I love Mending as much as the next guy, but do you think it's too overpowered? Let me explain.
In case you didn't know, Mending is an enchantment added in 1.9 that allows tools to repair themselves by 2 durability for every 1 experience.
When the devs implemented Mending, they had general mining in mind. While mining, you get experience from ores and fighting mobs. Most mobs drop roughly 5-6 experience, and mining ores gets you around 2-7 experience, depending on the ore. That means, if you're spelunking (arguably the most time-effecient way to mine) you'll get about 600 experience per hour. (Please note that this is extremely general, there's a huge number of factors that affect how much ore you get, and no two mining trips are the same.) You can repair a diamond chestplate from 0 durability with that much experience, if the chestplate has Mending.
However, as we all know, there are more ways to get experience.
Your average zombie spawner XP grinder will generate 720 mobs, or 3,600 XP per hour. That's six times (roughly) the amount you'd get from mining! To put it into perspective, you cold repair with Mending two diamond pickaxes and still have XP to spare! A zombie grinder requires only wood and iron, which by the time you get Mending is almost nothing!
But that is not all, no, that is not all!
Once you get to the Nether (which, to have mending books, you probably have) you can make a Blaze farm. Blaze spawners spawn, again, 720 mobs an hour. However, Blazes drop double the experience of zombies. So in one hour, you can get 7,200 experience. That's 4.6 diamond pickaxes that you can repair with Mending, all with 0 durability!
Of course, an hour is too long for most played to fix a couple pickaxes. So allow me to direct your attention to . The mobs spawned from these farms spawn so fast, even with the new sweep attack in 1.9, you can't keep up with the spawning. This means that you can kill 30 mobs per stroke (again, roughly), and with .625 seconds to recover, you can get 150 experience in one stroke.
So, what are your thoughts? Do you think Mending is OP?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Curing the Andromeda Strain one abduction at a time!
Most likely the developers did not have this process in mind when they were creating this enchantment. I do have to agree that the process you showed does indeed make the enchantment op. Maybe in the future if this is an actual problem they may change the ratio to something higher.
I don't think XP farms should be used as an excuse that Mending is overpowered or should be nerfed; they have always created balance issues due to the ease of getting XP and mob drops, and the same applies to any sort of automated farm.
Also, Mending only restores 2 durability per XP if you are holding just one item; if you are holding six the game splits the XP among each item at random and if that item doesn't need to be repaired it just adds it to your XP bar instead of choosing another item, so to fully repair a diamond tool requires 781 XP by itself but 4686 XP with six Mending items. That is considerably greater than the cost to repair most items in versions prior to 1.8, where renaming let you repair items indefinitely in the anvil; for example, an Efficiency V, Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe costs 1032 XP to fully repair, and since this is the item I use by far it dominates XP costs either way. Mending does have the advantage that you only need 4686 XP to fully repair every single item (with items with lower durability being repaired several times over).
Also, the XP figure you gave for mining (assuming caving) is off by a factor of about 2; I average around 1300-1500 XP per hour of caving, despite two-thirds of the ores I mine being coal (0-2 XP, average 1, per ore), although the more important factor is the XP obtained per ore mined or mob killed, plus since Unbreaking stacks with Mending (i.e. 1 durability = 4 uses) this means you only need 1/8 of an XP to restore one use, 6/8 for all six items (armor requires more but I assume your tools get a lot more wear); this is less than what I spent to repair a maxed-out Fortune pickaxe, 9/10 of an XP per use, which was still sustainable.
Personally, I think that making Mending work like renaming did in older versions would be much more balancing since you'd be unable to indefinitely repair overly enchanted gear and still have a use for diamonds, which are otherwise only needed in the event that you lose your gear. Either way though XP farms can easily give you the XP required to repair them.
Another issue is that Mending is too easy to obtain with the changes to villager trading (since 1.8 villagers have a guaranteed enchanted book trade without having to unlock one by trading, and two more that can be easily unlocked), and automated fishing farms, which goes back to the first issue; just as XP farms make it too easy to get XP fishing farms make getting rare items by fishing unbalanced; they could also remove Mending from fishing rods and bows obtained by fishing (Mending fishing rods makes fishing farms much easier to use since they repair themselves).
