Pech

A pech forager.

Pech are short humanoid neutral mobs that roam through magical biomes. Greedy and materialistic, they wander about picking up any dropped items they come across and hoarding them in the large packs strapped to their backs. By gifting pech some valuable items, players can briefly tame them, allowing players to barter with them for some of their rarer treasures.

Spawning

Natural generation

Pech can spawn on any solid block at any light level. They will spawn only in the magical forest and eerie biomes while in the Overworld. Pech will not spawn in other dimensions such as the Nether or the End even if the biome has been changed.

Pech will not spawn if four or more pech are within a 16x16x16 box centered on the spawning location.

Drops

On death, pech will drop 0-1 mana beans attuned to a random primal aspect. When slain with a weapon that has the Looting enchantment, one additional bean is possible for each level of Looting. All beans dropped from a single pech will be of the same aspect. In rare instances, a single knowledge fragment may also drop along with the beans.

If a pech is carrying a tool in its hand, it has a 20% chance to be dropped on death. Tools that spawn in the pech's hand will have a random amount of damage applied to them, similar to other mobs that can spawn with equipment. If the tool happens to be a wand, the wand will be randomly charged with 0-4 aer, ignis, and ordo vis and 2-8 aqua, terra, and perditio vis, and it will be capped with the Pech's Curse wand focus.

If the pech has picked up any items on the ground and put them in its inventory, most of them will also be dropped in addition to the other drops. Each stack of items in the pech's inventory has an 88% chance to be dropped on death.

Behavior

Movement

When idle, pech will wander about aimlessly, similarly to villagers. Unlike villagers, however, they are unable to open doors. Pech in this state will prefer to keep their distance from players, fleeing away with a slightly faster pace when players come within 3 blocks.

Picking up items

Should an idle pech spot an item nearby, it will quickly run toward the item and attempt to pick it up. If the item is not one of its valued items, it will put the item in its inventory if there is room for it. Each pech has a hidden inventory of 9 slots, in addition to being able to hold something in its hand.

Pech have a self-arming behavior similar to that of zombies:

• If the pech is not already holding something in its hand slot, the first item it picks up will be placed into its hand slot instead of its hidden inventory.
• If the pech is already holding an item in its hand, but it attempts to pick up a weapon that has a higher durability or attack strength than its current held item, it will discard the item it is holding in favor of the new item.

If a pech swaps the item in its hand for another one, the discarded item is dropped on the ground. If it has room, the pech may pick it back up shortly after and stow it in its inventory like any other dropped item.

Once a pech has filled up its inventory slots, it will stop pursuing and picking up all items that are not valuable.

Taming and valuable items

It is possible to temporarily tame a pech if it picks up items that it considers valuable. These items are given below with the following values:

Item	Value
Mana bean	1
Gold ingot	2
Golden apple	2
Ender pearl	3
Diamond	4
Emerald	5

Additionally, any item other than the ones listed above that contain the lucrum aspect will also be considered a valuable item, with a value equal to the amount of lucrum it contains. Items that contain more than 32 lucrum will have their value capped to 32.

Each time a pech picks up a valuable item, the item skips the pech's inventory and is instead consumed immediately. For each valuable item it picks up, a number between 0 and 9, inclusive, is generated and compared to the item's value. If the generated number is less than the item value, the pech will become tamed.

It should be noted that pech will pick up items by the stack, and the pech will only considers the type of stack when determining its value, not the stack's size. For example, a stack of 64 gold ingots will have the same value as only 1 gold ingot alone. Thus, a player attempting to tame a pech by dropping valuable items for it to pick up should drop the items one at a time to not waste resources.

Once tamed, pech are able to be bartered with for random loot. Several barters will eventually cause the pech to become untamed, after which it may be tamed again via the same process as before.

Tamed pech do not flee from players, nor do they pursue items to pick them up, even if their inventory has room or if the item is a valuable item. A tamed pech that is being bartered with will stop moving and stare at their trading partner until the bartering has concluded.

