Minecraft Forums

One thing I have noticed about Minecraft is unless you know the ins and outs of the game, some things can be confusing to people. For example, most of the ingredients for making potions do absolutely nothing besides making those potions (Ghast Tear or Magma Cream for example). So why not give those items a secondary use, while trying to hint to unsuspecting players that there may be more you can do with these items? Then I thought about Spider Eyes and their ability to poison the player.

That is why I want to suggest being able to eat potion ingredients to restore a small amount of Hunger and give the player that ingredient's potion effect, but in a severely reduced form. For example, lets say you come across a Magma Cream. You don't know what it is used for, but you know it has to do something so you take it. You can't figure out any crafting recipes with it, so you try using it. Surprisingly, your character begins to eat it.

Once you finish eating the item, you notice a strange effect surrounding you. You open your inventory and you see that you have the Fire Resistance effect, but only for about 15 seconds. You start to think that there might be more to the game than you thought, and like a toddler, you begin trying to put anything you can find in your mouth.

I think this would be a good way to introduce potion effects to players in Minecraft, as well as allow yourself to get little bonuses just from eating the food itself. The bonuses would be tiny compared to potions though. Here is a rough idea of I think would work for each ingredient (All items would restore 2 Hunger and 0.5 Saturation, except the Golden Carrot because it already restores Hunger):

Blaze Powder - Strength 1 (10 Seconds)
Fermented Spider Eye - Weakness 1 (10 Seconds)
Ghast Tear - Regeneration 1 (5 Seconds)
Glistening Melon - Restores 2 Health (1 Heart)
Golden Carrot - Night Vision 1 (10 Seconds)
Magma Cream - Fire Resistance (10 Seconds)
Spider Eye - Poison (4 Seconds) *Note: This item's Saturation would be lowered from 3.2 to 0.5
Sugar - Swiftness 1 (10 Seconds)

Anyone have any comments, criticisms, or ideas? Anything seem unbalanced?

Sure, 10 seconds would work. But I'll make a Poll.

Quote from CodenameDuchess

I'm certainly not wild about the idea, but it couldn't hurt. I can't see it being all that helpful, as I think quite a few people use the wiki to learn everything (feel free to disprove or disagree with this, I'm only basing it off of my own personal experience). At the same time, however, I think that heavy wiki-use should not be encouraged or necessary, and that Minecraft should be more new-user-friendly, so steps to improve that situation are steps I support.

That is the main reason I suggested it actually. Also was slightly inspired by The Elder Scrolls Alchemy system where you can eat an ingredient to learn the effects. It just seems to be a more natural way to introduce Brewing.

I also support almost any idea for in game documentation of basic game mechanics and/or a recipe list (either a full one right off the bat or one that shows the recipes as silhouettes until you craft them once). Something to make it more accessible to people.

Quote from CodenameDuchess

Although, now that I think about it, the ability to stack ingredients goes a long way for shorter effect times . . . Could go either way.

That may be true, but only one or two of the items are easily attainable enough that you can do that easily, like Sugar. Others are usually a bit harder to find in large amounts without a grinder or doing some serious legwork.

Quote from EL_Kurto_15

I imagine the ease to get of sugar would be balanced by the fact that having to slow down to eat it a lot will cancel out a lot of the benefit of mass using just sugar.

That is a good point that I didn't think about. Eating takes about 3 seconds. So if effects were 10 seconds long and you ate so you would never lose the buff (once every 7 seconds), then you would travel 34 blocks every 10 seconds according to my calculations. With the bonus to your Speed from Sugar, you would travel 40 blocks every 10 seconds. Default Walking Speed is 4.3 blocks per second, or 43 blocks over 10 seconds. So if the ingredients were set at 10 second effect durations, trying to abuse sugar would actually make you slower.

Quote from carollwood

I like it. Support.

Quote from spongebob09

Like it up button to 2

Thanks for the support guys. I changed the effect duration to 10 seconds if they were at 15 due to that making it useful for 10 seconds of a quick buff in an absolute emergency without being abused.

Quote from Emerald9Creeper

This will be abused to the point of potions being practicaly extinct. Anyway theres some thing called minecraft wiki. It's terrifying I know.

Except that:

Quote from Deonyi

How? This provides a good benefit to potion ingredients as well as nudging people to create a fully featured stand.

How indeed? There was one possible abuse, using high amounts of Sugar to run faster, because it is easy to make a farm for that. That is why I dropped it to 10 seconds, because that way trying to abuse it by repeatedly eating it makes you actually go slower over a long distance. All the other items are either negative effects, fairly expensive to make (enough that you would rather make potions), or you need to get to a Nether Fortress anyways, so you will have access to the stuff to make potions by then.

Also, remember that these restore Hunger. If you have no Hunger, you can only eat 10 items before you are full.