4JStudios, I've been watching a lot of MindCrack lately, and it inspired a lot of ideas for a new difficulty level that sits above Hard. Something akin to 'Legendary' in Halo. Here's what I have in mind for this new difficulty, "Legacy Mode", without requiring any new additions to the game. By the way, some of these ideas are inspired by mindcrack and recent PC changes.
Credit goes to KioriBug for the name!
Like Hardcore mode, any world created in this difficulty should permanently bar access to host privileges, creative mode, and lesser difficulties on that map.
Unlike Hardcore, Legacy Mode shouldn't carry a permanent death penalty. Although, if Hardcore is coming to MCX360, it certainly should be compatible with this game type, for the truly extreme players. It's necessary to lock a Legacy Mode map in this mode for a few inconsistencies it would have with other difficulty levels.
Force players to accept a random seed for their world generation.
No seed hunting, no playing on a seed someone else found and mapped out all the resources for.
Make food stackable only up to 16, or perhaps not stack at all.
This severely limits the amount of food you can carry, forcing you to either sacrifice inventory space to accommodate, or to think strategically about your movements in caves and over mountains. It also makes tunneling that much more of a non-option, until you're established well enough to start quarrying.
The stackability of food should depend on the hunger/saturation it restores. Bread and raw meat could stack up to 16, whereas cooked meats might not stack at all.
Speaking of food, fully satiated hunger should not regenerate your health.
While you still need to keep your hunger up in order to sprint and not starve to death, health regeneration should be reserved solely for potions and golden apples. This puts a bit more importance on both gold and nether travel.
As a side note, I also wouldn't mind if the option to turn off hunger bar health regen was available for all difficulties.
Weapon and tool tiers should be harder to advance in.
Coal should only generate below Y=60. Remove the charcoal smelting recipe, and make only coal and blaze rods available for use in a furnace, saplings an wood being useless.
Stone tools should require smooth stone to craft. This, along with requiring coal to smelt stone, encourages at least some caving with wooden tools.
Other ores should spawn in lower ranges, and less frequently outside of caves. If ores are more likely to be found on a cave wall and much less likely to be found embedded in stone, this makes tunnel mining an ineffective means of resource gathering, forcing the player to deal with monsters and caves. Iron Ore should only spawn below Y=48, making leather a more viable option for armor crafting. Gold should spawn only below Y=30. Diamonds and redstone are fine as-is, and Lapis is of no consequence to difficulty.
Monsters that spawn from spawners should not drop XP or rare drops.
Eliminate grinding! This makes enchanting more valuable, as well as making lower level enchants more viable. It also defeats being able to gain iron from Zombies, should the player find an easy-to-reach zombie spawner. (This is assuming rare drops are being added to MCX360)
Zombie Pigmen should spawn slightly more frequently, and have a rare chance for an individual to be hostile without provocation.
In normal difficulties, the Nether is a surprisingly safe place to be. The two most threatening mobs are Ghasts, which you can hear from a long distance and easily have time to take cover from or dodge their slow moving attacks; and Blazes, which only spawn if the player walks close enough to their spawner. If Pigmen have a chance to be hostile upon spawn, this adds an element of danger back to the nether, as well as something to strategize on--do you flee from the pigman or risk provoking the others by defending yourself?
Of course, if you increase their spawn rates, their gold drops should be tweaked up in rarity slightly to compensate.
The recipe for crafting melon seeds from melons should be removed. Fully grown melon stalks should only drop one seed when broken. Melon seeds should be a rarer find in Mineshaft chests. The glistering melon recipe should require a melon and a gold ingot, instead of just a nugget.
Eliminating huge melon farms makes brewing healing potions less trivial. Removing the melon seed crafting recipe forces a player to return to dangerous mineshafts should they wish to expand their farm.
The crafting recipe for golden apples should be reverted to gold ingots.
For the highly increased cost, The golden apple should give the player Regen II instead of Regen I, and last long enough to recover 3 hearts.
The potency of healing potions and regen potions should be reduced as they are on the PC version.
As long as glowstone is renewable from Blazes, why not make it more valuable?
The Protection enchantment needs to be far less useful than specific protection enchants.
