Casting spells without a wand took a far greater toll on the mind and magic. In order to compensate for the lack of a magical focus, you had to exert stronger intent, which was mentally taxing. It also required much more power compared to using a wand, because controlling a large amount of magic outside your body was generally hard. Additionally, without a precise tool, you would waste a lot of it in the process. Almost all modern spells were created for wand use. Not to mention that in this world, the volatility of ambient magic made everything far harder. But getting a wand was a pipe dream for now, especially considering that he had no magical ingredients and not a wide selection of wand woods. That was beside the fact that he hadn't delved very deep in wand crafting, which meant that he had a lot of experimenting to do even with the correct materials in order to get anything usable.