I don't have any of these issues, as all of the ones mentioned around Mending have been exploiting game mechanics such as a grinder, afk fishing farmer, and getting them through Villagers which in itself is not an exploit, but the most common way to get several white robed villagers is to either make a Villager farm or by abusing how the breeding/housing systems work by "removing" undesirable Villagers to bring the population down.
I do think it is a tad too powerful though. If it was something more like 1 durability restored for every 2 XP gained (or a straight 1:1 ratio), and maybe if it couldn't exist on an item with Unbreaking it would be more balanced.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
I do think it is a tad too powerful though. If it was something more like 1 durability restored for every 2 XP gained (or a straight 1:1 ratio), and maybe if it couldn't exist on an item with Unbreaking it would be more balanced.
That would only worsen the problem because then even players like myself would require XP farms, and don't forget that it is already nerfed when you have multiple items with Mending - you only get 1/3 of a durability point per XP if you have 6 items (4x armor + main hand + off hand), which already means that around 2/3 of the XP I get by caving would be used up (actually less but I use my pickaxe far more than anything else and excess XP goes to your XP bar instead).
I could maybe see this working if the game tried repairing every item in succession (chosen at random from a list until all options are chosen or the XP is consumed) before finally adding it to your XP bar, so 100% of the XP you get would go towards repairing items unless they were all in perfect condition. You could then decrease the durability gained per XP by sixfold (1/3 chance of 1 durability per XP), making a pickaxe cost 4686 XP for a full repair and the total XP higher depending on how many other items you have to repair (these would not affect the pickaxe cost, only the total cost). Alternatively, make the number of enchantments affect the amount of durability gained per XP; for example, 1 / n, so a pickaxe with Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending would get 1/3 of a durability point per XP and require 4686 XP to fully repair, while a pickaxe with Mending only would cost 1562 XP, and a maxed-out pickaxe (4 enchantments) would cost 6248.
To get an idea what what I'd consider too expensive for my playstyle, I was able to sustainably repair an Efficiency V, Fortune III, Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe which had the equivalent cost of 0.277 durability per XP (5624 XP for a full repair, using the pre-1.8 repair system), with a small margin left after repairing other items.
But the fact is, Mojang should nerf XP and most automated farms instead; for example, have the game keep track of how many mobs have died within a certain time interval (excluding despawning) and if the number exceeds a set threshold, based on how many a player can reasonably kill at once, they stop dropping XP and items, or even stop spawning, for a while. In fact, mob spawners used to have NBT tags that appeared to limit the experience they gave, possibly by making the mobs they spawned stop dropping XP (and items). Of course, we all saw what happened when they tried nerfing iron and gold farms (players had to kill iron golems and zombie pigmen themselves; you could certainly still farm them, just not automatically)
I don't think it would be that bad, I can keep a full set of equipment fully repaired with mending without any type of grinder and still consistently, repeatedly level up to 30 and use levels enchanting other stuff or combining books. My trick is just to diversify what I do and manage my inventory. It only takes a second and it keeps all my gear maxed.
I do agree that XP could be reduced a bit, but that has many implications beyond just Mending.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
One thing to keep in mind is that this enchantment is an end game one. It requires that you have already traveled to the end, making it end game. It's also kind of rare. So I don't think it's too broken.
One thing to keep in mind is that this enchantment is an end game one. It requires that you have already traveled to the end, making it end game. It's also kind of rare. So I don't think it's too broken.
Not true, you can get it from Villagers or Fishing, or just normal dungeons as far as I know. I haven't gotten to the End on my current world but I have several mending bows and fishing rods, and a mending sword and mending Fortune pickaxe.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
It doesn't really matter. By the time you can get a piece of equipment worth putting Mending on, you already have the infrastructure to replace that piece of equipment very easily. It merely saves tedium by saving you diamonds that you won't be running out of in the first place. (Using Mending early-game if you get it then just makes it a smidgeon harder to get the levels you need to enchant something worth putting Mending on.)