Protection IV should not stack with, and in fact negate the effects of a similar Protection enchant on any other piece of armor. Lower levels of Protection should only stack with no more than one other piece of armor with the same protection enchant of equal or lesser level. This makes specific protection enchants more attractive, and a suit consisting of all the different types of protection more valuable.
Village Blacksmith chests should not contain overly valuable loot.
An uncommon Iron sword is a nice find, and even a rare chance at a few pieces of Obsidian is fine. But in this difficulty mode, diamonds, Iron armor, and iron ingots should not be available in blacksmith chests. It eliminates the purpose of needing to truly work for resources when you can find a seed that gets you good and set up right off the bat for no cost.
Mobs should have a chance to spawn with random potion effects.
Swiftness, Strength, and Fire Resist, with an even smaller chance of spawning with the extended or Level II variants of these effects.
Light should not pacify spiders.
Angry daytime spiders!
Spider spawns should have a small chance of being cave spiders.
The lower you go, the higher the chance.
If Hardcore mode isn't enabled alongside this difficulty level, every death should come with a penalty of losing a random 25% of your inventory.
Did you lose food when you died? Potions? Your pickaxe? Better carefully pick and choose what to bring with you in case you die!
Make enchanting save the game.
Bad enchantments? You'll have to make due.
These are just some ideas I have (along with discussed ideas that seem to fit well), I'll likely add to this post when I inevitably think of something else. If you like this idea for a harder-than-hard difficulty, please +1 and post your support! Feel free to discuss your own ideas as well.
I'm sitting here liking all of this...then becoming angry because I have no idea what to name it. ._.
I know what you mean, man. "Hardcore" is already a gametype, "Expert" is really generic, "Ultra Hardcore" is the brainchild of MindCrack... "Ironman" would be nice, but if you think about it, iron is lower tier than diamond, and this is supposed to be the highest tier difficulty.
The only thing that concerns me are all the changes proposed to world generation. This would disrupt the integrity of the seed-based generation we currently have. I think the worlds should generate consistently regardless of which difficulty level they are generated in.
Other parts of the proposal could be made tougher to compensate - e.g.:
1) Revert food back to being completely unstackable (which would necessitate resurfacing to farm or hunt) rather than hiding in safely lit tunnels underground.
2) Make weapons and armor completely unenchantable, essentially leaving enchanting available only on farming and mining equipment.
Suggested name - Herculean Mode (sorry, best I could come up with).
The only thing that concerns me are all the changes proposed to world generation. This would disrupt the integrity of the seed-based generation we currently have. I think the worlds should generate consistently regardless of which difficulty level they are generated in.
Other parts of the proposal could be made tougher to compensate - e.g.:
1) Revert food back to being completely unstackable (which would necessitate resurfacing to farm or hunt) rather than hiding in safely lit tunnels underground.
2) Make weapons and armor completely unenchantable, essentially leaving enchanting available only on farming and mining equipment.
Suggested name - Herculean Mode (sorry, best I could come up with).
I think you can change the way ores generate in the world without changing the terrain generation itself. Several PC mods that add new ores come to mind. But that's the reason that this new difficulty would have to be chosen at generation, and then lock the save file in that difficulty. The inconsistencies between the difficulties would mean that the world could only work if locked like that.
I'm not so sure about removing enchantments on weapon and armor. The player should still have access to the core features and be able to use them to their fullest. I also disagree with non-stackable food, because it makes bread completely useless, and mushroom stew really the only viable choice. Making golden apples unstackable is probably a good idea, though.
I think you can change the way ores generate in the world without changing the terrain generation itself. Several PC mods that add new ores come to mind. But that's the reason that this new difficulty would have to be chosen at generation, and then lock the save file in that difficulty. The inconsistencies between the difficulties would mean that the world could only work if locked like that.
I'm not so sure about removing enchantments on weapon and armor. The player should still have access to the core features and be able to use them to their fullest. I also disagree with non-stackable food, because it makes bread completely useless, and mushroom stew really the only viable choice. Making golden apples unstackable is probably a good idea, though.
I'm not saying it's not doable, just that I think worlds should generate consistently regardless of difficulty level, rather than risking introducing more generations bugs (like flaky chests and spawners that didn't generate in some modes in the past). it's seems a rather inordinately complex way to up the difficulty, while negating the enchantment of armor and weapons would certainly make things tougher in a much simplere, direct way - which can be coded more reliably and with less demands on the system RAM.
