In all honesty the netherite upgrade template feels really cheap still for the final tier of armor/tools. I feel like the recipe to duplicate the upgrade should cost ancient debris instead of the netherrack. I also feel like we could really use some sort of item or potion effect that can make babies never grow up, If you wanted a tadpole pond they will just age into frogs so that sort of thing is not possible or what if someone wants a aquarium filled with baby axolotls due to their more realistic size? Some new baby mobs would also be nice to have, like baby parrots maybe with hybrid colors? maybe even some color hybrids between axolotls. Dolphins already have baby variants in bedrock so its just a matter of time for them to make their way to java. Also on the topic of baby mobs it feels a boring that sniffers can be bred for a egg. That sort of defeats the purpose of the whole archeology mechanic because once you get 2 sniffer eggs everyone can have them and never have to explore for them again.
This is sort of two suggestions in one (or three, really).
I won't address the template duplication one as I'm not yet familiar with what it entails.
Having a way to keep entities in their baby state isn't something I'm opposed to. I'm indifferent about it. If this happens though, an method to undo it would be necessary, or else the room for griefing is there. Someone comes along to someone's food farm and freezes them all in a younger form. Or maybe it's simply something that only be done to mobs tamed by a player, and even them maybe by that same player? (Would still warrant and undo method.) This way would restrict it to certain things though.
As for sniffers and eggs, if sniffers couldn't breed, that would be strange. The idea for exploring for them is that they aren't native the the time, so you don't see them by default. They are seemingly supposed to feel a bit "prehistoric" in a way. I'm not saying Mojang couldn't have gone the way of wanting an egg to be found for each one but that's not the way they went with it. They seemingly wanted them to be more renewable, and more readily accessible once you find them.
7 diamonds is already pretty expensive for gear which is barely better than diamond in most aspects and already required diamond items to upgrade from (most items are several times more expensive than before; a shovel now needs 8 diamonds instead of 1 and even a chestplate is almost double the cost), especially once you enchant it (try comparing the mining speed of tools enchanted with Efficiency V, in fact, even wood and gold take the same amount of time to mine stone; or try killing most mobs with Sharpness V swords (10 vs 11 damage doesn't matter for most mobs, though zombies benefit due to their innate armor, but Smite and/or axes take care of that as well); and so on; the difference between iron and diamond is a lot greater, especially for armor (2x the base protection vs only some added "toughness" that is most visible against high-damage sources), and Mending makes durability mostly redundant); its main advantage, immunity to items burning in lava, is only a problem if you die that way a lot, and higher enchantability is likewise a one-time benefit to an already very cheap enchanting system (try playing a version before 1.8, or especially before 1.3).
Yes, the cost while progressing isn't linear (the cost gets higher and the increase doesn't proportionally match that), but I don't feel like it necessarily should have to. Flat progression is... well, less exciting. Games tend to have harder or more time involved moments at their "end" (Minecraft itself doesn't have a strict end, but the progression of armor ends with netherite so I feel like it makes for a good comparison).
Saying the extreme example (a shovel) takes something that costs one diamond and now requires 700% more sounds insane... until you realize a stack of diamonds (I'm presuming nine items; four armor, sword, and the four tools) give or take at that point of the game isn't too big of a big deal (especially since you can do it over time and you don't need it all at once). Maybe Mojang more wants people to be on a journey with Diamond for a bit rather than rapid rushing to netherrite? If so, I honestly don't have major objections to that. If you are investing into diamond stuff before upgrading it, then with a good diamond pickaxe (namely, with fortune), diamonds come quick. So the higher cost isn't that bad. At least it's not in my opinion, and here's why; you're still likely to be gated by the need of ancient debris/netherite ingots anyway. This is why I said it would have been a good opportunity to slightly (again, key word on slightly and not massively) increase ancient debris frequency to offset this a bit.
So yes, in a vacuum it sounds bad to describe it as needing anywhere from two to seven times more diamonds to upgrade, but that's missing the forest for the trees, and sensationalizes the change in a bad way because the entire process is nowhere near even twice the effort compared to before, let alone seven times. The real process hasn't moved a while lot unless you only did the minimum amount of diamond mining to begin with.
The reality is, now that gear can be kept forever and we don't have to craft it/enchant it anew all the time, this cost is fair. We're still having to be mine an order of magnitude less than before, and mining is in the name of the game's title. Nobody wants to do it. I'm disappointed I haven't had to do it much in my hardcore world and I'm wanting to do it just to do it. Sorry, ranting a bit. back to netherite upgrade costs...
