EDIT2:
Keep in mined that Iron ALSO needs to be smelted, using up wood or coal. ALso keep in mind that unlike wood (Planting trees), orCobblestone (Cobblestone factory), or water (Oceans, "infinisprings"), Iron is non replenishable.
this is a bit off topic but.... why on earth would ANYONE want a cobblestone factory? the stuff is everywhere!
Stone could be used for lanterns, and I am not good at finding iron. I have never made a single mine cart track because I am afraid of wasting iron.
I've made about a 200 track long and still have a good 100+ ingots to spare. I even made an armory with 5 of every sword, 9 bows, 9 stacks of arrows, and a set of all the game armor. So it wouldn't really be a waste, and this is kinda needed, since this is Minecraft SURVIVAL, not Minecraft Place-****ing-Torches-Everywhere-And-Never-Have-To-Fight-Again.
I could see fun mechanics out of this, like temporary mineshafts in which you place iron lanterns to light it while you mine then section off that part when you're finished mining.
Stone could be used for lanterns, and I am not good at finding iron. I have never made a single mine cart track because I am afraid of wasting iron.
I've made about a 200 track long and still have a good 100+ ingots to spare. I even made an armory with 5 of every sword, 9 bows, 9 stacks of arrows, and a set of all the game armor. So it wouldn't really be a waste, and this is kinda needed, since this is Minecraft SURVIVAL, not Minecraft Place-****ing-Torches-Everywhere-And-Never-Have-To-Fight-Again.
I could see fun mechanics out of this, like temporary mineshafts in which you place iron lanterns to light it while you mine then section off that part when you're finished mining.
Not everyone is blessed by the Iron Fairy like you.
First, there's multiple ways to play Minecraft. Some people prefer to build continuously, some people want an actual survival game out of it. Some people spend the majority of their day mining out materials, others only devote a handful of hours to the game. I don't know if Notch wants to satisfy all of these players, but I assume he does since widespread appeal would make the game generate more sales.
The power players (we'll say > 6 hours/day) probably won't care too much if lanterns require iron. These people mine so much material they have likely overcome the relative rarity of iron. Some of them are blessed with rich iron veins that contribute to their bounty. I think these people are likely ambivalent to lanterns using iron because they have enough iron it won't bother them.
In addition, there are people who want survival to be a real game of survival. These people don't like that torches can effectively erase monster spawns. They may or may not have a large amount of iron, but this doesn't matter because their argument is permanent sources of light should be a severe resource drain.
There are also people who prefer the creative aspect of Minecraft. Sure, they could play Creative instead of Survival, but maybe they feel there's something a little too boring about having an infinite box of blocks and no chance of death or accidents which lead to dramatic setbacks. These people want to work on their projects mostly undisturbed, so every project likely starts with the construction of a wall around the site and a healthy application of torches to keep monsters out. These people would likely be hurt the most by lanterns that require iron. It's more likely they already occupy huge swaths of land that require fast locomotion, so any iron they find is tied up in railroads. Their projects require hundreds of light sources for both aesthetic and practical reasons, so to them it's like adding extra, almost artificial time to every project to gather hundreds of pieces of iron ore.
There has to be a solution that makes everyone happy. Well, scratch that; it's my experience that power players are never really happy because they consume game content so quickly. But the other guys ought to be satisfied.
Survival players are happy with the notion of lanterns requiring a lot of iron, because they feel that sources of light remove challenge from the game. Creative players aren't happy with this because they prefer monsters to be an avoidable danger. Increasing iron yields would help, but I do think it's interesting that iron is so precious (in many ways I consider it more valuable than diamond.) Making lanterns not use iron would help, but survivalists would complain that this makes things too easy; these players have a strange compulsion to use every game feature even if it's one they don't like that's intended to help players with a different playstyle. I'm not sure what the answer is.
What I do know is where I fall. I like all of the aspects of Minecraft. Some days I do nothing but mine. Some days I do nothing but work on epic builds. I haven't secured a good source of arrows yet but I'm excited at the prospect of going monster hunting. For now, my epic builds are surrounded by dirt walls and enough torches to keep monsters slightly at bay; my goal isn't to stop them from spawning entirely but to keep them from massing around my safehouse and making it impossible to proceed the next day. I know that right now, after 3 days of mining, this is how my materials stack up:
[*:1gnzjo3z]2,500 cobblestone/smooth stone (partially finished smelting)
[*:1gnzjo3z]80 coal (not enough to finish smelting)
[*:1gnzjo3z]20 iron
The prospect of needing even more iron bothers me. I get 2 hours/day to play this game. I often have to quit in the middle of a build and spend multiple days mining in order to get enough coal to smelt/build torches. I find this relatively painful, but coal is common enough I know if I spent a week on mining I'd be fine for another week or so. The iron bothers me. I don't tend to find it in large veins, and the smaller groups aren't even very common. I just laid the foundation for my biggest project so far, and if I'm going to need to spend 8-10 days mining iron just to produce enough lanterns to keep it permanently lit then I'm just going to start using InvEdit. Because seriously, some of us have relatively difficult real lives in which Minecraft is but a brief diversion.
