As I'm certain everyone is familiar with, traders offer goods in exchange for other resources. My idea would be for there to be miners occasionally inside mine shafts, or caves, offering food in exchange for resources. I.e. they'd give you some cooked beef in exchange for some of your iron. This would be useful if one ran out of food in caves. I feel like this is going to be shot down, like previous suggestions I've made, but I'm putting it out there anyways
EDIT: And more valuable resources (diamonds, emeralds) would offer better food items, like golden apples or just a higher quantity of the food offered
EDIT 2: Anyways, they look, bear with me, like villagers, but with miner's coveralls and spelunking hats, if you're familiar with them, probably coal and dirt on their faces, et cetera. As for trades, 5 coal for a steak, 3 iron for 5 steaks. Wait for it, a diamond for 20 golden apples. That last one isn't really serious. But I think you get the gist. They'd be rather uncommon, I'm not sure how to quantify it exactly, but you'd only find one per mine shaft, if that seems reasonable. Obviously they can't be around mobs, lest they die, so they'd be somewhere out of the way, perhaps an iron door or something barricading them
Not a bad idea. Could you flesh it out a bit: Would these traders be 'villagers' and able to breed with other villagers, provided you moved them to a village or imported another in. And if you moved them out, would they retain their special trades, which sound like a butcher/blacksmith hybrid. Is their trading as such, or maybe the opposite? Maybe they would trade ores for food, since they've been underground so long they've used up their food stores and taken Donner-party like steps to be the last man standing.
Might I suggest that they only be found in abandoned mineshafts, in a house of some sort and with a chest or two. Call it the center of the shaft complex. Maybe they could be different than villagers, and only able to breed with other traders. This would encourage players to find other abandoned mineshafts and move the traders together.
Of course, if this were to happen, they wouldn't really be 'abandoned' mineshafts anymore, would they?
IMO, a miner would be more likely to trade their ores/minerals for other goods (tools, food, etc.) From their perspective... they should have an abundance of food and mine-able items, it would be the stuff that they are using up in plying their trade that they would be in need of and want the most. This could be a good way to to make some more of the less renewable resources more renewable.
As to being a villager... I suppose that would work, but having an underground office/house wouldn't work for villager binding rules without direct access to sunlight within 5 blocks in front of the office/house front door.
They could spawn during world gen as being trapped in abandoned mineshafts, perhaps behind a wall of cobblestone, sand, and gravel.
If they are a Villager type, they could potentially spawn (be born) inside villages... which begs the question.. should the start of a mineshaft be considered for a possible new village structure?
If they are just a Trader in the Mineshaft to do business with the minors and keep them in supply instead... then more thought needs to be put into how did they get to that location, are they traveling between locations in order to barter goods with the surface, resupply and go back down into the mineshafts again, are they just sitting there and 'auto-magically' just able to make trades without having to return to the surface? Are they movable? Do they follow other villager rules?
Quote from GregNelsonjump
As to being a villager... I suppose that would work, but having an underground office/house wouldn't work for villager binding rules without direct access to sunlight within 5 blocks in front of the office/house front door.
They would spawn as their own mob, but hold the appearance, AI, and sound of villagers, if that makes sense. Like the difference in spiders vs. cave spiders. So they'd only spawn under the correct conditions, which would hold pertinence to the aforementioned mineshaft the villager would be residing in.
And they aren't traders, just miners. I suppose it doesn't make 100% sense, but I feel like a miner would be up for a trade if you ran into them, following the vanilla actions of regular villagers
They would spawn as their own mob, but hold the appearance, AI, and sound of villagers, if that makes sense. Like the difference in spiders vs. cave spiders. So they'd only spawn under the correct conditions, which would hold pertinence to the aforementioned mineshaft the villager would be residing in.
And they aren't traders, just miners. I suppose it doesn't make 100% sense, but I feel like a miner would be up for a trade if you ran into them, following the vanilla actions of regular villagers
Makes some sense the way it is setup.... but I still have a problem with them offering food and tools for ores and mine-able items.