It's probably one of the lowest concerns with end-game balance. Yeah, your tools won't break, but nothing is posing a challenge at that point in the game anyway thanks to all the other enchants you have, that even without Mending would be easy to replace...
That is true. If you can kill the End Dragon and/or the Wither, the game holds virtually no challenge for you anymore. It becomes a very limited version of Creative, just without unlimited flight, unlimited blocks, and instant block breaking.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
XP farms are basically recharge stations as far as Mending goes. You still have to survive the hostile wilderness and retreat to them before you can reap their benefits. That's pretty mundane, not OP.
EDIT: I forgot about Bottles of Enchanting. That kind of portable XP is far more likely to break the difficulty curve than an XP farm, which is probably why enchanting bottles are so much more difficult to amass now.
I wouldn't say automatic fish farms are OP either. When you're trying to fish up enchanted books, every one you get is random, plus Mending is one of the rarer enchantments you can get. You're going to have to spend hours and hours before you get the enchantments you want, and if you aren't going for Mending, you might want to resort to an enchantment table for the lower cost and, say, the chance to get Silk Touch on a tool. You can even use all those leather boots you fish up to absorb enchantments you don't want! So I wouldn't say fish farms are overpowered; I'd say they're just powerful enough.
Let's also remember the Elytra here, which is the whole reason Mending was put into the game in the first place. It wasn't for mining purposes; it was because Mojang added an extremely cool, rare, and difficult to repair item to the game. So what did people do with their Elytras? They kept them safe in their chests because they were too awesome to use. Using an anvil to repair them was out of the question because they'd quickly became unrepairable and thus useless. Thus the Mending enchantment was added to the game so people wouldn't be afraid to go out and actually use the Elytra.
One more thing: keep in mind that the void in The End and lava will kill you AND destroy your items to boot. Mending won't help you there.
Author of , Minecraft's most noteworthy Mega Man-themed resource pack!
Also the author of Tales from the Creature Keeper, a book series where humanity is long gone, but its successors, both domesticated and feral, could learn a lot from its legacy.
That is true. If you can kill the End Dragon and/or the Wither, the game holds virtually no challenge for you anymore. It becomes a very limited version of Creative, just without unlimited flight, unlimited blocks, and instant block breaking.
I respectfully disagree, and I submit this video as proof. It's from a player who has killed many Ender Dragons and Withers before (although his first encounter with the dragon went hilariously bad).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Author of , Minecraft's most noteworthy Mega Man-themed resource pack!
Also the author of Tales from the Creature Keeper, a book series where humanity is long gone, but its successors, both domesticated and feral, could learn a lot from its legacy.
I respectfully disagree, and I submit this video as proof. It's from a player who has killed many Ender Dragons and Withers before (although his first encounter with the dragon went hilariously bad).
A majority of those deaths were from situations impossible in standard Survival play (PvP, fighting common mobs near the void, excessive numbers of common mobs due to the presence of multiple spawners). In only a few deaths was he in a scenario where he died from a threat reasonable in Survival with equipment where Mending and top-tier equipment would be relevant. Even when he was fighting the Enderdragon, the equipment he was wearing was fairly mediocre (who enchants iron...?)
If I ever have and am currently making use of Mending in Survival, I also have the equipment and the other enchantments that turn the game trivial. That's what Badprenup is referencing by "if you can kill a boss"; he's referring to if you have the gear to kill one (especially the Wither since skill isn't relevant in his fight). Most of the time he had subpar or no armor and iron equipment in his Survival deaths; not something you would try to kill the Dragon with, much less the Wither.
A majority of those deaths were from situations impossible in standard Survival play (PvP, fighting common mobs near the void, excessive numbers of common mobs due to the presence of multiple spawners). In only a few deaths was he in a scenario where he died from a threat reasonable in Survival with equipment where Mending and top-tier equipment would be relevant. Even when he was fighting the Enderdragon, the equipment he was wearing was fairly mediocre (who enchants iron...?)
If I ever have and am currently making use of Mending in Survival, I also have the equipment and the other enchantments that turn the game trivial. That's what Badprenup is referencing by "if you can kill a boss"; he's referring to if you have the gear to kill one (especially the Wither since skill isn't relevant in his fight). Most of the time he had subpar or no armor and iron equipment in his Survival deaths; not something you would try to kill the Dragon with, much less the Wither.