As for unstacking the food making bread useless, etc.... that's a matter of opinion. I don't think stacking to 16 makes it much more difficult at all. I forgot to mention that I would make is also so that plants could not have any sort of roof over them in order to grow... again, forcing the player to spend time out in the open on the surface. Even caves can be made very safe by quickly blocking them off into sections and lighting them well. Personally, I have far more deadly encounters with hostiles walking through a forest at night than I do spelunking anymore.
I'm not saying it's not doable, just that I think worlds should generate consistently regardless of difficulty level, rather than risking introducing more generations bugs (like flaky chests and spawners that didn't generate in some modes in the past). it's seems a rather inordinately complex way to up the difficulty, while negating the enchantment of armor and weapons would certainly make things tougher in a much simplere, direct way - which can be coded more reliably and with less demands on the system RAM.
As for unstacking the food making bread useless, etc.... that's a matter of opinion. I don't think stacking to 16 makes it much more difficult at all. I forgot to mention that I would make is also so that plants could not have any sort of roof over them in order to grow... again, forcing the player to spend time out in the open on the surface. Even caves can be made very safe by quickly blocking them off into sections and lighting them well. Personally, I have far more deadly encounters with hostiles walking through a forest at night than I do spelunking anymore.
I don't think bugs should be a deterrent for the tweaked ore generation; for the most part, they can be fixed.
The more I think about it, the more I agree with you on non-stackable food. The point of this difficulty level is that a player wouldn't be doing any large scale quarrying/tunneling until they needed large amounts of stone for a large project, which is usuallly a safer project than caving, so a player still wouldn't need as much food then.
I don't think bugs should be a deterrent for the tweaked ore generation; for the most part, they can be fixed.
The more I think about it, the more I agree with you on non-stackable food. The point of this difficulty level is that a player wouldn't be doing any large scale quarrying/tunneling until they needed large amounts of stone for a large project, which is usuallly a safer project than caving, so a player still wouldn't need as much food then.
I still think that if ore generation is to be changed, it should be changed across all difficulty levels... maintaining the consistency of individual seeds across all difficulty levels. Ditto with the contents of blacksmiths' chests, dungeon chests, etc. ... which are generally now pretty consistent each time the same seed is generated, regardless of the difficulty level it is generated in.
I still think that if ore generation is to be changed, it should be changed across all difficulty levels... maintaining the consistency of individual seeds across all difficulty levels. Ditto with the contents of blacksmiths' chests, dungeon chests, etc. ... which are generally now pretty consistent each time the same seed is generated, regardless of the difficulty level it is generated in.
But changing the ore generation/chest contents/etc like this would increase the difficulty on all difficulty levels, not just this one. The point is that just this one single level has these elements to up the difficulty.
This mode scares me, but it sounds like a lot of fun!
For a name, why not name it "Legacy Mode".
You take your past experiences with the game and leave your "Legacy" behind as you start this new difficult journey?
Great Name! I should of thought of that, oh well. I have one new addition to this "Legacy Mode", maybe the lighting should be dimmed for dramatic effect or the gamma ray settings can only reach 50 instead of 100
This mode scares me, but it sounds like a lot of fun!
For a name, why not name it "Legacy Mode".
You take your past experiences with the game and leave your "Legacy" behind as you start this new difficult journey?
Legacy mode sounds pretty cool. It also works in the same sense of the definition of Legacy as in hardware, since healing is more like the old days, when you couldn't rely on your health to just regenerate over time.
This is one great idea, imagine yourself, like a undomesticated dog, killing others to survive, scavenging for food that is not plentiful nor healthy, struggling to stay alive at night, fighting for what you need, dying is not a resolution to this problem, fighting is. You must fight for yourself, your belongings, your right to stay alive, and most of all the great thing that has been passed on from generation to generation, or in this case gamer gamer, your only will that you'll still have something when you die, but you don't want to die, because you want your children's children's grandchildren to have you families great immortal, time less, and wonderful.......................................
A name has been suggested
Legendary is a Halo difficulty title. It's a really good one (along with heroic), but, unfortunately, already taken nonetheless.