It makes no logical sense that they would trade away the resources they need to continue mining in exchange for raw material that they should have an abundance of from their mining activity.
They should 'want' food and tools (pickaxe, wood, and torches) to be able to continue working, and be willing to trade away the raw material they have labored to collect: diamonds, emerald, lapis lazuli, cobblestone, dirt, sand, coal, flint, gravel, redstone dust, gold ore, iron ore, obsidian, etc.
They should 'want' food and tools (pickaxe, wood, and torches) to be able to continue working, and be willing to trade away the raw material they have labored to collect: diamonds, emerald, lapis lazuli, cobblestone, dirt, sand, coal, flint, gravel, redstone dust, gold ore, iron ore, obsidian, etc.
Yeah, it would make significantly more sense from their perspective, and would take away the difficulty in finding some resources in bulk (i.e. lapis lazuli), I was just thinking in terms of functionality, but I think I like your idea more
Yeah, it would make significantly more sense from their perspective, and would take away the difficulty in finding some resources in bulk (i.e. lapis lazuli), I was just thinking in terms of functionality, but I think I like your idea more
I usually go mining with a full stack of food, and I usually have plenty of food left over by the time I'm heading back to base to unload the fruits of my mining efforts, so I really don't have any problems with keeping my food levels plentifully stocked as I go. As UpUp pointed out, food is a hugely renewable resource, and as such, is not very highly valued from a trading perspective by players due to how easy it is to farm/hunt.
Food isn't usually an issue with me either, but I like this idea. However, the trades would need to be worthwhile. Because you're in a mineshaft, there wouldn't really be anything that you would need. You have wood, which is very important, dirt, and food, plenty of stone and minerals for tools. I also don't like the idea of buying minerals from them, especially diamonds, which are much too easy to come buy nowadays, and iron, which is so very abundant.
I like the idea. I'm thinking, though, that basing this off the villager mechanics brings up a fair number of other problems, like whether they can be bred, and if so how, or if not, what happens if you accidentally kill one? Plus there would be issues with the villager cap on consoles, too. But this would be a neat thing to differentiate the console and PC games.
I like the idea of it being somewhat more random: when you enter a cave area in a particular chunk, there is a 1% (or some other number) chance that a "mining vendor NPC" will be generated somewhere in an eligible area (essentially, cave) in that chunk. When you leave the chunk, he'd despawn automatically. This would avoid a lot of those issues, and simulate the randomness of the guy wandering around the mineshaft looking for people to buy his stuff.
Villagers grow crops, and they put up torches in their villages so they can clearly make torches. So, it makes sense that he would sell torches and various types of food. I can think of a few other items that might make sense, such as maps and buckets of milk. He would buy gold and iron ore, diamonds, coal, redstone, etc. He would have only a limited number of items to sell, and if/when you bought his last ones, he'd thank you and despawn.
The one big catch I see is that in a barter economy, if he was selling torches, bread, pork chops, and steaks, for instance, and buying iron, gold, diamonds, and coal (leaving out all the others), that's already 16 possible trades just for those few things. We'd need some sort of currency here, the way emeralds work for villagers, but not emeralds because it's far too easy to get essentially infinite emeralds when you breed a few villagers who trade for things you can farm easily. This adds in a new item to the game, and further complications.
So, I support the idea, and I think it could a really nice addition to the game, but I suspect the implementation would wind up being too complicated, from the game development side, for the amount it actually adds; the guys at 4J have a lot of higher priorities.
EDIT: And more valuable resources (diamonds, emeralds) would offer better food items, like golden apples or just a higher quantity of the food offered
EDIT 2: Anyways, they look, bear with me, like villagers, but with miner's coveralls and spelunking hats, if you're familiar with them, probably coal and dirt on their faces, et cetera. As for trades, 5 coal for a steak, 3 iron for 5 steaks. Wait for it, a diamond for 20 golden apples. That last one isn't really serious. But I think you get the gist. They'd be rather uncommon, I'm not sure how to quantify it exactly, but you'd only find one per mine shaft, if that seems reasonable. Obviously they can't be around mobs, lest they die, so they'd be somewhere out of the way, perhaps an iron door or something barricading them
Might I suggest that they only be found in abandoned mineshafts, in a house of some sort and with a chest or two. Call it the center of the shaft complex. Maybe they could be different than villagers, and only able to breed with other traders. This would encourage players to find other abandoned mineshafts and move the traders together.
