I don't think this has been addressed; At least not in the first three pages of search, and certainly not in the pinned thread.
Everyone knows how hoes work, right? You use them to till field squares so you can plant wheat... And so far, only wheat, in vanilla.
Which is... Kind of pointless.
Who here has a field of 60 squares of wheat? I don't, and I'm pretty certain I never will.
Which generally means...
One wood hoe, created to start the field; Average 30 or so uses. A well-built wheat field is generally protected from pigs and stuff, so maintenance is a rare thing. This means you'll average break it after maybe a stack of wheat, maybe two stacks, at which point you... Save your iron for more useful tools, and use wood to make another 60 uses worth of hoe.
You with me so far? That all seems logical and straightforward. No excessive assumptions. It's not like tilling takes time or effort, right?
Anyway, this sort of negates most of the usefulness of the higher level hoes. This, then can be "solved" (Insomuch that it's less an actual problem and more just a minor annoyance.) several ways;
1) Increase the Wood Hoe's uses to 180, remove higher variations.
2) Merge Hoe into Shovel, allowing the shovel to till blocks.
Or...
3) When the hoe is used to strike a plant, such as a flower, or wheat, or sugarcane, that plant is immediately moved to the inventory, instead of flying off at wild, at the cost of one use of the tool.
I doubt this will be much more complicated to code than wolves.
This is waay too loong.... I'm sure you can shorten this up :wink.gif:
Would it be a valid suggestion if I were to say "Hoes do nothing, give them more functions, such as:" without explaining exactly what I mean by "nothing"?
No, I don't think it would. This is not a ridiculous amount of text.
I do see what you're getting at with making hoes collect the crops for you, but why would you choose a wood hoe over a cobblestone one? cobblestone will be in much greater supply than wood once you start mining which means a stone hoe is actually easier then a wood hoe to obtain
You make one stone hoe, ever, and never make another? That's more or less the same difference, in the grand scheme of things, isn't it?
Edit: since the original post was pointlessly small, I might as well admit now that any of the suggestions I made are equally appealing, in the long run, I've just got a selfish interest in the hoes-as-harvesting-tools-as-well-as-tilling-devices.
With a stone hoe you can make multiple farms. Just think... If I had a house and I made a farm, cool I made a small farm that nice, but when I have another home somewhere else ((I usually have up to 6 homes in my singleplayer games)) Then I want to be able to harvest wheat there too! So I could you this tool with more uses, I sometimes even use iron hoes! Sometimes your in a multiplayer server and the huge town needs a huge farm! The multiple levels of hoes is quite interesting. I believe Notch should keep the hoes as they are
Perhaps make it so, that when you use a hoe on wildgrass it increases the chance on seeds? I know, not a major change, but giving it more uses then till fields & farm wheat is a good start.
Could also be combined with flowergather, if you use a hoe on flowers, you can get flowerseeds from it, allowing you to replant them.
I think this is probably the best idea. Really, once you have your farm, hoes become useless unless you want a new farm, and even then, you make a stone hoe and then throw it away. Why waste space? So if you could plant a flower on hoed land to make it grow, or use hoes when planting trees to maybe get an apple tree. It doesn't have to be just like that, but something similar to use hoes for so that it is actually useful for more than forty uses.
At first I thought, wtf?? Minecraft needs hoes about as much as it needs drugs and gangs (which it doesn't). Then I read, and I was like - oh right... that kind of hoe...
Anyway, I don't care too much for farming until the game play is changed. It's so easy to stay alive. Even on hard, you can get away with very little food. Pig hunting gives me all the food I need. Although I have a small crop for the days I'm too lazy to wander off into the woods.
However, I don't agree with the current system. Food should be more important. And if this were the case, farming should be expanded on.
Now that seeds are aquired by breaking tall grass I don't see why we can't just get rid of the hoe altogether. Using seeds on the ground could just auto-till the soil and plant the seeds. It would be one less underused tool in the game to worry about.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Mostly moved on. May check back a few times a year.
But the consensus is that, generally, Hoes could definitely be more useful?
Definitely. I could get through my whole game now with one stone hoe, and it probably wouldn't be broken at the end. We can all agree, they are underpowered, the question is, how can we make them better? Two solutions I have heard are:
-After each harvest you would have to till the land again. Although might get annoying, it would make hoes useful again.
-Requiring the ground to be hoed in order to make other plants reproduce, such as flowers, or perhaps hoeing the ground for trees my produce apple trees. Personally, I prefer the former, as this seems like a bit of a stretch.
Definitely. I could get through my whole game now with one stone hoe, and it probably wouldn't be broken at the end. We can all agree, they are underpowered, the question is, how can we make them better? Two solutions I have heard are:
-After each harvest you would have to till the land again. Although might get annoying, it would make hoes useful again.
