Trying to stay alive by not starving to death is tough for about the first 20 minutes of play or so, depending on your luck factor (bonemeal, anyone?). Then it becomes a non issue as your harvest more wheat to get more seed. Unless you create an enormous field, though, you have to harvest rather frequently. I think this is fairly balanced, but then come the melon and the mushroom to eliminate the food challenge in short order.
A single melon seed, once found, quickly turns into a very compact, practically infinite food crop which requires less maintenance than wheat to produce more food. The large , well tended wheat field quickly shrinks into a tiny square (just enough to breed the animals), and sadly, the food farming element of Minecraft is done.
Turning a single seed into an infinite number of seeds in only a few minutes of gameplay is what kills the balance. It's worse in multiplayer, where the server's first melon seed is worth so many diamonds, then all melon seeds to follow are usually given away because they're so prevalent after the first. To balance the melons, I suggest that a melon stalk always drop exactly one seed (allowing for crop relocation), and that melon slices no longer break down into melon seeds on the crafting table. Instead, allow for a small chance that when a melon block is broken, it may drop a seed along with the melon slices. This will slow the growth in availability of melon, maintaining the value of wheat crops for longer (and thus keeping farming more interesting for longer), and increasing the value of seeds in a multiplayer economy. Further, it would be nice if there were a recipe which actually consumed seeds for another purpose (maybe you feed them to your dog and something happens...?), to offset the slowed, but still exponential growth of their availability. If anyone has suggestions for that bit, please post!
Mushroom farming is relevant because mushroom soup is the fastest way to regain food bar. The mushroom itself is also one of the coolest crops to farm because of its unique nature - it grows by actually spreading of its own accord, and only in low light levels. That means that unlike other crops, the player has to consider a wider space for potential spreading, light level management, and how to handle the monsters that may spawn in the farm area due to the low light level. These factors made mushroom farming a deep and interesting design challenge. But then came giant mushrooms to ruin it. Now a player can place a mushroom on the ground anywhere (even in high light levels) and simply
hit it with the bonemeal to make it a giant mushroom, where every block yields several small mushrooms. In moments and in any location, a single mushroom becomes a mountain of mushrooms, totally eclipsing the value of the much more interesting and challenging cave-mushroom farming method. I suggest that giant mushrooms blocks only drop mushrooms when they occur naturally rather than from bonemeal, so that mushroom farming can return to its challenging and rewarding roots, and to balance it with other crops so they remain relevant farming options.
The low saturation(Amount of time it keeps your hunger bar filled up) makes melons and mushrooms not a reliable main food source. Sure, it's infinite, but you'll spend more time eating than actually doing something.
Eh, I rather disagree. I always found that finding a red mushroom was quite a bit challenging, and could only find one if I went in search of a swamp biome (I personally dislike swamps). So, when I find the red mushroom, of course I farm that hell out of them with bonemeal. I never found farming to be my personal thing in minecraft. I like to spelunk, find abandoned mineshafts and fortresses. Food is secondary to me, and I don't want to constantly worry about food because big mushrooms would be decoration, and growing little mushrooms would have me battle skeletons and creeps. Wheat farming is not so bad, if you get things set up alright, and then you only farm when you are 100% out of food. I understand the appeal of farming, but if we make it harder to get food, harder to regain health, then I would spend most of my time making elaborate farms rather then spelunking, which is why I really play the game. I personally think farms are balanced out enough. IRL, food isn't hard to come by, so why make everyone starve to death to get a simple piece of bread?
The other thing is, it takes me forever to find pumpkins. If i come across a melon seed I cherish it because I hardly ever come across them when I spelunk.
The low saturation makes melons and mushrooms not a reliable main food source. Sure, it's infinite, but you'll spend more time eating than actually doing something.
True, you do eat more often with melon. Buy I think its exponential growth and the fact that you don't have to replant it, breed it, or cook it makes it vastly superior to all other crops except the giant mushroom. So animals and wheat as a food crop lose their relevance beside the melon.
A single bowl of mushroom soup gives much more food bar than bread, and more than meat as well. It contributes only a little less saturation than the meat and is much easier to produce extremely quickly (versus waiting for animals to grow, cooking the meat, and re-breeding the animals). The only downside is that it doesn't stack. Since mushrooms can grow even faster than melon (with a little bonemeal in hand), their value is well... out of hand.
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The other thing is, it takes me forever to find melons. If i come across a melon seed I cherish it because I hardly ever come across them when I spelunk.
I agree with you where single player is involved, at least for the initial find. But after that initial find, BOOM farming is done. But for multiplayer, unless the server is absolutely brand new, everyone has more melon seed than they need, and they're happy to share it.
Food is secondary to me, and I don't want to constantly worry about food.
Then you're responding in the wrong thread, because this one is about making farming more fun. :smile.gif: It's possible to play without hunger turned on at all, if you're not into it.
Actually melons suck, fish is good, and mushrooms i agree with. But they grow slow, so it's balanced.
They don't grow slowly. Bonemeal = giant mushroom = giant pile of small mushrooms, in only moments.
