This is something I typed up in a seperate document, and I'm pasting it there. I don't know how to mod minecraft, so I'm secretly hoping someone else does something like this.
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Crows and Their Nests:
Crows are rare passive chicken sized mobs that spawn in groups of 1-4, on any surface that isn't water or lava, within x chunks of a crow's Nest. Initially they behave like chickens, except they will swoop in fast to capture certain dropped items, and fly off with the item, placing it in the nearest nest. Crow's prioritize shiny items (diamond gems, gold bars, iron bars) but will otherwise take bow & arrow ingredients (sticks, feathers, string, flint) and pork. They cannot steal any crafted tools, equipment, or earth blocks (stone, cobble, sand, etc).
Crow's have low HP: one arrow kills them. They will drop any item they were carrying once slain, but drop nothing otherwise. The dropped item they grab is visibly displayed below them in flight. Once they reach a nest, that item is placed in the nest inventory, and the crow immediately de-spawns...
A crow's Nest is a rare block that spawn naturally on tree tops, and is basically the surface equivalent of a dungeon chest with less inventory slots. Unlike chests however, they are easily destroyed and cannot be picked up after destruction (just like leaf blocks without sheers and glass). Nests never start out having contents already in them: Crows must first accumulate dropped items into the nest, and crows won't spawn unless a nest is within x chunks.
Nests can be crafted with 1 soul sand surrounded by 8 sticks, but can only be placed and remain intact on top of a leaf block. If there is no leaf block under the nest, it will disappear and drop all its contents, like when a chest is destroyed. By causation, crows do not spawn in the absence of a tree (a stable leaf block) because there is no nest without a tree.
Gameplay Implications:
Crows can save your valuables if you die near a nest (or build a tree house near one)!
An incentive to explore the tree tops tops of forest biomes without indiscriminately cutting down every tree.
Areas near an undiscovered crows nest are potentially very valuable on multiplayer, when players are slain nearby on a regular basis. Crows could implicitly signify a place people are likely to kill each other sheerly for the chance to follow a crow to it's nest, thus raising the stakes when encountered with other players.
Difficult to share items with other players when crows can quickly swoop in to take anything.
They will take pork from slain pigs, flint from gravel, string from slain spiders, and feathers from slain zombies and skeletons. They can make a dire situation more dire.
More Gameplay Implications:
An incentive to establish a well lit area with a tree underground: to place a nest on top and have crows spawn in cave systems where they're arguable more useful at salvaging items (that haven't fallen in lava).
An incentive to establish an underground forest : to misdirect from trees containing the nest on multiplayer!
Hell, an incentive to plant trees anywhere there isn't already trees; to have a couple crow's nests.
Killing crows so others cant follow them when you have knowledge of a nest location for yourself.
Short of organizing combat encounters: just craft and place a crows nest somewhere and try to defend it selfishly.
If there are books or written notes crows could pick them up, and to some extent be the minecraft equivalent of carrier pigeons.
Challenges:
A crow needs more than intermediate path finding AI, otherwise they are far too easy to follow.
(Basically like faster wolf movement, but also in the air--navigating y, not just x and z).
A crow should possibly fly off in almost any direction, post-swoop, before going in the actual direction of the nest (possibly once x distance from the swooped item location is fulfilled).
The purpose is to trance the player's attention solely on chasing the crow, or giving them a chance to shoot the crow out of the sky before it gets too far away to retrieve said item or give away the nest location.
Crows should also fly at least three times as fast as a player can walk.
Afterthoughts & Fixes:
Crows do not swoop for dropped items if there is no nest within x chunks to flee back to (this is just in case you encounter a crow, immediately find the nest close by, and destroy that nest before the crow is de-spawned or killed when you drop something). Crows can't spawn until a loaded or generated chunk uncovers or produces a nest... or a nest is placed, so you can't have crows spawning before a nest is around anyway.
Refresher: dropped items that crows fly away with:
- diamond gems
- gold bars
- iron bars
- wood sticks
- flint
- string
- feathers
- pork (cooked and uncooked)
- books & paper mail (if added)
In short: Crows steal shiny things, bow & arrow stuff, and meat. So a nest encountered on an aged multiplayer server map may supply those things.
What happens when the item a crow is swooping for suddenly disappears or gets picked up by something else (like another crow or player)? Well the crow immediately goes for the next closest drop... but what if there aren't anymore dropped items within x distance? Well then the crow just lands... so yes, you can throw a stick into lava and perhaps the crow will dive into lava (lol). Wolves don't fetch... Crows almost do.