Eh... no, I'm afraid I still must disagree. You sound kinda like you're falling into the common trap where you assume that the way you play is the way everyone plays. Minecraft refuses to be bound by your shackles, sir, and that's a big reason why the game has been so renowned and successful.
Now, I do fully understand your points, but they only seem to apply to us top-tier players who are a minority amongst all the players. Even before 1.9 let me march around with Mending on all of my diamond gear, I'd go into any situation well-prepared and equipped and almost always return home OK. Then I'd see poor saps like that suffering death after death and think, "You know... maybe the game balance is fine as it is. I'll just switch to Hard or Hardcore mode. There's no need for Mojang to crank up the difficulty just to appease 8-bit era veterans like me."
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Author of , Minecraft's most noteworthy Mega Man-themed resource pack!
Also the author of Tales from the Creature Keeper, a book series where humanity is long gone, but its successors, both domesticated and feral, could learn a lot from its legacy.
Eh... no, I'm afraid I still must disagree. You sound kinda like you're falling into the common trap where you assume that the way you play is the way everyone plays. Minecraft refuses to be bound by your shackles, sir, and that's a big reason why the game has been so renowned and successful.
Now, I do fully understand your points, but they only seem to apply to us top-tier players who are a minority amongst all the players. Even before 1.9 let me march around with Mending on all of my diamond gear, I'd go into any situation well-prepared and equipped and almost always return home OK. Then I'd see poor saps like that suffering death after death and think, "You know... maybe the game balance is fine as it is. I'll just switch to Hard or Hardcore mode. There's no need for Mojang to crank up the difficulty just to appease 8-bit era veterans like me."
If you have (and wear) equipment worth putting Mending on, pretty much everything is going to be dealing less than one damage; it'll take 20+ hits to kill you and that's if you don't regenerate whatsoever (which will vastly offset the damage you're taking). You'll only die to environmental kills, which few enchants protect against anyway. If people are dying from common mobs with that stuff on it's kind of amazing that they managed to get that stuff in the first place.
What I'm saying is: most of those deaths are either caused by situations irrelevant to Vanilla balance (the adventure maps) or irrelevant to Mending (low-quality gear, PvP). That's not the equipment of someone who is in a position to kill a boss. I'm sure there are people who will die to the common mobs with the best gear in the game, but your video doesn't prove that whatsoever; it just proves that a guy can die while wearing mediocre gear or in situations irrelevant to Vanilla balance.
(And, specifically regarding your comment about balance: Minecraft's balance is really screwed up. However, it's not that the game is too easy; it's that most of the game is much easier than it should be. No reason for the surface of the Overworld at night to be the hardest part of the game besides the Enderdragon, End Cities, and Ocean Monuments; especially since 1.10 is adding hostiles that are straight upgrades of common mobs to the surface of extreme climates. The game shouldn't get easier as you progress...)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Did something happen to you in your childhood to give you this unreasonable fear of rutabaga?
I respectfully disagree, and I submit this video as proof. It's from a player who has killed many Ender Dragons and Withers before (although his first encounter with the dragon went hilariously bad).
I must agree with Badprenup:
Zero deaths during the entire 2+ weeks of real time I spent playing this world; the vast majority of the mobs killed were while caving or on the surface at night. This is also with less than maxed-out gear (as far as armor goes) and in this particular case was in a modded world which increases the difficulty of some mobs; while 1.9 made it a bit harder I could significantly upgrade it, same if I played on Hard instead of Normal (I do not see Minecraft as a hardcore Survival game where you should be dying all the time, and like you said, everybody plays the game differently; some play on Peaceful because they do not want to fight mobs, whether or not they are good at it; conversely, I've seen players who play Hardcore with minimal or even no armor for the challenge; just because the latter player dies a lot more often doesn't mean that the game is hard).
