Did you ever think TNT was too weak? Too expensive, even with alchemy producing TNT at gloriously efficient rates? Nova Catalysts are a special breed of explosive that do a few things for you:
- 1, they leave massive craters. They blister through all forms of material with relative ease, and have a very wide area of effect.
- 2, they won't hurt you, or anything for that matter. You can stand right next to the blast as it safely vaporizes all materials nearby to their appropriate "collectable" forms. This also means no items will ever be "accidentally" vaporized.
- 3, they don't drop individual items. Much like several of the alchemical items, this explosion drops everything in a neat, lag reducing bundle somewhere near the epicenter of the explosion, leaving you free to detonate massive quantities of the stuff in relative safety.
Finally, the items don't just drop on the ground in stacks. They drop right on you, the player. This means you can detonate them safely over large lava lakes without fear of losing it all.