By the way, some of these ideas are inspired by mindcrack and recent PC changes.
Credit goes to KioriBug for the name!
Like Hardcore mode, any world created in this difficulty should permanently bar access to host privileges, creative mode, and lesser difficulties on that map.
Unlike Hardcore, Legacy Mode shouldn't carry a permanent death penalty. Although, if Hardcore is coming to MCX360, it certainly should be compatible with this game type, for the truly extreme players. It's necessary to lock a Legacy Mode map in this mode for a few inconsistencies it would have with other difficulty levels.
Force players to accept a random seed for their world generation.
No seed hunting, no playing on a seed someone else found and mapped out all the resources for.
Make food stackable only up to 16, or perhaps not stack at all.
This severely limits the amount of food you can carry, forcing you to either sacrifice inventory space to accommodate, or to think strategically about your movements in caves and over mountains. It also makes tunneling that much more of a non-option, until you're established well enough to start quarrying.
The stackability of food should depend on the hunger/saturation it restores. Bread and raw meat could stack up to 16, whereas cooked meats might not stack at all.
Speaking of food, fully satiated hunger should not regenerate your health.
While you still need to keep your hunger up in order to sprint and not starve to death, health regeneration should be reserved solely for potions and golden apples. This puts a bit more importance on both gold and nether travel.
As a side note, I also wouldn't mind if the option to turn off hunger bar health regen was available for all difficulties.
Weapon and tool tiers should be harder to advance in.
Eliminate grinding! This makes enchanting more valuable, as well as making lower level enchants more viable. It also defeats being able to gain iron from Zombies, should the player find an easy-to-reach zombie spawner. (This is assuming rare drops are being added to MCX360)
Zombie Pigmen should spawn slightly more frequently, and have a rare chance for an individual to be hostile without provocation.
In normal difficulties, the Nether is a surprisingly safe place to be. The two most threatening mobs are Ghasts, which you can hear from a long distance and easily have time to take cover from or dodge their slow moving attacks; and Blazes, which only spawn if the player walks close enough to their spawner. If Pigmen have a chance to be hostile upon spawn, this adds an element of danger back to the nether, as well as something to strategize on--do you flee from the pigman or risk provoking the others by defending yourself?
Of course, if you increase their spawn rates, their gold drops should be tweaked up in rarity slightly to compensate.
The recipe for crafting melon seeds from melons should be removed. Fully grown melon stalks should only drop one seed when broken. Melon seeds should be a rarer find in Mineshaft chests. The glistering melon recipe should require a melon and a gold ingot, instead of just a nugget.
Eliminating huge melon farms makes brewing healing potions less trivial. Removing the melon seed crafting recipe forces a player to return to dangerous mineshafts should they wish to expand their farm.
The crafting recipe for golden apples should be reverted to gold ingots.
For the highly increased cost, The golden apple should give the player Regen II instead of Regen I, and last long enough to recover 3 hearts.
The potency of healing potions and regen potions should be reduced as they are on the PC version.
As long as glowstone is renewable from Blazes, why not make it more valuable?
The Protection enchantment needs to be far less useful than specific protection enchants.
Protection IV should not stack with, and in fact negate the effects of a similar Protection enchant on any other piece of armor. Lower levels of Protection should only stack with no more than one other piece of armor with the same protection enchant of equal or lesser level. This makes specific protection enchants more attractive, and a suit consisting of all the different types of protection more valuable.
Village Blacksmith chests should not contain overly valuable loot.
An uncommon Iron sword is a nice find, and even a rare chance at a few pieces of Obsidian is fine. But in this difficulty mode, diamonds, Iron armor, and iron ingots should not be available in blacksmith chests. It eliminates the purpose of needing to truly work for resources when you can find a seed that gets you good and set up right off the bat for no cost.
Mobs should have a chance to spawn with random potion effects.
Swiftness, Strength, and Fire Resist, with an even smaller chance of spawning with the extended or Level II variants of these effects.
Light should not pacify spiders.
Angry daytime spiders!
Spider spawns should have a small chance of being cave spiders.
The lower you go, the higher the chance.
If Hardcore mode isn't enabled alongside this difficulty level, every death should come with a penalty of losing a random 25% of your inventory.