The dropped item they grab is visibly displayed below them in flight. Once they reach a nest, that item is placed in the nest inventory, and the crow immediately de-spawns...
eh...That might create an annoyance. Say you die and 4 crows grab your stuff and you chase em and then they just..disappear only to let more be able to respawn near your stuff and grab more of your loot to bring back to the nest, to repeat.
Not only that but it would just feel...weird.
I support everything except the despawn. They should just go off locking for more shiny things
eh...That might create an annoyance. Say you die and 4 crows grab your stuff and you chase em and then they just..disappear only to let more be able to respawn near your stuff and grab more of your loot to bring back to the nest, to repeat.
Not only that but it would just feel...weird.
I support everything except the despawn. They should just go off locking for more shiny things
As far as I know, mobs don't spawn or stay in memory in areas without players. So if you die near 4 crows in singleplayer, they'll take 4 of your valuables to the nearest nest inventory and despawn, but the game wouldn't immediately spawn replacements unless you return very quickly, or another player in multiplayer happens upon it.
Remember: The nest itself isn't a crow generator. The condition for crows to spawn are like a less common chicken, but with the addition of "must be x chunks near a nest" It's the generation rarity of a nest that makes crows less encounterable than even wolves, at least until the player has a full or rough idea of the nest's location.
If the player's spawn point happens to be near the site of their death, and the nest, then it's likely because they made their base where they've spotted crows on purpose. If not, then it's just a mild problem when you die and don't know where the nest is (you could just keep dropping sticks and try to follow crows that spawn/steal).
But this was the main reason I wanted the despawn for crows after they add to a nest inventory: so "fishing" for crows (dropping a ton of sticks) wasn't so immediately profitable for locating a nest (a ridiculously easy succession of opportunities to follow a crow if the same ones keep returning to a pile of sticks).
How about this? If crows only appear at "wolf" light levels (dusk, dawn, near torches at night/underground) then that would be enough of a deterrent to "fishing" since you'd now be forced to do it under conditions where you also must worry about aggressive mobs spawning (especially on the surface, which is the only place for naturally generated nests anyway). THEN I'd be fine with crows not despawning and immediately returning, since you'd be taking a huge risk spending all night chasing them in the context of other aggressive mobs everywhere.
I'm not too picky about them being crows. Any small flying creature with a nest is fine.
- - -
Crows and Their Nests:
Crows are rare passive chicken sized mobs that spawn in groups of 1-4, on any surface that isn't water or lava, within x chunks of a crow's Nest. Initially they behave like chickens, except they will swoop in fast to capture certain dropped items, and fly off with the item, placing it in the nearest nest. Crow's prioritize shiny items (diamond gems, gold bars, iron bars) but will otherwise take bow & arrow ingredients (sticks, feathers, string, flint) and pork. They cannot steal any crafted tools, equipment, or earth blocks (stone, cobble, sand, etc).
Crow's have low HP: one arrow kills them. They will drop any item they were carrying once slain, but drop nothing otherwise. The dropped item they grab is visibly displayed below them in flight. Once they reach a nest, that item is placed in the nest inventory, and the crow immediately de-spawns...
A crow's Nest is a rare block that spawn naturally on tree tops, and is basically the surface equivalent of a dungeon chest with less inventory slots. Unlike chests however, they are easily destroyed and cannot be picked up after destruction (just like leaf blocks without sheers and glass). Nests never start out having contents already in them: Crows must first accumulate dropped items into the nest, and crows won't spawn unless a nest is within x chunks.
Nests can be crafted with 1 soul sand surrounded by 8 sticks, but can only be placed and remain intact on top of a leaf block. If there is no leaf block under the nest, it will disappear and drop all its contents, like when a chest is destroyed. By causation, crows do not spawn in the absence of a tree (a stable leaf block) because there is no nest without a tree.
Gameplay Implications:
Crows can save your valuables if you die near a nest (or build a tree house near one)!
An incentive to explore the tree tops tops of forest biomes without indiscriminately cutting down every tree.
Areas near an undiscovered crows nest are potentially very valuable on multiplayer, when players are slain nearby on a regular basis. Crows could implicitly signify a place people are likely to kill each other sheerly for the chance to follow a crow to it's nest, thus raising the stakes when encountered with other players.
