I've seen some other posts suggesting the addition of dragons to Minecraft, and I think that emphasizing them as a major sub-theme would add yet another rich direction to explore within the game. Here are some ideas I had about their addition, please contribute:
Dragon lairs spawn rarely, and the design of the lair varies with the class of dragon. Most dragons do not seek out inhabited areas and tend to avoid miners - maybe only venturing out once in awhile to snatch up some livestock or scout out a new lair. Encroachment of mining and building will unsettle a dragon though, and aggressive strikes against structures associated with players harassing a dragon could be expected.
If you want nothing to do with dragons, it should be fairly simple to avoid them; in fact it should be rare to run into them unless you are aggressively exploring/expanding or specifically hunting one (tracking down claw marks, the odd burning tree, animal remains, etc). To stumble upon a lair would be an exciting find.
A lair would contain an array of riches and rare materials mostly unobtainable throughout the rest of the game. The lair should be intimidating to enter and an expedition to slay a dragon would be filled with suspense, as it would be difficult to get close enough to to much reconnaissance ahead of time. If different classes of dragons with different temperaments and difficulty levels were introduced, the desirability of the treasure could be varied accordingly. Perhaps items like artifacts that cannot be gifted or otherwise found, or potions that may assist in battles against higher class dragons.
Most importantly: Dragons should be almost impossible to defeat on one's own. I think that this could be the key to introducing some real player cohesion within the multi-player version of the game. Quests would need to be organized, and the size of a raiding party would depend on the skill of the players, the quality of their gear, and the class of the dragon. Teamwork, planning and skill would be needed to take out any dragon of significant difficulty.
I like to think of the dragon as playing the role of a Balrog, or the boar demons from Princess Mononoke; a retribution from nature for our wanton pillaging of the Minecraft environment - a ferocious line of defense when we dig "too greedily and too deep."
Ditto.
So here are some of my thoughts, many I would be happy to alter, but use your imagination. Tell me what ideas you would use and what could be trashed. I'm all ears! Or eyes, or pupils... Whatever.
Dragons should be created in special dragon areas, which are extremely dangerous to enter because that's where the dragon's cave is, at the very center. These areas should be extremely rare, only able to exist beyond 30 or 40 equal areas away from the spawn point and with a 1/200-300 area chance of being created. The biome should be the same as any other, with maybe some burnt trees to give a hint of the danger. The dragon itself should normally only travel within it's area, unless it has to go further to find live food. Adult dragons should come in three sizes: big- about 10 or 20 long, huge-about 25 or 30 long, and epic-35 or 45 long. They breath fire that sets anything on fire, turns sand to glass, gravel to cobblestone, cobblestone to smooth stone and smooth stone to a SMALL lava flow. It should kill on impact without armor. The dragon uses biting within 5 blocks of it's mouth. The only thing that dragon fire can't destroy is diamond blocks, and this can be used to trap them. When trapped so that it can't articulate it's limbs and head, the dragon with burn and melt everything it can, other than diamond stuff of course. What about diamond armor? Well, the dragon can get through even that eventually, so if you don't have full diamond armor, you're toast. A dragon has a ridiculous amount of hearts, so you have to be really skilled to kill one. But it's worth it , because dragons should drop dragon scales, dragon teeth, and a dragon skull. Dragon scales are good for dragon armor, which is five or eight times as durable as diamond armor, but can protect you from fire and lava indefinitely. A dragon should drop enough to make a chestplate and helmet, but you can wade through one block lava with boots and pants. After killing two dragons or one epic, which is frustratingly hard to do, you can make a set of full body dragon scale armor, so that lava will be just like water.
Dragon teeth would be used to make stationary mob totems, which repel mobs up to a very large radius according to how they are crafted. One could be made to repel hostile mobs, while another cows or pigs.
Dragon skulls could be essential in domesticating dragons, or might just be trophies, depending on Notch's vision. And that brings us to babies.
Dragon eggs should hatch in 15 days, making babies with a 15 day childhood. That means there is always a harmless baby dragon and an egg in the dragon cave. When the baby becomes an adult, it should fly off into the sky, never to be seen again, so as to preserve the balance of the world. That same day, the new baby hatches and another egg is lay.
