EDIT: As of 13w05a, the Beacon's max range has been extended from 81 blocks to 101.
It's been around for a while now, and more people, including me, have gotten the chance to use it.
I have 4 beacons in my survival world, each with a different affect.
Here's what I think:
What I do love about it is Speed II and Haste II.
With Haste II, you can mine stone blocks instantly with an Efficiency V Diamond pickaxe. You can mine this amount of stone in simply a minute or two:
(Keep in mind, there is a lot more mined beyond the Void Fog)
But the range is just too small, even at max pyramid height. Why should I need to constantly move it if I want these affects at different parts of my base? I'm sure as hell not going to fight the Wither 4 more times and branch mine for the iron again to get another set of 4 beacons at the other side of my base.
The Beacon IS a good item. But it's not good for what is required to actually to use it, in my opinion. You have to work to get excessively powerful gear to fight a powerful boss, and happen to have a spare 1476 iron(or whatever) if you want all of the affects.
I'm interested in what other people think of it, and how they use it. We could also use ideas on how to improve it.
The most obvious one, would be increasing the range. It's just too damn small. It'd be better if it was somewhere over 100, instead of 81.
The good uses it has would be speed, and haste. But the range is just too small, even at max pyramid height. Why should I need to constantly move it if I want these affects at different parts of my base? I'm sure as hell not going to fight the Wither 4 more times and branch mine for the iron again to get another set of 4 beacons at the other side of my base.
The Beacon IS a good item. But it's not good for what is required to actually to use it, in my opinion. You have to work to get excessively powerful gear to fight a powerful boss, and happen to have a spare 1476 iron if you want all of the affects.
I agree 100% and it's unfinished in my opinion. For example: why build the pyramid from diamond or emerald when iron does the same thing. This goes for the "sacrifice" as well, a gold ingot has the same effect as a an iron one. They need to make up their minds as to what exactly makes the beacon more powerful, and how. Is it pyramid size, materials, or the sacrifice? Right now it's the size of the pyramid that matters, but everything else doesn't matter. So why have that as a choice? In survival, who would rather use 1476 emeralds over 1476 iron?
What I would really want to see is the material that you "Sacrifice" to activate the beacon's affects would actually make a difference. You can put in diamonds, gold, iron, or emeralds, and they all do the same thing.
In my opinion, the beacon was not well implemented. Everyone, unless you're in creative mode, is almost always going to use iron, as there is no incentive to use more valuable materials. The Nether star is far too under powered in regards to what you need to do to get one. The range of the beacon doesn't necessarily need to be extended, but there should be a more exponential difference between the different ranges.
In my opinion, the primary use of a beacon is just that, as a beacon, a shining beam of light to help with navigation. However, dispite this, the beacon should provide more effects, or at least more noticable ones.
Hmmm...
The beacon is probably the most underpowered block in the game. To get it, you have to defeat a very hard boss and to make it fully functional, you have to collect about 1000 iron ores. Maybe they should turn it a bit down, or make the buffs more useful.
This.
In it's current state, it's absolutely beyond useless.
I use potions alot, as well as enchantments, and EVERYTHING the beacon does, the potions and enchantments can do MUCH MUCH BETTER, and without utterly insane costs. The ONLY unique effect the beacon has is the higher jump, but.... notice, the higher jump DOESNT EVEN WORK RIGHT unless it's the level 2 version (because that one increases the height to 2 blocks; the other only to 1.5, which ONLY lets you jump over fences). You need the FULL pyramid to get a buff that wont actually help you get anywhere, because there's no way to use that buff in exploring or stuff; and if using it at your base...... MAKE A DAMN LADDER instead, it's not hard!
If I *ever* need ANY of these buffs at my base..... there is something ridiculously wrong with my base, and it's likely on fire and half-exploded. The damn thing provides things like buffs for combat and buffs for exploration, but..... most players will never, EVER need these within the extremely tiny, limited range that the thing produces. If I want some buffs like this, I'll go grab my flaming uber-sword (enchantments, yay!), a potion of speed, a potion of strength, and diamond armor of incredible invincible doom, and I'll be able to run around splattering things like an unstoppable juggernaut..... and guess what, doing THAT doesnt cost me 1500 iron and HOURS of farming for stupid wither skulls.
And hell, I think this thing actually JUST GOT MORE WORTHLESS with the recent update. Now that the anvils are in, and are USEFUL.... well, I'll say this, originally I was going to get and build one of the accursed beacons to at least experiment with them. But now I'm glad I DIDNT, since that iron can be used for anvils, both the construction of the things (which do break after awhile) and in the repair of iron items and armor.