Difficult to share items with other players when crows can quickly swoop in to take anything.
They will take pork from slain pigs, flint from gravel, string from slain spiders, and feathers from slain zombies and skeletons. They can make a dire situation more dire.
More Gameplay Implications:
An incentive to establish a well lit area with a tree underground: to place a nest on top and have crows spawn in cave systems where they're arguable more useful at salvaging items (that haven't fallen in lava).
An incentive to establish an underground forest : to misdirect from trees containing the nest on multiplayer!
Hell, an incentive to plant trees anywhere there isn't already trees; to have a couple crow's nests.
Killing crows so others cant follow them when you have knowledge of a nest location for yourself.
Short of organizing combat encounters: just craft and place a crows nest somewhere and try to defend it selfishly.
If there are books or written notes crows could pick them up, and to some extent be the minecraft equivalent of carrier pigeons.
Challenges:
A crow needs more than intermediate path finding AI, otherwise they are far too easy to follow.
(Basically like faster wolf movement, but also in the air--navigating y, not just x and z).
A crow should possibly fly off in almost any direction, post-swoop, before going in the actual direction of the nest (possibly once x distance from the swooped item location is fulfilled).
The purpose is to trance the player's attention solely on chasing the crow, or giving them a chance to shoot the crow out of the sky before it gets too far away to retrieve said item or give away the nest location.
Crows should also fly at least three times as fast as a player can walk.
Afterthoughts & Fixes:
Crows do not swoop for dropped items if there is no nest within x chunks to flee back to (this is just in case you encounter a crow, immediately find the nest close by, and destroy that nest before the crow is de-spawned or killed when you drop something). Crows can't spawn until a loaded or generated chunk uncovers or produces a nest... or a nest is placed, so you can't have crows spawning before a nest is around anyway.
Refresher: dropped items that crows fly away with:
- diamond gems
- gold bars
- iron bars
- wood sticks
- flint
- string
- feathers
- pork (cooked and uncooked)
- books & paper mail (if added)
In short: Crows steal shiny things, bow & arrow stuff, and meat. So a nest encountered on an aged multiplayer server map may supply those things.
What happens when the item a crow is swooping for suddenly disappears or gets picked up by something else (like another crow or player)? Well the crow immediately goes for the next closest drop... but what if there aren't anymore dropped items within x distance? Well then the crow just lands... so yes, you can throw a stick into lava and perhaps the crow will dive into lava (lol). Wolves don't fetch... Crows almost do.
Correction, you can get leaf blocks with shears.
♥
Oh yeah... I forgot about that. *fixed*
eh...That might create an annoyance. Say you die and 4 crows grab your stuff and you chase em and then they just..disappear only to let more be able to respawn near your stuff and grab more of your loot to bring back to the nest, to repeat.
Not only that but it would just feel...weird.
I support everything except the despawn. They should just go off locking for more shiny things
As far as I know, mobs don't spawn or stay in memory in areas without players. So if you die near 4 crows in singleplayer, they'll take 4 of your valuables to the nearest nest inventory and despawn, but the game wouldn't immediately spawn replacements unless you return very quickly, or another player in multiplayer happens upon it.
Remember: The nest itself isn't a crow generator. The condition for crows to spawn are like a less common chicken, but with the addition of "must be x chunks near a nest" It's the generation rarity of a nest that makes crows less encounterable than even wolves, at least until the player has a full or rough idea of the nest's location.
If the player's spawn point happens to be near the site of their death, and the nest, then it's likely because they made their base where they've spotted crows on purpose. If not, then it's just a mild problem when you die and don't know where the nest is (you could just keep dropping sticks and try to follow crows that spawn/steal).
But this was the main reason I wanted the despawn for crows after they add to a nest inventory: so "fishing" for crows (dropping a ton of sticks) wasn't so immediately profitable for locating a nest (a ridiculously easy succession of opportunities to follow a crow if the same ones keep returning to a pile of sticks).
How about this? If crows only appear at "wolf" light levels (dusk, dawn, near torches at night/underground) then that would be enough of a deterrent to "fishing" since you'd now be forced to do it under conditions where you also must worry about aggressive mobs spawning (especially on the surface, which is the only place for naturally generated nests anyway). THEN I'd be fine with crows not despawning and immediately returning, since you'd be taking a huge risk spending all night chasing them in the context of other aggressive mobs everywhere.
I'm not too picky about them being crows. Any small flying creature with a nest is fine.