Tamed pech occasionally emit green sparkle particles identical to those emitted by happy villagers.

Attacking

When attacked, pech will become hostile to whatever attacked them. Unarmed pech or pech holding melee weapons will charge their aggressor and strike with melee attacks. Pech stalkers holding bows will stand back and shoot arrows. Pech thaumaturges holding wands will stand back and shoot blasts from the Pech's Curse wand focus.

Pech that have begun attacking a target will ignore picking up all items. They will remain in this state until their target has been killed. Pech will switch targets to whatever has most recently attacked them, including other pech.

Anger

If attacked by a player, a pech will emit thundercloud particles similar to a villager and make an enraged shout, signalling that it has become angry. Any other pech within a box 32x32 blocks horizontally and 16 blocks vertically centered on the pech will also become angry and target that player.

A pech that is tamed will immediately become untamed when angered.

While angry, pech continuously emit thundercloud particles, and will attack all players on sight after their original target is killed or flees out of range. This anger lasts for a random interval between 20 and 40 seconds before subsiding. Targets already under attack by angry pech will continue to be attacked even after their anger wears off.

Professions

Each pech has one of three professions, indicated by their clothing. A pech's profession determines the loot that can be obtained from bartering with it. The profession also determines what weapon they will initially spawn with.

Appearance	Profession	Weapon	Probability	Combined probability
	Forager	Stone sword	5%	65%
		Stone pickaxe	5%
		Iron sword	5%
		Iron axe	5%
		Fishing rod	5%
		Stone axe	5%
		Iron pickaxe	5%
		None	30%
	Stalker	Bow	25%	25%
	Thaumaturge	Iron-capped wooden wand (with Pech's Curse focus)	10%	10%

Bartering

Once a pech has been tamed, players may begin to barter with it for loot.

Right-clicking on a tamed pech will open up a GUI window with one input slot, four output slots, and a die-shaped button. If a valuable item is placed in the input slot and all four output slots are empty, clicking on the die-shaped button will consume one item from the input slot and produce a random assortment of one to four stacks of loot in the output slots.

The items that can be received from a successful barter depend on the offered item's value, the pech's current inventory, the pech's profession, and the game's dungeon loot table. In general, each pech has a set list of items related to its profession that it can reward as loot, where each item in the list is assigned a specific rarity. The higher the value of the offered item, the higher the chance that an item of higher rarity can be received.

If offered items of lower value, there is a relatively high chance that the player may receive items that the pech has picked up off of the ground instead of loot, if the pech has picked anything up prior to bartering. If offered items of higher value, it becomes possible to receive items that can be found in dungeon loot chests instead of the pech's normal loot.

Each time a successful barter occurs, the pech has a chance to return to untamed behavior. When this occurs, the GUI window will immediately close and the pech will once again flee from the player. The last bartering trade still occurs, but due to the GUI closing, the resultant loot along with any offered items still left in the input slot will be immediately dropped in the world, allowing the pech to pick them up if they are not picked up by the player first. To resume bartering, the player must re-tame the pech again. A pech can be tamed and untamed in this way an unlimited number of times.

The chance of a pech becoming untamed after a barter is correlated to the value of the item offered for trade. Because of this, there is an extra risk and reward between using low-value items and high-value items: low-value items will tend to keep a bartering session going for more trades at the cost of receiving lower value loot, while high-value items can generate high-value loot trades at the cost of risking ending the bartering session sooner.