It's sad, too, because I really liked the idea of this block, but the absurd tiny, tiny, TINY range makes it useless.
As someone up above said already, the only real value of this block is not the buffs, but is the light beam; you only need a (still silly) 70 or so ingots/whatever to produce the tiny pyramid that just activates the light beam. And even then..... that's still a terrible cost for something like that.
.....this also makes the Wither an entirely pointless fight for the vast majority of players. Though, that's fine, since the boss is just a gear-check anyway; seriously, if you wanted examples of how NOT to make a boss, that thing is the best example there is. It just SITS ON YOUR HEAD and spams explosive projectiles. Stick to you and spam..... yeah. That's a GREAT attack pattern.
Sigh. The only way for this terrible block to be useful, I think, is to simply mod it. I've a feeling it's not getting changed otherwise.
The beacon will add a lot to the PvP and PvE experience
Since there's a lot of buffs, and it is also balanced out so it not easy to get beacons
And it isnt to OP so i like how it is right now
I'm sorry, what?
Mindless grind for crap that you can get both easier and better in potions and enchanting will "add a lot to the PvP and PvE experience"? How does that work?
I wouldn't say it's beyond useless. Being able to have Speed II as long as you want in your base without constantly brewing is pretty awesome. I know Etho loves being able to have it. And Haste makes mining a lot faster, as you can insta-mine stone(About 5 times faster than creative mode mining) if you use an Efficiency V diamond pickaxe.
Really, it needs different affects that are as useful as haste and speed. Things like Attack strength are very pointless for a Beacon affect. The range also needs an increase, maybe 128 instead of 81. Or perhaps the amount of blocks visible in far render distance.
It's in no way useless. It's simply lack luster for what it costs. Not to mention, it feels unfinished.
I wouldn't say it's beyond useless. Being able to have Speed II as long as you want in your base without constantly brewing is pretty awesome. I know Etho loves being able to have it. And Haste makes mining a lot faster, as you can insta-mine stone(About 5 times faster than creative mode mining) if you use an Efficiency V diamond pickaxe.
Really, it needs different affects that are as useful as haste and speed. Things like Attack strength are very pointless for a Beacon affect. The range also needs an increase, maybe 128 instead of 81. Or perhaps the amount of blocks visible in far render distance.
It's in no way useless. It's simply lack luster for what it costs. Not to mention, it feels unfinished.
1500 ingots AND hours of farming AND beating the gear check boss, for some speed just around ONE (rather small) base? ....no. No, I dont think so. And the base would indeed have to be VERY small for just one beacon to work. I dont have a very huge one myself, but I'd still need AT LEAST 6 beacon setups (full-sized pyramids) to fully cover all of it to provide that effect. That'd be around 9000 ingots if using full-sized pyramids (which you must do to get the level 2 buffs at all), 6 Wither fights, 6 looooooong skull farming expeditions, and loads of wasted space (since the pyramids are huge and lumpy)...... or I could spend 20 minutes making a huge blob of any level of speed potion. You could use smaller pyramids to just get the level one speed buff, but the range with those drops from "really tiny" to "range? What range? I see no range here", and you'd need to get LOTS of actual beacon blocks; the ingot cost would shrink (though it'd actually still be pretty darn high), but the TIME cost would increase very, very dramatically.
It's not so much that the thing is useless on a technical level; The concept of it is actually pretty neat. The problem is that it's the single most unbalanced thing in the game. It's effects COULD be useful..... if the price was, you know, sane. The effects arent actually STRONG at all, thus the potion arguement. It'd actually be a far more efficient idea to simply make and store lots of level 2 speed potions (the super-fast ones that last for 1:30 or so); you could make BOXES of the things in a (very small) fraction of the time that it takes to do all of the stuff for the beacon; my own base has a bit of a distance from the main mansion to the farm section, and that's what I use to speed it up. No way in heck am I using 1500 ANYTHINGS to produce what is actually a very weak effect that I can already get by simply gulping one of the (many) excess potions I have. An effect that, if provided by the beacon, isnt even useful for simple exploring. Wheras the potions are worth investing in since they can be used ANYWHERE. Same with enchantments.