Also, while some say that Mending was added for the Elytra I think of it as a replacement for infinite anvil repairing in older versions, which Mojang likely had in mind when they allowed it to be used on all gear; actually, I wonder why they didn't make it work the same way and require that you repair Mending items in the anvil with level costs dependent on the enchantments (it would be impossible to repair "God" gear but moderately enchanted gear would be very affordable) and the need for diamonds to repair them (people who hate mining surely love it though, which goes back to people playing the game differently).
Mending is not OP in any way. It is a great way to be able to re-use the same tools forever, especially if they have perfect enchants on them. If you have an XP farm, then it is even better for this purpose.
Mending is not OP in any way. It is a great way to be able to re-use the same tools forever, especially if they have perfect enchants on them. If you have an XP farm, then it is even better for this purpose.
But that is exactly why it could be seen as OP. Unlimited use of all Diamond gear with the very best enchantments forever could easily be seen as OP. My current stance is while it can be hard to get for everything without abusing game mechanics, it is kind of overpowered. However, if you actually get to the point where you can get Mending on everything, the game doesn't hold a challenge for you anymore anyways.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
I love Mending as much as the next guy, but do you think it's too overpowered? Let me explain.
In case you didn't know, Mending is an enchantment added in 1.9 that allows tools to repair themselves by 2 durability for every 1 experience.
When the devs implemented Mending, they had general mining in mind. While mining, you get experience from ores and fighting mobs. Most mobs drop roughly 5-6 experience, and mining ores gets you around 2-7 experience, depending on the ore. That means, if you're spelunking (arguably the most time-effecient way to mine) you'll get about 600 experience per hour. (Please note that this is extremely general, there's a huge number of factors that affect how much ore you get, and no two mining trips are the same.) You can repair a diamond chestplate from 0 durability with that much experience, if the chestplate has Mending.
However, as we all know, there are more ways to get experience.
Your average zombie spawner XP grinder will generate 720 mobs, or 3,600 XP per hour. That's six times (roughly) the amount you'd get from mining! To put it into perspective, you cold repair with Mending two diamond pickaxes and still have XP to spare! A zombie grinder requires only wood and iron, which by the time you get Mending is almost nothing!
But that is not all, no, that is not all!
Once you get to the Nether (which, to have mending books, you probably have) you can make a Blaze farm. Blaze spawners spawn, again, 720 mobs an hour. However, Blazes drop double the experience of zombies. So in one hour, you can get 7,200 experience. That's 4.6 diamond pickaxes that you can repair with Mending, all with 0 durability!
Of course, an hour is too long for most played to fix a couple pickaxes. So allow me to direct your attention to . The mobs spawned from these farms spawn so fast, even with the new sweep attack in 1.9, you can't keep up with the spawning. This means that you can kill 30 mobs per stroke (again, roughly), and with .625 seconds to recover, you can get 150 experience in one stroke.
So, what are your thoughts? Do you think Mending is OP?
Curing the Andromeda Strain one abduction at a time!
Most likely the developers did not have this process in mind when they were creating this enchantment. I do have to agree that the process you showed does indeed make the enchantment op. Maybe in the future if this is an actual problem they may change the ratio to something higher.
Aspiring Minecraft Youtuber: YinYangCraft
I don't think XP farms should be used as an excuse that Mending is overpowered or should be nerfed; they have always created balance issues due to the ease of getting XP and mob drops, and the same applies to any sort of automated farm.
Also, Mending only restores 2 durability per XP if you are holding just one item; if you are holding six the game splits the XP among each item at random and if that item doesn't need to be repaired it just adds it to your XP bar instead of choosing another item, so to fully repair a diamond tool requires 781 XP by itself but 4686 XP with six Mending items. That is considerably greater than the cost to repair most items in versions prior to 1.8, where renaming let you repair items indefinitely in the anvil; for example, an Efficiency V, Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe costs 1032 XP to fully repair, and since this is the item I use by far it dominates XP costs either way. Mending does have the advantage that you only need 4686 XP to fully repair every single item (with items with lower durability being repaired several times over).