Another thing is, as you said, it's not a massive upgrade over diamond anyway so the option to just not upgrade to netherite and not miss out much is always there.
I feel like a bit more of a fuss is being made about this in particular by the community. It feels like no balance changes are ever allowed to be done unless they make things more player favored, and never less, it seems, and that makes me sad. Forget (re)balancing with a wider scope in mind; it has to always get easier or people complain I guess. I don't envy Mojang here; people will always complain about something.
So yes, in a vacuum it sounds bad to describe it as needing anywhere from two to seven times more diamonds to upgrade, but that's missing the forest for the trees, and sensationalizes the change in a bad way because the entire process is nowhere near even twice the effort compared to before, let alone seven times. The real process hasn't moved a while lot unless you only did the minimum amount of diamond mining to begin with.
Some people think it is a huge deal (you know who I'm referring to, they constantly bring up the idea that Mending will be nerfed to require resources, no matter how much (little) of their time would be needed to require materials to repair them, claiming that "you spend all my time caving just to be able to maintain you gear" (which is completely untrue, even if I did not trade, as is the case in modded worlds, and not like I don't use my equipment a lot, nearly a whole Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe per play session). They also highly disliked the addition of netherite upgrade templates because now they need to actually go out exploring to find one (that said, I do think they should be guaranteed loot in one chest, perhaps more hidden/guarded).
There's also the general impression that most players don't care at all about mining/exploring/resource collection, no matter how easy it might be (and modern players are extremely spoiled in this regard; the addition of enchantments effectively made diamond 3-9 times more abundant (factoring in Fortune and the effectiveness of Unbreaking on armor/tools), which is why everybody says it was so rare in Beta when it was actually just as common until 1.8, which made veins 20% larger, and since 1.18 it appears to be more concentrated on its peak layers. Actually, 1.18 isn't even the first time they reduced diamond exposure in caves, Beta 1.8 halved the amount above lava level, while not affecting branch-mining).
I'm agree, netherite upgrade should be more expensive.
It's not worth it. As is, I will no longer bother with netherite. Bastions are the number one place I would want it for (knockback and lava protection - bastions are full of knocky enemies and lava), and you need to conquer one to get any netherite. So yeah, not worth it. Diamond stuff is renewable via trading.
It's not worth it. As is, I will no longer bother with netherite. Bastions are the number one place I would want it for (knockback and lava protection - bastions are full of knocky enemies and lava), and you need to conquer one to get any netherite. So yeah, not worth it. Diamond stuff is renewable via trading.
A lot of people seem to have the idea that since it is the final tier and is so hard to obtain netherite items must be so good but that just is not the case; diamond can do 99% of what netherite can for much cheaper and ease of obtainment (they are even making diamonds more common). The only case where I see it warranted is a sword since a Sharpness V diamond sword is insufficient to kill zombies in two normal hits (they have invisible "armor" which amounts to the equivalent of 21.74 health, 20.3 with maximum armor penetration, thus a weapon that deals at least 10.15 damage is required; diamond deals 10 and netherite deals 11).
If they really wanted netherite to clearly be the top tier they could nerf the amount of protection given by diamond, e.g. reduce it to 18 armor points, or 72% damage reduction, which is still 43% better than iron (diamond is currently 80% damage reduction or 20% of damage taken, half of iron's 60/40%. This also means that netherite would now be 40% better than diamond, plus a smaller benefit from its higher "armor toughness" at higher damage levels). Swords could also have a faster recharge rate, and so on, maybe the hardest to balance would be mining speed (with Efficiency V all tools take the same amount of time to mine stone (0.4 seconds), and any faster would break it instantly (0.05 seconds); the entire mining time calculation could be reworked to remove the delay added until then to allow for mining mines between 0.1-0.35 seconds. While this is more of an issue with Efficiency I doubt anybody doesn't use it on diamond+ tools, well, I don't use it on shovels, but definitely on pickaxes).
It's not worth it. As is, I will no longer bother with netherite. Bastions are the number one place I would want it for (knockback and lava protection - bastions are full of knocky enemies and lava), and you need to conquer one to get any netherite. So yeah, not worth it. Diamond stuff is renewable via trading.
I hate this protection from knockback. It breaks the pvp.
