If you want a lot of reserch points abuse villagers; Thaumcraft villagers almost always end up with a knowledge fragment trade (you can use them to gain 1-2 of each base aspect) and it's usually bookcases for fragments. If you are clever you can play the villager market by selling paper/ books to librarians and use those emeralds to buy their bookcases without ever having to craft a book case. Then again it's probably faster to craft them and sell them but you may still need emeralds to unlock the trades if their last trade isn't the fragments. The trading can be made easier with a trading post if you don't relish hunting down villager for trades.

I mean you can rely on a deconstructor but that's a lot of looking in to a GUI and hopeing for the best, I tried the netherwart thing but it's way too slow and doesn't net you the aspects you want, also thaumaturge villagers usually also have a trade for blank wisp essence which is a farmless source of auram.



You can also take a Pech hostage, but that will require emeralds anyway to gamble up some fragments along with a lot of other handy loot.