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There have been numerous suggestions on what to do to make Minecraft survival mode more challenging without breaking the game or wasting too much of people's time and effort.

But some of them in my view have been questionable at best, and awful at worst.

What I would like to see happen is natural predators be the daytime hostile mobs, be it snakes, crocodiles, lions and grizzly bears.

Meaning even day time wouldn't be safe, while these new hostile mobs wouldn't be as dangerous as Creepers or Endermen, they would force you to fight them off from time to time if your area wasn't secure.

The way to prevent their spawn would be simple.

Your location has to count as a village, and your territory has to have a fence of some kind to keep the predator mobs outside.

This suggestion may receive criticism too, I fully understand that nothing is immune to criticism, but this is a lot better than turning pillagers into thieves and vandals who smash apart player mansions and loot their chests for everything they earned legitimately and spent a lot of time collecting, when they previously never had to deal with such a threat in the current survival mode gameplay.

If you want vandals, play on an anarchy or grief server.

That's fair on the players who don't want these things in vanilla Minecraft, in my opinion.

Quote from Agtrigormortis»

This suggestion may receive criticism too, I fully understand that nothing is immune to criticism

I understand that you're new to the forum and you probably think that Mojang is reading this forum for ideas, but have you never read somebody else's suggestion before? The replies are all about criticizing and judging the idea.

There have been numerous suggestions on what to do to make Minecraft survival mode more challenging without breaking the game or wasting too much of people's time and effort.

But some of them in my view have been questionable at best, and awful at worst.

To be honest I don't understand this since I play like an idiot and I tend to die a lot. But we'll go with the premise that survival Minecraft isn't difficult enough.

What I would like to see happen is natural predators be the daytime hostile mobs, be it snakes, crocodiles, lions and grizzly bears.

Meaning even day time wouldn't be safe, while these new hostile mobs wouldn't be as dangerous as Creepers or Endermen, they would force you to fight them off from time to time if your area wasn't secure.

I'm not sure this would make the game more difficult, it would just mean the players have to fight more mobs than they usually need to. Even during the day, the player still has to defend his house from creepers and baby zombies.

The way to prevent their spawn would be simple.

Your location has to count as a village, and your territory has to have a fence of some kind to keep the predator mobs outside.

I think this wrongly assumes that I, the player, want to turn my base into a village. There are many cases in which I would like to build a base that does not resemble a village at all, however. I may choose to build a giant underground bunker with a piston blast door, or I may choose to build a glass dome in the sky accessible via minecart elevators and elytra. There are plenty of occasions where my base is not going to consist of lots of doors so that it would qualify as a village.

The fence idea sounds interesting if perhaps you meant to say enclosing an area with a fence would prevent these hostile mobs from spawning, but this requires that the game check the surrounding area for a large fence enclosure whenever it needs to spawn one of these mobs. And again, there are times when I don't really want to put a giant fence around my base.

I think a better way to handle this would be that chunks the player spends long periods of time in will become "domestic" chunks. (And for the sake of keeping Villages safe, when a new Village is generated it will make nearby chunks "domestic") In these "domestic" chunks, hostile mobs whether they be daytime or nighttime mobs will spawn about half as frequently unless the light level is zero. That way you may be able to domesticate the surface, but underground caves will still be dangerous.

[This] is a lot better than turning pillagers into thieves and vandals who smash apart player mansions and loot their chests for everything they earned legitimately and spent a lot of time collecting, when they previously never had to deal with such a threat in the current survival mode gameplay.

If you want vandals, play on an anarchy or grief server.

That's fair on the players who don't want these things in vanilla Minecraft, in my opinion.

I don't necessarily know that anybody supports this. I think someone in the past suggested something similar and got a lot of flak for it, but I'm not entirely sure. However, the fact that someone else's suggestion is worse does not necessarily mean this suggestion is good.


I like some of the ideas in this post, though in its current state I wouldn't support its implementation.

Quote from C1ff»

I understand that you're new to the forum and you probably think that Mojang is reading this forum for ideas, but have you never read somebody else's suggestion before? The replies are all about criticizing and judging the idea.