And yes, I know, constantly brewing new potions is annoying, but..... as annoying as collecting 8 squillion ingots and doing the skull farming and wither fighting and the MANY hours of time and LOADS of resources it takes? Keep in mind: The ingots ARE NOT the only cost here. You also need things like coal for smelting, torches for lighting up caves/mines, tools, food.... ALL of this stuff, and probably quite a great deal of it, JUST to get this ONE block. No. Brewing potions constantly isnt even close to as annoying. And also.... who said you have to do it constantly? It's now very, very easy to get Blaze Rods. Get 20 or so brewing stands (or some other arbitrary number), and spend 20-30 minutes JUST brewing potions, fast as you can. You can end up with a great many double-chests full of these things, and you're NOT going to run out of them anytime soon, particularly if you use the "extended" versions instead of the level 2 versions. You wont have to do the brewing again for quite awhile, and even when you do.... it's merely another 20 minutes.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The beacon's effect should work more like this: If the beacon is loaded (and if the pyramid is also fully loaded), you get the buffs. As in, the chunks they occupy being currently loaded into the game. Simple as that. This would make the cost much less deranged, and yet even THEN, it still might be a bit too much cost. But it'd be alot less terrible than it is now.
The beacon's buffs really do seem designed around combat and exploring, yet it's useless for both of these.
At the VERY least, I'd like to see another, non-beacon use for the Nether Star, considering the loopy amount of effort that must be put in just to GET one.
For me the solution is pretty clear: make the effects last way longer, something like 15 minutes for the tinny piramid up to 30 minutes or an hour for the big one, or maybe this long time buff only happens when a player activates the beacon with a resource, but i would expect a longer buff than 30 minutes or an hour for one diamond.
This, yes, would be a MUCH better idea. Feed the thing, get a buff (one that actually stacks with potion buffs, if possible). When the buff runs out, if you want to re-do it, you need to return to the pyramid and feed it again. Hell, you could even have it so that it's not JUST ingots and whatever that you feed it; you could also have the option of feeding it a BLOCK of any of those materials, for an even longer/bigger effect. This would be a POWERFUL item at this point, and the cost would make waaaayyyy more sense.
They could also perhaps just keep, I dunno, the regen effect that's just in a fixed range, if you need a quick heal. Or something. But mostly, your idea is a great deal better than the current setup. It'd still be EXPENSIVE.... but it'd also be strong and useful in a practical, sane way.
Frankly I think that it's current state should be best suited for an iron pyramid and fuel. Gold, emerald, and diamond should then increase the range by about 16 blocks or so, respectively. Keep in mind that the pyramid can be built not only by a single type of material, so rather you should also be able to dynamically change the range of the beacon by creating a pyramid of various combinations and amounts of material, with all diamond being the most powerful. Nothing about the beacon needs to be changed, it just needs to be finished.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots." - Albert Einstein
I have everything to make at least four beacons currently yet I have used an entire looting 3 sword on just wither skeletons and not gotten any damn heads....
The beacon idea seems like Villages.
First they added cause people wish for more life in the game. But was completely abandoned...
Than very later they added villagers, but they had no purpose.
More later, villagers got purpose.
And still have small tweaks over the time...
I just find silly when they add something to the game, but don't add purpose or any other related function.
For example, they added different colored wood, but still not different color for the crafting, fences, doors, trapdoors, ladders... Not need to sticks, obviously, cause we don't set them in the world. How hard is to copy and paste these, set a different ID and add new textures?
The beacon idea seems like Villages.
First they added cause people wish for more life in the game. But was completely abandoned...
Than very later they added villagers, but they had no purpose.
More later, villagers got purpose.
And still have small tweaks over the time...
I just find silly when they add something to the game, but don't add purpose or any other related function.
For example, they added different colored wood, but still not different color for the crafting, fences, doors, trapdoors, ladders... Not need to sticks, obviously, cause we don't set them in the world. How hard is to copy and paste these, set a different ID and add new textures?
Aye, agreed. This particular item really does seem VERY unfinished.
It is though, at least, nice for the actual light beam...... if you can get those bloody skulls first! Argh! Dunno WHY those things are so impossible to get.
It's been around for a while now, and more people, including me, have gotten the chance to use it.
I have 4 beacons in my survival world, each with a different affect.
What I do love about it is Speed II and Haste II.
With Haste II, you can mine stone blocks instantly with an Efficiency V Diamond pickaxe. You can mine this amount of stone in simply a minute or two:
But the range is just too small, even at max pyramid height. Why should I need to constantly move it if I want these affects at different parts of my base? I'm sure as hell not going to fight the Wither 4 more times and branch mine for the iron again to get another set of 4 beacons at the other side of my base.
