Minecraft Forums

The best idea in my opinion is to make a block and set it, then use 1 pearl per teleport to where ever you placed the block. Second best idea would be you right click with it in your hand, and if theres nothing in your way, you teleport 10 blocks in the direction your facing. Third best idea would be each pearl can be used once to turn time to night (although it would have to be disabled for SMP). AlSpiskellepigreeperjockey's idea of it being a currency is good, maybe use it to get rare items from zombie pig-men. But like i said these are just my thoughts.... i already have 27 pearls, i want there to be a use!

Quote from Lunarembrace

perhaps use them for diving/underwater equipment? with the deeper oceans would be nice to explore them without drowning

Wait a second, I missed something in my description of the Enderman....

THEY ARE WEAK TO WATER :biggrin.gif:

Quote from FuryOfASquirrel

You have my attention - but what parts of the game design/the MC experience does teleportation destroy?
To prepare a pre-counter argument to yours, I'm going to assume for a moment that you will say that teleportation destroys the exploration part of MC - but I disagree. In my suggestion the radical amount of resources it would require to create even one working pair of teleporters would require a vast amount of exploration already and is simply a way to spend all of the diamond - and quite simply, a reward for all of this hard work. I think it enhances the game design and overall experience by rewarding the player, not with silly achievements, but with the ability to do that which he has already done in mass - just faster,

It's like getting a diamond pick or diamond armor - it's a reward to getting diamond and it makes life easier, it doesn't invalidate the constant re-arming and re-crafting of all those stone tools and iron armor, but rather rewards the player for all of their hard work, creating a sense of accomplishment.

Ever hear of minecarts? You realize that they are more than just glorified roller-coasters?
They are supposed to be the in-game transportation and mobile storage system. Quite frankly, its easier to get ender pearls and diamonds than it is to build a fully fleshed out minecart system. It's too imbalanced and discourages their use, which I expect notch to flesh out more as time goes on. I also expect to see minecarts made more valuable and necessary in the game, because as it is now they are just completely unimportant and making ender pearls into teleportation devices undermines that even more. We should be looking for ways to add new mechanics in that make the existing mechanics BETTER not WORSE.

That being said, what if ender pearls teleported you to your spawn and left all your items behind that were not in your quick slots, almost like if you died, but you didn't lose any experience orbs and kept 8 stacks of items? Like a last ditch survival tool to not lose ALL of your levels when cornered in a dungeon. That would make them still useful and worth carrying around, but they would not replace any other game mechanics, and would add a new game mechanic: emergency escape item. Depending on how important skills and experience orbs become, they could become very important for advanced survival play and dangerous survival missions. They are not terribly rare, so making them useful but not VERY useful would be a good balance and still maintain the value of other in game systems such as minecarts.
Err, to go farther with that idea, right click it for two seconds to use it.
This would naturally balance out their rarity, since you wouldnt use them that often, but still make them very important for small load journeys (like a quick diamond or coal or redstone run) and last ditch survival when cornered in a dead end in a cave with half a heart deep in the earth far from home. A smart player could bring one of those and a chest with them in case they needed to stash their **** and bail til later. This would open up new strategic pathways to preserve aspects of gameplay and add new ones that dont conflict or overlap directly.

I'm still hoping to see skills that give you special bonuses when using, say, leather armor or wooden tools, like faster movement and stuff if a skill point is spent on it, so that notch can preserve low tier equipment as alternately strategic if you choose to sacrifice defense for other options.

An important facet of game design, if he truly wants to make this game sandbox, is to make... maybe not AS good, but some bonuses to taking any route. If you want to be a cow farmer and use mostly leather gear, there should be some combat bonus to leather gear that you could level towards, and similarly... gold equipment should be able to be enchanted, perhaps a second use of ender pearls would be to combine it with gold equipment for stuff with low stats but infinite durability. This would add a second use to ender pearls, making them still not extremely important, but once again fleshing out and balancing more game mechanics in a way that gives you MORE options on how you can play the game and build your world and character into something that feels personalized and unique.

etc etc.

Game design man, its ALL about options within the scope of balance (thats why its not always better to have things in the options menu), and adding an option that undermines other options is not the way to go, unless the first undermined option is going to get overhauled. I'm still waiting for torches to go out so that flint and steel are not completely useless.

Now this may sound a little to magical but bear with me. So, say you got one ender pearl and surrounded it with 8 diamonds in a crafting table to create a super pearl or something like that, then you put it on top of a stick to create an ender wand. This wand could be used to enchant ender blocks (9 ender pearls in a block) these could than be placed in a 3x3 square or pad. You then later used the ender wand by right clicking it on any block and *poof* you appeared in the middle block of the pad.

I just watched the equivalent exchange mod spotlight vid the yogscast did and obviously got a bit excited and also it's 1:30 in the morning in tassie right now so my brains a bit fried so forgive the flaws (of which i'm sure there will be a fair few). Also the ender wand should only have like 50 uses including enchanting and there should only have a range of like 100 blocks or so.

How about a "hearthstone" that you can use to teleport yourself back to your spawn/bed once every so often like 3 in game days or 1 RL hour or whatever.