To be honest I don't understand this since I play like an idiot and I tend to die a lot. But we'll go with the premise that survival Minecraft isn't difficult enough.

I'm not sure this would make the game more difficult, it would just mean the players have to fight more mobs than they usually need to. Even during the day, the player still has to defend his house from creepers and baby zombies.

I think this wrongly assumes that I, the player, want to turn my base into a village. There are many cases in which I would like to build a base that does not resemble a village at all, however. I may choose to build a giant underground bunker with a piston blast door, or I may choose to build a glass dome in the sky accessible via minecart elevators and elytra. There are plenty of occasions where my base is not going to consist of lots of doors so that it would qualify as a village.

The fence idea sounds interesting if perhaps you meant to say enclosing an area with a fence would prevent these hostile mobs from spawning, but this requires that the game check the surrounding area for a large fence enclosure whenever it needs to spawn one of these mobs. And again, there are times when I don't really want to put a giant fence around my base.

I think a better way to handle this would be that chunks the player spends long periods of time in will become "domestic" chunks. (And for the sake of keeping Villages safe, when a new Village is generated it will make nearby chunks "domestic") In these "domestic" chunks, hostile mobs whether they be daytime or nighttime mobs will spawn about half as frequently unless the light level is zero. That way you may be able to domesticate the surface, but underground caves will still be dangerous.

I don't necessarily know that anybody supports this. I think someone in the past suggested something similar and got a lot of flak for it, but I'm not entirely sure. However, the fact that someone else's suggestion is worse does not necessarily mean this suggestion is good.


I like some of the ideas in this post, though in its current state I wouldn't support its implementation.

I understand what you're saying

but I feel if the survival experience isn't revamped then too many players would never be satisfied with it.

Some other players on here have been asking for particular changes to be made to survival and I am proposing something for them.

I personally couldn't care less if natural predators were implemented into the game or not, we already have wolves and spiders, which technically already classify as predators. Spiders exist in real life, so do wolves.

But it would add something fresh and new to do, so the game doesn't become stale.

However I am also fully aware of another thing which games must follow.

Changing the rules of the game can ruin them, it wouldn't work for chess or poker, or sports, why would it work for any other game?

It's kind of like the "constitution of games" so to speak. There are some changes that work and some which don't.

Some people actually complained about the aquatic update, but I'm not sure why.

Drowned zombies don't bother me too much, sure the tridents do a lot of damage, but staying away from water if you're not wearing armour can avoid death from it. And if you kill drowned zombies there is a chance to drop a trident and a gold ingot, if I'm not mistaken.

Mojang haven't added changes to the game which didn't give some kind of benefit to the player.

Even the Phantom, which is demonstrably receiving negative feedback from some members of the community, drops membrane can be used to repair the elytra. Don't forget to use beds and the phantom will not spawn, it's that simple.

Or if players are using beds and you forgot yours while you were traveling, ask them to log out so they can use theirs.

That avoids the unnecessary disputes between players about wasted time, and again the phantom is avoided.

This trick will not help if you're on the world on your own, you absolutely must use a bed in this case to switch it to day time.

And obviously, this will never work in cave systems as unlit caves are already dark, regardless of what time it is in the game.

Quote from Agtrigormortis»

I understand what you're saying

but I feel if the survival experience isn't revamped then too many players would never be satisfied with it.

Some other players on here have been asking for particular changes to be made to survival and I am proposing something for them.

You're counterarguing my points by assuming that I do not agree with this idea that the survival game isn't hard enough. I guess I haven't really stated my opinion on it, and to be honest, I don't really have a hard opinion on whether it should be harder or easier. However, I specifically stated I would presume for the moment that the difficulty wasn't hard enough in my post.

This also seems like a weird thing to hinge upon since you're assuming that I'm not supporting this suggestion because the suggestion makes the game harder. That's not necessarily true, I just find this specific implementation to be ineffective.

I personally couldn't care less if natural predators were implemented into the game or not, we already have wolves and spiders, which technically already classify as predators. Spiders exist in real life, so do wolves.