Remember: the way you play the game is not the way everyone else plays. There's no "right" way to play Minecraft, so solutions that favor one playstyle over another aren't really solutions.
I do think it's silly to argue at this point. As far as I can tell, Notch hasn't posted any recipes related to lanterns. So the use of iron in lanterns is just a hypothetical. So we're all involved in a 3-page argument about a hypothetical that probably isn't going to come to pass.
There is no requirement that lanterns be surrounded by glass. If people want to spam lanterns like they spam pickaxes or spam buildings (because you can't build stuff that fast in real live), then I don't think that is an issue.
I think 1 coal + 1 iron should give you 4 lanterns:
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Nothing special, it would be just like the torch recipe except it uses iron.
Alright, I haven't read the thread all through just yet, but has anyone else suggested being able to pick which material you build it out of? Have the material be purely aesthetics.
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Yellow being the pick-your-own material. You could have a lantern that matches any room. Throne room? Gold or diamond lantern. Wood cottage? Wood lantern. Glass dome? Glass lantern. Save a lot problems and fussing.
That's actually a good idea, thought I think Gold and Diamond should have a bigger light radius, since it's more valuable and realistically more shiny, while wood and cobblestone to have X2 less shine, like about 6/8 of a normal torch. While Gold and Diamond have 1/2 more than a normal torch... Maybe each recipe would give 8? I think that's a fair number that is a multiple to 64... I think.
I love the ideas coming out of this thread... definitely gets me thinking about my future building and mining projects.
I too have a hard time gathering large piles of iron. I don't play enough to mine out huge regions and spend a fair amount of my time building and creating, with the thrill of survival involved. (It was mentioned in previous posts that some people play this way). Iron becomes critical at this point for mine tracks and carts, but I don't have enough to light everything permanently if iron was to be used for lanterns...
Smooth stone and glass with coal in the middle nuff said.
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Just like that. Simple and still harder to make than usual. Requires smelting and such.
Either that or even a torch instead of coal.
Exactly. I don't understand why there's still an argument. This design seems like it'd satisfy everyone. Not too time consuming to make, but not so easy that you could get a bunch of them while you're inside a mine. It's perfect.
Iron is used for a lot of things, that I know from having very little of it in my island like world. But, I guess we'll have to wait till we get it. :tongue.gif:
- Cookies to whomever gets the reference
No, it's about Iron being used for damn near everything.
this is a bit off topic but.... why on earth would ANYONE want a cobblestone factory? the stuff is everywhere!
I've made about a 200 track long and still have a good 100+ ingots to spare. I even made an armory with 5 of every sword, 9 bows, 9 stacks of arrows, and a set of all the game armor. So it wouldn't really be a waste, and this is kinda needed, since this is Minecraft SURVIVAL, not Minecraft Place-****ing-Torches-Everywhere-And-Never-Have-To-Fight-Again.
I could see fun mechanics out of this, like temporary mineshafts in which you place iron lanterns to light it while you mine then section off that part when you're finished mining.
Not everyone is blessed by the Iron Fairy like you.
First, there's multiple ways to play Minecraft. Some people prefer to build continuously, some people want an actual survival game out of it. Some people spend the majority of their day mining out materials, others only devote a handful of hours to the game. I don't know if Notch wants to satisfy all of these players, but I assume he does since widespread appeal would make the game generate more sales.
The power players (we'll say > 6 hours/day) probably won't care too much if lanterns require iron. These people mine so much material they have likely overcome the relative rarity of iron. Some of them are blessed with rich iron veins that contribute to their bounty. I think these people are likely ambivalent to lanterns using iron because they have enough iron it won't bother them.
In addition, there are people who want survival to be a real game of survival. These people don't like that torches can effectively erase monster spawns. They may or may not have a large amount of iron, but this doesn't matter because their argument is permanent sources of light should be a severe resource drain.