Use it to create a portal in any part of your world, and warp yourself to another portal in your world.

However... It would kind of defeat the purpose of rails. So it should be hard to make.

My friend originally thought they might be used as a cannonball. Imagine putting it in a dispenser and it fires one out of it and it makes a small crater where it hits. Now that's a nice thing to have and will make hunting endermen a lot more purposeful.

make it throwable
and we replace the lighter
which is used for making a portal to the nether.

so we throw the enderpearl at the obsidian, and it will react making a portal.


i think this will happen
since enderman emit purple particles that is seen from a portal.


and another idea i got is to make other mobs blind by throwing enderpearls.
but since these are even easier to get than arrows, notch should make enderman stronger somehow

Craft a pearl necklace out of ender pearls, and you heal faster.
Or no fall damage.
Or something cool.

The transportation idea is great. Maybe fashion them into a block, like crafting metal blocks, set it down, right click it and a gui opens. There it has a setting for name (location name obviously), where you can teleport, and depending on the distance, how many ender pearls or redstone the port will require.

Obviously it would become quite expensive so mine tracks don't become useless.

Quote from wintermuet

Ender pearls should be used to teleport you to your spawn point. That is all. Sort of like a town portal scroll that exists in most roguelike games. They should only be one-way to avoid them being overpowered, and are largely used to escape or to return with loot or run home when starving. This would be even more important if item encumbrance ever becomes part of minecraft (I really hope it does, it could have very cool effects on hunger, running, swimming, and make minecarts more useful!).

Anyways, if you hold right click with a pearl in hand, for 5 seconds, it should glow brighter and brighter, until eventually it teleports you to your spawn point, standing next to your bed.

I've been thinking for a while now:
Clocks should be able to be right clicked to skip to sundown.
Beds should be right clicked to skip through the night and set spawn point.
Ender Pearls should teleport you to your bed from elsewhere.

This is perfect.

Its perfect, in your terms.
I mean you can just die to get back. Just store your useful stuff back into the chest.
And, would there be any fun when being capable of getting back home from a giant cave that connects to many, many tunnels? This is why we pay for minecraft --and notch using it for stupid things such as making other projects like cobalt or scrolls instead of completing the minecraft, why we pay for him?--. Fo' fun!

I really, really like the idea of being able to teleport back to your "home base." I can't tell you how many times I've lost castles and all kinds of other things because I couldn't find them or I get the "spawn point could not be located" message.

I know you all don't want it to be too easy to craft and I agree it should be expensive, so how about this...

A teleporter "receiver" block you place in your home base or where ever and that would be crafted like so:

G = GOLD
R = Redstone
E = Ender Pearl

G|R|G
R|E|R
G|R|G

Then, in order to make this work, you'd have to craft a "transmitter" as well - similar to the Clay Soldiers Disruptor in shape. That could be crafted like so...

G|E|G
E|R|E
G|E|G

If you get lost or in trouble and can't find/escape a situation quick and easy like, you could *poof* back to home base. In order to keep with the theme of not making it too easy to abuse, one or two uses exhausts both transmitter AND receiver.

Thoughts?

**EDIT**

I meant to add: No limitation of distance due to the rapid depletion

post it on getsatisfaction!

Unless it's the dream world (not the sky dimension), Notch might as well add guns and the aether and stuff.

Quote from PikminWorld

Honestly, I think Endermen are a little weak then I expected. Yes, they'll confuse you but if you turn around and around you'll find them easily. Not to mention they don't really do much other than run towards you after teleporting. I think if they could throw the block they hold or at least when they teleport leave dark matter that pretty much poisons you then, they'd be a greater threat!
But, back on topic, I like the portal idea but don't you think Endermen are a little too sinister for the Sky Dimension?

they are from the nether so yes they are too sinister i like the idea i heard somewhere else where its a dreamland.

Teleporting seems a little overpowered. What about equiping one as your shoe armor (this thing= and it makes you run faster, but it shouldn't be permanent. How about 1 ender pearl lasts 1 minute? if that's too long it could be 30 seconds? If that wont work, what about temporarily stunning enemies this would help with many mobs.

How 'bout the ability to teleport blocks to different locations, i.e. left click to select a block, right click to set it's destination, and it switches spots. Or it could be used to "control" a block in a much similar way, by allowing you to simply move the block around, perhaps via arrow keys and "-" and "+".

Ok,right now i don't use minecarts at all and with the sprint it seems i never will. But what if you put a enderpearl in a furnace and it doesn't burn anything but it will make the powered minecart go a lot faster. It would be almost as fast as how it goes with a gold power rail and it would have the durability of a piece of coal.It makes sense because the endermen are so fast. This way people will start making powered minecarts again and it doesn't do anything to really change the game or be too overpowered.

Perhaps, based on claims of the sky dimension being a "dream world", The ender pearls could be somehow added to a bed, creating some sort of special bed that, when slept in, teleports you to the "dream" world, with your portal back being another bed that, when slept in, makes you "wake up".

I think they should just be a one use right click emergency teleportation to your spawn/bed.
I agree with the previous post (back a few pages) that they should make minecarts better and easier to use and an ender pearl as an emergency item.