This is true but, gigantic spiders do not exist in real life. I also didn't necessarily disagree with the addition of more natural predators, I just said that it wouldn't be an effective way of making the game more difficult.

But it would add something fresh and new to do, so the game doesn't become stale.

Again, I would argue that this isn't necessarily adding fresh new difficulty to the game. Now, perhaps if you suggested some kind of new combat mechanic that requires either skill or new dungeons that required puzzle-solving skills, that would be a good way of implementing some difficulty into the game. (Though the former would be more effective since the player engages in combat more often than they will with a random dungeon)

At most, this suggestion would require players to put large ugly lines of fences around their buildings or to create villages to protect themselves. I personally think this sounds very annoying to deal with since villages require villagers and these villagers would need to be tediously moved all around the world to create spaces safe from daytime mobs without the gigantic fence lines.

However I am also fully aware of another thing which games must follow.

Changing the rules of the game can ruin them, it wouldn't work for chess or poker, or sports, why would it work for any other game?

You're not necessarily changing rules though. While you are making the player deal with more mobs, you haven't actually changed a lot of core functionality of the game.

It's kind of like the "constitution of games" so to speak. There are some changes that work and some which don't.

I've never heard that term before.

Some people actually complained about the aquatic update, but I'm not sure why.

Drowned zombies don't bother me too much, sure the tridents do a lot of damage, but staying away from water if you're not wearing armour can avoid death from it. And if you kill drowned zombies there is a chance to drop a trident and a gold ingot, if I'm not mistaken.

I think you're assuming that players always complain only if the game gets harder. This is not true at all. People complain about changes that are not Minecraft-y enough, changes that are unrealistic, changes that make the game too easy, changes that remove content people are nostalgic for, and sometimes when there are no other good reasons, people will complain that the change just adds unnecessary bloat.

That being said, I've heard people say the drowned zombies are incredibly difficult to fight off and "staying away from water" is not really the advice I want to hear when I want to build my lakeside village near... a lake.

You go into this irrelevant tangent about the Phantom, there was only one line I thought I'd address.

..snip..if players are using beds and you forgot yours while you were traveling, ask them to log out so they can use theirs..snip..

This tangent had no real relevance to my post or to your initial post but I felt like mentioning that using a bed is not convenient for players, just as the gigantic fences or the village-in-every-chunk solutions to hostile daytime mobs would also not be very convenient. A lot of people would like to spend night-time continuing building things or mining without having to sleep every few nights. Sure, the ability to repair an elytra is useful, but I'm not going to Phantom Membranes on my fifth night in the game when I'm busy building my base and finding diamonds. (Which is ultimately the worst part of Phantom Membranes: there's no early-game use despite the fact that an early-game player is probably going to collect a lot if he doesn't actively go out and hunt spiders or sheep.)

I don't feel like you adequately addressed my arguments in my post. I think you should read my post again, figure out what I'm saying about the suggestion and then reply to me again.

Quote from C1ff»

I think you're assuming that players always complain only if the game gets harder. This is not true at all. People complain about changes that are not Minecraft-y enough, changes that are unrealistic, changes that make the game too easy, changes that remove content people are nostalgic for, and sometimes when there are no other good reasons, people will complain that the change just adds unnecessary bloat.

I never said that, so don't even go there, if you're going to be like this then this is not a conversation I want to be in as this is spiteful.

Quote from Agtrigormortis»

I never said that, so don't even go there, if you're going to be like this then this is not a conversation I want to be in as this is spiteful.

I'm not being spiteful, I pointed to a specific context where I thought you were making this argument. The context was that you were saying "I don't understand why people complain about the aquatic update", then you specifically went to Drowned Zombies. I pointed out that this may not necessarily be the only argument someone has against the aquatic update or even Drowned Zombies. (Either way, it's not relevant to my post and I think you're derailing the argument by going off on a tangent, and I'd prefer if you responded to my criticisms directly.)

Quote from C1ff»

I'm not being spiteful, I pointed to a specific context where I thought you were making this argument. The context was that you were saying "I don't understand why people complain about the aquatic update", then you specifically went to Drowned Zombies. I pointed out that this may not necessarily be the only argument someone has against the aquatic update or even Drowned Zombies. (Either way, it's not relevant to my post and I think you're derailing the argument by going off on a tangent, and I'd prefer if you responded to my criticisms directly.)