The only way to train a dragon to ride on is to raise it from birth, so it is necessary to capture an egg. Once the mother is slain, the egg should be found sitting atop a pool of lava in the middle of the cave. To hatch your egg, you must either leave it there, or put it on lava back at your base. Since you won't know what part of development it's in, the egg should be checked daily for cracks, because that is when it needs to be broken.
Now this would be an optional feature that forces you to kill the parent before raising an egg. To break the baby out, a dragon skull must be used on it, or else your new pet will perish. This makes sure that you don't just tunnel into a dragon cave and steal the egg, because you have to kill an adult to get a skull.
After the baby is born, it must be fed three raw pork a day for fifteen days. Once it's an adult, it will not attack you, but will kill farm animals to get it's food and will try to break out of any containment it can.
Now there are two viable options for riding the pet dragon: Containment and summoning. The first would require either some kind of diamond enclosure or a long chain to keep the dragon contained. The enclosure would probably be small and seem cruel, so the long chain might work best as long as it can get to live food. Summoning seems most appealing to me because it is much easier to use. With possibly diamonds and wood, a dragon caller could be made that summons your dragon from anywhere within a previously mentioned area distance away. To ride it, you feed him a piece of raw meat and put a saddle on, giving you full control to fly about. To rise, use space and to dive use S, being as dragons can't go backwards but only rotate. You may mount and dismount anytime during the three minute period after you feed your pet, but can only get off after that. Possibly the saddle would stay on so you can tell what dragon is yours and don't have to carry one around.
So your dragon will stay in one general area most of the time, you can build lava pits that the dragon likes to sleep by, maybe a island surrounded by at least three width of lava.
All this dragon raising info is a little complex, so there could be an item found in dungeon chests that acts like a book and diagrams how to domesticate one of these beasts.
Overall, dragons should be very rare, extremely hard to defeat and a commitment to raise. But the reward should be high: super awesome armor, mob proof areas and ultimate transportation. And don't forget about bragging rights!
Dragon lairs spawn rarely, and the design of the lair varies with the class of dragon. Most dragons do not seek out inhabited areas and tend to avoid miners - maybe only venturing out once in awhile to snatch up some livestock or scout out a new lair. Encroachment of mining and building will unsettle a dragon though, and aggressive strikes against structures associated with players harassing a dragon could be expected.
If you want nothing to do with dragons, it should be fairly simple to avoid them; in fact it should be rare to run into them unless you are aggressively exploring/expanding or specifically hunting one (tracking down claw marks, the odd burning tree, animal remains, etc). To stumble upon a lair would be an exciting find.
A lair would contain an array of riches and rare materials mostly unobtainable throughout the rest of the game. The lair should be intimidating to enter and an expedition to slay a dragon would be filled with suspense, as it would be difficult to get close enough to to much reconnaissance ahead of time. If different classes of dragons with different temperaments and difficulty levels were introduced, the desirability of the treasure could be varied accordingly. Perhaps items like artifacts that cannot be gifted or otherwise found, or potions that may assist in battles against higher class dragons.
Most importantly: Dragons should be almost impossible to defeat on one's own. I think that this could be the key to introducing some real player cohesion within the multi-player version of the game. Quests would need to be organized, and the size of a raiding party would depend on the skill of the players, the quality of their gear, and the class of the dragon. Teamwork, planning and skill would be needed to take out any dragon of significant difficulty.
I like to think of the dragon as playing the role of a Balrog, or the boar demons from Princess Mononoke; a retribution from nature for our wanton pillaging of the Minecraft environment - a ferocious line of defense when we dig "too greedily and too deep."
So here are some of my thoughts, many I would be happy to alter, but use your imagination. Tell me what ideas you would use and what could be trashed. I'm all ears! Or eyes, or pupils... Whatever.