The Beacon IS a good item. But it's not good for what is required to actually to use it, in my opinion. You have to work to get excessively powerful gear to fight a powerful boss, and happen to have a spare 1476 iron(or whatever) if you want all of the affects.
I'm interested in what other people think of it, and how they use it. We could also use ideas on how to improve it.
The most obvious one, would be increasing the range. It's just too damn small. It'd be better if it was somewhere over 100, instead of 81.
I agree 100% and it's unfinished in my opinion. For example: why build the pyramid from diamond or emerald when iron does the same thing. This goes for the "sacrifice" as well, a gold ingot has the same effect as a an iron one. They need to make up their minds as to what exactly makes the beacon more powerful, and how. Is it pyramid size, materials, or the sacrifice? Right now it's the size of the pyramid that matters, but everything else doesn't matter. So why have that as a choice? In survival, who would rather use 1476 emeralds over 1476 iron?
Since there's a lot of buffs, and it is also balanced out so it not easy to get beacons
And it isnt to OP so i like how it is right now
Just doing this so you know who it is
Right now the range is 81x81x81.
In my opinion, the primary use of a beacon is just that, as a beacon, a shining beam of light to help with navigation. However, dispite this, the beacon should provide more effects, or at least more noticable ones.
This.
In it's current state, it's absolutely beyond useless.
I use potions alot, as well as enchantments, and EVERYTHING the beacon does, the potions and enchantments can do MUCH MUCH BETTER, and without utterly insane costs. The ONLY unique effect the beacon has is the higher jump, but.... notice, the higher jump DOESNT EVEN WORK RIGHT unless it's the level 2 version (because that one increases the height to 2 blocks; the other only to 1.5, which ONLY lets you jump over fences). You need the FULL pyramid to get a buff that wont actually help you get anywhere, because there's no way to use that buff in exploring or stuff; and if using it at your base...... MAKE A DAMN LADDER instead, it's not hard!
If I *ever* need ANY of these buffs at my base..... there is something ridiculously wrong with my base, and it's likely on fire and half-exploded. The damn thing provides things like buffs for combat and buffs for exploration, but..... most players will never, EVER need these within the extremely tiny, limited range that the thing produces. If I want some buffs like this, I'll go grab my flaming uber-sword (enchantments, yay!), a potion of speed, a potion of strength, and diamond armor of incredible invincible doom, and I'll be able to run around splattering things like an unstoppable juggernaut..... and guess what, doing THAT doesnt cost me 1500 iron and HOURS of farming for stupid wither skulls.
And hell, I think this thing actually JUST GOT MORE WORTHLESS with the recent update. Now that the anvils are in, and are USEFUL.... well, I'll say this, originally I was going to get and build one of the accursed beacons to at least experiment with them. But now I'm glad I DIDNT, since that iron can be used for anvils, both the construction of the things (which do break after awhile) and in the repair of iron items and armor.
It's sad, too, because I really liked the idea of this block, but the absurd tiny, tiny, TINY range makes it useless.
As someone up above said already, the only real value of this block is not the buffs, but is the light beam; you only need a (still silly) 70 or so ingots/whatever to produce the tiny pyramid that just activates the light beam. And even then..... that's still a terrible cost for something like that.
.....this also makes the Wither an entirely pointless fight for the vast majority of players. Though, that's fine, since the boss is just a gear-check anyway; seriously, if you wanted examples of how NOT to make a boss, that thing is the best example there is. It just SITS ON YOUR HEAD and spams explosive projectiles. Stick to you and spam..... yeah. That's a GREAT attack pattern.
Sigh. The only way for this terrible block to be useful, I think, is to simply mod it. I've a feeling it's not getting changed otherwise.
I'm sorry, what?
Mindless grind for crap that you can get both easier and better in potions and enchanting will "add a lot to the PvP and PvE experience"? How does that work?
I wouldn't say it's beyond useless. Being able to have Speed II as long as you want in your base without constantly brewing is pretty awesome. I know Etho loves being able to have it. And Haste makes mining a lot faster, as you can insta-mine stone(About 5 times faster than creative mode mining) if you use an Efficiency V diamond pickaxe.
Really, it needs different affects that are as useful as haste and speed. Things like Attack strength are very pointless for a Beacon affect. The range also needs an increase, maybe 128 instead of 81. Or perhaps the amount of blocks visible in far render distance.
It's in no way useless. It's simply lack luster for what it costs. Not to mention, it feels unfinished.
