (Nit) and Potassium (Pot) act as input-only nutrients; that is, they can be turned into other nutrients in the system, but nothing gets turned into Nit or Pot. Nit and Pot levels decay by 10 every tick, regardless of whether or not they are used. Nit can be added using Dung; Pot requires Saltpeter. In both cases, 1 deben of material produces 20 units of the input.

Water and Oxygen

Water (H2O) and Oxygen (Oxy) can be considered catalysts in the system. They are added to the system in the same way as Nit and Pot: 1 deben of Water in Jugs becomes 20 H2O (the Jugs aren't consumed), and 20 Oxy can be added at a time without requiring any materials or tools. They also decay like Nit and Pot, at 10 units per tick. H2O and Oxy are not consumed or produced by any conversions; they simply facilitate them.

Sun

Sun is, as you can imagine, a measure of the amount of sunlight falling on the thistles. The sun level during Egypt nighttime is 0, and progresses quickly at mid-morning to 99 for the daytime. To control Sun, you can toggle the canopy open and closed; while it is closed, the sunlight is cut down to 1/3 of the ambient value. There is no middle ground... the canopy is either open or closed. Like H2O and Oxy, Sun is a catalyst. It facilitates conversions, but is never itself produced or consumed.

Nutrient Conversions

Every batch of thistle starts with the main nutrients set at a value of 0. So how do they get up to the levels that we need?

Each tick behind the scenes, the system steps through a list of nutrient conversions. Each conversion has four parts:

• Input Nutrient. The input nutrient can be any of the main seven nutrients (although Bio is never actually used as an input) as well as Nit or Pot.
• Condition. Each conversion will only be active when a certain condition is met. The condition is tied to the value of either H2O, Oxy, or Sun. Some conversions will require that the level be above a certain value, others will require that it be below.
• Output Nutrient. The output can be any of the seven main nutrients.
• Conversion Ratio. This determines how much of the output nutrient is created per input nutrient.

You will most often see the conversions listed in a form similar to:

10 Nia -> 30 Fol

For this reaction, the input nutrient is Nia, the output is Fol, and the conversion ratio is 3. If at least 10 Nia is available that tick, then 10 Nia will be turned into 30 Fol. If less than 10 Nia is available, whatever is there will be turned into 3 times as much Fol. The full list of possible conversions is shown in the table below.

Nutrient Conversions

Conversion	Condition
10 Nit -> 3.3 Asc	H2O > 79
10 Car -> 5 Asc	Oxy < 49
10 Fol -> 20 Asc	Sun > 69
10 Pot -> 2.5 Bio	Sun < 20
10 Asc -> 20 Bio	H2O < 29
10 Pyr -> 10 Bio	Oxy > 89
10 Pot -> 3.3 Car	Oxy > 69
10 Asc -> 10 Car	Sun > 79
10 Thi -> 20 Car	H2O < 39
10 Pot -> 2.5 Fol	Sun > 69
10 Nia -> 30 Fol	H2O < 59
10 Thi -> 20 Fol	Oxy < 49
10 Asc -> 20 Nia	Sun < 20
10 Pyr -> 5 Nia	H2O > 69
10 Thi -> 10 Nia	Oxy < 39
10 Nit -> 3.3 Pyr	H2O < 39
10 Car -> 10 Pyr	Sun > 59
10 Fol -> 20 Pyr	Oxy > 79
10 Asc -> 10 Thi	Sun < 40
10 Car -> 20 Thi	Oxy < 49
10 Nia -> 5 Thi	H2O < 49

Each tick, the system runs through the following steps:

1. 10 Nit and 10 Pot are lost.
2. The conversion table is stepped through from top to bottom. Order is important... once you generate some of one nutrient, it (or up to 10 of it, anyway) will be consumed by the first reaction that uses it as an input (if the condition is met).
3. 10 H2O and 10 Oxy are lost.
4. New nutrient and catalyst levels are displayed.

After 40 ticks, the thistles are mature and can be harvested. The thistles stop growing at that point. You cannot harvest a batch early, but you can abort a batch, losing the seed in the process.

Voids

As if all that wasn't complex enough, there's a huge wrinkle thrown in that makes the system very dynamic and contributes to the difficulty of finding recipes for a particular requirement: voids. Each Egypt week (about 2.5 real days), a random set of nutrient conversions is voided. That is to say, the conversions are removed from the table for that week. There's no pattern to the voids (that we can tell), and there's no set number of them that happen. It's possible for there to be 8+ voids, and it's possible for there to be no voids at all. The presence of voids can completely change the nature of the cycles that allow nutrients to build up, and drastically affect the strategies.

There are usually folks who test for voids each Egypt week and post them in their in-game info for the public. As of this writing, me (Numaris) and Ephemere are hosting voids in our info.

Tips and Strategies

So now you have a vague understanding of the system that drives thistles, but you're still left not having any clue where to start. In this section, I hope to give you a push in the right direction.

