This is exactly what makes mod packs so compelling (at least for the Java Edition). You can find mod packs that add additional advanced content with bigger challenges, with some mod packs being so brutal and unforgiving that would challenge even the most seasoned Minecraft players.
I don't have a problem with this being added in Minecraft vanilla either in hardcore difficulty or with a new infinite lives difficulty that is 1 tier above hard but below hardcore, Very Hard Mode or Survival Elite which should also be a separate game mode, not just a change in difficulty, and be as the name entails, it should provide all the challenges the most experienced and competitive players of the game desire. Whether it be more environmental hazards, a far more advanced enchanting system, a rebalancing of the ore generation, damage output or behaviour of AI and what not.
But as a sandbox it needs to also stay true to its roots and give other players who don't consider themselves professional level gamers but just want to play survival mode for the grinding of resources, occasional combat against hostile mobs at night time, in caves, In End or Nether and be fun to explore worlds with your friends. Easy and Normal difficulties most definitely should never be made frustrating or excessively unforgiving as it would defeat the purpose and those difficulty names would become somewhat of a misnomer. Suggestions like this being implemented need to be thought through.
I respectfully disagree. I believe the game could provide places, quests, goals, mobs and even things to build (with very difficult-to-attain materials) challenging enough for advanced players/end-game players. That wouldn't change the experience for anyone else.
As was said before, the problem is no proper progression - after you attain a diamond set and enchantments, the game gets terribly dull. No challenge, no effort, which means accomplishments become... Void, in a way. Providing that proper progression at later game stages wouldn't ruin the experience, in my view, to other players.
I respectfully disagree. I believe the game could provide places, quests, goals, mobs and even things to build (with very difficult-to-attain materials) challenging enough for advanced players/end-game players. That wouldn't change the experience for anyone else.
As was said before, the problem is no proper progression - after you attain a diamond set and enchantments, the game gets terribly dull. No challenge, no effort, which means accomplishments become... Void, in a way. Providing that proper progression at later game stages wouldn't ruin the experience, in my view, to other players.
There are alternatives, like adding in a 4th dimension that is more difficult to survive in than either End or Nether with rare items to obtain.
Just because some people got bored with the game does not give them a good reason to ruin other people's experience. Some people play survival for the purposes of collecting resources to build, exploration and occasional hostile mob fighting only. They shouldn't have to cheat to circumvent an update forced in on them that they didn't want, especially not one that was based upon fan suggestions.
Not everyone plays the game for the same reasons you do, it is nuanced.
I agree with you that not everyone plays for the same reasons. But I find an imbalance between the top tier equipment/conditions (enchanted fortune III diamond pickaxes, protection IV armor and sharpness V sword, mostly) and the challenges involved in using them (too easy to farm resources, too easy to defeat all mobs).
I'm not saying those easy and early stages should change or shouldn't exist. Those who wanted to keep at it, definitely should have that option. But that imbalance should be addressed, in my opinion, and there should be harder content capable of challenging those who were up to it.
I agree with you that not everyone plays for the same reasons. But I find an imbalance between the top tier equipment/conditions (enchanted fortune III diamond pickaxes, protection IV armor and sharpness V sword, mostly) and the challenges involved in using them (too easy to farm resources, too easy to defeat all mobs).
I'm not saying those easy and early stages should change or shouldn't exist. Those who wanted to keep at it, definitely should have that option. But that imbalance should be addressed, in my opinion, and there should be harder content capable of challenging those who were up to it.
Just so you know, there are status debuffs that can bypass the invulnerability of enchanted armour, poison from Witch potions being some of those things, quite literally they are capable at maximum of reducing player down to half a heart, the next hit would be fatal, regardless of the damage source.
Wither effect is also capable of this if applied enough times by Wither skeletons found in Nether fortresses.
I agree that Protection IV does offer too much protection though, the problem with Protection IV is it is too generous on the amount of times it stacks with other enchanted plates.
Surviving 2 Creeper explosions as well as fall damage inside of a ravine is also overpowered.
It means players are not really encouraged to be aware of their surroundings and avoid as many hazards as possible,
and while no one is going to make the perfect decision at all times, people should be using common sense and not actively
be putting themselves in a situation where knockback would cause them to fall down a hole.
I've also suggested capping the number of enchantments on tools, armour and weapons to a maximum of 4 if they want unlimited repairs via mending,
this means somebody would have to do without Soul Speed or Thorns, if they wanted to put say Frost Walker II on a pair of boots that had Unbreaking III, Feather Falling IV and Mending I already on them. If they want Protection IV then put it on a pair of leggings instead.
Villager trades especially with regard to diamond gear and enchantments are concerned need to be made more expensive also, in my opinion, considering the benefits Mending I provides it should not be as cheap as 10 emeralds as it is in bedrock edition, 32 to 48 emeralds each would be a fair asking price. People forget that although this would be an expensive trade, they are paying for their item to last forever so long as they don't lose it.
Considering that the anvil does not allow unlimited repairs and breaks after a set amount of uses,
the anvil is impractical for long term repair so is not advisable.
I agree with nearly everything you said, except that those status debuffs do little (or near nothing), in my opinion, to address such imbalance. A witch can be killed with 2 swings of a sharpness 5 diamond sword, meaning it will never even get to throw a bottle at you (you wont even have to use a bow or any special tactic for that, just run towards it and hit it right on). I end my participation here, thanks for the exchange of ideas. Let's hope future changes address some of these issues without frustrating other players. Take care.
Fortune III is overpowered? Considering how many people just build iron/gold/etc, even diamond (equipment) farms instead of doing half the name of the game we need MORE incentive to go mining - for example, in my own mod I added Smelting and Vein Miner enchantments* (though those wouldn't do anything to the majority of players, even if Mojang restored the original ore generation - did you know that they made iron less than half as common in 1.18, and that is per-chunk, with twice as much ground to generate in? Sure, I average over 200 iron mined per hour in 1.6.4 but I see people ridiculing me when I suggest that they go mining, because, you know, you need double chests of iron to do "anything" when the basic progression only requires half a stack).
*These do what their names suggest; Smelting makes iron and gold drop ingots, which can be affected by Fortune (otherwise they drop themselves, as they did before 1.17) and Vein Miner mines multiple blocks at once, effective on ores and wood, with up to 8 blocks mined within a 2 block radius; I've used both of these and the benefit actually isn't that great, Smelting does mean I don't need to smelt ores in furnaces but i only spend a few minutes out of a 3-4 hour session (un)loading furnaces, and otherwise found more benefit when mining in a biome with many ore variants (requiring multiple slots, especially for gold, which normally takes up a single slot); likewise, for Vein Miner only about 10% of the time I spend caving is spent on mining ores (based on mining speed and ores mined per hour) so that is the most improvement in mining rate that could be done if entire veins could be instantly mined and the actual increase is more like 5%.
As for diamonds? Just trade to get the gear you need, you only need a couple actual diamonds for an enchantment table (which itself isn't even needed if you trade for enchanted books), and otherwise I don't even bother using Fortune on diamonds because it is easy to find enough when branch-mining for the resources I need (players who disagree just aren't mining properly, the Wiki suggests that up to 1.7% of mined/exposed blocks can be diamond ore, which is a stack per hour if you mine one block per second), and otherwise Fortune is detrimental when caving for fun as it means my inventory/ender chest fills up twice as fast (I average over 3,000 ores mined per play session, closer to 3,500 recently, so you can imagine how many resources I'd collect with Fortune).
As far as Sharpness goes, here is a fun fact:
Beta 1.9 Prerelease 3 Sword damage has been reduced to make way for enchanting. A diamond sword's damage has been reduced from 10 to 7, iron has been reduced from 8 to 6 and stone has been reduced from 6 to 5. Wooden and golden swords still deal 4 damage.
How much damage does a Sharpness V diamond sword currently do? The same as an unenchanted sword back in Beta, and back then there were no armored mobs or "innate armor" for mobs like zombies (because of this you must deal more than 20 damage to kill one; you must use netherite if you want to be able to kill zombies in 2 non-critical hits, and otherwise the additional damage has little impact, maybe it did in 1.6-1.8, where a Sharpness V diamond sword did 14.25 damage and could kill cave spiders in one hit and witches in two - do you still play in such an old version? Because unless you are doing critical hits you can't kill a witch (26 HP) in two hits with any sword).