Of course, if this were to happen, they wouldn't really be 'abandoned' mineshafts anymore, would they?
As to being a villager... I suppose that would work, but having an underground office/house wouldn't work for villager binding rules without direct access to sunlight within 5 blocks in front of the office/house front door.
They could spawn during world gen as being trapped in abandoned mineshafts, perhaps behind a wall of cobblestone, sand, and gravel.
If they are a Villager type, they could potentially spawn (be born) inside villages... which begs the question.. should the start of a mineshaft be considered for a possible new village structure?
If they are just a Trader in the Mineshaft to do business with the minors and keep them in supply instead... then more thought needs to be put into how did they get to that location, are they traveling between locations in order to barter goods with the surface, resupply and go back down into the mineshafts again, are they just sitting there and 'auto-magically' just able to make trades without having to return to the surface? Are they movable? Do they follow other villager rules?
They would spawn as their own mob, but hold the appearance, AI, and sound of villagers, if that makes sense. Like the difference in spiders vs. cave spiders. So they'd only spawn under the correct conditions, which would hold pertinence to the aforementioned mineshaft the villager would be residing in.
And they aren't traders, just miners. I suppose it doesn't make 100% sense, but I feel like a miner would be up for a trade if you ran into them, following the vanilla actions of regular villagers
Makes some sense the way it is setup.... but I still have a problem with them offering food and tools for ores and mine-able items.
It makes no logical sense that they would trade away the resources they need to continue mining in exchange for raw material that they should have an abundance of from their mining activity.
They should 'want' food and tools (pickaxe, wood, and torches) to be able to continue working, and be willing to trade away the raw material they have labored to collect: diamonds, emerald, lapis lazuli, cobblestone, dirt, sand, coal, flint, gravel, redstone dust, gold ore, iron ore, obsidian, etc.
Fair enough, it was just a thought I had mining the other day
Yeah, it would make significantly more sense from their perspective, and would take away the difficulty in finding some resources in bulk (i.e. lapis lazuli), I was just thinking in terms of functionality, but I think I like your idea more
I usually go mining with a full stack of food, and I usually have plenty of food left over by the time I'm heading back to base to unload the fruits of my mining efforts, so I really don't have any problems with keeping my food levels plentifully stocked as I go. As UpUp pointed out, food is a hugely renewable resource, and as such, is not very highly valued from a trading perspective by players due to how easy it is to farm/hunt.
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Retired StaffI like the idea of it being somewhat more random: when you enter a cave area in a particular chunk, there is a 1% (or some other number) chance that a "mining vendor NPC" will be generated somewhere in an eligible area (essentially, cave) in that chunk. When you leave the chunk, he'd despawn automatically. This would avoid a lot of those issues, and simulate the randomness of the guy wandering around the mineshaft looking for people to buy his stuff.
Villagers grow crops, and they put up torches in their villages so they can clearly make torches. So, it makes sense that he would sell torches and various types of food. I can think of a few other items that might make sense, such as maps and buckets of milk. He would buy gold and iron ore, diamonds, coal, redstone, etc. He would have only a limited number of items to sell, and if/when you bought his last ones, he'd thank you and despawn.
The one big catch I see is that in a barter economy, if he was selling torches, bread, pork chops, and steaks, for instance, and buying iron, gold, diamonds, and coal (leaving out all the others), that's already 16 possible trades just for those few things. We'd need some sort of currency here, the way emeralds work for villagers, but not emeralds because it's far too easy to get essentially infinite emeralds when you breed a few villagers who trade for things you can farm easily. This adds in a new item to the game, and further complications.
So, I support the idea, and I think it could a really nice addition to the game, but I suspect the implementation would wind up being too complicated, from the game development side, for the amount it actually adds; the guys at 4J have a lot of higher priorities.
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