I said I wasn't sure why people complained about the aquatic update, there could be various reasons for it, perhaps they disagreed with the additional enchantments that involved the trident, or maybe they just didn't like the new water mechanics as it messed up their auto grinders, or whatever, idk.

The point is I don't see why they did complain, as it is probably one of the most interesting updates I've seen happen with the game. I like the dolphins, the turtles, and now that the fish are visible, along with the coral and seaweed etc. Previously oceans were boring in Minecraft, now they're not and are fun to explore.

In fact this is a testament to the fact that adding new animals to the game doesn't necessarily break it. I've been a fan of adding more biodiversity to the game since the beginning and only now are we beginning to get more creatures to spice things up a bit. Previously the fish while they could be caught with rods, they were otherwise invisible in the sea/rivers/lakes. And other than this the only animals we had before the ocelots/cats were the farm animals, squids, spiders and wolves. The biodiversity in Minecraft used to be hot garbage, but this is changing, and I am happy that it is.

On a different note, about what you said about drowned zombies.

Well, I have a fishing hut near a lake myself, but most of it is only 1 block deep, and because of that me and my friend who plays on the realm rarely encounter drowned in this area, they do come, but mostly underneath the half slab boardwalk where they cannot see us, we also have boats floating in the water, if they go to them by accident, they get stuck and are rendered harmless unless we get too close to them, they're not that difficult if you know how to deal with them.

It is the phantom who usually bother us while we are night fishing in the game, we have beds, but there have been nights where we got carried away and lost track of time only to end up being distracted by the phantom, and that's when we had to shoot it down with our bows.

Quote from Agtrigormortis»

..snip..

I was thinking of continuing this reply chain but this extended discussion over opinions on updates isn't productive and it's not on topic. Let's get back to the OT.

I think survival Minecraft is fine the way it is. It seems to be a good balance of luck (the seed you use) and skill. They've also added elements in recent updates that add more challenging/strategic elements to the game, such as pillagers, phantoms, crossbows, etc. Even if it didn't seem good enough, I think survival is making good progress anyway, and I don't think these ideas are necessary

10% support (because you put at least a little thought into it)

I honestly find it odd that there are polar bears, but no black or brown bears, or that wolves aren't conditionally hostile. Maybe wolves could be passive as long as you keep your distance, but step too close, and then they'll growl, and eventually attack. But, if you offer them food as you approach, they'll cautiously accept it.

As for other hostile creatures, like snakes, they could provide hard to get resources, such as poison, with a risk.

For a few months, pillager patrols could spawn in broad daylight. With more than a 20% chance (I can't find the exact number) of spawning four pillagers and possibly ravagers every ten minutes, they could have been considered a threat. They were eventually nerfed to only include pillagers. I still never struggled to fight five of them every ten minutes, with or without armor. A shield and sword could easily dispatch them. I never once was cautious about traveling outside during the day out of fear of being shot to death. They were just another minorly-annoying obstacle in my path.

As C1ff stated, the best way to add difficulty to Minecraft isn't to add random generic enemies. It's adding and changing features that work with the core mechanics to add difficulty.

1. Endermen can teleport. Shulkers can, too. Shulkers are also much less likely to attack. But they're so much more difficult than mere endermen because of their attack. Instead of relying on smacking players to death, they fire projectiles that travel in linear patterns. Your average player can't detect the subtlety of the bullets' movements, and due to their much smaller hitbox, they can't be destroyed as easily as Ghast fireballs.
2. Speaking of ghasts, when they were first added, you can bet players struggled to fight them. After all, how can you stop a far-away enemy that can shoot explosions? But as time passed, eventually players learned to take these gargantuan mobs down.
3. Next, imagine Withers and their skeletal versions. Wither Skeletons are tough, tall and fast. Plus, they can give you a death-inducing poison effect that covers your hearts. When I first saw them, I was afraid. They were too tough for me. When I finally slew one, it was very rewarding. I received coal and bones. Eventually, I learned about the skulls and transforming them into the Wither. The Wither was an absolute nightmare. It could fly, it could dish out a stronger Wither effect, it could destroy any block, and, halfway through the fight, it would gain immunity to bows. It was too dangerous to let survive yet too valuable to flee from if things turned sour. The power of Withers was a new challenge unlike anything I'd ever seen, so it certainly added difficulty.