Also, as I mentioned before, instead of placing a hard limit of 4 enchantments on any item I would revert the anvil mechanics to that before 1.8 and make Mending (as I implemented in my own modded version) simply stop the prior work penalty from increasing (back then you could negate the penalty by renaming an item) - each enchantment has a level cost which depends on how good it is (presumably) and the total cost must not exceed 39 levels; even better the repair cost considered the amount of durability being restored, ranging from 1 to as many as 17 levels for diamond items (since 1.8 it is always 2 levels, or 1 level per unit) - nope, not gonna repair that maxed-out diamond item but maybe you can use iron instead at the expense of more frequent repairs and less damage/speed/protection (or only add the enchantments that you really need, making two separate items if necessary, e.g. my general-purpose sword has Sharpness V, Knockback II, Unbreaking III and already hits the cost limit unless I repair it with individual diamonds or kill a couple hundred chickens to lower the durability and cost of a sacrifice; it is clear that it would be impossible to repair it at all if you added Looting or Fire Aspect, unless you dropped an enchantment, or even two, as Looting is a lot more expensive, same for Fortune (Fortune/Looting cost 12 levels while Sharpness/Efficiency cost 5 and Unbreaking costs 6, all for the max level; lower levels cost less, e.g. Fortune costs 4/8/12 for levels I-III).
I also added another way to reduce the penalty without needing Mending, but at the cost of extra maintenance and needing to find one of several biomes with ruby ore, with each ruby reducing the penalty by 6 levels when combined with an item in the anvil; for example, I've been using a pickaxe with Efficiency V, Vein Miner II, Unbreaking III, which costs 43/45/47 levels to repair (this cost is due to my own modded "amethyst" gear having 3x the durability of diamond, the cost limit was increased to 49 for these items only), then I use a ruby for 21 levels to reset the repair cost back to 43, repeat; the same is true if Smelting is used instead of Vein Miner, while Mending keeps the cost at a constant 43 levels per repair (all three enchantments add 8 levels to the base cost; I made Mending twice as expensive as in vanilla 1.9+ to be in line with its value and most other single level enchantments like Silk Touch and Infinity).
Fortune III is overpowered? Considering how many people just build iron/gold/etc, even diamond (equipment) farms instead of doing half the name of the game we need MORE incentive to go mining - for example, in my own mod I added Smelting and Vein Miner enchantments* (though those wouldn't do anything to the majority of players, even if Mojang restored the original ore generation - did you know that they made iron less than half as common in 1.18, and that is per-chunk, with twice as much ground to generate in? Sure, I average over 200 iron mined per hour in 1.6.4 but I see people ridiculing me when I suggest that they go mining, because, you know, you need double chests of iron to do "anything" when the basic progression only requires half a stack).
*These do what their names suggest; Smelting makes iron and gold drop ingots, which can be affected by Fortune (otherwise they drop themselves, as they did before 1.17) and Vein Miner mines multiple blocks at once, effective on ores and wood, with up to 8 blocks mined within a 2 block radius; I've used both of these and the benefit actually isn't that great, Smelting does mean I don't need to smelt ores in furnaces but i only spend a few minutes out of a 3-4 hour session (un)loading furnaces, and otherwise found more benefit when mining in a biome with many ore variants (requiring multiple slots, especially for gold, which normally takes up a single slot); likewise, for Vein Miner only about 10% of the time I spend caving is spent on mining ores (based on mining speed and ores mined per hour) so that is the most improvement in mining rate that could be done if entire veins could be instantly mined and the actual increase is more like 5%.
As for diamonds? Just trade to get the gear you need, you only need a couple actual diamonds for an enchantment table (which itself isn't even needed if you trade for enchanted books), and otherwise I don't even bother using Fortune on diamonds because it is easy to find enough when branch-mining for the resources I need (players who disagree just aren't mining properly, the Wiki suggests that up to 1.7% of mined/exposed blocks can be diamond ore, which is a stack per hour if you mine one block per second), and otherwise Fortune is detrimental when caving for fun as it means my inventory/ender chest fills up twice as fast (I average over 3,000 ores mined per play session, closer to 3,500 recently, so you can imagine how many resources I'd collect with Fortune).
As far as Sharpness goes, here is a fun fact:
How much damage does a Sharpness V diamond sword currently do? The same as an unenchanted sword back in Beta, and back then there were no armored mobs or "innate armor" for mobs like zombies (because of this you must deal more than 20 damage to kill one; you must use netherite if you want to be able to kill zombies in 2 non-critical hits, and otherwise the additional damage has little impact, maybe it did in 1.6-1.8, where a Sharpness V diamond sword did 14.25 damage and could kill cave spiders in one hit and witches in two - do you still play in such an old version? Because unless you are doing critical hits you can't kill a witch (26 HP) in two hits with any sword).
Also, as I mentioned before, instead of placing a hard limit of 4 enchantments on any item I would revert the anvil mechanics to that before 1.8 and make Mending (as I implemented in my own modded version) simply stop the prior work penalty from increasing (back then you could negate the penalty by renaming an item) - each enchantment has a level cost which depends on how good it is (presumably) and the total cost must not exceed 39 levels; even better the repair cost considered the amount of durability being restored, ranging from 1 to as many as 17 levels for diamond items (since 1.8 it is always 2 levels, or 1 level per unit) - nope, not gonna repair that maxed-out diamond item but maybe you can use iron instead at the expense of more frequent repairs and less damage/speed/protection (or only add the enchantments that you really need, making two separate items if necessary, e.g. my general-purpose sword has Sharpness V, Knockback II, Unbreaking III and already hits the cost limit unless I repair it with individual diamonds or kill a couple hundred chickens to lower the durability and cost of a sacrifice; it is clear that it would be impossible to repair it at all if you added Looting or Fire Aspect, unless you dropped an enchantment, or even two, as Looting is a lot more expensive, same for Fortune (Fortune/Looting cost 12 levels while Sharpness/Efficiency cost 5 and Unbreaking costs 6, all for the max level; lower levels cost less, e.g. Fortune costs 4/8/12 for levels I-III).
I also added another way to reduce the penalty without needing Mending, but at the cost of extra maintenance and needing to find one of several biomes with ruby ore, with each ruby reducing the penalty by 6 levels when combined with an item in the anvil; for example, I've been using a pickaxe with Efficiency V, Vein Miner II, Unbreaking III, which costs 43/45/47 levels to repair (this cost is due to my own modded "amethyst" gear having 3x the durability of diamond, the cost limit was increased to 49 for these items only), then I use a ruby for 21 levels to reset the repair cost back to 43, repeat; the same is true if Smelting is used instead of Vein Miner, while Mending keeps the cost at a constant 43 levels per repair (all three enchantments add 8 levels to the base cost; I made Mending twice as expensive as in vanilla 1.9+ to be in line with its value and most other single level enchantments like Silk Touch and Infinity).
At least you and I agree that the current anvil mechanics suck.
I do agree that indefinite repairs should be allowed on the anvil at a maximum XP level cost of no more than 39 regardless of how many times the anvil had been used, as opposed to the autonomous repairs per mob kill, smelted item or fishing mechanics relating to mending itself as it is now.
What we need here is mending to be reworked so it is a "manual repair" if you will, yes it would be considered a nerf, but in this case it makes sense.
That still leaves the issue with anvils breaking after about 28 uses however, each time the anvil breaks you're spending nearly half a stack of iron ingots to replace the darn things, which without Iron Golem farming, does get tedious.
While survival gameplay is about earning your resources, there are some things in the game that shouldn't have to be done more than once.
I'm fine with durability draining on tools and armour, but not items like the anvil.
The grindstone and enchantment table last forever, why shouldn't the anvil? if you're going to remove iron golem farming then
at least provide a viable alternative to maintain gear and still be able to collect a reasonable surplus of iron for building.
The grindstone and enchantment table last forever, why shouldn't the anvil? if you're going to remove iron golem farming then at least provide a viable alternative to maintain gear and still be able to collect a reasonable surplus of iron for building.
This is probably as a balance to being able to highly enchant and repair items; if anvils did not exist then you couldn't get Sharpness V/Efficiency V or multiple enchantments (as easily), and as one who uses anvils multiple times per play session I have no issue with their durability, except how it is implemented so you get as little as 3 uses out of an anvil, which I mitigated by allowing you to combine two very damaged anvils to make a new anvil, and adding a 4th damage state (minimum of 4 uses instead of 3, and a much lower chance of breaking in that many uses, even as I increased the chance of being damaged so they average 25 uses, the same as vanilla) - iron is insanely easy to obtain, half a stack is literately as little as 5-10 minutes of caving - if Mending were changed to require anvils and resources people would be far more upset by the fact that netherite items would require mining more ancient debris, diamonds, and gold (only gold is farmable/obtainable by killing mobs, and otherwise all of these are far rarer than iron).
