First I plant one of my saplings. I'd actually planted my spare before I left and it's sprouted already - but without a node. So good for looks but not functionality. I'll chop it (I have another spare) but I want to try to get a pic first.

Next I want to plant my mana beans. They need to go in a magical biome, so Magical Forest or Eerie. For convenience, I don't want to plant them in a totem-generated Eerie away from my base, so they'll go in the mini Magical Forest Biomes my Silverwoods have made. I'll also need to light them with a Thaumcraft Lamp of Growth because otherwise they grow extremely slow.

I like the idea of putting them on the Silverwoods but I just can't figure out a way to do it attractively and symmetrically. I don't actually need them to be symmetrical for the altar function but I want it. The Magical Forest biomes are also very small so they would have to be right next to the altar.

Eventually I decide I can't place them nicely above ground and I'll have to dig out a chamber below. I think about direct access from the ground but that's not appealing either. So I decide to dig another room below the tower and then dig a tunnel from there.



But first, a swarm of zombies drops off the hill and attacks my front door! Again, I have no idea where they came from. But one of them has chain, so I open the door hoping for a trophy - and luck out! I have a chain breastplate! Into storage for later

I dig another room for the tower with the same basic plan - same shape, and 5 blocks high. I don't bother decorating yet, though. The area turns out to have a big ice deposit in it which I accidentally break with my high-speed diamond pic, producing a seriously inconvenient flood. I can't manage to snap up the water with my bucket and eventually have to go to the floor above and cut down to drain it.



That done, I dig a tunnel over to exactly under the altar and place four silverwood columns. My magical Forest plan has not worked out quite right; the biomes don't quite reach to the center. Whoops. I actually have *7* beans, not the 5 I thought I had.

I then need a Lamp of Growth. I do the research, and it needs to be infused from an Arcane Lamp. I spend quite a bit of time trying to infuse an Arcane Lamp before learning that that's been changed from 1.6 and now they're just crafted.



The Lamp of Growth needs a six-item infusion so I have to expand my altar. I put in four more pedestals along the spiral arms. The Silverwoods you see are the new ones, which have sprouted, but neither has a Pure Node so I'll have to chop them and replant at some point.I need Pure Nodes for the Magical Forest biome so the mana beans will grow.

The infusion goes without a hitch and I place the Lamp of Growth in the middle of the mana beans with a bottle of Herba essence to fuel it.



I've been doing very little with Bibliocraft but all my jars of Essentia are starting to get clutter-y so I build some potion shelves to put them on. As it turns out the labels always face east so I then had to move them to the west wall.



Before I chop down the node less silverwoods I get a pic of my altar. Thanks to the Greatwood tree the taotie of my tower even has hair now!

After this I chop down one silver wood, getting a sapling, allowing me to chop the other dud silver wood too and replant both of them.

Next episode: More home improvement.