-Requiring the ground to be hoed in order to make other plants reproduce, such as flowers, or perhaps hoeing the ground for trees my produce apple trees. Personally, I prefer the former, as this seems like a bit of a stretch.
Those seem more "pointlessly frustrating" than "Valid and productive expansions to the experience", if you ask me.
But the consensus is that, generally, Hoes could definitely be more useful?
They are definely pretty useless right now. I've never made an iron or diamond hoe. There's no advantages besides durability, and they're not used often enough for that to matter.
Edit: I've never made a gold hoe, either. It's worse than stone in every way.
What if tilling over tall grass with a hoe doubles (even triples?) the possibility of a seed coming out? This would make them slightly more useful at the beginning, but it still isn't a perfect fix, as after getting five seeds like that you won't need anymore.
I agree that hoes need more functionality and should be valued more. I also think that all weapons should have a little more variation, though (block with sword, attack with axe, gold tools have magic effect, etc), but that's for another thread.
Use hoes to pick up tall grass, shrubs, and flowers, and automatically place them in your inventory. Punching any of them otherwise destroys them, but may leave seeds for that plant (seeds for wheat, bulbs for shrub, flower). The plant should occaisonally produce and drop seeds or bulbs, if planted on fairly well-watered tilled soil. Flowers and shrubs can be planted on plain dirt or grass but will not produce seeds or bulbs. Apple and cocoa trees can be found in the wild but require tilled grass to grow saplings.
In addition to giving higher-quality hoes more durability, they take less time to till land. Yeah, this means making current hoes worse. To till one block of dirt with a wood hoe, it'd take like one second, whereas tilling with a diamond hoe would take a fourth of a second. Tilling dirt with a gold hoe leaves the dirt brighter than normal, and the plant takes less time to grow. A gold hoe takes the same amount of time to till land as a stone hoe, however, and has just as much durability as an iron hoe.
Also, I'd love to be able to till sand and gravel, in addition to dirt. Not to grow plants, well, maybe cacti, but to make a zen garden or something. Tilled sand and gravel should be a lot more durable than tilled dirt, because the sand or gravel is not required to be loose enough to bear plants. Tilled sand and gravel should take maybe ten steps, whereas tilled dirt should take like three steps before reverting to flat dirt.
I kind of went off on a tangent and changed the way plants work, in addition to adding two new trees, instead of just changing hoes, but I think it's necessary to add more to the game to make hoes more functional.
I agree that hoes need more functionality and should be valued more. I also think that all weapons should have a little more variation, though (block with sword, attack with axe, gold tools have magic effect, etc), but that's for another thread.
Use hoes to pick up tall grass, shrubs, and flowers, and automatically place them in your inventory. Punching any of them otherwise destroys them, but may leave seeds for that plant (seeds for wheat, bulbs for shrub, flower). The plant should occaisonally produce and drop seeds or bulbs, if planted on fairly well-watered tilled soil. Flowers and shrubs can be planted on plain dirt or grass but will not produce seeds or bulbs. Apple and cocoa trees can be found in the wild but require tilled grass to grow saplings.
In addition to giving higher-quality hoes more durability, they take less time to till land. Yeah, this means making current hoes worse. To till one block of dirt with a wood hoe, it'd take like one second, whereas tilling with a diamond hoe would take a fourth of a second. Tilling dirt with a gold hoe leaves the dirt brighter than normal, and the plant takes less time to grow. A gold hoe takes the same amount of time to till land as a stone hoe, however, and has just as much durability as an iron hoe.
Also, I'd love to be able to till sand and gravel, in addition to dirt. Not to grow plants, well, maybe cacti, but to make a zen garden or something. Tilled sand and gravel should be a lot more durable than tilled dirt, because the sand or gravel is not required to be loose enough to bear plants. Tilled sand and gravel should take maybe ten steps, whereas tilled dirt should take like three steps before reverting to flat dirt.
I kind of went off on a tangent and changed the way plants work, in addition to adding two new trees, instead of just changing hoes, but I think it's necessary to add more to the game to make hoes more functional.
y/n?
Threadjacking. But large parts of that do make sense, yes.
Everyone knows how hoes work, right? You use them to till field squares so you can plant wheat... And so far, only wheat, in vanilla.
Which is... Kind of pointless.
Who here has a field of 60 squares of wheat? I don't, and I'm pretty certain I never will.
Which generally means...
One wood hoe, created to start the field; Average 30 or so uses. A well-built wheat field is generally protected from pigs and stuff, so maintenance is a rare thing. This means you'll average break it after maybe a stack of wheat, maybe two stacks, at which point you... Save your iron for more useful tools, and use wood to make another 60 uses worth of hoe.
