One of the ladders you climb in Thaumcraft is the wand ladder. There's a sequence of wand materials and caps, each generally better than the one before, and generally requiring the previous wand to make. I can take one step up from my iron-capped wood wand to a gold-capped Greatwood wand, and I do so. I couldn't have done this earlier, as I need a fair amount of all six Vis to do it. This also gives me two wands to store mana in. So I want to go out again to fill my new wand.

But first, now that I've cleared the mineshaft that blocked my original dropshaft, I can move the bottom section that I had to displace to avoid the mineshaft.



Not a big deal but that was an annoyance to have to shift my position going up or down.

Now that I've got Goggles of Revealing, it's going to be much easier to find nodes. But, once I've found them, how do I find them again. For this, I'm going to use a new feature of Explorercraft -map markers.

Map markers are made with a dye and a piece of paper, which produces 8 markers. They're metaphorically like sticky notes. If you right-click with a stack of markers, it will place that marker at that spot on every map in your hot bar, and every map in every Atlas in your hot bar.

Of course all those different marker colors chew up a lot of inventory space, but you can keep unused markers in an Atlas.

So I make an Atlas



And fill it with a variety of colored markers.



It also holds my map, and a blank 16x16 map (from ExplorerCraft). If I move off my current map now, Explorercraft will automatically convert my blank map into a new map that tiles with my current one.

While I've been doing this, I've gotten enough leather to make 15 bookcases so I can finally to a level 30 enchant. I enchant a diamond pick and get Efficiency IV/Unbreaking III. Not exciting, but a great workhorse pick. It'll do.

I learned in my last game to have a plan for using the colors before I start using them. In this game I primarily intend to use them to mark nodes. There are far too many possible aspect colors so I'm just going to use a color for the most powerful aspect. That''l leave 10 colors for other things.



I start out dropping a black marker at my front door. So from now on, you can use the black cross on the map to know exactly where my base is.

I head east, primarily working to fill in the blank areas on my map near my base. Very quickly I spot a glow off to the side and find an aqua/aer/perdito node near the frozen river I take to the coast.  So I travelled thousands of blocks to find an aspect right next to my base. But of course I couldn't know that and the limited FOV of the thermometer is the reason I missed it before.

I consider using a grey for Perdito - the most significant aspect for game play, but eventually decide to just mark for the largest aspect, which is aqua.



I enjoy the views as I travel, of course. I've planned my mod and world setting to produce striking landscapes, pretty maps, and reasons to travel to look at it. I'm getting what I wanted, and it's nice.

On my third Minecraft day exploring, I find 3 nodes close together - the third of which is a wisp spawner.



This is a Thaumcraft structure made mostly of obsidian, and containing a treasure chest, a Sinister node and which, unsurprisingly, spawns wisps, moderately dangerous flying Thaumcraft mobs. I head up to loot but hear the dreaded SSSS.

I spin around and try a swat-and jump-back tactic on the creeper but I don't jump fast enough and get a hole in the hill.



The white glow is one of the other 2 nodes, a largish pure Ordo node.

The chest contains some minor stuff plus a ring with Runic Shield I. Google unfortunately doesn't tell be what the thing does but I figure it's very useful and use it anyway.

I travel to the coast to find the Ignis node I'd found on the previous trip and have a hard time finding which of several bays it's in. This mapping is going to be a big benefit. I find yet another Obsidian Totem with a Sinister node while looking. Man, these things are everywhere!

I eventually find the earlier node and head west, discovering two more nodes as I travel.

I mark the aqua/terra node I'd found in the lake and then:



Yet *another* sinister node. Looks good with the Greatwood tree, though.

From there I head west to mark the aqua/perdito/tempestas node. I have a really hard time finding it. I am really looking forward to having nodes marked on my map.

When I do finally find it, I find an ignis node very nearby.

After this, I head home. Here's the resulting map:



You can see the aqua/aer/perdito node I marked first as blue cross just below my base. The trio of nodes is three overlapping crosses above and to the right of my base, with the red one on top. The node with ignis I found on the coast in my earlier trip is a blue cross (because it has more aqua) further northeast of that. South of it is a grey marker for the totem I found looking for it. The aqua/terra node in the lake next to the cows in the green cross near the center. The aqua/perdito/tempestas node is a blue cross in the west partly obscured for a orange cross for the ignis node next to it.

I've been dreaming of a map with Thaumcraft nodes marked on it for months. And now I have it. A very good day!

Next episode: mining for resources and (finally) some building.