1500 ingots AND hours of farming AND beating the gear check boss, for some speed just around ONE (rather small) base? ....no. No, I dont think so. And the base would indeed have to be VERY small for just one beacon to work. I dont have a very huge one myself, but I'd still need AT LEAST 6 beacon setups (full-sized pyramids) to fully cover all of it to provide that effect. That'd be around 9000 ingots if using full-sized pyramids (which you must do to get the level 2 buffs at all), 6 Wither fights, 6 looooooong skull farming expeditions, and loads of wasted space (since the pyramids are huge and lumpy)...... or I could spend 20 minutes making a huge blob of any level of speed potion. You could use smaller pyramids to just get the level one speed buff, but the range with those drops from "really tiny" to "range? What range? I see no range here", and you'd need to get LOTS of actual beacon blocks; the ingot cost would shrink (though it'd actually still be pretty darn high), but the TIME cost would increase very, very dramatically.
It's not so much that the thing is useless on a technical level; The concept of it is actually pretty neat. The problem is that it's the single most unbalanced thing in the game. It's effects COULD be useful..... if the price was, you know, sane. The effects arent actually STRONG at all, thus the potion arguement. It'd actually be a far more efficient idea to simply make and store lots of level 2 speed potions (the super-fast ones that last for 1:30 or so); you could make BOXES of the things in a (very small) fraction of the time that it takes to do all of the stuff for the beacon; my own base has a bit of a distance from the main mansion to the farm section, and that's what I use to speed it up. No way in heck am I using 1500 ANYTHINGS to produce what is actually a very weak effect that I can already get by simply gulping one of the (many) excess potions I have. An effect that, if provided by the beacon, isnt even useful for simple exploring. Wheras the potions are worth investing in since they can be used ANYWHERE. Same with enchantments.
And yes, I know, constantly brewing new potions is annoying, but..... as annoying as collecting 8 squillion ingots and doing the skull farming and wither fighting and the MANY hours of time and LOADS of resources it takes? Keep in mind: The ingots ARE NOT the only cost here. You also need things like coal for smelting, torches for lighting up caves/mines, tools, food.... ALL of this stuff, and probably quite a great deal of it, JUST to get this ONE block. No. Brewing potions constantly isnt even close to as annoying. And also.... who said you have to do it constantly? It's now very, very easy to get Blaze Rods. Get 20 or so brewing stands (or some other arbitrary number), and spend 20-30 minutes JUST brewing potions, fast as you can. You can end up with a great many double-chests full of these things, and you're NOT going to run out of them anytime soon, particularly if you use the "extended" versions instead of the level 2 versions. You wont have to do the brewing again for quite awhile, and even when you do.... it's merely another 20 minutes.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The beacon's effect should work more like this: If the beacon is loaded (and if the pyramid is also fully loaded), you get the buffs. As in, the chunks they occupy being currently loaded into the game. Simple as that. This would make the cost much less deranged, and yet even THEN, it still might be a bit too much cost. But it'd be alot less terrible than it is now.
The beacon's buffs really do seem designed around combat and exploring, yet it's useless for both of these.
At the VERY least, I'd like to see another, non-beacon use for the Nether Star, considering the loopy amount of effort that must be put in just to GET one.
This, yes, would be a MUCH better idea. Feed the thing, get a buff (one that actually stacks with potion buffs, if possible). When the buff runs out, if you want to re-do it, you need to return to the pyramid and feed it again. Hell, you could even have it so that it's not JUST ingots and whatever that you feed it; you could also have the option of feeding it a BLOCK of any of those materials, for an even longer/bigger effect. This would be a POWERFUL item at this point, and the cost would make waaaayyyy more sense.
They could also perhaps just keep, I dunno, the regen effect that's just in a fixed range, if you need a quick heal. Or something. But mostly, your idea is a great deal better than the current setup. It'd still be EXPENSIVE.... but it'd also be strong and useful in a practical, sane way.
I'm quite the shady customer.
First they added cause people wish for more life in the game. But was completely abandoned...
Than very later they added villagers, but they had no purpose.
More later, villagers got purpose.
And still have small tweaks over the time...
I just find silly when they add something to the game, but don't add purpose or any other related function.
For example, they added different colored wood, but still not different color for the crafting, fences, doors, trapdoors, ladders... Not need to sticks, obviously, cause we don't set them in the world. How hard is to copy and paste these, set a different ID and add new textures?
Aye, agreed. This particular item really does seem VERY unfinished.
It is though, at least, nice for the actual light beam...... if you can get those bloody skulls first! Argh! Dunno WHY those things are so impossible to get.