Also, the XP figure you gave for mining (assuming caving) is off by a factor of about 2; I average around 1300-1500 XP per hour of caving, despite two-thirds of the ores I mine being coal (0-2 XP, average 1, per ore), although the more important factor is the XP obtained per ore mined or mob killed, plus since Unbreaking stacks with Mending (i.e. 1 durability = 4 uses) this means you only need 1/8 of an XP to restore one use, 6/8 for all six items (armor requires more but I assume your tools get a lot more wear); this is less than what I spent to repair a maxed-out Fortune pickaxe, 9/10 of an XP per use, which was still sustainable.
Personally, I think that making Mending work like renaming did in older versions would be much more balancing since you'd be unable to indefinitely repair overly enchanted gear and still have a use for diamonds, which are otherwise only needed in the event that you lose your gear. Either way though XP farms can easily give you the XP required to repair them.
Another issue is that Mending is too easy to obtain with the changes to villager trading (since 1.8 villagers have a guaranteed enchanted book trade without having to unlock one by trading, and two more that can be easily unlocked), and automated fishing farms, which goes back to the first issue; just as XP farms make it too easy to get XP fishing farms make getting rare items by fishing unbalanced; they could also remove Mending from fishing rods and bows obtained by fishing (Mending fishing rods makes fishing farms much easier to use since they repair themselves).
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?
I don't have any of these issues, as all of the ones mentioned around Mending have been exploiting game mechanics such as a grinder, afk fishing farmer, and getting them through Villagers which in itself is not an exploit, but the most common way to get several white robed villagers is to either make a Villager farm or by abusing how the breeding/housing systems work by "removing" undesirable Villagers to bring the population down.
I do think it is a tad too powerful though. If it was something more like 1 durability restored for every 2 XP gained (or a straight 1:1 ratio), and maybe if it couldn't exist on an item with Unbreaking it would be more balanced.
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/suggestions/2775557-guidelines-for-the-suggestions-forum
Yeah, when I first heard of
Yeah, when Mending first came out I thought it would/should be mutually exclusive with Unbreaking.
Curing the Andromeda Strain one abduction at a time!
That would only worsen the problem because then even players like myself would require XP farms, and don't forget that it is already nerfed when you have multiple items with Mending - you only get 1/3 of a durability point per XP if you have 6 items (4x armor + main hand + off hand), which already means that around 2/3 of the XP I get by caving would be used up (actually less but I use my pickaxe far more than anything else and excess XP goes to your XP bar instead).
I could maybe see this working if the game tried repairing every item in succession (chosen at random from a list until all options are chosen or the XP is consumed) before finally adding it to your XP bar, so 100% of the XP you get would go towards repairing items unless they were all in perfect condition. You could then decrease the durability gained per XP by sixfold (1/3 chance of 1 durability per XP), making a pickaxe cost 4686 XP for a full repair and the total XP higher depending on how many other items you have to repair (these would not affect the pickaxe cost, only the total cost). Alternatively, make the number of enchantments affect the amount of durability gained per XP; for example, 1 / n, so a pickaxe with Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending would get 1/3 of a durability point per XP and require 4686 XP to fully repair, while a pickaxe with Mending only would cost 1562 XP, and a maxed-out pickaxe (4 enchantments) would cost 6248.
To get an idea what what I'd consider too expensive for my playstyle, I was able to sustainably repair an Efficiency V, Fortune III, Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe which had the equivalent cost of 0.277 durability per XP (5624 XP for a full repair, using the pre-1.8 repair system), with a small margin left after repairing other items.
But the fact is, Mojang should nerf XP and most automated farms instead; for example, have the game keep track of how many mobs have died within a certain time interval (excluding despawning) and if the number exceeds a set threshold, based on how many a player can reasonably kill at once, they stop dropping XP and items, or even stop spawning, for a while. In fact, mob spawners used to have NBT tags that appeared to limit the experience they gave, possibly by making the mobs they spawned stop dropping XP (and items). Of course, we all saw what happened when they tried nerfing iron and gold farms (players had to kill iron golems and zombie pigmen themselves; you could certainly still farm them, just not automatically)
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?
I don't think it would be that bad, I can keep a full set of equipment fully repaired with mending without any type of grinder and still consistently, repeatedly level up to 30 and use levels enchanting other stuff or combining books. My trick is just to diversify what I do and manage my inventory. It only takes a second and it keeps all my gear maxed.
