Drowned in Java are terribly unbalanced. They spawn at acceptable levels in ruins and in nighttime oceans but you never see them in rivers or underwater caves, lakes at surface or underground, etc. On my recent server I have seen some glitches where loading chunks twice caused duplications of mobs to spawn leading to e.g. mobs of drowned near ruins and a fourth elder guardian in a monument nearby. But in general drowned are very rare.
At the same time, their power levels are unequal. They swim so slowly it's painful, and can't use their fishing rods. They are only a threat in groups as such, if a baby is around, or one or more carries tridents. And then tridents are overpowered, firing fast without any return-to-sender, (the computer always cheats), and drowned never melee with the trident at close range which is both awkward and annoying for combat.
Now, in Bedrock we get the opposite set of problems. Drowned here are overabundantly common, spawning in rivers and surface-water-caves even in full sunlight at daytime if the water of body is more than three blocks deep. You also have many more with tridents and many babies, but the trident-bearers melee at close. Here, the drowned all swim properly, and the regular ones are fast, but the babies are absurdly fast by contrast, though still not much different than land zombie babies.
And because Bedrock is weird with loot drops, giving you a much higher chance in my experience of getting bows from skeletons for example and armour from undead, you end up with multitudes of tridents from drowned easily, whereas in a java world I am lucky to meet more than a handful of drowned with tridents and barely get one trident after ages of playing. Forcing me to get mending on it immediately, really, and there we go into villager trade change testing feature having rippling effects... The unbalanced rare weapon thing is already seen with elytras (barely a few end cities have ships due to how big the End is and how often cities spawn with just a tower or a few towers, no docks), and maces (you can only use a key box once per player but get many keys). Tridents really need balance here.
Addendum: the only thing helping me get tridents in java is that ocean ruins are super common now.
What is my suggestion overall?
> Match bedrock to java. Beyond baby animals and dying/dead trees. Have Drowned spawn at moderate rates and speeds and tridents drop often enough while trident-bearers meleeing at close range so fighting them doesn't kill either you or your shield (don't skill issue me).
I thought a while back, drowned were made far less common in oceans, so it should be rivers that you find them in more? I seldom see then in oceans. They are still somewhat rare in smaller rivers since the river needs to be large/deep enough, but as of 1.18, there are more rivers that are like that.
While I wouldn't mind some changes to make them spawn a little more often, I don't think it needs a substantial change because I wouldn't want any river to be a constant threat. A light level restriction (or depth restriction, whichever it uses), and a biome restriction seems like it works well for me.
Moving a little faster than they do now in order to make them more useful wouldn't get any complaints out of me, but like my opinion with the previous thing, I don't think this needs changed substantially either. Zombies are meant to be a slow moving entity, so I don't exactly think they should be nimble and swimming like an athlete.
The drowned with tridents should definitely spawn more (so that less of them are slow moving fodder), and the ones that do spawn should also drop them more. I think that's something most Java players agree on, especially since the trident itself more or less needs the loyalty enchantment to make it usable. I remember Mojang saying they didn't want that to be the case, but unless they get rid of the enchantment and make the behavior innate to the trident, there's probably no fixing that now. It would at least make the trident worth using and risking it being thrown away if it wasn't so hard to get in the first place though.
Drowned in Java are terribly unbalanced. They spawn at acceptable levels in ruins and in nighttime oceans but you never see them in rivers or underwater caves, lakes at surface or underground, etc. On my recent server I have seen some glitches where loading chunks twice caused duplications of mobs to spawn leading to e.g. mobs of drowned near ruins and a fourth elder guardian in a monument nearby. But in general drowned are very rare.
At the same time, their power levels are unequal. They swim so slowly it's painful, and can't use their fishing rods. They are only a threat in groups as such, if a baby is around, or one or more carries tridents. And then tridents are overpowered, firing fast without any return-to-sender, (the computer always cheats), and drowned never melee with the trident at close range which is both awkward and annoying for combat.
Now, in Bedrock we get the opposite set of problems. Drowned here are overabundantly common, spawning in rivers and surface-water-caves even in full sunlight at daytime if the water of body is more than three blocks deep. You also have many more with tridents and many babies, but the trident-bearers melee at close. Here, the drowned all swim properly, and the regular ones are fast, but the babies are absurdly fast by contrast, though still not much different than land zombie babies.
And because Bedrock is weird with loot drops, giving you a much higher chance in my experience of getting bows from skeletons for example and armour from undead, you end up with multitudes of tridents from drowned easily, whereas in a java world I am lucky to meet more than a handful of drowned with tridents and barely get one trident after ages of playing. Forcing me to get mending on it immediately, really, and there we go into villager trade change testing feature having rippling effects... The unbalanced rare weapon thing is already seen with elytras (barely a few end cities have ships due to how big the End is and how often cities spawn with just a tower or a few towers, no docks), and maces (you can only use a key box once per player but get many keys). Tridents really need balance here.
Addendum: the only thing helping me get tridents in java is that ocean ruins are super common now.
What is my suggestion overall?
> Match bedrock to java. Beyond baby animals and dying/dead trees. Have Drowned spawn at moderate rates and speeds and tridents drop often enough while trident-bearers meleeing at close range so fighting them doesn't kill either you or your shield (don't skill issue me).
I thought a while back, drowned were made far less common in oceans, so it should be rivers that you find them in more? I seldom see then in oceans. They are still somewhat rare in smaller rivers since the river needs to be large/deep enough, but as of 1.18, there are more rivers that are like that.
While I wouldn't mind some changes to make them spawn a little more often, I don't think it needs a substantial change because I wouldn't want any river to be a constant threat. A light level restriction (or depth restriction, whichever it uses), and a biome restriction seems like it works well for me.
Moving a little faster than they do now in order to make them more useful wouldn't get any complaints out of me, but like my opinion with the previous thing, I don't think this needs changed substantially either. Zombies are meant to be a slow moving entity, so I don't exactly think they should be nimble and swimming like an athlete.
The drowned with tridents should definitely spawn more (so that less of them are slow moving fodder), and the ones that do spawn should also drop them more. I think that's something most Java players agree on, especially since the trident itself more or less needs the loyalty enchantment to make it usable. I remember Mojang saying they didn't want that to be the case, but unless they get rid of the enchantment and make the behavior innate to the trident, there's probably no fixing that now. It would at least make the trident worth using and risking it being thrown away if it wasn't so hard to get in the first place though.