This helps to put things into perspective on how easy it is for me to collect the iron I need for anvils (from a vanilla world):
Iron blocks are on the 4th row:
Anvils are listed on the second to last row:
Threads like this weren't exaggerating when they claimed that they could find a stack of iron in 10 minutes; a single average sized cave system (in 1.6.4) can yield over 1,000 iron, enough for more than 30 anvils, and the caves within just the initial world spawn area have more exposed iron than I've used to make anvils, and indeed, for any use (the rails I've used for my rail system all came from mineshafts, thus I never had to use iron to craft them):
How does it make the game too easy? Well, I can just walk around or dig for 10 minutes, find a cave system, and walk out 10 minutes later with a stack of iron and 3 stacks of coal.
Before you try to use my playstyle as a counter-argument (well, sure, but you literally spend all your time mining), the 3,596 iron I've used to make 116 anvils is only 0.467% of the 769,811 iron I've collected (including 4 ingots per anvil, I consider mineral blocks to be permanent so the 4 ingots per anvil were never crafted into blocks). In other words, somebody who has to repair their gear as often I I do (as one who very heavily uses tools, weapons, and armor due to my playstyle) only has to spend 6.7 minutes out of every 24 hours of playtime (which is about a week for me) on collecting iron for anvils - I spend significantly more time on farming the resources I need to trade for diamond items to repair my gear (or to collect the diamonds I'd otherwise need, even if I used Fortune - I only average a bit over 4 diamond ore per hour, about 9 diamonds with Fortune).
This is probably as a balance to being able to highly enchant and repair items; if anvils did not exist then you couldn't get Sharpness V/Efficiency V or multiple enchantments (as easily), and as one who uses anvils multiple times per play session I have no issue with their durability, except how it is implemented so you get as little as 3 uses out of an anvil, which I mitigated by allowing you to combine two very damaged anvils to make a new anvil, and adding a 4th damage state (minimum of 4 uses instead of 3, and a much lower chance of breaking in that many uses, even as I increased the chance of being damaged so they average 25 uses, the same as vanilla) - iron is insanely easy to obtain, half a stack is literately as little as 5-10 minutes of caving - if Mending were changed to require anvils and resources people would be far more upset by the fact that netherite items would require mining more ancient debris, diamonds, and gold (only gold is farmable/obtainable by killing mobs, and otherwise all of these are far rarer than iron).
This helps to put things into perspective on how easy it is for me to collect the iron I need for anvils (from a vanilla world):
Iron blocks are on the 4th row:
Anvils are listed on the second to last row:
Threads like this weren't exaggerating when they claimed that they could find a stack of iron in 10 minutes; a single average sized cave system (in 1.6.4) can yield over 1,000 iron, enough for more than 30 anvils, and the caves within just the initial world spawn area have more exposed iron than I've used to make anvils, and indeed, for any use (the rails I've used for my rail system all came from mineshafts, thus I never had to use iron to craft them):
576 chunks is equivalent to 384x384 blocks, or +/- 192 blocks from the center:
Before you try to use my playstyle as a counter-argument (well, sure, but you literally spend all your time mining), the 3,596 iron I've used to make 116 anvils is only 0.467% of the 769,811 iron I've collected (including 4 ingots per anvil, I consider mineral blocks to be permanent so the 4 ingots per anvil were never crafted into blocks). In other words, somebody who has to repair their gear as often I I do (as one who very heavily uses tools, weapons, and armor due to my playstyle) only has to spend 6.7 minutes out of every 24 hours of playtime (which is about a week for me) on collecting iron for anvils - I spend significantly more time on farming the resources I need to trade for diamond items to repair my gear (or to collect the diamonds I'd otherwise need, even if I used Fortune - I only average a bit over 4 diamond ore per hour, about 9 diamonds with Fortune).
Not my point
if you removed Iron Golem farming, then there are far less alternatives for renewable Iron,
which will make it a problem if we were to then nerf mending to the point where it becomes inconvenient for some players to bother with.
Yes you can obtain renewable Iron drops from Zombies, occasional Iron ingots as well as armour and shovels or swords to smelt for nuggets, but compared to other sources of Iron this is extremely inefficient as almost no one would be obtaining a good surplus of Iron with these. And no, I don't consider a single chest worth of Iron blocks a good surplus, not with how quickly you end up spending this on builds that involve a large amount of hoppers, cauldrons and minecarts with rails.
1 chest of Iron blocks would only yield you a little under 2 full chests of hoppers,
each hopper consumes 5 iron ingots, iron blocks are worth 9 iron ingots each,
if you're sharing these with other players on the server, like I do from time to time you will eventually
find yourself needing to mine more iron, and that is assuming you get far enough in the game to do this.
It's not only anvils you replace, some players like to use their Iron in the game for more than just crafting new tools and armour all the time which is already super tedious given the obnoxious durability of unenchanted tools of 250 points, and up until now there hasn't been a workable compromise other than just using mending or relying on trades to replace our gear that gets broken, that is why the durability of the anvil is a problem and is considered a problem not just by me, but some other players including one's I have talked to over the years.
You keep bringing up how "easy" it is to obtain Iron ore, which is debatable at best considering the changes in 1.18 update, but the fundamental issue with ore materials not being renewable in the game, forcing players to relocate their mines, or go further out in the Overworld than they would like.
Now in 1.19 players have to contend with Ancient cities and the Warden which can spawn if the shriekers are set off 4 times and if the warning levels are not reduced between that time, potentially causing them to lose all the Iron they obtained if they fail to escape from the Deep Dark biome in time.
The deep dark biome is avoidable, players do have the option to turn away from them if they want to avoid the hassle of fighting the Warden,
Mojang did do this right by giving players the choice whether or not to take the risk, without having to resort to cheats or difficulty switching.
I have suggested allowing players to receive ingots instead of nuggets for smelting tools and armour, but the amount retrieved being proportional to the durability left on each piece, meaning any tool or amour piece with minimal durability left would only yield 1 iron ingot, this would make Zombie farming more practical and it would provide players a good alternative if Iron Golem farms were to be removed from the game.
To add difficulty to this you could give Zombies enchanted gear, but only have a small chance of dropping said gear on death,
they already have this now, the only thing that is truly negative about them is the abysmal efficiency of recycling their loot,
But I would say it would be a good idea to give hostile mobs more of a chance to spawn with enchanted gear as the game progresses.
Instead of adding more grind to the game causing fake difficulty, it is better to increase the amount of hazards we have in the game.
Introducing more biomes, neutral and hostile mobs is the route the game should be taking.
I have also suggested introducing another difficulty level to the game that is underneath hardcore,
but above hard, so players have the option for more punishing gameplay if they want to challenge themselves.
You keep bringing up how "easy" it is to obtain Iron ore, which is debatable at best considering the changes in 1.18 update, but the fundamental issue with ore materials not being renewable in the game, forcing players to relocate their mines, or go further out in the Overworld than they would like.
I have suggested allowing players to receive ingots instead of nuggets for smelting tools and armour, but the amount retrieved being proportional to the durability left on each piece, meaning any tool or amour piece with minimal durability left would only yield 1 iron ingot, this would make Zombie farming more practical and it would provide players a good alternative if Iron Golem farms were to be removed from the game.
To add difficulty to this you could give Zombies enchanted gear, but only have a small chance of dropping said gear on death,
they already have this now, the only thing that is truly negative about them is the abysmal efficiency of recycling their loot,
But I would say it would be a good idea to give hostile mobs more of a chance to spawn with enchanted gear as the game progresses.
Instead of adding more grind to the game causing fake difficulty, it is better to increase the amount of hazards we have in the game.
Introducing more biomes, neutral and hostile mobs is the route the game should be taking.
I don't consider the changes in 1.18 because that is a major flaw that needs to be corrected (making iron as abundant as it used to be, along with all other ores; when I made mods that increased the ground depth I simply scaled up the ranges and amounts of each ore to give the same relative proportions above cave lava level as before; sure, there is now a lot more ore per chunk but all that matters (with more experience in caving than anybody else) is the percentage of exposed blocks that are ore). At least Mojang did make Fortune effective on iron but there is still less per unit volume.
As far as making smelting tools and armor return more, I made it so they return (3 * units) nuggets, based on durability; for example, an intact chestplate returns 24 nuggets, a pickaxe returns 9 nuggets, and so on, down to one nugget at 0 durability left. Yes, you still lose material but that should be expected; you can also only smelt unenchanted items but mob drops are generally damaged anyway and combining items gives a 5% bonus as long as the sum of the durabilities is no more than 95%. I also added many other items - even anvils that can be smelted down (all those buckets and iron horse armor you find in dungeons? Smelt them for 1 iron ingot; even mineshaft rails can be smelted for an iron nugget):
Not only that, I added a "hammer" item which is basically an uncrafting tool; many iron-based blocks will break down into ingots when mined with one, with an amount that is generally less than smelting by furnaces but Fortune increases the yield, and blocks like quartz-based blocks break down with 100% yield in any case (i.e. you can now use quartz blocks as storage blocks; all other "mineral" blocks also always return 100% of their resources).