I could continue by analyzing ocean monuments and the 1.9 dragon fight, but my point stands. Difficulty doesn't come from more danger; rather, it comes from new danger. I'd personally recommend either a new mob that gains better AI and more irregular attack patterns during the daytime or a new set of early to mid-game dungeons to compliment dungeons, abandoned mineshafts and nether fortresses.

Quote from Jancrash»

For a few months, pillager patrols could spawn in broad daylight. With more than a 20% chance (I can't find the exact number) of spawning four pillagers and possibly ravagers every ten minutes, they could have been considered a threat. They were eventually nerfed to only include pillagers. I still never struggled to fight five of them every ten minutes, with or without armor. A shield and sword could easily dispatch them. I never once was cautious about traveling outside during the day out of fear of being shot to death. They were just another minorly-annoying obstacle in my path.

As C1ff stated, the best way to add difficulty to Minecraft isn't to add random generic enemies. It's adding and changing features that work with the core mechanics to add difficulty.

1. Endermen can teleport. Shulkers can, too. Shulkers are also much less likely to attack. But they're so much more difficult than mere endermen because of their attack. Instead of relying on smacking players to death, they fire projectiles that travel in linear patterns. Your average player can't detect the subtlety of the bullets' movements, and due to their much smaller hitbox, they can't be destroyed as easily as Ghast fireballs.
2. Speaking of ghasts, when they were first added, you can bet players struggled to fight them. After all, how can you stop a far-away enemy that can shoot explosions? But as time passed, eventually players learned to take these gargantuan mobs down.
3. Next, imagine Withers and their skeletal versions. Wither Skeletons are tough, tall and fast. Plus, they can give you a death-inducing poison effect that covers your hearts. When I first saw them, I was afraid. They were too tough for me. When I finally slew one, it was very rewarding. I received coal and bones. Eventually, I learned about the skulls and transforming them into the Wither. The Wither was an absolute nightmare. It could fly, it could dish out a stronger Wither effect, it could destroy any block, and, halfway through the fight, it would gain immunity to bows. It was too dangerous to let survive yet too valuable to flee from if things turned sour. The power of Withers was a new challenge unlike anything I'd ever seen, so it certainly added difficulty.

I could continue by analyzing ocean monuments and the 1.9 dragon fight, but my point stands. Difficulty doesn't come from more danger; rather, it comes from new danger. I'd personally recommend either a new mob that gains better AI and more irregular attack patterns during the daytime or a new set of early to mid-game dungeons to compliment dungeons, abandoned mineshafts and nether fortresses.

The regular patrol of pillagers I didn't have much of a problem with, the majority of the time I stayed alive against them, only when caught off guard on a particular night when I was low on health from fighting skeletons did pillagers manage to take me out, but even then I recovered my equipment. What I did find difficult however was the raid, which I had encountered with 1 friend just hours ago. Next time I deal with the ravagers and the pillagers with the axes I will have to bring some enchanted iron armour, I was a long way from original spawn, and because I used a bed I was able to recover the items a friend dropped when he died, he forgot to keep his bed placed down before the raid and paid the price for it, he had to wait while I recovered his items and brought the cats home with me from the village we found.

Knowing what to expect means you can form an effective plan, if you know how. Bringing bows would help against the ravagers too I understand. Sometimes though having a new threat isn't a good thing, because if you don't know what to expect then you're not going to be prepared to deal with it. If I had known the raid was this dangerous I never would've attacked the pillager captain at the time until I had the right equipment on me.

Quote from Agtrigormortis»

Knowing what to expect means you can form an effective plan, if you know how. Bringing bows would help against the ravagers too I understand. Sometimes though having a new threat isn't a good thing, because if you don't know what to expect then you're not going to be prepared to deal with it. If I had known the raid was this dangerous I never would've attacked the pillager captain at the time until I had the right equipment on me.

