Ah! I have not read the Lexica cover to cover as I perhaps should have. (This from a person who was caught reading a book in high school Trigonometry class. The book was titled Boolean Algebra and the poor teacher didn't know what to say!)
I acquired the Ring of Chordata as soon as I was able to make it. That and the snorkel have made my underwater life MUCH easier!
I feel like the snorkel cancels out the ring slightly. I just use that and whatever armor I have.
The crafting scepter, whoever mentioned that, listen, the crafting scepter is ONLY usable for crafting and staves cannot craft. The two compliment each other. When you have to kill the wither you should do so in the nether, as Forbidden Magic will cause it to drop Pride shards. Sin Shards can ONLY be gotten in the Nether and the Pride Shards are needed for the Infernal Wand. The Infernal wand protects you from withering making it HIGHLY useful.
A common staff core meanwhile is the Primal, extremely powerful. However, I'm more used to the infernal and tainted cores when crafting wands/staves/scepters because I've been doing a lot of tinkering with Thaumcraft addons, Botania and Witchery in the Hubris and Banished modpacks. In Hubris the entire overworld is covered in taint, making the tainted cores very useful.
In this case however, with only a wasteland, the primal core will do very well for a staff. Though you should dabble in the forbidden magic wands a little bit to get familiar.
Oh yes and I found a bug with Netherfish. If you put them in a fish feeder thats in water they gobble up all the food and then won't do anything for you. Just to warn folks. And before you ask how to get them, go to the very edge of the lava in the nether, use sneak to lean out over the edge, take your rod and cast it STRAIGHT DOWN. Any other direction and your catch will burn up, and even then sometimes it still burns.
I'm really wishing now though that i hadn't drained that lava pool next to my base to fuel some of my early machinery and thermalillies.
also... smallest setup evar for a runic altar, coming soon to a thread near you.
Oh yes and Necro, if a mod's features are being troublesome, ALWAYS take 5 or 10 minutes to read the config files to see if that feature can be safely removed.