Block Drop(s) (1-2-3) = with Fortune
Polished Granite 1 Granite
Polished Diorite 1 Diorite
Polished Andesite 1 Andesite
Cobblestone 1 Gravel
Compressed Cobblestone 4 Cobblestone
Compressed Moss Stone 4 Moss Stone
Wood Planks 2 Sticks (4 for Stick Planks)
Gravel 1 Gravel Sand
Gravel Sand 1 Sand
Wood 4 Wood Planks
Iron Ore 1 Raw Iron (higher chance of 2)
Gold Ore 1 Raw Gold (higher chance of 2)
Dispenser 2-4 Cobblestone (up to 5-6-7)
Dropper 2-4 Cobblestone (up to 5-6-7)
Sandstone 1-2 Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Quartz Sandstone 1-2 Quartz Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Red Sandstone 1-2 Red Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Sandstone Stairs 1-2 Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Quartz Sandstone Stairs 1-2 Quartz Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Amethyst Block 9 Amethyst
Diamond Block 9 Diamonds
Emerald Block 9 Emeralds
Gold Block 9 Gold Ingots
Iron Block 9 Iron Ingots
Lapis Block 9 Lapis
Redstone Block 9 Redstone Dust
Smooth Stone Block 2 Stone Slabs
Smooth Quartz Block 2 Quartz Slabs
Brick Block 2-4 Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Bookshelf 0-12 Books + 2-3 Oak Wood Planks (up to 4-5-6)
Wooden Stairs 1 Wooden Planks
Chests 2-4 Oak Wood Planks (up to 6-8-8)
Crafting Table 2 Oak Wood Planks (up to 3,4,4)
Furnace 2-4 Cobblestone (up to 6-8-8)
Sign 1 Oak Wood Planks (up to 2 with a higher chance of 2)
Wooden Door 1 Oak Wood Planks (up to 2 with a higher chance of 2)
Iron Door 1 Iron Ingot (up to 2 with a higher chance of 2)
Ladder 2 Sticks
Cobblestone Stairs 1 Cobblestone
Compressed Cobble Stairs 1 Compressed Cobblestone
Stone Brick Stairs 1 Cobblestone
Stone Pressure Plate 1-2 Gravel (up to 2)
Sandstone Pressure Plate 1-2 Sand (up to 2)
Wood Pressure Plate 1-2 Sticks (up to 2; 2-4 and 4 for Stick variant)
Gold Pressure Plate 1 Gold Ingot
Iron Pressure Plate 1 Iron Ingot
Jukebox 1 Diamond + 2-4 Oak Wood Planks (up to 6-8-8)
Fence 1-2 Sticks (up to 2 with a higher chance of 2)
Fence Gate 2-4 Sticks (up to 5-6-7)
Trapdoor 2 Sticks (up to 3-4-4)
(Mossy)Stone Bricks 1 (Mossy)Cobblestone
Mushroom Blocks 1 Mushroom Pores Block
Brick Stairs 2-4 Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Nether Brick 2-4 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Red Nether Brick 1-2 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 2)
Nether Brick Stairs 2-4 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Red Nether Brick Stairs 1-2 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 2)
Nether Brick Fence 2-4 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Red Nether Brick Fence 1-2 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 2)
Enchantment Table 1-2 Obsidian (up to 3-4-4)
Cauldron 3-4 Iron Ingots (up to 5-6-7)
Redstone Lamp 2-4 each of Redstone and Glowstone Dust (higher chance of 4)
Cobblestone Wall 1 Cobblestone
Mossy Cobblestone Wall 1 Mossy Cobblestone
Stone Wall 1 Cobblestone
Granite Wall 1 Granite
Diorite Wall 1 Diorite
Andesite Wall 1 Andesite
Sandstone Wall 1-2 Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Brick Wall 2-4 Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Stone Brick Wall 1 Stone Brick
Mossy Stone Brick Wall 1 Mossy Stone Brick
End Stone Wall 1 End Stone
Nether Quartz Wall 2-4 Nether Quartz (higher chance of 4)
Netherrack Wall 1 Netherrack
Hardened Clay Wall 1 Hardened Clay
Quartz Sandstone Wall 1-2 Quartz Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Red Sandstone Wall 1-2 Red Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Anvil 18-24 Iron Ingots (up to 25-26-27)
Slightly Damaged Anvil 14-18 Iron Ingots (up to 19-20-21)
Moderately Damaged Anvil 9-12 Iron Ingots (up to 13-14-15)
Very Damaged Anvil 4-6 Iron Ingots (up to 7-8-9)
Hopper 2-3 Iron Ingots (up to 4-5-5)
Nether Quartz Block 4 Nether Quartz
Nether Quartz Stairs 2-4 Nether Quartz (higher chance of 4)
Coal Block 9 Coal
Bone Block 9 Bonemeal
Ruby Block 9 Rubies
Living Coral Block 4 Coral
Dead Coral Block 1 Gravel Sand
Light Block 2-4 Glowstone (higher chance of 4)
Diamond End Stone 1 Diamond and 1 End Stone
Obsidian 8 Obsidian Shards
Block of Raw Iron 4 Raw Iron
Block of Raw Gold 4 Raw Gold
Barrel 2-4 Oak Wood Planks (up to 5-6-7)
This also makes various blocks renewable and/or easier to obtain; for example, cobblestone breaks down into gravel, which in turn breaks down into gravel sand (gravel with the Beta texture, which looks like the sand texture), and that in turn breaks down into sand.
As for mob equipment, I greatly increased the chance of mobs spawning with equipment; on Normal they have a 20% chance of armor, which is higher than on Hard in vanilla (15%), and only based on the total time spent in the world; i.e. it is always 20% after 100 hours, as opposed to vanilla's "regional difficulty"-based system (you must be in the same area for 50 hours to reach the maximum, and it still varies with moon phase. Versions prior 1.6 did not have regional difficulty and were also effectively always at the maximum - I can only assume that Mojang wanted to make the game easier when they added it). Zombies have a 6.67% chance of a weapon, compared to a mere 1% in vanilla (5% on Hard), and they can be any tool except for hoes (which do deal more damage in TMCW) and can be diamond or amethyst as well as iron (this would be like mobs spawning with netherite in vanilla; as a balancing measure diamond and amethyst have much less durability when dropped).
This is pretty telling on how common mobs in diamond+ armor are, with iron and chain being far more common (diamond+ is still relatively rare considering that I've killed well over 100,000 mobs at the rate of about 500 per play session, which is significantly higher than in vanilla 1.6.4; I imagine it would be much less in 1.18 because the mob cap is spread out over a much larger area; what I did was decrease the spawning range from 128 to 96 blocks and "safe zone" around the player from 24 to 16 blocks, and split the mob cap into separate "cave" and "surface" caps; the cave cap is actually less than vanilla, 60 instead of 70 (actually 79 in vanilla 1.6.4 due to a miscalculation, so this is almost 25% less mobs), but is unaffected by mobs spawning on the surface at night):
36 zombies in diamond armor
11 zombies in amethyst armor
20 skeletons in diamond armor
6 skeletons in amethyst armor
2 pink sheep
34 amethyst horse armor
10 enchanted golden apples
10 Mending books
18 Smelting books
14 Vein Miner books
6 Swift Sneak books*
5 Long Fall books*
*Not added until later on so these are unrepresentative
(I imagine that most players will find a pink sheep before they see a mob in diamond armor, I've even seem people who thought they didn't even exist anymore)
In any case, I did not remove iron drops from iron golems, only made them require a player kill to drop - something Mojang themselves wanted to add in 1.8 but the outrage from the community forced them to undo the change (but really, those massive automated iron farms that yield thousands of iron per hour cannot be justified by any means):
14w03a Iron golems now drop only iron ingots when killed by the player, either through combat, potions, or player-activated mechanisms such as manually lit TNT. If killed without player intervention, they now drop only poppies.
14w04a The previous change has been reverted; iron golems always drop iron ingots again.