7 diamonds is already pretty expensive for gear which is barely better than diamond in most aspects and already required diamond items to upgrade from (most items are several times more expensive than before; a shovel now needs 8 diamonds instead of 1 and even a chestplate is almost double the cost), especially once you enchant it (try comparing the mining speed of tools enchanted with Efficiency V, in fact, even wood and gold take the same amount of time to mine stone; or try killing most mobs with Sharpness V swords (10 vs 11 damage doesn't matter for most mobs, though zombies benefit due to their innate armor, but Smite and/or axes take care of that as well); and so on; the difference between iron and diamond is a lot greater, especially for armor (2x the base protection vs only some added "toughness" that is most visible against high-damage sources), and Mending makes durability mostly redundant); its main advantage, immunity to items burning in lava, is only a problem if you die that way a lot, and higher enchantability is likewise a one-time benefit to an already very cheap enchanting system (try playing a version before 1.8, or especially before 1.3).
In hindsight this issue could have been made a whole lot worse, as even with the requirement to find and duplicate templates, once you have mending players still don't need to go out of their way to craft more sets of the same item, unless they are making spares just in case they die and lose their original set.
Even though templates cost 7 diamonds to duplicate, it's still much better than spending 60 diamonds to make 20 diamond pickaxes, mending still made this a non existent issue with lesser materials in the game. But the question becomes, how long will this last for?
People seem to misunderstand that there is a trend going on here, as it was announced in 1.20.2 trading will be nerfed as well. It is reasonable to assume enchantments themselves and how they work, won't be too far behind.
Before a friend of mine set up a Shulker farm in the End dimension on my server, I was able to get 11 Shulker boxes for myself purely by End City raiding, and still had a few Shulker Shells spare to pass a couple of friends an extra 6 each. This friend who used to frequent my server before inevitable boredom set in, he used to have 24 Shulker boxes after all the End City visits, now he has more because of his farm. I did explain to him we didn't need the farm, because even 10 Shulker boxes each would have been enough for us to transport the items we needed in bulk, but he decided to get ambitious, so I just let him get on with it while I did other things, it wasn't something worth arguing over.
Anyhow, if Mojang don't nerf the mending enchantment, it would very likely be some other enchantment just as useful, such as the Protection enchantments, or even Feather Falling, could you imagine having to deal with a nerf to these that resulted in players taking 50% additional damage from falling than they already do now? it was already possible to be insta killed by fall damage before if players weren't careful, but Mojang could go to extremes, a better alternative would be to reduce the duration of Potions of Slow Falling, which are arguably more broken than the enchantments on their own, this would force players to gauge their surroundings more closely, knowing a potion isn't going to save them every time.
In hindsight this issue could have been made a whole lot worse, as even with the requirement to find and duplicate templates, once you have mending players still don't need to go out of their way to craft more sets of the same item, unless they are making spares just in case they die and lose their original set.
Even though templates cost 7 diamonds to duplicate, it's still much better than spending 60 diamonds to make 20 diamond pickaxes, mending still made this a non existent issue with lesser materials in the game. But the question becomes, how long will this last for?
People seem to misunderstand that there is a trend going on here, as it was announced in 1.20.2 trading will be nerfed as well. It is reasonable to assume enchantments themselves and how they work, won't be too far behind.
Before a friend of mine set up a Shulker farm in the End dimension on my server, I was able to get 11 Shulker boxes for myself purely by End City raiding, and still had a few Shulker Shells spare to pass a couple of friends an extra 6 each. This friend who used to frequent my server before inevitable boredom set in, he used to have 24 Shulker boxes after all the End City visits, now he has more because of his farm. I did explain to him we didn't need the farm, because even 10 Shulker boxes each would have been enough for us to transport the items we needed in bulk, but he decided to get ambitious, so I just let him get on with it while I did other things, it wasn't something worth arguing over.
Anyhow, if Mojang don't nerf the mending enchantment, it would very likely be some other enchantment just as useful, such as the Protection enchantments, or even Feather Falling, could you imagine having to deal with a nerf to these that resulted in players taking 50% additional damage from falling than they already do now? it was already possible to be insta killed by fall damage before if players weren't careful, but Mojang could go to extremes, a better alternative would be to reduce the duration of Potions of Slow Falling, which are arguably more broken than the enchantments on their own, this would force players to gauge their surroundings more closely, knowing a potion isn't going to save them every time.
How would your friends make a shulker farm? They spawn one at a time. How do you supposedly make a farm of something that is non-renewable?