I do agree that XP could be reduced a bit, but that has many implications beyond just Mending.
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/suggestions/2775557-guidelines-for-the-suggestions-forum
One thing to keep in mind is that this enchantment is an end game one. It requires that you have already traveled to the end, making it end game. It's also kind of rare. So I don't think it's too broken.
Farewell everyone o/
Not true, you can get it from Villagers or Fishing, or just normal dungeons as far as I know. I haven't gotten to the End on my current world but I have several mending bows and fishing rods, and a mending sword and mending Fortune pickaxe.
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/suggestions/2775557-guidelines-for-the-suggestions-forum
It doesn't really matter. By the time you can get a piece of equipment worth putting Mending on, you already have the infrastructure to replace that piece of equipment very easily. It merely saves tedium by saving you diamonds that you won't be running out of in the first place. (Using Mending early-game if you get it then just makes it a smidgeon harder to get the levels you need to enchant something worth putting Mending on.)
It's probably one of the lowest concerns with end-game balance. Yeah, your tools won't break, but nothing is posing a challenge at that point in the game anyway thanks to all the other enchants you have, that even without Mending would be easy to replace...
That is true. If you can kill the End Dragon and/or the Wither, the game holds virtually no challenge for you anymore. It becomes a very limited version of Creative, just without unlimited flight, unlimited blocks, and instant block breaking.
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/suggestions/2775557-guidelines-for-the-suggestions-forum
hey don't forget pvp too if you're playing on a server
well for me mending is useful with armors in pvp
it's really useful on that server when you kill someone you get their exp and that exp repairs my diamonds armors
so i can go 1vs1 max enchants and enchanted gapples withoun't worrying on my armors
XP farms are basically recharge stations as far as Mending goes. You still have to survive the hostile wilderness and retreat to them before you can reap their benefits. That's pretty mundane, not OP.
EDIT: I forgot about Bottles of Enchanting. That kind of portable XP is far more likely to break the difficulty curve than an XP farm, which is probably why enchanting bottles are so much more difficult to amass now.
I wouldn't say automatic fish farms are OP either. When you're trying to fish up enchanted books, every one you get is random, plus Mending is one of the rarer enchantments you can get. You're going to have to spend hours and hours before you get the enchantments you want, and if you aren't going for Mending, you might want to resort to an enchantment table for the lower cost and, say, the chance to get Silk Touch on a tool. You can even use all those leather boots you fish up to absorb enchantments you don't want! So I wouldn't say fish farms are overpowered; I'd say they're just powerful enough.
Let's also remember the Elytra here, which is the whole reason Mending was put into the game in the first place. It wasn't for mining purposes; it was because Mojang added an extremely cool, rare, and difficult to repair item to the game. So what did people do with their Elytras? They kept them safe in their chests because they were too awesome to use. Using an anvil to repair them was out of the question because they'd quickly became unrepairable and thus useless. Thus the Mending enchantment was added to the game so people wouldn't be afraid to go out and actually use the Elytra.
One more thing: keep in mind that the void in The End and lava will kill you AND destroy your items to boot. Mending won't help you there.
Also the author of Tales from the Creature Keeper, a book series where humanity is long gone, but its successors, both domesticated and feral, could learn a lot from its legacy.
I respectfully disagree, and I submit this video as proof. It's from a player who has killed many Ender Dragons and Withers before (although his first encounter with the dragon went hilariously bad).
Also the author of Tales from the Creature Keeper, a book series where humanity is long gone, but its successors, both domesticated and feral, could learn a lot from its legacy.
A majority of those deaths were from situations impossible in standard Survival play (PvP, fighting common mobs near the void, excessive numbers of common mobs due to the presence of multiple spawners). In only a few deaths was he in a scenario where he died from a threat reasonable in Survival with equipment where Mending and top-tier equipment would be relevant. Even when he was fighting the Enderdragon, the equipment he was wearing was fairly mediocre (who enchants iron...?)