Actually, I went one step further - they only drop iron if directly killed by a player (only melee attacks work), along with patching a bug where you can apply the Looting effect to bows by simply holding or switching to a Looting weapon after firing an arrow (or throwing a splash potion or igniting TNT) - which has an open bug report so Mojang considers it to be a bug:
(the fix was quite easy so IDK why Mojang struggles so much to fix bugs like this - I even added an exception for Ghast fireballs that were deflected by a player so you can use Looting without having to get up close to them):
// Looting only works if the player directly dealt damage (not via bow/arrow or potions), with
// the exception of ghast fireballs, and only if a Looting sword was used to deflect it
boolean directlyHit = (sourceEntity instanceof EntityPlayer);
int looting = 0;
if (directlyHit)
{
if (par1DamageSource instanceof EntityDamageSourceIndirect)
{
if (par1DamageSource.getSourceOfDamage() instanceof EntityGhastFireball)
{
looting = ((EntityGhastFireball)par1DamageSource.getSourceOfDamage()).lootingModifier;
}
else
{
directlyHit = false;
}
}
else
{
looting = CustomEnchantmentHelper.getLootingModifier((EntityLivingBase)sourceEntity);
}
}
// Iron golems only drop iron if directly killed by a player. Witches also only drop redstone
// and glowstone when killed by a player.
if (directlyHit || !(this instanceof EntityIronGolem))
{
// Overrides drop methods to avoid having to modify/replace classes not modified for any other reason.
if (this instanceof EntityWitch)
{
this.dropWitchItems(this.recentlyHit > HIT_THRESHOLD, looting);
}
else
{
this.dropFewItems(this.recentlyHit > HIT_THRESHOLD, looting);
}
}
I don't consider the changes in 1.18 because that is a major flaw that needs to be corrected (making iron as abundant as it used to be, along with all other ores; when I made mods that increased the ground depth I simply scaled up the ranges and amounts of each ore to give the same relative proportions above cave lava level as before; sure, there is now a lot more ore per chunk but all that matters (with more experience in caving than anybody else) is the percentage of exposed blocks that are ore). At least Mojang did make Fortune effective on iron but there is still less per unit volume.
As far as making smelting tools and armor return more, I made it so they return (3 * units) nuggets, based on durability; for example, an intact chestplate returns 24 nuggets, a pickaxe returns 9 nuggets, and so on, down to one nugget at 0 durability left. Yes, you still lose material but that should be expected; you can also only smelt unenchanted items but mob drops are generally damaged anyway and combining items gives a 5% bonus as long as the sum of the durabilities is no more than 95%. I also added many other items - even anvils that can be smelted down (all those buckets and iron horse armor you find in dungeons? Smelt them for 1 iron ingot; even mineshaft rails can be smelted for an iron nugget):
Not only that, I added a "hammer" item which is basically an uncrafting tool; many iron-based blocks will break down into ingots when mined with one, with an amount that is generally less than smelting by furnaces but Fortune increases the yield, and blocks like quartz-based blocks break down with 100% yield in any case (i.e. you can now use quartz blocks as storage blocks; all other "mineral" blocks also always return 100% of their resources).
Block Drop(s) (1-2-3) = with Fortune
Polished Granite 1 Granite
Polished Diorite 1 Diorite
Polished Andesite 1 Andesite
Cobblestone 1 Gravel
Compressed Cobblestone 4 Cobblestone
Compressed Moss Stone 4 Moss Stone
Wood Planks 2 Sticks (4 for Stick Planks)
Gravel 1 Gravel Sand
Gravel Sand 1 Sand
Wood 4 Wood Planks
Iron Ore 1 Raw Iron (higher chance of 2)
Gold Ore 1 Raw Gold (higher chance of 2)
Dispenser 2-4 Cobblestone (up to 5-6-7)
Dropper 2-4 Cobblestone (up to 5-6-7)
Sandstone 1-2 Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Quartz Sandstone 1-2 Quartz Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Red Sandstone 1-2 Red Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Sandstone Stairs 1-2 Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Quartz Sandstone Stairs 1-2 Quartz Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Amethyst Block 9 Amethyst
Diamond Block 9 Diamonds
Emerald Block 9 Emeralds
Gold Block 9 Gold Ingots
Iron Block 9 Iron Ingots
Lapis Block 9 Lapis
Redstone Block 9 Redstone Dust
Smooth Stone Block 2 Stone Slabs
Smooth Quartz Block 2 Quartz Slabs
Brick Block 2-4 Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Bookshelf 0-12 Books + 2-3 Oak Wood Planks (up to 4-5-6)
Wooden Stairs 1 Wooden Planks
Chests 2-4 Oak Wood Planks (up to 6-8-8)
Crafting Table 2 Oak Wood Planks (up to 3,4,4)
Furnace 2-4 Cobblestone (up to 6-8-8)
Sign 1 Oak Wood Planks (up to 2 with a higher chance of 2)
Wooden Door 1 Oak Wood Planks (up to 2 with a higher chance of 2)
Iron Door 1 Iron Ingot (up to 2 with a higher chance of 2)
Ladder 2 Sticks
Cobblestone Stairs 1 Cobblestone
Compressed Cobble Stairs 1 Compressed Cobblestone
Stone Brick Stairs 1 Cobblestone
Stone Pressure Plate 1-2 Gravel (up to 2)
Sandstone Pressure Plate 1-2 Sand (up to 2)
Wood Pressure Plate 1-2 Sticks (up to 2; 2-4 and 4 for Stick variant)
Gold Pressure Plate 1 Gold Ingot
Iron Pressure Plate 1 Iron Ingot
Jukebox 1 Diamond + 2-4 Oak Wood Planks (up to 6-8-8)
Fence 1-2 Sticks (up to 2 with a higher chance of 2)
Fence Gate 2-4 Sticks (up to 5-6-7)
Trapdoor 2 Sticks (up to 3-4-4)
(Mossy)Stone Bricks 1 (Mossy)Cobblestone
Mushroom Blocks 1 Mushroom Pores Block
Brick Stairs 2-4 Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Nether Brick 2-4 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Red Nether Brick 1-2 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 2)
Nether Brick Stairs 2-4 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Red Nether Brick Stairs 1-2 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 2)
Nether Brick Fence 2-4 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Red Nether Brick Fence 1-2 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 2)
Enchantment Table 1-2 Obsidian (up to 3-4-4)
Cauldron 3-4 Iron Ingots (up to 5-6-7)
Redstone Lamp 2-4 each of Redstone and Glowstone Dust (higher chance of 4)
Cobblestone Wall 1 Cobblestone
Mossy Cobblestone Wall 1 Mossy Cobblestone
Stone Wall 1 Cobblestone
Granite Wall 1 Granite
Diorite Wall 1 Diorite
Andesite Wall 1 Andesite
Sandstone Wall 1-2 Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Brick Wall 2-4 Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Stone Brick Wall 1 Stone Brick
Mossy Stone Brick Wall 1 Mossy Stone Brick
End Stone Wall 1 End Stone
Nether Quartz Wall 2-4 Nether Quartz (higher chance of 4)
Netherrack Wall 1 Netherrack
Hardened Clay Wall 1 Hardened Clay
Quartz Sandstone Wall 1-2 Quartz Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Red Sandstone Wall 1-2 Red Sand (up to 3-4-4)
Anvil 18-24 Iron Ingots (up to 25-26-27)
Slightly Damaged Anvil 14-18 Iron Ingots (up to 19-20-21)
Moderately Damaged Anvil 9-12 Iron Ingots (up to 13-14-15)
Very Damaged Anvil 4-6 Iron Ingots (up to 7-8-9)
Hopper 2-3 Iron Ingots (up to 4-5-5)
Nether Quartz Block 4 Nether Quartz
Nether Quartz Stairs 2-4 Nether Quartz (higher chance of 4)
Coal Block 9 Coal
Bone Block 9 Bonemeal
Ruby Block 9 Rubies
Living Coral Block 4 Coral
Dead Coral Block 1 Gravel Sand
Light Block 2-4 Glowstone (higher chance of 4)
Diamond End Stone 1 Diamond and 1 End Stone
Obsidian 8 Obsidian Shards
Block of Raw Iron 4 Raw Iron
Block of Raw Gold 4 Raw Gold
Barrel 2-4 Oak Wood Planks (up to 5-6-7)
This also makes various blocks renewable and/or easier to obtain; for example, cobblestone breaks down into gravel, which in turn breaks down into gravel sand (gravel with the Beta texture, which looks like the sand texture), and that in turn breaks down into sand.
As for mob equipment, I greatly increased the chance of mobs spawning with equipment; on Normal they have a 20% chance of armor, which is higher than on Hard in vanilla (15%), and only based on the total time spent in the world; i.e. it is always 20% after 100 hours, as opposed to vanilla's "regional difficulty"-based system (you must be in the same area for 50 hours to reach the maximum, and it still varies with moon phase. Versions prior 1.6 did not have regional difficulty and were also effectively always at the maximum - I can only assume that Mojang wanted to make the game easier when they added it). Zombies have a 6.67% chance of a weapon, compared to a mere 1% in vanilla (5% on Hard), and they can be any tool except for hoes (which do deal more damage in TMCW) and can be diamond or amethyst as well as iron (this would be like mobs spawning with netherite in vanilla; as a balancing measure diamond and amethyst have much less durability when dropped).