You with me so far? That all seems logical and straightforward. No excessive assumptions. It's not like tilling takes time or effort, right?
Anyway, this sort of negates most of the usefulness of the higher level hoes. This, then can be "solved" (Insomuch that it's less an actual problem and more just a minor annoyance.) several ways;
1) Increase the Wood Hoe's uses to 180, remove higher variations.
2) Merge Hoe into Shovel, allowing the shovel to till blocks.
Or...
3) When the hoe is used to strike a plant, such as a flower, or wheat, or sugarcane, that plant is immediately moved to the inventory, instead of flying off at wild, at the cost of one use of the tool.
I doubt this will be much more complicated to code than wolves.
Would it be a valid suggestion if I were to say "Hoes do nothing, give them more functions, such as:" without explaining exactly what I mean by "nothing"?
No, I don't think it would. This is not a ridiculous amount of text.
You make one stone hoe, ever, and never make another? That's more or less the same difference, in the grand scheme of things, isn't it?
But they've got like 130 uses. What kind of insane mega-farm needs more than 120 uses from a hoe?
EDIT: Concession, farming for your whole server could probably require more than one hoe over time.
Edit: since the original post was pointlessly small, I might as well admit now that any of the suggestions I made are equally appealing, in the long run, I've just got a selfish interest in the hoes-as-harvesting-tools-as-well-as-tilling-devices.
Your Friend,
Barren_Teeth
damn hoes never behave... i have a little crop:
hoes should react to other plants in the game... like harvest apples off of trees or something that ties in with the new mushroom farming...
He wants to give hoes new functions.
Wait... Too late...
I think this is probably the best idea. Really, once you have your farm, hoes become useless unless you want a new farm, and even then, you make a stone hoe and then throw it away. Why waste space? So if you could plant a flower on hoed land to make it grow, or use hoes when planting trees to maybe get an apple tree. It doesn't have to be just like that, but something similar to use hoes for so that it is actually useful for more than forty uses.
Anyway, I don't care too much for farming until the game play is changed. It's so easy to stay alive. Even on hard, you can get away with very little food. Pig hunting gives me all the food I need. Although I have a small crop for the days I'm too lazy to wander off into the woods.
However, I don't agree with the current system. Food should be more important. And if this were the case, farming should be expanded on.
Mostly moved on. May check back a few times a year.
Definitely. I could get through my whole game now with one stone hoe, and it probably wouldn't be broken at the end. We can all agree, they are underpowered, the question is, how can we make them better? Two solutions I have heard are:
-After each harvest you would have to till the land again. Although might get annoying, it would make hoes useful again.
-Requiring the ground to be hoed in order to make other plants reproduce, such as flowers, or perhaps hoeing the ground for trees my produce apple trees. Personally, I prefer the former, as this seems like a bit of a stretch.
Those seem more "pointlessly frustrating" than "Valid and productive expansions to the experience", if you ask me.
They are definely pretty useless right now. I've never made an iron or diamond hoe. There's no advantages besides durability, and they're not used often enough for that to matter.
Edit: I've never made a gold hoe, either. It's worse than stone in every way.
Mostly moved on. May check back a few times a year.
Use hoes to pick up tall grass, shrubs, and flowers, and automatically place them in your inventory. Punching any of them otherwise destroys them, but may leave seeds for that plant (seeds for wheat, bulbs for shrub, flower). The plant should occaisonally produce and drop seeds or bulbs, if planted on fairly well-watered tilled soil. Flowers and shrubs can be planted on plain dirt or grass but will not produce seeds or bulbs. Apple and cocoa trees can be found in the wild but require tilled grass to grow saplings.
In addition to giving higher-quality hoes more durability, they take less time to till land. Yeah, this means making current hoes worse. To till one block of dirt with a wood hoe, it'd take like one second, whereas tilling with a diamond hoe would take a fourth of a second. Tilling dirt with a gold hoe leaves the dirt brighter than normal, and the plant takes less time to grow. A gold hoe takes the same amount of time to till land as a stone hoe, however, and has just as much durability as an iron hoe.
Also, I'd love to be able to till sand and gravel, in addition to dirt. Not to grow plants, well, maybe cacti, but to make a zen garden or something. Tilled sand and gravel should be a lot more durable than tilled dirt, because the sand or gravel is not required to be loose enough to bear plants. Tilled sand and gravel should take maybe ten steps, whereas tilled dirt should take like three steps before reverting to flat dirt.
I kind of went off on a tangent and changed the way plants work, in addition to adding two new trees, instead of just changing hoes, but I think it's necessary to add more to the game to make hoes more functional.
y/n?
Threadjacking. But large parts of that do make sense, yes.
Yeah I didn't mean to, I just didn't want to make my own thread and figured I'd contribute to the conversation here.
:<