Mojang doesn't need to weaken mending, in 1.20.2 they will weaken trade with librarians, which is the main way to get mending. Comunity Minecraft is ridiculous, one minute they want to weaken mending, and then they complain about weakening trade with librarians.
How would your friends make a shulker farm? They spawn one at a time. How do you supposedly make a farm of something that is non-renewable?
Mojang doesn't need to weaken mending, in 1.20.2 they will weaken trade with librarians, which is the main way to get mending. Comunity Minecraft is ridiculous, one minute they want to weaken mending, and then they complain about weakening trade with librarians.
The issue with the Librarian trades is what they're being replaced with are extremely lackluster
Some people disagreed with my suggestion on adding in quests to unlock powerful enchantments with Villager Librarians, with the worry it would make the game excessively grindy, but how is this any better? in my humble opinion and this is informed, not just a wild guess, it's much worse, because while if it were mission based after taking the job from the Librarian, would have meant you could potentially unlock trades after finding books in naturally generated structures, and the probability of the enchanted books you need showing up could've been reworked with this update as well, so they weren't too rare in Dungeons, Pillager Outposts, Strongholds or treasure chests.
As of 1.20.2 you will need to search out different biomes, how is this a problem? while the Overworld isn't too difficult to survive in, this isn't the problem, it's time. Some biomes are rarer than other's, and depending on the world seed, you may not even find a swamp for 5,000 or even 10,000 blocks from origin. Then there is the obvious backtracking that would need to be done in order to actually use these trades between different biomes, and the time it would take to move Villagers from end to end in minecarts or boats. With that in mind, yeah, I can see why people would think this is lame.
On the contrary, if it were mission/quest based, given enough time, you could feasibly unlock any trade you want within the same biome.
It's not rocket science, sometimes I think Mojang just add in features without play testing them. Even a nerf to Zombie Villager curing so the price gap between them and regular Villagers was smaller, would have been better than this.
Lol like what did people do before mending, right?
I used to just slapstick whatever enchantments I got onto whatever I had, and it worked fine.
If you played in 1.4-1.7 you could rename an item and repair it forever as long as it didn't have too many enchantments (which IMO is far more balanced than Mending, and this is how it works in TMCW) - I've literally used the same items for as long as a decade and millions of uses, no need to ever enchant new ones or replace them (except for the few that I've accidentally broken); if you think that just enchanting items for a few levels and using them until they break is better then you are missing out on so much (max-level enchantments, Unbreaking on weapons and armor, etc. People often wonder how I mange to cave so efficiently, well, my gear is a big reason):
If the item has been renamed at any point, the penalty is always 2 levels, regardless of further alterations.
I find it odd that so many people did not seem to know about this given that the Wiki first mentioned it days after the release of 1.4.2, when anvils were added (if you didn't read the Wiki, well, maybe, but then how did anybody ever figure out Nether portals, or how to get to the End, and so on without looking it up?):
Revision as of 01:51, 31 October 2012
Renaming an item makes it exempt from increasing repair costs on all future repairs.
Also, the removal of this mechanic alone would have been reason enough to never update past 1.7.10 (unmodded vanilla) - I actually even made a mod that reverted the changes to anvil mechanics in 1.8 (entirely, not just restoring renaming, otherwise repairing would be impossibly broken since any item could be repaired for only 1-4 levels).
If you played in 1.4-1.7 you could rename an item and repair it forever as long as it didn't have too many enchantments (which IMO is far more balanced than Mending, and this is how it works in TMCW) - I've literally used the same items for as long as a decade and millions of uses, no need to ever enchant new ones or replace them (except for the few that I've accidentally broken); if you think that just enchanting items for a few levels and using them until they break is better then you are missing out on so much (max-level enchantments, Unbreaking on weapons and armor, etc. People often wonder how I mange to cave so efficiently, well, my gear is a big reason):
I find it odd that so many people did not seem to know about this given that the Wiki first mentioned it days after the release of 1.4.2, when anvils were added (if you didn't read the Wiki, well, maybe, but then how did anybody ever figure out Nether portals, or how to get to the End, and so on without looking it up?):
Also, the removal of this mechanic alone would have been reason enough to never update past 1.7.10 (unmodded vanilla) - I actually even made a mod that reverted the changes to anvil mechanics in 1.8 (entirely, not just restoring renaming, otherwise repairing would be impossibly broken since any item could be repaired for only 1-4 levels).