Did you lose food when you died? Potions? Your pickaxe? Better carefully pick and choose what to bring with you in case you die!
Make enchanting save the game.
Bad enchantments? You'll have to make due.
These are just some ideas I have (along with discussed ideas that seem to fit well), I'll likely add to this post when I inevitably think of something else. If you like this idea for a harder-than-hard difficulty, please +1 and post your support! Feel free to discuss your own ideas as well.
Keep yourself up to date with the Minecraft Forum rules!
Stay fluffy~
I know what you mean, man. "Hardcore" is already a gametype, "Expert" is really generic, "Ultra Hardcore" is the brainchild of MindCrack... "Ironman" would be nice, but if you think about it, iron is lower tier than diamond, and this is supposed to be the highest tier difficulty.
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For the player that cannot be broken! It doesn't really have a good ring to it, though
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Other parts of the proposal could be made tougher to compensate - e.g.:
1) Revert food back to being completely unstackable (which would necessitate resurfacing to farm or hunt) rather than hiding in safely lit tunnels underground.
2) Make weapons and armor completely unenchantable, essentially leaving enchanting available only on farming and mining equipment.
Suggested name - Herculean Mode (sorry, best I could come up with).
I think you can change the way ores generate in the world without changing the terrain generation itself. Several PC mods that add new ores come to mind. But that's the reason that this new difficulty would have to be chosen at generation, and then lock the save file in that difficulty. The inconsistencies between the difficulties would mean that the world could only work if locked like that.
I'm not so sure about removing enchantments on weapon and armor. The player should still have access to the core features and be able to use them to their fullest. I also disagree with non-stackable food, because it makes bread completely useless, and mushroom stew really the only viable choice. Making golden apples unstackable is probably a good idea, though.
Keep yourself up to date with the Minecraft Forum rules!
I'm not saying it's not doable, just that I think worlds should generate consistently regardless of difficulty level, rather than risking introducing more generations bugs (like flaky chests and spawners that didn't generate in some modes in the past). it's seems a rather inordinately complex way to up the difficulty, while negating the enchantment of armor and weapons would certainly make things tougher in a much simplere, direct way - which can be coded more reliably and with less demands on the system RAM.
As for unstacking the food making bread useless, etc.... that's a matter of opinion. I don't think stacking to 16 makes it much more difficult at all. I forgot to mention that I would make is also so that plants could not have any sort of roof over them in order to grow... again, forcing the player to spend time out in the open on the surface. Even caves can be made very safe by quickly blocking them off into sections and lighting them well. Personally, I have far more deadly encounters with hostiles walking through a forest at night than I do spelunking anymore.
I don't think bugs should be a deterrent for the tweaked ore generation; for the most part, they can be fixed.
The more I think about it, the more I agree with you on non-stackable food. The point of this difficulty level is that a player wouldn't be doing any large scale quarrying/tunneling until they needed large amounts of stone for a large project, which is usuallly a safer project than caving, so a player still wouldn't need as much food then.
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How Aboot Now Eh?
I still think that if ore generation is to be changed, it should be changed across all difficulty levels... maintaining the consistency of individual seeds across all difficulty levels. Ditto with the contents of blacksmiths' chests, dungeon chests, etc. ... which are generally now pretty consistent each time the same seed is generated, regardless of the difficulty level it is generated in.
But changing the ore generation/chest contents/etc like this would increase the difficulty on all difficulty levels, not just this one. The point is that just this one single level has these elements to up the difficulty.
Keep yourself up to date with the Minecraft Forum rules!
For a name, why not name it "Legacy Mode".
You take your past experiences with the game and leave your "Legacy" behind as you start this new difficult journey?
Legacy mode sounds pretty cool. It also works in the same sense of the definition of Legacy as in hardware, since healing is more like the old days, when you couldn't rely on your health to just regenerate over time.
Keep yourself up to date with the Minecraft Forum rules!
°Legendary
°Impossible
°Nightmare
Sorry but thats all I can think of, it really is hard to come up with something good
A name has been suggested
Legendary is a Halo difficulty title. It's a really good one (along with heroic), but, unfortunately, already taken nonetheless.
Keep yourself up to date with the Minecraft Forum rules!