If I ever have and am currently making use of Mending in Survival, I also have the equipment and the other enchantments that turn the game trivial. That's what Badprenup is referencing by "if you can kill a boss"; he's referring to if you have the gear to kill one (especially the Wither since skill isn't relevant in his fight). Most of the time he had subpar or no armor and iron equipment in his Survival deaths; not something you would try to kill the Dragon with, much less the Wither.
Eh... no, I'm afraid I still must disagree. You sound kinda like you're falling into the common trap where you assume that the way you play is the way everyone plays. Minecraft refuses to be bound by your shackles, sir, and that's a big reason why the game has been so renowned and successful.
Now, I do fully understand your points, but they only seem to apply to us top-tier players who are a minority amongst all the players. Even before 1.9 let me march around with Mending on all of my diamond gear, I'd go into any situation well-prepared and equipped and almost always return home OK. Then I'd see poor saps like that suffering death after death and think, "You know... maybe the game balance is fine as it is. I'll just switch to Hard or Hardcore mode. There's no need for Mojang to crank up the difficulty just to appease 8-bit era veterans like me."
Also the author of Tales from the Creature Keeper, a book series where humanity is long gone, but its successors, both domesticated and feral, could learn a lot from its legacy.
If you have (and wear) equipment worth putting Mending on, pretty much everything is going to be dealing less than one damage; it'll take 20+ hits to kill you and that's if you don't regenerate whatsoever (which will vastly offset the damage you're taking). You'll only die to environmental kills, which few enchants protect against anyway. If people are dying from common mobs with that stuff on it's kind of amazing that they managed to get that stuff in the first place.
What I'm saying is: most of those deaths are either caused by situations irrelevant to Vanilla balance (the adventure maps) or irrelevant to Mending (low-quality gear, PvP). That's not the equipment of someone who is in a position to kill a boss. I'm sure there are people who will die to the common mobs with the best gear in the game, but your video doesn't prove that whatsoever; it just proves that a guy can die while wearing mediocre gear or in situations irrelevant to Vanilla balance.
(And, specifically regarding your comment about balance: Minecraft's balance is really screwed up. However, it's not that the game is too easy; it's that most of the game is much easier than it should be. No reason for the surface of the Overworld at night to be the hardest part of the game besides the Enderdragon, End Cities, and Ocean Monuments; especially since 1.10 is adding hostiles that are straight upgrades of common mobs to the surface of extreme climates. The game shouldn't get easier as you progress...)
I must agree with Badprenup:
Zero deaths during the entire 2+ weeks of real time I spent playing this world; the vast majority of the mobs killed were while caving or on the surface at night. This is also with less than maxed-out gear (as far as armor goes) and in this particular case was in a modded world which increases the difficulty of some mobs; while 1.9 made it a bit harder I could significantly upgrade it, same if I played on Hard instead of Normal (I do not see Minecraft as a hardcore Survival game where you should be dying all the time, and like you said, everybody plays the game differently; some play on Peaceful because they do not want to fight mobs, whether or not they are good at it; conversely, I've seen players who play Hardcore with minimal or even no armor for the challenge; just because the latter player dies a lot more often doesn't mean that the game is hard).
Also, while some say that Mending was added for the Elytra I think of it as a replacement for infinite anvil repairing in older versions, which Mojang likely had in mind when they allowed it to be used on all gear; actually, I wonder why they didn't make it work the same way and require that you repair Mending items in the anvil with level costs dependent on the enchantments (it would be impossible to repair "God" gear but moderately enchanted gear would be very affordable) and the need for diamonds to repair them (people who hate mining surely love it though, which goes back to people playing the game differently).
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?
Mending is not OP in any way. It is a great way to be able to re-use the same tools forever, especially if they have perfect enchants on them. If you have an XP farm, then it is even better for this purpose.
But that is exactly why it could be seen as OP. Unlimited use of all Diamond gear with the very best enchantments forever could easily be seen as OP. My current stance is while it can be hard to get for everything without abusing game mechanics, it is kind of overpowered. However, if you actually get to the point where you can get Mending on everything, the game doesn't hold a challenge for you anymore anyways.
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/suggestions/2775557-guidelines-for-the-suggestions-forum