Cheesing works just as well. I'd just drink milk or drown the captain in the first place to avoid the Bad Omen effect. And that's another problem with difficulty: eventually, someone will figure out how to exploit it.

Quote from Jancrash»

Cheesing works just as well. I'd just drink milk or drown the captain in the first place to avoid the Bad Omen effect. And that's another problem with difficulty: eventually, someone will figure out how to exploit it.

Challenges aren't supposed to be based on luck, or be impossible however, difficulty is about giving somebody a problem to solve, and if they use a strategy that helps them win that fits within the rules of the game and developer intent, that's not cheesing, it is skill.

If you choose to camp in a base somewhere which you built, say made from obsidian, so it couldn't be destroyed by Creeper explosions, that wouldn't be cheating or exploiting a glitch, you're using the mechanics of the game the way you're supposed to. If a similar strategy were used against the raids, same thing, except without the explosions part, since ravagers do not cause explosions.

Quote from Agtrigormortis»

Challenges aren't supposed to be based on luck, or be impossible however, difficulty is about giving somebody a problem to solve, and if they use a strategy that helps them win that fits within the rules of the game and developer intent, that's not cheesing, it is skill.

If you choose to camp in a base somewhere which you built, say made from obsidian, so it couldn't be destroyed by Creeper explosions, that wouldn't be cheating or exploiting a glitch, you're using the mechanics of the game the way you're supposed to. If a similar strategy were used against the raids, same thing, except without the explosions part, since ravagers do not cause explosions.

Perhaps my example was poorly chosen. What you ended up describing is normal gameplay, which isn't what I meant. I can't think of any proper examples of cheesing vs exploiting the way I intended to sound in Minecraft, so I'm going to use other examples.

Stunlocking an enemy so they can't attack would be cheesing how I meant it. If you have an attack they can stun enemies and/or interrupt their attack, no matter how frequently you can perform it, the devs most likely didn't intend for a player to spam it. But some people will choose to stun their enemies over and over, and at that point, the game loses all its difficulty. That's cheesing: the game is working fine, and no tricky workarounds are performed to execute it. Cheesing is debatable whether or not it would have been expected by the developers (although 90% of the time, that probably would be no.)This applies to a multitude of games.

As for exploiting, take Skyrim's infamous restoration loop. The "Fortify Restoration" potion effect increases the potency of restoration spells and effects, that being anything that boosts stats, as long as they are gained during its effect. The effect boosts other Fortify Skill effects. The developers somehow did not anticipate this specific ability boosting itself despite Restoration being a Skill. So players eventually learned they could gather dozens of Salt Piles, Abecean Longfins and Cyrodilic Spadetails, craft a Fortify Restoration potion, then drink that potion to boost the power of further potions. Within a few minutes of starting the loop, players were able to create forks that do billions of points of fire damage that would probably incinerate every living thing within the solar system.

That is a proper exploit: the game is working properly, but players find some loophole that destroys barriers. And you could argue that the developers could have left this in intentionally, but seeing as how they never created Fortify Alchemy potion effects or disenchantable Fortify Enchanting enchantments, I'd say it's safe to say the exploit was an accident.

How does this relate to the topic at hand? Difficulty can't be increased by adding more obstacles. There need to be new obstacles. Your example of cheesing with obsidian falls under normal gameplay that simply never occurred to the developers. A similar result would be taking milk buckets to ocean monuments to rid yourself of mining fatigue. A proper exploit would be like the underwater TNT bug/exploit. By surrounding TNT with blocks and placing a redstone block on top, the TNT can't register being underwater and will explode normally. The same result can be achieved by placing a sand block above a lone block of TNT before lighting it. The newly-placed sand displaces only the model (as far as I know), but since the blast's origin is technically not underwater, it explodes as normal and allows the player to skip the challenge of ocean monuments. Technically the engine is doing what it should. But there's no way the developers would have expected that. Trapping the Wither in a cube of bedrock so it suffocates has the same result.