Loot generation algorithm

To deduce the loot generated from a barter, the following algorithm is first employed :

1. Start with the offered item's value, ${\textstyle V}$.
2. There is a 20% chance that a random value between 0 and 2, inclusive, is added to ${\textstyle V}$.
3. There is a 50% chance that a random value between 0 and 2, inclusive, is subtracted from ${\textstyle V}$.
4. If ${\textstyle V\le0}$, stop.
5. Select a random number ${\textstyle a}$ between 1 and the offered item's value, ${\textstyle V}$, inclusive.
6. Clamp ${\textstyle a}$ between half the offered item's value plus one rounded down (${\textstyle \lfloor\tfrac{V+1}{2}\rfloor}$) and 5, inclusive. (If ${\textstyle \lfloor\tfrac{V+1}{2}\rfloor > 5}$, then ${\textstyle a=5}$.)
7. Set the current value of ${\textstyle a}$ aside in a list.
8. Subtract ${\textstyle a}$ from ${\textstyle V}$.
9. Repeat from step 4.

The result should be a list of zero or more numbers, each one between 1 and 5, inclusive. Each number in this list will be used to generate an individual piece of loot via the following rules:

1. If ${\textstyle a=1}$ and the pech's hidden inventory is not empty, there is a 50% chance that the loot will be one of the non-empty slots of the pech's hidden inventory. This removes the item stack from the pech's inventory.
2. If $a \geq 4$, there is a 50% chance that the loot will be a random pull from the game's dungeon loot table.
3. Otherwise, pull a random item from the pech loot table.

The pech loot table yields the following loot for a given pech's profession and values of ${\textstyle a}$:

Profession	${\textstyle a}$ (Rarity)	Possible loot
Forager	1	Mana bean (random aspect) Native ore cluster (random ore)
	2	Blaze rod Greatwood sapling Potion of Strength Potion of Swiftness
	3	Bottle o' enchanting Knowledge fragment Golden apple Potion of Strength + Potion of Night Vision +
	4	Thaumium pickaxe
	5	Enchanted golden apple Silverwood sapling (twice as likely)
Stalker	1	Mana bean (random aspect) Tallow candle (random color)
	2	Ghast tear Potion of Swiftness Potion of Strength Enchanted book (random enchantment)
	3	Bottle o' enchanting Knowledge fragment Potion of Invisibility + Potion of Regeneration + Golden apple
	4	Thaumium boots
	5	Enchanted golden apple Enchanted book (Flame) Enchanted book (Infinity)
Thaumaturge	1	Mana bean (random aspect) Shard (random aspect) Knowledge fragment
	2	Knowledge fragment Potion of Regeneration Potion of Healing
	3	Enchanted book (Haste I) Golden apple Potion of Regeneration II Potion of Healing II
	4	Crystal cluster (random aspect)
	5	Enchanted golden apple Focus pouch Wand Focus: Pech's Curse Amulet of vis storage

Once each value of ${\textstyle a}$ from the list has been converted to a corresponding piece of loot, redundant stacks of like-items are grouped together, and the first four stacks of the list are output to the trade GUI for the player to take.

The chance that the pech returns to untamed behavior after a barter occurs is equivalent to the half the offered item's value rounded down taken as a percent. For example, an emerald with a value of 5 will have a ${\textstyle \lfloor 5/2\rfloor /100=2\%}$chance to end the session.

Strategies

The following is a strategy guide for locating, capturing, and effectively trading with pech to farm useful loot.

Preparing an enclosure

Before looking for a pech to capture, it is advised to prepare an enclosure where one or more can be kept, in such a way that they cannot escape but can still be accessed easily for bartering. Any structure suitable for holding common livestock will suffice, as they cannot open with gates or doors. A fence that allows items to be thrown over to the pech is preferable, as items must occasionally be given to the pech to tame it.

It should be noted that housing a pech in or near your primary base may not be the best idea, as the growls they make can become annoying.

Finding a pech

The magical forest biome is ideal for finding pech, as they tend to be quite expansive and thus provide ample spawning ground. If a magical forest is not nearby, an eerie biome created by a sinister node will also suffice, though its smaller area will make spawning rarer. Extra spawns may be encouraged by building extra platforms for pech to spawn upon within the magical forest or eerie biome.