Fishing is the worst food option. You literally stare at your screen waiting for something to happen, unable to do anything else but wait and watch. If that's not the antithesis of gaming, I don't know what is.
i stick to killing cows or eating bread, imo melons heal way to little and im not going to sit there and eat 15 melons just to get to full hunger.
Maybe you don't realize it, but you spend more time breeding, growing, killing, and cooking those cows than you would spend by just eating the melon. Anyway even if you put the melon aside, the mushroom is still OP.
Now we have descended into the "what you use to fight off hunger is overpowered" state of the game, which is sad.
I do not agree that the Melon is overpowered (as funny as that terminology is, even though overbeneficial is the more correct term) this would imply it is a rampant problem within the game itself.
Melon Slices do well in being able to restore single hearts to keep regeneration up, but take more melons to accomplish this.
If you are able to keep a consistent farm up to the point where you are never starving, this isn't harmful to the balance of the game, it's called...well, surviving in survival mode.
Starving is the penalty for not using food items, but not something used to enforce difficulty into the game unless you neglect it.
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Curse PremiumA single melon seed, once found, quickly turns into a very compact, practically infinite food crop which requires less maintenance than wheat to produce more food. The large , well tended wheat field quickly shrinks into a tiny square (just enough to breed the animals), and sadly, the food farming element of Minecraft is done.
Turning a single seed into an infinite number of seeds in only a few minutes of gameplay is what kills the balance. It's worse in multiplayer, where the server's first melon seed is worth so many diamonds, then all melon seeds to follow are usually given away because they're so prevalent after the first. To balance the melons, I suggest that a melon stalk always drop exactly one seed (allowing for crop relocation), and that melon slices no longer break down into melon seeds on the crafting table. Instead, allow for a small chance that when a melon block is broken, it may drop a seed along with the melon slices. This will slow the growth in availability of melon, maintaining the value of wheat crops for longer (and thus keeping farming more interesting for longer), and increasing the value of seeds in a multiplayer economy. Further, it would be nice if there were a recipe which actually consumed seeds for another purpose (maybe you feed them to your dog and something happens...?), to offset the slowed, but still exponential growth of their availability. If anyone has suggestions for that bit, please post!
Mushroom farming is relevant because mushroom soup is the fastest way to regain food bar. The mushroom itself is also one of the coolest crops to farm because of its unique nature - it grows by actually spreading of its own accord, and only in low light levels. That means that unlike other crops, the player has to consider a wider space for potential spreading, light level management, and how to handle the monsters that may spawn in the farm area due to the low light level. These factors made mushroom farming a deep and interesting design challenge. But then came giant mushrooms to ruin it. Now a player can place a mushroom on the ground anywhere (even in high light levels) and simply
hit it with the bonemeal to make it a giant mushroom, where every block yields several small mushrooms. In moments and in any location, a single mushroom becomes a mountain of mushrooms, totally eclipsing the value of the much more interesting and challenging cave-mushroom farming method. I suggest that giant mushrooms blocks only drop mushrooms when they occur naturally rather than from bonemeal, so that mushroom farming can return to its challenging and rewarding roots, and to balance it with other crops so they remain relevant farming options.
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The other thing is, it takes me forever to find pumpkins. If i come across a melon seed I cherish it because I hardly ever come across them when I spelunk.
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Curse PremiumTrue, you do eat more often with melon. Buy I think its exponential growth and the fact that you don't have to replant it, breed it, or cook it makes it vastly superior to all other crops except the giant mushroom. So animals and wheat as a food crop lose their relevance beside the melon.
A single bowl of mushroom soup gives much more food bar than bread, and more than meat as well. It contributes only a little less saturation than the meat and is much easier to produce extremely quickly (versus waiting for animals to grow, cooking the meat, and re-breeding the animals). The only downside is that it doesn't stack. Since mushrooms can grow even faster than melon (with a little bonemeal in hand), their value is well... out of hand.
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Curse PremiumI agree with you where single player is involved, at least for the initial find. But after that initial find, BOOM farming is done. But for multiplayer, unless the server is absolutely brand new, everyone has more melon seed than they need, and they're happy to share it.
Then you're responding in the wrong thread, because this one is about making farming more fun. :smile.gif: It's possible to play without hunger turned on at all, if you're not into it.
They don't grow slowly. Bonemeal = giant mushroom = giant pile of small mushrooms, in only moments.
Fishing is the worst food option. You literally stare at your screen waiting for something to happen, unable to do anything else but wait and watch. If that's not the antithesis of gaming, I don't know what is.
Maybe you don't realize it, but you spend more time breeding, growing, killing, and cooking those cows than you would spend by just eating the melon. Anyway even if you put the melon aside, the mushroom is still OP.
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I do not agree that the Melon is overpowered (as funny as that terminology is, even though overbeneficial is the more correct term) this would imply it is a rampant problem within the game itself.
Melon Slices do well in being able to restore single hearts to keep regeneration up, but take more melons to accomplish this.
If you are able to keep a consistent farm up to the point where you are never starving, this isn't harmful to the balance of the game, it's called...well, surviving in survival mode.
Starving is the penalty for not using food items, but not something used to enforce difficulty into the game unless you neglect it.