Dragons should be created in special dragon areas, which are extremely dangerous to enter because that's where the dragon's cave is, at the very center. These areas should be extremely rare, only able to exist beyond 30 or 40 equal areas away from the spawn point and with a 1/200-300 area chance of being created. The biome should be the same as any other, with maybe some burnt trees to give a hint of the danger. The dragon itself should normally only travel within it's area, unless it has to go further to find live food. Adult dragons should come in three sizes: big- about 10 or 20 long, huge-about 25 or 30 long, and epic-35 or 45 long. They breath fire that sets anything on fire, turns sand to glass, gravel to cobblestone, cobblestone to smooth stone and smooth stone to a SMALL lava flow. It should kill on impact without armor. The dragon uses biting within 5 blocks of it's mouth. The only thing that dragon fire can't destroy is diamond blocks, and this can be used to trap them. When trapped so that it can't articulate it's limbs and head, the dragon with burn and melt everything it can, other than diamond stuff of course. What about diamond armor? Well, the dragon can get through even that eventually, so if you don't have full diamond armor, you're toast. A dragon has a ridiculous amount of hearts, so you have to be really skilled to kill one. But it's worth it , because dragons should drop dragon scales, dragon teeth, and a dragon skull. Dragon scales are good for dragon armor, which is five or eight times as durable as diamond armor, but can protect you from fire and lava indefinitely. A dragon should drop enough to make a chestplate and helmet, but you can wade through one block lava with boots and pants. After killing two dragons or one epic, which is frustratingly hard to do, you can make a set of full body dragon scale armor, so that lava will be just like water.
Dragon teeth would be used to make stationary mob totems, which repel mobs up to a very large radius according to how they are crafted. One could be made to repel hostile mobs, while another cows or pigs.
Dragon skulls could be essential in domesticating dragons, or might just be trophies, depending on Notch's vision. And that brings us to babies.
Dragon eggs should hatch in 15 days, making babies with a 15 day childhood. That means there is always a harmless baby dragon and an egg in the dragon cave. When the baby becomes an adult, it should fly off into the sky, never to be seen again, so as to preserve the balance of the world. That same day, the new baby hatches and another egg is lay.
The only way to train a dragon to ride on is to raise it from birth, so it is necessary to capture an egg. Once the mother is slain, the egg should be found sitting atop a pool of lava in the middle of the cave. To hatch your egg, you must either leave it there, or put it on lava back at your base. Since you won't know what part of development it's in, the egg should be checked daily for cracks, because that is when it needs to be broken.
Now this would be an optional feature that forces you to kill the parent before raising an egg. To break the baby out, a dragon skull must be used on it, or else your new pet will perish. This makes sure that you don't just tunnel into a dragon cave and steal the egg, because you have to kill an adult to get a skull.
After the baby is born, it must be fed three raw pork a day for fifteen days. Once it's an adult, it will not attack you, but will kill farm animals to get it's food and will try to break out of any containment it can.
Now there are two viable options for riding the pet dragon: Containment and summoning. The first would require either some kind of diamond enclosure or a long chain to keep the dragon contained. The enclosure would probably be small and seem cruel, so the long chain might work best as long as it can get to live food. Summoning seems most appealing to me because it is much easier to use. With possibly diamonds and wood, a dragon caller could be made that summons your dragon from anywhere within a previously mentioned area distance away. To ride it, you feed him a piece of raw meat and put a saddle on, giving you full control to fly about. To rise, use space and to dive use S, being as dragons can't go backwards but only rotate. You may mount and dismount anytime during the three minute period after you feed your pet, but can only get off after that. Possibly the saddle would stay on so you can tell what dragon is yours and don't have to carry one around.
So your dragon will stay in one general area most of the time, you can build lava pits that the dragon likes to sleep by, maybe a island surrounded by at least three width of lava.
All this dragon raising info is a little complex, so there could be an item found in dungeon chests that acts like a book and diagrams how to domesticate one of these beasts.
Overall, dragons should be very rare, extremely hard to defeat and a commitment to raise. But the reward should be high: super awesome armor, mob proof areas and ultimate transportation. And don't forget about bragging rights!
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You should try it Walloftext man.
All right everyone, if we don't buy Lamborghinis for one day, the price will go way down and then we can all afford one. It's Economics!
That tower of words was previously used by me on getsatisfaction.com, so I decided to contribute here to make even better use of my effort.
So are my thoughts properly spaced?
Or does it just look like I'm hogging the page?
Point over-exaggerated. Definitely hogging.