This is pretty telling on how common mobs in diamond+ armor are, with iron and chain being far more common (diamond+ is still relatively rare considering that I've killed well over 100,000 mobs at the rate of about 500 per play session, which is significantly higher than in vanilla 1.6.4; I imagine it would be much less in 1.18 because the mob cap is spread out over a much larger area; what I did was decrease the spawning range from 128 to 96 blocks and "safe zone" around the player from 24 to 16 blocks, and split the mob cap into separate "cave" and "surface" caps; the cave cap is actually less than vanilla, 60 instead of 70 (actually 79 in vanilla 1.6.4 due to a miscalculation, so this is almost 25% less mobs), but is unaffected by mobs spawning on the surface at night):
(I imagine that most players will find a pink sheep before they see a mob in diamond armor, I've even seem people who thought they didn't even exist anymore)
In any case, I did not remove iron drops from iron golems, only made them require a player kill to drop - something Mojang themselves wanted to add in 1.8 but the outrage from the community forced them to undo the change (but really, those massive automated iron farms that yield thousands of iron per hour cannot be justified by any means):
Actually, I went one step further - they only drop iron if directly killed by a player (only melee attacks work), along with patching a bug where you can apply the Looting effect to bows by simply holding or switching to a Looting weapon after firing an arrow (or throwing a splash potion or igniting TNT) - which has an open bug report so Mojang considers it to be a bug:
(the fix was quite easy so IDK why Mojang struggles so much to fix bugs like this - I even added an exception for Ghast fireballs that were deflected by a player so you can use Looting without having to get up close to them):
// Looting only works if the player directly dealt damage (not via bow/arrow or potions), with
// the exception of ghast fireballs, and only if a Looting sword was used to deflect it
boolean directlyHit = (sourceEntity instanceof EntityPlayer);
int looting = 0;
if (directlyHit)
{
if (par1DamageSource instanceof EntityDamageSourceIndirect)
{
if (par1DamageSource.getSourceOfDamage() instanceof EntityGhastFireball)
{
looting = ((EntityGhastFireball)par1DamageSource.getSourceOfDamage()).lootingModifier;
}
else
{
directlyHit = false;
}
}
else
{
looting = CustomEnchantmentHelper.getLootingModifier((EntityLivingBase)sourceEntity);
}
}
// Iron golems only drop iron if directly killed by a player. Witches also only drop redstone
// and glowstone when killed by a player.
if (directlyHit || !(this instanceof EntityIronGolem))
{
// Overrides drop methods to avoid having to modify/replace classes not modified for any other reason.
if (this instanceof EntityWitch)
{
this.dropWitchItems(this.recentlyHit > HIT_THRESHOLD, looting);
}
else
{
this.dropFewItems(this.recentlyHit > HIT_THRESHOLD, looting);
}
}
Having a hammer in the game to make stone into gravel would be excellent, unfortunately it does not yet exist in the vanilla game, but in your own version you added it which makes gravel and sand easier to obtain in vast quantities, if the player cares about it and needs this much of it for a project.
The hammer also having a secondary use being an uncrafting type tool, as opposed to the uncrafting table other's suggested before, is very good in my opinion and it would add more variety to the tool items in the game and give players yet another use for Iron.
I did not really have any complaints about gravel existing in the Piglin bartering system although it does require gold which is expensive, gravel is abundant in the Overworld so for most cases it should not matter, and who seriously builds a mansion or even a small house out of gravel? it can be done in Minecraft, but it wouldn't look nice or be the most efficient material for said project because to hold it up you also need items like fences, I would consider building a house out of gravel as a joke, but for my main house builds? nah.
Gravel of course can be Fortuned into flint for making arrows and Flint and Steels of course, but there are better alternatives to produce arrows en mass.
However there are some projects that would require an enormous amount of gravel so your idea of doing this is good, it would make the factory I built on my world more useful. Other people would like being able to turn stone into gravel also, it means they don't have to hollow out large sections of mines any longer and they could instead use their cobblestone generator, I use Pistons for my design as I find this to be more efficient in terms of stone per second. Although depending on the project you work on, stone obtained in mines is okay I guess, it is a super abundant material even without cobblestone generators.
Gravel is also used for making Coarse Dirt but what's truly exciting about making gravel easier to obtain in accordance with your idea,
is it makes concrete much more accessible in the game, meaning players can design better looking buildings more often.
The hammer has good potential for this and recycling unwanted surplus tools for crafting other materials in the game.
minecraft has so much potential imagine you can build a kingdom in the game and have control of NPCs in your kingdom and go to war with mobs and can lead your NPC soldiers to battle. it would be a perfect game for that. they can add so many cool and useful things that can turn minecraft into a epic RPG but they dont want. instead they want to keep doing useless updates like bees and warden.
minecraft has so much potential imagine you can build a kingdom in the game and have control of NPCs in your kingdom and go to war with mobs and can lead your NPC soldiers to battle. it would be a perfect game for that. they can add so many cool and useful things that can turn minecraft into a epic RPG but they dont want. instead they want to keep doing useless updates like bees and warden.
The AI needed for that is insane. Most of MC's AI is simplistic compared to the average RPG and battle based game.
I don't have a problem with this being added in Minecraft vanilla either in hardcore difficulty or with a new infinite lives difficulty that is 1 tier above hard but below hardcore, Very Hard Mode or Survival Elite which should also be a separate game mode, not just a change in difficulty, and be as the name entails, it should provide all the challenges the most experienced and competitive players of the game desire. Whether it be more environmental hazards, a far more advanced enchanting system, a rebalancing of the ore generation, damage output or behaviour of AI and what not.
But as a sandbox it needs to also stay true to its roots and give other players who don't consider themselves professional level gamers but just want to play survival mode for the grinding of resources, occasional combat against hostile mobs at night time, in caves, In End or Nether and be fun to explore worlds with your friends. Easy and Normal difficulties most definitely should never be made frustrating or excessively unforgiving as it would defeat the purpose and those difficulty names would become somewhat of a misnomer. Suggestions like this being implemented need to be thought through.
I respectfully disagree. I believe the game could provide places, quests, goals, mobs and even things to build (with very difficult-to-attain materials) challenging enough for advanced players/end-game players. That wouldn't change the experience for anyone else.
As was said before, the problem is no proper progression - after you attain a diamond set and enchantments, the game gets terribly dull. No challenge, no effort, which means accomplishments become... Void, in a way. Providing that proper progression at later game stages wouldn't ruin the experience, in my view, to other players.
There are alternatives, like adding in a 4th dimension that is more difficult to survive in than either End or Nether with rare items to obtain.
Just because some people got bored with the game does not give them a good reason to ruin other people's experience. Some people play survival for the purposes of collecting resources to build, exploration and occasional hostile mob fighting only. They shouldn't have to cheat to circumvent an update forced in on them that they didn't want, especially not one that was based upon fan suggestions.
Not everyone plays the game for the same reasons you do, it is nuanced.
I agree with you that not everyone plays for the same reasons. But I find an imbalance between the top tier equipment/conditions (enchanted fortune III diamond pickaxes, protection IV armor and sharpness V sword, mostly) and the challenges involved in using them (too easy to farm resources, too easy to defeat all mobs).
I'm not saying those easy and early stages should change or shouldn't exist. Those who wanted to keep at it, definitely should have that option. But that imbalance should be addressed, in my opinion, and there should be harder content capable of challenging those who were up to it.
Just so you know, there are status debuffs that can bypass the invulnerability of enchanted armour, poison from Witch potions being some of those things, quite literally they are capable at maximum of reducing player down to half a heart, the next hit would be fatal, regardless of the damage source.
Wither effect is also capable of this if applied enough times by Wither skeletons found in Nether fortresses.
I agree that Protection IV does offer too much protection though, the problem with Protection IV is it is too generous on the amount of times it stacks with other enchanted plates.
Surviving 2 Creeper explosions as well as fall damage inside of a ravine is also overpowered.
It means players are not really encouraged to be aware of their surroundings and avoid as many hazards as possible,
and while no one is going to make the perfect decision at all times, people should be using common sense and not actively
be putting themselves in a situation where knockback would cause them to fall down a hole.
I've also suggested capping the number of enchantments on tools, armour and weapons to a maximum of 4 if they want unlimited repairs via mending,
this means somebody would have to do without Soul Speed or Thorns, if they wanted to put say Frost Walker II on a pair of boots that had Unbreaking III, Feather Falling IV and Mending I already on them. If they want Protection IV then put it on a pair of leggings instead.
Villager trades especially with regard to diamond gear and enchantments are concerned need to be made more expensive also, in my opinion, considering the benefits Mending I provides it should not be as cheap as 10 emeralds as it is in bedrock edition, 32 to 48 emeralds each would be a fair asking price. People forget that although this would be an expensive trade, they are paying for their item to last forever so long as they don't lose it.