Well I just find renaming items to feel vain and I don't want to do it. But it's also not intuitively obvious nor really necessary - and that goes for enchanting and potions in general.
In all honesty the netherite upgrade template feels really cheap still for the final tier of armor/tools. I feel like the recipe to duplicate the upgrade should cost ancient debris instead of the netherrack. I also feel like we could really use some sort of item or potion effect that can make babies never grow up, If you wanted a tadpole pond they will just age into frogs so that sort of thing is not possible or what if someone wants a aquarium filled with baby axolotls due to their more realistic size? Some new baby mobs would also be nice to have, like baby parrots maybe with hybrid colors? maybe even some color hybrids between axolotls. Dolphins already have baby variants in bedrock so its just a matter of time for them to make their way to java. Also on the topic of baby mobs it feels a boring that sniffers can be bred for a egg. That sort of defeats the purpose of the whole archeology mechanic because once you get 2 sniffer eggs everyone can have them and never have to explore for them again.
This is sort of two suggestions in one (or three, really).
I won't address the template duplication one as I'm not yet familiar with what it entails.
Having a way to keep entities in their baby state isn't something I'm opposed to. I'm indifferent about it. If this happens though, an method to undo it would be necessary, or else the room for griefing is there. Someone comes along to someone's food farm and freezes them all in a younger form. Or maybe it's simply something that only be done to mobs tamed by a player, and even them maybe by that same player? (Would still warrant and undo method.) This way would restrict it to certain things though.
As for sniffers and eggs, if sniffers couldn't breed, that would be strange. The idea for exploring for them is that they aren't native the the time, so you don't see them by default. They are seemingly supposed to feel a bit "prehistoric" in a way. I'm not saying Mojang couldn't have gone the way of wanting an egg to be found for each one but that's not the way they went with it. They seemingly wanted them to be more renewable, and more readily accessible once you find them.
7 diamonds is already pretty expensive for gear which is barely better than diamond in most aspects and already required diamond items to upgrade from (most items are several times more expensive than before; a shovel now needs 8 diamonds instead of 1 and even a chestplate is almost double the cost), especially once you enchant it (try comparing the mining speed of tools enchanted with Efficiency V, in fact, even wood and gold take the same amount of time to mine stone; or try killing most mobs with Sharpness V swords (10 vs 11 damage doesn't matter for most mobs, though zombies benefit due to their innate armor, but Smite and/or axes take care of that as well); and so on; the difference between iron and diamond is a lot greater, especially for armor (2x the base protection vs only some added "toughness" that is most visible against high-damage sources), and Mending makes durability mostly redundant); its main advantage, immunity to items burning in lava, is only a problem if you die that way a lot, and higher enchantability is likewise a one-time benefit to an already very cheap enchanting system (try playing a version before 1.8, or especially before 1.3).
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?
Yes, the cost while progressing isn't linear (the cost gets higher and the increase doesn't proportionally match that), but I don't feel like it necessarily should have to. Flat progression is... well, less exciting. Games tend to have harder or more time involved moments at their "end" (Minecraft itself doesn't have a strict end, but the progression of armor ends with netherite so I feel like it makes for a good comparison).
Saying the extreme example (a shovel) takes something that costs one diamond and now requires 700% more sounds insane... until you realize a stack of diamonds (I'm presuming nine items; four armor, sword, and the four tools) give or take at that point of the game isn't too big of a big deal (especially since you can do it over time and you don't need it all at once). Maybe Mojang more wants people to be on a journey with Diamond for a bit rather than rapid rushing to netherrite? If so, I honestly don't have major objections to that. If you are investing into diamond stuff before upgrading it, then with a good diamond pickaxe (namely, with fortune), diamonds come quick. So the higher cost isn't that bad. At least it's not in my opinion, and here's why; you're still likely to be gated by the need of ancient debris/netherite ingots anyway. This is why I said it would have been a good opportunity to slightly (again, key word on slightly and not massively) increase ancient debris frequency to offset this a bit.
So yes, in a vacuum it sounds bad to describe it as needing anywhere from two to seven times more diamonds to upgrade, but that's missing the forest for the trees, and sensationalizes the change in a bad way because the entire process is nowhere near even twice the effort compared to before, let alone seven times. The real process hasn't moved a while lot unless you only did the minimum amount of diamond mining to begin with.
