Mesky

Thaumcraft, Botania will both have ways of creating the Blooms to drive back the taint, though in Thaumcraft that is upgraded to the Dawn totem. As has been said, dont melee tainted mobs. Avoid them if you can, once you get a better wand with shock they are a bit easier. Dont bother going into the towns unless your after books to make knowledge scraps (or to steal their smelter). Best weapon in the game though is probably the singulium crossbow with tartarite/tartarite bolts. If your able to head inot the villages you should have the means of making signulim and tartarite. (only the limb of the xbow in signlium, stock of thaumium is good, string can be anything) (making the bolt core fo tartarite will give you 533 ammo count, making the tip tartaarite will give you great damage per hit before modifiers. Just throw moss on the xbow and bolts first up and no need to worry, If you can see the mob and know how to aim you can single hit pretty much anything)

Best source for gold early game is 1) loot bags from mob drops (you can smelt the gold coins, they are nuggests) 2) the supplier quest costs 2 or so rep points for a gold item that can be melted down. (if you made a thaumometer) The ore caches are under the ocean, so its not like you can head tot hem and mine down, you need to mine across to them and then up and down.

Will Blightfall be updated with the new botania update at all? Has anyone tried to do it manually and had any success?