In Thaumcraft, object have magical "aspects". Most aspects in Thaumcraft can be discovered by scanning object that have them. However, some can't, and there's no way to know which ones without googling up a cheat sheet.

I knew from previous experience that Victus, or Life, was one aspect you can't scan for and which has to be made. So, the first thing I do with my shiny new research table is to make it:



With Victus I can now discover a number of other aspects, which I proceed to do:



Thaumcraft research pretty much requires you have all aspect discovered, so I run around on a mad scanning spree. I scan vials, mushrooms, ores, animals, dyes, tools - you name it. But I'm still getting stuck, apparently on Humanus (man). Well, I remember that zombie flesh has that so I head back to the zombie spawner I'd found before and crack it open.



Killing zombies through the porthole is easy but I can't get the rotten flesh. Should have cut in one level lower, I guess. But, I'm not seeing the creeper so during a pause in zombies I mine out another block to make an opening and go in to collect. I light up the inside so there will be no more spawns until I want to use it. There's also an opening to an outside cave (presumably how the creeper got in before and I block that up too. Then I loot the chests.

The chests are actually a great find. Thaumcraft stuff generates in the chest, and in the first I find some Thaumium (essential enchanted Iron that can be eventually used for specially magicked items) and a Thaumium Axe (which I'm going to save for just that.)

But in the second chest is a whopper of an item:



Vis is the magical energy in thaumcraft you use for making items and wand effects. It normally has to be gotten from magical nodes, and that's quite a chore early in the game. There are six different kinds of Vis used for magic and each node generally only has one or two. So you have to find a whole bunch of nodes and then travel back and forth to them to recharge them before I could do much of anything. Eventually you can move nodes around, but that comes much later.

At present I've only even found one node, with two usable types of Vis, so I would normally have to discover several more nodes and make many outdoor trips. But this this will recharge all my wands for me up to a low level, effectively many hours of work. In particular, I'll be able to make things to help find nodes before I have to go looking for them. (or so I think - it comes out to be less useful than I'd thought.)

Feeling a little confident, I decide to break into the mineshaft that had gotten in the way of my initial mineshaft.



That goes easily and I secure and block off a segment right next to my base.

However, it turns out the zombie flesh doesn't let me scan more aspects after all.  It turns out I need Mortuus, or Death, and after not getting it from things like skeleton bones I eventually make that at the research table too. I get a few things, but I'm still stuck on Spiritus, or spirit, so I make that as well. That finally gets me past the bottleneck and after a frenzy of scanning almost everything in my base I finally have most of the aspects.



And I *mean* almost everything.

At that point I can start research. Thaumcraft has had a number of different research systems over several different versions. In the current system each "research note" is essentially a puzzle where you have to connect a number of aspect on a hexagonal board with chains of related aspects.



IMO it's a big improvement over the previous research system - more thought and less tedium. It's kind of hard at first, although I imagine it will get easier as I get the hand of it.



I work up a number of researches, focusing on getting better wands, and also Goggles of Revealing, which make it *much* easier to find the nodes I'm going to need. It's a cute little system and I'm having fun with it, taking periodic breaks to go farm and ranch (especially for the leather I need for bookcases).

After a while I decide to make some Goggles. But it turns out Goggles need all six aspects and my wand has very little of two of them:



So I farm and research a while longer - but I don't get anything more in the wand. So apparently rather than charging *all* aspects to 10, my amulet stops charging when any *one* aspect gets to 10 - a lot less useful, given that I don't have a way to drain out particular aspects yet. I consider making a bunch of wands and charging one after another until one get the right set but that seems tedious and a little silly. So I'm going to have to go on a early node-hunting expedition, without the Goggles that make it much easier, after all.

Next episode - exploring the world for magical nodes.