The reality is, now that gear can be kept forever and we don't have to craft it/enchant it anew all the time, this cost is fair. We're still having to be mine an order of magnitude less than before, and mining is in the name of the game's title. Nobody wants to do it. I'm disappointed I haven't had to do it much in my hardcore world and I'm wanting to do it just to do it. Sorry, ranting a bit. back to netherite upgrade costs...
Another thing is, as you said, it's not a massive upgrade over diamond anyway so the option to just not upgrade to netherite and not miss out much is always there.
I feel like a bit more of a fuss is being made about this in particular by the community. It feels like no balance changes are ever allowed to be done unless they make things more player favored, and never less, it seems, and that makes me sad. Forget (re)balancing with a wider scope in mind; it has to always get easier or people complain I guess. I don't envy Mojang here; people will always complain about something.
Some people think it is a huge deal (you know who I'm referring to, they constantly bring up the idea that Mending will be nerfed to require resources, no matter how much (little) of their time would be needed to require materials to repair them, claiming that "you spend all my time caving just to be able to maintain you gear" (which is completely untrue, even if I did not trade, as is the case in modded worlds, and not like I don't use my equipment a lot, nearly a whole Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe per play session). They also highly disliked the addition of netherite upgrade templates because now they need to actually go out exploring to find one (that said, I do think they should be guaranteed loot in one chest, perhaps more hidden/guarded).
There's also the general impression that most players don't care at all about mining/exploring/resource collection, no matter how easy it might be (and modern players are extremely spoiled in this regard; the addition of enchantments effectively made diamond 3-9 times more abundant (factoring in Fortune and the effectiveness of Unbreaking on armor/tools), which is why everybody says it was so rare in Beta when it was actually just as common until 1.8, which made veins 20% larger, and since 1.18 it appears to be more concentrated on its peak layers. Actually, 1.18 isn't even the first time they reduced diamond exposure in caves, Beta 1.8 halved the amount above lava level, while not affecting branch-mining).
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?
You want to be able to keep baby mobs as babies forever? There's some plants in the game that this can be done too - I think glow vines.
Nope, though mods like quark make poison potatoes useful for that by poisoning the mob but keeping it as a baby.
Aminal cruelty!
But I dont see how poison would infantilize a baby. Either it lives or dies.
I'm agree, netherite upgrade should be more expensive.
It's not worth it. As is, I will no longer bother with netherite. Bastions are the number one place I would want it for (knockback and lava protection - bastions are full of knocky enemies and lava), and you need to conquer one to get any netherite. So yeah, not worth it. Diamond stuff is renewable via trading.
A lot of people seem to have the idea that since it is the final tier and is so hard to obtain netherite items must be so good but that just is not the case; diamond can do 99% of what netherite can for much cheaper and ease of obtainment (they are even making diamonds more common). The only case where I see it warranted is a sword since a Sharpness V diamond sword is insufficient to kill zombies in two normal hits (they have invisible "armor" which amounts to the equivalent of 21.74 health, 20.3 with maximum armor penetration, thus a weapon that deals at least 10.15 damage is required; diamond deals 10 and netherite deals 11).
If they really wanted netherite to clearly be the top tier they could nerf the amount of protection given by diamond, e.g. reduce it to 18 armor points, or 72% damage reduction, which is still 43% better than iron (diamond is currently 80% damage reduction or 20% of damage taken, half of iron's 60/40%. This also means that netherite would now be 40% better than diamond, plus a smaller benefit from its higher "armor toughness" at higher damage levels). Swords could also have a faster recharge rate, and so on, maybe the hardest to balance would be mining speed (with Efficiency V all tools take the same amount of time to mine stone (0.4 seconds), and any faster would break it instantly (0.05 seconds); the entire mining time calculation could be reworked to remove the delay added until then to allow for mining mines between 0.1-0.35 seconds. While this is more of an issue with Efficiency I doubt anybody doesn't use it on diamond+ tools, well, I don't use it on shovels, but definitely on pickaxes).
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 hate this protection from knockback. It breaks the pvp.
In hindsight this issue could have been made a whole lot worse, as even with the requirement to find and duplicate templates, once you have mending players still don't need to go out of their way to craft more sets of the same item, unless they are making spares just in case they die and lose their original set.
Even though templates cost 7 diamonds to duplicate, it's still much better than spending 60 diamonds to make 20 diamond pickaxes, mending still made this a non existent issue with lesser materials in the game. But the question becomes, how long will this last for?