Considering that the anvil does not allow unlimited repairs and breaks after a set amount of uses,
the anvil is impractical for long term repair so is not advisable.
I agree with nearly everything you said, except that those status debuffs do little (or near nothing), in my opinion, to address such imbalance. A witch can be killed with 2 swings of a sharpness 5 diamond sword, meaning it will never even get to throw a bottle at you (you wont even have to use a bow or any special tactic for that, just run towards it and hit it right on). I end my participation here, thanks for the exchange of ideas. Let's hope future changes address some of these issues without frustrating other players. Take care.
Fortune III is overpowered? Considering how many people just build iron/gold/etc, even diamond (equipment) farms instead of doing half the name of the game we need MORE incentive to go mining - for example, in my own mod I added Smelting and Vein Miner enchantments* (though those wouldn't do anything to the majority of players, even if Mojang restored the original ore generation - did you know that they made iron less than half as common in 1.18, and that is per-chunk, with twice as much ground to generate in? Sure, I average over 200 iron mined per hour in 1.6.4 but I see people ridiculing me when I suggest that they go mining, because, you know, you need double chests of iron to do "anything" when the basic progression only requires half a stack).
*These do what their names suggest; Smelting makes iron and gold drop ingots, which can be affected by Fortune (otherwise they drop themselves, as they did before 1.17) and Vein Miner mines multiple blocks at once, effective on ores and wood, with up to 8 blocks mined within a 2 block radius; I've used both of these and the benefit actually isn't that great, Smelting does mean I don't need to smelt ores in furnaces but i only spend a few minutes out of a 3-4 hour session (un)loading furnaces, and otherwise found more benefit when mining in a biome with many ore variants (requiring multiple slots, especially for gold, which normally takes up a single slot); likewise, for Vein Miner only about 10% of the time I spend caving is spent on mining ores (based on mining speed and ores mined per hour) so that is the most improvement in mining rate that could be done if entire veins could be instantly mined and the actual increase is more like 5%.
As for diamonds? Just trade to get the gear you need, you only need a couple actual diamonds for an enchantment table (which itself isn't even needed if you trade for enchanted books), and otherwise I don't even bother using Fortune on diamonds because it is easy to find enough when branch-mining for the resources I need (players who disagree just aren't mining properly, the Wiki suggests that up to 1.7% of mined/exposed blocks can be diamond ore, which is a stack per hour if you mine one block per second), and otherwise Fortune is detrimental when caving for fun as it means my inventory/ender chest fills up twice as fast (I average over 3,000 ores mined per play session, closer to 3,500 recently, so you can imagine how many resources I'd collect with Fortune).
As far as Sharpness goes, here is a fun fact:
How much damage does a Sharpness V diamond sword currently do? The same as an unenchanted sword back in Beta, and back then there were no armored mobs or "innate armor" for mobs like zombies (because of this you must deal more than 20 damage to kill one; you must use netherite if you want to be able to kill zombies in 2 non-critical hits, and otherwise the additional damage has little impact, maybe it did in 1.6-1.8, where a Sharpness V diamond sword did 14.25 damage and could kill cave spiders in one hit and witches in two - do you still play in such an old version? Because unless you are doing critical hits you can't kill a witch (26 HP) in two hits with any sword).
Also, as I mentioned before, instead of placing a hard limit of 4 enchantments on any item I would revert the anvil mechanics to that before 1.8 and make Mending (as I implemented in my own modded version) simply stop the prior work penalty from increasing (back then you could negate the penalty by renaming an item) - each enchantment has a level cost which depends on how good it is (presumably) and the total cost must not exceed 39 levels; even better the repair cost considered the amount of durability being restored, ranging from 1 to as many as 17 levels for diamond items (since 1.8 it is always 2 levels, or 1 level per unit) - nope, not gonna repair that maxed-out diamond item but maybe you can use iron instead at the expense of more frequent repairs and less damage/speed/protection (or only add the enchantments that you really need, making two separate items if necessary, e.g. my general-purpose sword has Sharpness V, Knockback II, Unbreaking III and already hits the cost limit unless I repair it with individual diamonds or kill a couple hundred chickens to lower the durability and cost of a sacrifice; it is clear that it would be impossible to repair it at all if you added Looting or Fire Aspect, unless you dropped an enchantment, or even two, as Looting is a lot more expensive, same for Fortune (Fortune/Looting cost 12 levels while Sharpness/Efficiency cost 5 and Unbreaking costs 6, all for the max level; lower levels cost less, e.g. Fortune costs 4/8/12 for levels I-III).
I also added another way to reduce the penalty without needing Mending, but at the cost of extra maintenance and needing to find one of several biomes with ruby ore, with each ruby reducing the penalty by 6 levels when combined with an item in the anvil; for example, I've been using a pickaxe with Efficiency V, Vein Miner II, Unbreaking III, which costs 43/45/47 levels to repair (this cost is due to my own modded "amethyst" gear having 3x the durability of diamond, the cost limit was increased to 49 for these items only), then I use a ruby for 21 levels to reset the repair cost back to 43, repeat; the same is true if Smelting is used instead of Vein Miner, while Mending keeps the cost at a constant 43 levels per repair (all three enchantments add 8 levels to the base cost; I made Mending twice as expensive as in vanilla 1.9+ to be in line with its value and most other single level enchantments like Silk Touch and Infinity).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Start a SMP. I can honestly say I havent played single player in a year
At least you and I agree that the current anvil mechanics suck.
I do agree that indefinite repairs should be allowed on the anvil at a maximum XP level cost of no more than 39 regardless of how many times the anvil had been used, as opposed to the autonomous repairs per mob kill, smelted item or fishing mechanics relating to mending itself as it is now.
What we need here is mending to be reworked so it is a "manual repair" if you will, yes it would be considered a nerf, but in this case it makes sense.
That still leaves the issue with anvils breaking after about 28 uses however, each time the anvil breaks you're spending nearly half a stack of iron ingots to replace the darn things, which without Iron Golem farming, does get tedious.
While survival gameplay is about earning your resources, there are some things in the game that shouldn't have to be done more than once.
I'm fine with durability draining on tools and armour, but not items like the anvil.
The grindstone and enchantment table last forever, why shouldn't the anvil? if you're going to remove iron golem farming then
at least provide a viable alternative to maintain gear and still be able to collect a reasonable surplus of iron for building.
This is probably as a balance to being able to highly enchant and repair items; if anvils did not exist then you couldn't get Sharpness V/Efficiency V or multiple enchantments (as easily), and as one who uses anvils multiple times per play session I have no issue with their durability, except how it is implemented so you get as little as 3 uses out of an anvil, which I mitigated by allowing you to combine two very damaged anvils to make a new anvil, and adding a 4th damage state (minimum of 4 uses instead of 3, and a much lower chance of breaking in that many uses, even as I increased the chance of being damaged so they average 25 uses, the same as vanilla) - iron is insanely easy to obtain, half a stack is literately as little as 5-10 minutes of caving - if Mending were changed to require anvils and resources people would be far more upset by the fact that netherite items would require mining more ancient debris, diamonds, and gold (only gold is farmable/obtainable by killing mobs, and otherwise all of these are far rarer than iron).
This helps to put things into perspective on how easy it is for me to collect the iron I need for anvils (from a vanilla world):
Anvils are listed on the second to last row:
Threads like this weren't exaggerating when they claimed that they could find a stack of iron in 10 minutes; a single average sized cave system (in 1.6.4) can yield over 1,000 iron, enough for more than 30 anvils, and the caves within just the initial world spawn area have more exposed iron than I've used to make anvils, and indeed, for any use (the rails I've used for my rail system all came from mineshafts, thus I never had to use iron to craft them):
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/discussion/2529746-how-many-ores-do-caves-expose
Before you try to use my playstyle as a counter-argument (well, sure, but you literally spend all your time mining), the 3,596 iron I've used to make 116 anvils is only 0.467% of the 769,811 iron I've collected (including 4 ingots per anvil, I consider mineral blocks to be permanent so the 4 ingots per anvil were never crafted into blocks). In other words, somebody who has to repair their gear as often I I do (as one who very heavily uses tools, weapons, and armor due to my playstyle) only has to spend 6.7 minutes out of every 24 hours of playtime (which is about a week for me) on collecting iron for anvils - I spend significantly more time on farming the resources I need to trade for diamond items to repair my gear (or to collect the diamonds I'd otherwise need, even if I used Fortune - I only average a bit over 4 diamond ore per hour, about 9 diamonds with Fortune).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Not my point
if you removed Iron Golem farming, then there are far less alternatives for renewable Iron,
which will make it a problem if we were to then nerf mending to the point where it becomes inconvenient for some players to bother with.