There are also people who prefer the creative aspect of Minecraft. Sure, they could play Creative instead of Survival, but maybe they feel there's something a little too boring about having an infinite box of blocks and no chance of death or accidents which lead to dramatic setbacks. These people want to work on their projects mostly undisturbed, so every project likely starts with the construction of a wall around the site and a healthy application of torches to keep monsters out. These people would likely be hurt the most by lanterns that require iron. It's more likely they already occupy huge swaths of land that require fast locomotion, so any iron they find is tied up in railroads. Their projects require hundreds of light sources for both aesthetic and practical reasons, so to them it's like adding extra, almost artificial time to every project to gather hundreds of pieces of iron ore.
There has to be a solution that makes everyone happy. Well, scratch that; it's my experience that power players are never really happy because they consume game content so quickly. But the other guys ought to be satisfied.
Survival players are happy with the notion of lanterns requiring a lot of iron, because they feel that sources of light remove challenge from the game. Creative players aren't happy with this because they prefer monsters to be an avoidable danger. Increasing iron yields would help, but I do think it's interesting that iron is so precious (in many ways I consider it more valuable than diamond.) Making lanterns not use iron would help, but survivalists would complain that this makes things too easy; these players have a strange compulsion to use every game feature even if it's one they don't like that's intended to help players with a different playstyle. I'm not sure what the answer is.
What I do know is where I fall. I like all of the aspects of Minecraft. Some days I do nothing but mine. Some days I do nothing but work on epic builds. I haven't secured a good source of arrows yet but I'm excited at the prospect of going monster hunting. For now, my epic builds are surrounded by dirt walls and enough torches to keep monsters slightly at bay; my goal isn't to stop them from spawning entirely but to keep them from massing around my safehouse and making it impossible to proceed the next day. I know that right now, after 3 days of mining, this is how my materials stack up:
[*:1gnzjo3z]2,500 cobblestone/smooth stone (partially finished smelting)
The prospect of needing even more iron bothers me. I get 2 hours/day to play this game. I often have to quit in the middle of a build and spend multiple days mining in order to get enough coal to smelt/build torches. I find this relatively painful, but coal is common enough I know if I spent a week on mining I'd be fine for another week or so. The iron bothers me. I don't tend to find it in large veins, and the smaller groups aren't even very common. I just laid the foundation for my biggest project so far, and if I'm going to need to spend 8-10 days mining iron just to produce enough lanterns to keep it permanently lit then I'm just going to start using InvEdit. Because seriously, some of us have relatively difficult real lives in which Minecraft is but a brief diversion.[*:1gnzjo3z]80 coal (not enough to finish smelting)
[*:1gnzjo3z]20 iron
Remember: the way you play the game is not the way everyone else plays. There's no "right" way to play Minecraft, so solutions that favor one playstyle over another aren't really solutions.
I do think it's silly to argue at this point. As far as I can tell, Notch hasn't posted any recipes related to lanterns. So the use of iron in lanterns is just a hypothetical. So we're all involved in a 3-page argument about a hypothetical that probably isn't going to come to pass.
I think 1 coal + 1 iron should give you 4 lanterns:
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[]
Nothing special, it would be just like the torch recipe except it uses iron.
That's actually a good idea, thought I think Gold and Diamond should have a bigger light radius, since it's more valuable and realistically more shiny, while wood and cobblestone to have X2 less shine, like about 6/8 of a normal torch. While Gold and Diamond have 1/2 more than a normal torch... Maybe each recipe would give 8? I think that's a fair number that is a multiple to 64... I think.
I too have a hard time gathering large piles of iron. I don't play enough to mine out huge regions and spend a fair amount of my time building and creating, with the thrill of survival involved. (It was mentioned in previous posts that some people play this way). Iron becomes critical at this point for mine tracks and carts, but I don't have enough to light everything permanently if iron was to be used for lanterns...
http://lodeoffmymine.blogspot.com/
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Just like that. Simple and still harder to make than usual. Requires smelting and such.
Either that or even a torch instead of coal.
Stop yelling, stop cursing, there's no point.
Exactly. I don't understand why there's still an argument. This design seems like it'd satisfy everyone. Not too time consuming to make, but not so easy that you could get a bunch of them while you're inside a mine. It's perfect.
(white cloth)
And lanterns should be
Requiring iron would totally kill mining (unless he greatly ups the availability of iron or makes new metals available.)
That gives me another idea. Maybe he means jack-o-lanterns that just require a pumpkin and a torch to make. I don't think that's likely though.
Well placed tnt does the trick quite well.
Then my minecarts will spread throughout the whole world! *maniacal laugh*