Simulators

If we had no other way to make thistles than to load up the gardens and try a recipe, it would be excruciating. Thankfully, a few folks out there have designed tools we can use to simulate a thistle garden and generate recipes much, much more easily. There are two major varieties of simulator that I am aware of.

ThistleSim Spreadsheet

The ThistleSim spreadsheet is available in MS Excel and OpenOffice Calc formats. Operation is simple.

• In the green column to the right, enter a "0" for any conversions that are currently voided, and a "1" for the rest.
• In the gray table to the left, enter the number of presses of each button in each tick (or the sun value in the Sun column). The yellow tables in between will show you the progression of the inputs and nutrients for the resulting thistle.

Talos's Thistle Garden Simulator

Alternatively, Talos has created a nice graphical thistle simulator in Python. It should be usable in Windows, Mac, and Linux environments. See his user page for installation instructions.

It's more mouse-oriented than the spreadsheet. Some people find it a little slower to use, but it has some nice features, and I would encourage folks to check it out.

Note that the current version as of this writing, v0.3, has a couple of notable issues. First, there are rounding errors in certain situations, causing it to display a very slightly erroneous value sometimes. It doesn't throw things off significantly, but you should be aware of it in case you compare a simulated run with a real run. Second, there seems to be a problem with saving and opening thistle recipes that makes this feature unusable.

Now that you've got your tool of choice, we'll move on to some thistle generating tips.

Two Types of Thistle Recipes

Thistle strategies can be divided loosely into two categories, based on how much of the thistle you plan to make.

Mass-Producible Thistle

For "easy" thistle requests (somewhat subjective, but you'll get a feel for it with experience), you'll want to try to create a mass-producible thistle recipe that has the following attributes:

• Cheap. If you're making a large quantity of thistles, you don't want your recipe to cost any Dung or Saltpeter to make, therefore you'll try to avoid adding Nit and Pot.
• Easy. Easy is a vague term, but basically what you're going for is to try to put as much distance as possible between the ticks in which you have to do work. If there are at least 4-5 ticks between any 2 given ticks of "work" in a thistle recipe, you'll be able to work a lot of Thistle Gardens at the same time, which means quick generation of lots of thistle.

Reset Thistle

For "harder" thistle requests (which unfortunately are a fairly high percentage of them, in most people's estimation), your strategy changes. Since requests don't change until they're satisfied by adding at least 1 thistle, in order to change a hard request, you'll need to generate a "reset" or "bailout" thistle. For reset thistle, the above attributes go out the door. Since you only need to make one batch of the thistle, you can use all the tools at your disposal to generate it.

Stage 1: Kick-Starting Your Thistle

Ok, so if we're going to try to generate thistle without adding Nit or Pot, how do we inject our first nutrients into the system? Thankfully, each batch of thistle starts with a "freebie" 50 Nit and Pot, and we can make good use of that.

The most common way to get a batch started is using the Pot->Car conversion. It requires Oxy>69, so hitting the Oxy button once is sometimes enough to get started. In practice, though, most of the time you'll need to also hit H2O once, otherwise Car->Asc and Asc->Bio will sink away your Car before it can do anything useful. Play around with the Tick 0 values for H2O and Oxy until you can see some nutrients being generated long-term.

When Pot->Car is voided, starting your thistle recipe is more difficult, but not impossible. Try playing around with other Nit->* and Pot->* conversions and see what else you can come up with.

Stage 2: Generating Nutrients with Cycles

You've just injected a very small amount of nutrient into your batch, but you'll need lots more to realize your final outcome. The way to do that is to harness the power of conversion cycles. A cycle is a set of conversions that, when applied in turn, can turn a small amount of nutrient into a larger amount of the same nutrient, often creating other nutrients in the process. By repeating the cycle, we build up nutrients in the system.

The Car-Thi Cycle

The simplest example of a cycle is also the most important. The Car-Thi cycle is used in virtually all mass-producible thistle recipes to generate nutrients. It consists of the two conversions Car->Thi and Thi->Car. Since the conversions are active during low values of H2O and Oxy, once you get this cycle started, you can just sit back and watch it go.

When either Car->Thi or Thi->Car are voided, it's a good time to take a few days off and do something else for a while.

The Fol-Pyr-Nia Cycle

Another example of a cycle involves the three reactions Fol->Pyr, Pyr->Nia, and Nia->Fol. This cycle is much more hands-on, so it's mostly used in reset thistle recipes to generate some Nia. It requires high Oxy, and an oscillation of H2O between >69 and <59. Watch out for the Pyr->Bio conversion... it can make this cycle unsustainable if you're not careful about your Oxy level.

Other Cycles: Be Creative

Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. If you're trying to generate a reset thistle and your usual avenues aren't available due to voids, see what else you can come up with. There are plenty of possibilities that may not work most of the time, but are exposed when certain voids line up.