Yes you can obtain renewable Iron drops from Zombies, occasional Iron ingots as well as armour and shovels or swords to smelt for nuggets, but compared to other sources of Iron this is extremely inefficient as almost no one would be obtaining a good surplus of Iron with these. And no, I don't consider a single chest worth of Iron blocks a good surplus, not with how quickly you end up spending this on builds that involve a large amount of hoppers, cauldrons and minecarts with rails.
1 chest of Iron blocks would only yield you a little under 2 full chests of hoppers,
each hopper consumes 5 iron ingots, iron blocks are worth 9 iron ingots each,
if you're sharing these with other players on the server, like I do from time to time you will eventually
find yourself needing to mine more iron, and that is assuming you get far enough in the game to do this.
It's not only anvils you replace, some players like to use their Iron in the game for more than just crafting new tools and armour all the time which is already super tedious given the obnoxious durability of unenchanted tools of 250 points, and up until now there hasn't been a workable compromise other than just using mending or relying on trades to replace our gear that gets broken, that is why the durability of the anvil is a problem and is considered a problem not just by me, but some other players including one's I have talked to over the years.
You keep bringing up how "easy" it is to obtain Iron ore, which is debatable at best considering the changes in 1.18 update, but the fundamental issue with ore materials not being renewable in the game, forcing players to relocate their mines, or go further out in the Overworld than they would like.
Now in 1.19 players have to contend with Ancient cities and the Warden which can spawn if the shriekers are set off 4 times and if the warning levels are not reduced between that time, potentially causing them to lose all the Iron they obtained if they fail to escape from the Deep Dark biome in time.
The deep dark biome is avoidable, players do have the option to turn away from them if they want to avoid the hassle of fighting the Warden,
Mojang did do this right by giving players the choice whether or not to take the risk, without having to resort to cheats or difficulty switching.
I have suggested allowing players to receive ingots instead of nuggets for smelting tools and armour, but the amount retrieved being proportional to the durability left on each piece, meaning any tool or amour piece with minimal durability left would only yield 1 iron ingot, this would make Zombie farming more practical and it would provide players a good alternative if Iron Golem farms were to be removed from the game.
To add difficulty to this you could give Zombies enchanted gear, but only have a small chance of dropping said gear on death,
they already have this now, the only thing that is truly negative about them is the abysmal efficiency of recycling their loot,
But I would say it would be a good idea to give hostile mobs more of a chance to spawn with enchanted gear as the game progresses.
Instead of adding more grind to the game causing fake difficulty, it is better to increase the amount of hazards we have in the game.
Introducing more biomes, neutral and hostile mobs is the route the game should be taking.
I have also suggested introducing another difficulty level to the game that is underneath hardcore,
but above hard, so players have the option for more punishing gameplay if they want to challenge themselves.
I don't consider the changes in 1.18 because that is a major flaw that needs to be corrected (making iron as abundant as it used to be, along with all other ores; when I made mods that increased the ground depth I simply scaled up the ranges and amounts of each ore to give the same relative proportions above cave lava level as before; sure, there is now a lot more ore per chunk but all that matters (with more experience in caving than anybody else) is the percentage of exposed blocks that are ore). At least Mojang did make Fortune effective on iron but there is still less per unit volume.
As far as making smelting tools and armor return more, I made it so they return (3 * units) nuggets, based on durability; for example, an intact chestplate returns 24 nuggets, a pickaxe returns 9 nuggets, and so on, down to one nugget at 0 durability left. Yes, you still lose material but that should be expected; you can also only smelt unenchanted items but mob drops are generally damaged anyway and combining items gives a 5% bonus as long as the sum of the durabilities is no more than 95%. I also added many other items - even anvils that can be smelted down (all those buckets and iron horse armor you find in dungeons? Smelt them for 1 iron ingot; even mineshaft rails can be smelted for an iron nugget):
Not only that, I added a "hammer" item which is basically an uncrafting tool; many iron-based blocks will break down into ingots when mined with one, with an amount that is generally less than smelting by furnaces but Fortune increases the yield, and blocks like quartz-based blocks break down with 100% yield in any case (i.e. you can now use quartz blocks as storage blocks; all other "mineral" blocks also always return 100% of their resources).
This also makes various blocks renewable and/or easier to obtain; for example, cobblestone breaks down into gravel, which in turn breaks down into gravel sand (gravel with the Beta texture, which looks like the sand texture), and that in turn breaks down into sand.
As for mob equipment, I greatly increased the chance of mobs spawning with equipment; on Normal they have a 20% chance of armor, which is higher than on Hard in vanilla (15%), and only based on the total time spent in the world; i.e. it is always 20% after 100 hours, as opposed to vanilla's "regional difficulty"-based system (you must be in the same area for 50 hours to reach the maximum, and it still varies with moon phase. Versions prior 1.6 did not have regional difficulty and were also effectively always at the maximum - I can only assume that Mojang wanted to make the game easier when they added it). Zombies have a 6.67% chance of a weapon, compared to a mere 1% in vanilla (5% on Hard), and they can be any tool except for hoes (which do deal more damage in TMCW) and can be diamond or amethyst as well as iron (this would be like mobs spawning with netherite in vanilla; as a balancing measure diamond and amethyst have much less durability when dropped).
This is pretty telling on how common mobs in diamond+ armor are, with iron and chain being far more common (diamond+ is still relatively rare considering that I've killed well over 100,000 mobs at the rate of about 500 per play session, which is significantly higher than in vanilla 1.6.4; I imagine it would be much less in 1.18 because the mob cap is spread out over a much larger area; what I did was decrease the spawning range from 128 to 96 blocks and "safe zone" around the player from 24 to 16 blocks, and split the mob cap into separate "cave" and "surface" caps; the cave cap is actually less than vanilla, 60 instead of 70 (actually 79 in vanilla 1.6.4 due to a miscalculation, so this is almost 25% less mobs), but is unaffected by mobs spawning on the surface at night):
(I imagine that most players will find a pink sheep before they see a mob in diamond armor, I've even seem people who thought they didn't even exist anymore)
In any case, I did not remove iron drops from iron golems, only made them require a player kill to drop - something Mojang themselves wanted to add in 1.8 but the outrage from the community forced them to undo the change (but really, those massive automated iron farms that yield thousands of iron per hour cannot be justified by any means):
Actually, I went one step further - they only drop iron if directly killed by a player (only melee attacks work), along with patching a bug where you can apply the Looting effect to bows by simply holding or switching to a Looting weapon after firing an arrow (or throwing a splash potion or igniting TNT) - which has an open bug report so Mojang considers it to be a bug:
MC-3304 Enchantments get applied to other weapons on kill
(the fix was quite easy so IDK why Mojang struggles so much to fix bugs like this - I even added an exception for Ghast fireballs that were deflected by a player so you can use Looting without having to get up close to them):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Having a hammer in the game to make stone into gravel would be excellent, unfortunately it does not yet exist in the vanilla game, but in your own version you added it which makes gravel and sand easier to obtain in vast quantities, if the player cares about it and needs this much of it for a project.
The hammer also having a secondary use being an uncrafting type tool, as opposed to the uncrafting table other's suggested before, is very good in my opinion and it would add more variety to the tool items in the game and give players yet another use for Iron.
I did not really have any complaints about gravel existing in the Piglin bartering system although it does require gold which is expensive, gravel is abundant in the Overworld so for most cases it should not matter, and who seriously builds a mansion or even a small house out of gravel? it can be done in Minecraft, but it wouldn't look nice or be the most efficient material for said project because to hold it up you also need items like fences, I would consider building a house out of gravel as a joke, but for my main house builds? nah.
Gravel of course can be Fortuned into flint for making arrows and Flint and Steels of course, but there are better alternatives to produce arrows en mass.
However there are some projects that would require an enormous amount of gravel so your idea of doing this is good, it would make the factory I built on my world more useful. Other people would like being able to turn stone into gravel also, it means they don't have to hollow out large sections of mines any longer and they could instead use their cobblestone generator, I use Pistons for my design as I find this to be more efficient in terms of stone per second. Although depending on the project you work on, stone obtained in mines is okay I guess, it is a super abundant material even without cobblestone generators.
Gravel is also used for making Coarse Dirt but what's truly exciting about making gravel easier to obtain in accordance with your idea,
is it makes concrete much more accessible in the game, meaning players can design better looking buildings more often.
The hammer has good potential for this and recycling unwanted surplus tools for crafting other materials in the game.
minecraft has so much potential imagine you can build a kingdom in the game and have control of NPCs in your kingdom and go to war with mobs and can lead your NPC soldiers to battle. it would be a perfect game for that. they can add so many cool and useful things that can turn minecraft into a epic RPG but they dont want. instead they want to keep doing useless updates like bees and warden.
The AI needed for that is insane. Most of MC's AI is simplistic compared to the average RPG and battle based game.