People seem to misunderstand that there is a trend going on here, as it was announced in 1.20.2 trading will be nerfed as well. It is reasonable to assume enchantments themselves and how they work, won't be too far behind.
Before a friend of mine set up a Shulker farm in the End dimension on my server, I was able to get 11 Shulker boxes for myself purely by End City raiding, and still had a few Shulker Shells spare to pass a couple of friends an extra 6 each. This friend who used to frequent my server before inevitable boredom set in, he used to have 24 Shulker boxes after all the End City visits, now he has more because of his farm. I did explain to him we didn't need the farm, because even 10 Shulker boxes each would have been enough for us to transport the items we needed in bulk, but he decided to get ambitious, so I just let him get on with it while I did other things, it wasn't something worth arguing over.
Anyhow, if Mojang don't nerf the mending enchantment, it would very likely be some other enchantment just as useful, such as the Protection enchantments, or even Feather Falling, could you imagine having to deal with a nerf to these that resulted in players taking 50% additional damage from falling than they already do now? it was already possible to be insta killed by fall damage before if players weren't careful, but Mojang could go to extremes, a better alternative would be to reduce the duration of Potions of Slow Falling, which are arguably more broken than the enchantments on their own, this would force players to gauge their surroundings more closely, knowing a potion isn't going to save them every time.
How would your friends make a shulker farm? They spawn one at a time. How do you supposedly make a farm of something that is non-renewable?
Mojang doesn't need to weaken mending, in 1.20.2 they will weaken trade with librarians, which is the main way to get mending. Comunity Minecraft is ridiculous, one minute they want to weaken mending, and then they complain about weakening trade with librarians.
The issue with the Librarian trades is what they're being replaced with are extremely lackluster
Some people disagreed with my suggestion on adding in quests to unlock powerful enchantments with Villager Librarians, with the worry it would make the game excessively grindy, but how is this any better? in my humble opinion and this is informed, not just a wild guess, it's much worse, because while if it were mission based after taking the job from the Librarian, would have meant you could potentially unlock trades after finding books in naturally generated structures, and the probability of the enchanted books you need showing up could've been reworked with this update as well, so they weren't too rare in Dungeons, Pillager Outposts, Strongholds or treasure chests.
As of 1.20.2 you will need to search out different biomes, how is this a problem? while the Overworld isn't too difficult to survive in, this isn't the problem, it's time. Some biomes are rarer than other's, and depending on the world seed, you may not even find a swamp for 5,000 or even 10,000 blocks from origin. Then there is the obvious backtracking that would need to be done in order to actually use these trades between different biomes, and the time it would take to move Villagers from end to end in minecarts or boats. With that in mind, yeah, I can see why people would think this is lame.
On the contrary, if it were mission/quest based, given enough time, you could feasibly unlock any trade you want within the same biome.
It's not rocket science, sometimes I think Mojang just add in features without play testing them. Even a nerf to Zombie Villager curing so the price gap between them and regular Villagers was smaller, would have been better than this.
You don't have to search biomes, it won't be worth.
Lol like what did people do before mending, right?
I used to just slapstick whatever enchantments I got onto whatever I had, and it worked fine.
If you played in 1.4-1.7 you could rename an item and repair it forever as long as it didn't have too many enchantments (which IMO is far more balanced than Mending, and this is how it works in TMCW) - I've literally used the same items for as long as a decade and millions of uses, no need to ever enchant new ones or replace them (except for the few that I've accidentally broken); if you think that just enchanting items for a few levels and using them until they break is better then you are missing out on so much (max-level enchantments, Unbreaking on weapons and armor, etc. People often wonder how I mange to cave so efficiently, well, my gear is a big reason):
I find it odd that so many people did not seem to know about this given that the Wiki first mentioned it days after the release of 1.4.2, when anvils were added (if you didn't read the Wiki, well, maybe, but then how did anybody ever figure out Nether portals, or how to get to the End, and so on without looking it up?):
Also, the removal of this mechanic alone would have been reason enough to never update past 1.7.10 (unmodded vanilla) - I actually even made a mod that reverted the changes to anvil mechanics in 1.8 (entirely, not just restoring renaming, otherwise repairing would be impossibly broken since any item could be repaired for only 1-4 levels).
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?
Well I just find renaming items to feel vain and I don't want to do it. But it's also not intuitively obvious nor really necessary - and that goes for enchanting and potions in general.