Once a pech has been located, it is advisable to name the pech with a name tag, as it will despawn like any other neutral or hostile mob when the player goes too far out of range.

Luring to the enclosure

Since pech will run towards dropped items, a player can lead a pech in any direction they like by leaving a "breadcrumb trail" of items for the pech to pick up. These items should be spaced out somewhat closely to ensure that the pech does not lose sight of the trail. The items used to form the breadcrumb trail can be any items one has on hand.

If the pech must be lured a great distance, non-valuable items are preferred breadcrumb material; however, keep in mind that such non-valuable items will be placed in the pech's hidden inventory. These inventoried items may later show up again during bartering, potentially wasting loot rolls. Also, once a pech's inventory becomes filled, it will no longer pick up non-valuable items until its inventory is emptied again through bartering.

Valuable items, preferably inexpensive and common ones such as gold coins, can also be useful for luring pech. These are particularly useful, as a pech can pick up an unlimited quantity of valuable items without ever filling up its inventory. However, giving pech enough valuable items may cause it to become tamed, which will prevent it from picking up any more items, disrupting the luring process until a player barters with it several times to untame it.

A player willing to take risks may choose to purposefully harm a pech to make it attack the player, and then lure the angered pech to its final enclosure. This is efficient, but risks the player taking damage. It also leaves the pech in a hostile state once it has been enclosed. This hostile state can be reverted either by allowing the player to be killed by the pech, or by tricking another mob into attacking the pech to draw its aggro away from the player and allowing that mob to be killed instead. A snow golem is ideal for the latter case, as snow golems will attack pech with non-damaging snowballs and can be felled quickly.

Take care with luring or housing your pech near any mundane iron golems or Thaumcraft golems with the Guard core, as they will attack any and all pech regardless of the pech's behavior state.

Bartering

Once properly enclosed, your new pech can be bartered with at any time.

If the pech is not tamed, it will need to be tamed before it can be bartered with. This can be done by giving the pech valuable items, as described above. Higher value items have a higher chance to tame a pech, but if one has access to many small items with low values (such as gold coins), several of those may be more effective.

Once tamed, one can begin bartering. Items offered to the pech for bartering will yield better results the more valuable it is. In general, an item with a value of 5 or greater is required to most consistently receive the rarest loot on offer. This generally makes emeralds the ideal trading item, especially if one has access to villager trading; though, phials of lucrum essentia distilled from less lucrum-dense sources such as taint tendrils, golden armor pieces claimed from hostile mobs, or even unwanted loot bags can be just as if not even more effective options. Offered items with values greater than 5 have higher chances to produce multiple pieces of loot per trade.

Trivia

• "Pech" translates to "bad luck" in German, Dutch, Polish, and Czech.
• When given bows or wands to hold, all pech regardless of profession will attempt to use them to fire projectiles as their sole method of attack. However, the projectile actually launched by a pech is determined by its profession, not by its held item:
  • Pech thaumaturges will always cast Pech's Curse, even if they are holding a bow, a wand with a focus other than Pech's Curse, or a wand with no focus at all.
  • Pech stalkers will always fire arrows, even when holding wands.
  • Pech foragers will always fail to launch or cast anything when holding a bow or wand. This renders them effectively harmless if given one of these items to hold. This can be exploited by players in normal gameplay, as pech foragers are able to spawn carrying no item.

Full text

These strange humanoids can be found wherever the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. They seem drawn to the magical energies that abound in such places.

Don't let their small stature fool you. They have incredible strength and can carry many times their own bodyweight.

Pech are normally not aggressive, but when riled up they will band together and hunt down their attacker. Under normal conditions they avoid people at all costs.

Pechs are notoriously avaricious, and will loot anything not nailed down, though they prefer precious things. It is said that if you feed this desire for material wealth it could be possible to befriend one. One befriended they often carry wondrous objects that they might be willing to part with.

It should be noted that such 'friendships' seldom last long.

--- Thaumonomicon