Making both leather armor easier to acquire and iron armor harder to acquire would make survival much more challenging and rewarding in my opinion.
A good way to deal with iron's oversupply at game beginning is COG (Custom Ore Generation) and layered veins. You'll still get iron, but in larger deposits found less frequently. So no "fully iron everything within 30 minutes".
Still doesn't address the whole "leather is too rare" issue.
(With COG, you still rely on caves/ravines to find stuff. Digging through the ground at random is not productive. The issue is just one of finding the veins, and the more exposed rock, the more likely you'll find it.)
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
A good way to deal with iron's oversupply at game beginning is COG (Custom Ore Generation) and layered veins. You'll still get iron, but in larger deposits found less frequently. So no "fully iron everything within 30 minutes".
Still doesn't address the whole "leather is too rare" issue.
(With COG, you still rely on caves/ravines to find stuff. Digging through the ground at random is not productive. The issue is just one of finding the veins, and the more exposed rock, the more likely you'll find it.)
Is this a mod I'm unaware of? I might check it out if it is. I will say, though, that I still believe reducing the frequency of large cavern systems is the preferable solution to this problem, as I would want to preserve patterned strip-mining as an alternative to cave diving.
Is this a mod I'm unaware of? I might check it out if it is. I will say, though, that I still believe reducing the frequency of large cavern systems is the preferable solution to this problem, as I would want to preserve patterned strip-mining as an alternative to cave diving.
That is exactly what the 1.7 update did, much to my disdain (not that I can't just mod them back in, which I did); here is a before and after comparison of the same seed:
Pre-1.7:
1.7+:
Well, maybe some people will still say there are lots of caves in 1.7+ but you can see that cave systems are far smaller. Also, ironically, a recent suggestion was made that caves should have more ores exposed; i.e. ore generation specifically puts more ores in the walls of caves, especially rarer ores, to encourage more people to go caving instead of branch-mining (caving is better though if you consider wear on tools and such; for example, you can just bring a single Fortune III pickaxe instead of having to use slow unenchanted pickaxes to mine stone).
NB: looking at the decompiled code, the cave generator pre-Beta 1.8 is almost exactly the same as after, including the same cave size/frequency parameters as Beta 1.8-1.6.4; the only difference is the fixing of a bug, resulting in pre-Beta 1.8 caves having glitches and cutting off at chunk borders, as mentioned here; so in other words, caves only seemed to get much more common because they fixed this, allowing caves to generate to their full extent. Of course, Beta 1.8 also added in ravines and abandoned mineshafts, making the underground much more extensive. However, to me Minecraft is still very much what it was originally called/based on - Cave Game, a cave exploration game - and it isn't much of one if there aren't lots of caves.
Also, for me the main problem with leather is not so much how easy it is to obtain (one of the first things I do is breed cows to get leather for books) but how effective it is; I mean a diamond chestplate by itself provides more protection than full leather armor! Durability is also an issue; no point in wearing armor that needs to be replaced all the time and requires bringing materials for new armor (a few stacks of leather?), unlike diamonds, which I mine anyway while caving, only need to bring an anvil tor repair things with. Then put Protection IV on that... diamond armor and tools are the only things I use after the very early game, and not like any armor before diamond is even necessary because you can just tunnel down and mine without ever encountering a hostile mob until you have diamond, much less iron.
In other words, making branch mining less effective, as opposed to making caves even less(!) common, would actually be a good thing - no more just digging a tunnel in total safety and quickly finding what you need (iron really is too common; with 20 veins generated over 64 blocks, that is one vein every 3.2 blocks on average; in fact, this is twice the density of coal veins (20 veins over 128 blocks), though the latter are about 4x larger). I can even see a reduction to as little as 4 veins per chunk or less (same density as gold but 2x the range), which would still get me many stacks of iron ore per caving session, if not the absurd 4 stacks or so of iron blocks I currently get. Of course, people who don't cave all the time would surely complain - if they don't already just build iron farms, a much more serious issue IMO than the abundance of iron ore (and as you can see here, Mojang was forced to un-nerf them).
That said, making cows drop more leather (3-5) would be a good idea, even if some people will just go straight to iron/diamond anyway. Maybe also make the recipe for books more expensive to compensate, say three leather instead of one, to avoid making it too easy to get high-level enchantments (45 books for 15 bookshelves = 135 leather/34 cows; still relatively easier to get than having cows drop only one leather on average, requiring 45 cows). Also, I think that cows should still drop 1 steak minimum; after all, other animals drop at least one food item, and not like leather is so OP that you have to nerf food drops so much to compensate, though pigs should drop more; 1-2 raw beef per cow and 3-5 porkchops per pig?
Custom Ore Generation does make branch mining less effective. By making ores concentrated, instead of uniform, it winds up taking a very long, long time before you find something by branch mining. Your ability to find stuff is more determined by how much "wall" you look at, in how little time; this means you want to use caves and ravines. But this also kills off the "safety" of branch mining -- now you are in the exposed, open caves.
The rest still applies. Leather is weak, rare, and easily destroyed. Diamond is very hard, long lasting, and normally really oversupplied.
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Just my 2 cents; how about: Cows drop 0-2 steak and 2-4 hide. Horses drop hide instead of leather. cooking hide in a furnace makes leather (i know, not realistic, but it fits minecraft). sheep drop 1 hide 20% of the time. pigs eat carrots and stuff alongside wheat. Rotten flesh can be smelted to make leather. make all armour 35% stronger
Just my 2 cents; how about: Cows drop 0-2 steak and 2-4 hide. Horses drop hide instead of leather. cooking hide in a furnace makes leather (i know, not realistic, but it fits minecraft). sheep drop 1 hide 20% of the time.
What's the point of implementing hide? Just keep leather as it is.
pigs eat carrots and stuff alongside wheat.
Pigs already eat carrots. They do not eat wheat (if I recall correctly). Their range of breeding foods should be expanded considerably to include wheat and/or mushrooms in my opinion.
Rotten flesh can be smelted to make leather.
That would devalue cows. Admittedly, in this case that's a good thing, but I'd rather make breeding pigs more worthwhile than make breeding cows less worthwhile.
make all armour 35% stronger
Nononononononononononono. No. Leather armor may be pitifully weak, both iron and diamond armor are OP. Buffing all armor would make them even more ridiculously OP than they already are, and wouldn't make leather any more desirable at all? Just give leather the 35% bonus. Make it more durable, while you're at it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Did something happen to you in your childhood to give you this unreasonable fear of rutabaga?
I think that armor should be divided into two groups, Heavy and Light.
Light armors would be Leather, and Chainmail. Light armors have no negative effects, like slowing you down, or decreasing your agility with drawing a bow.
Heavy armors would be Iron, Gold, and Diamond. Iron and Gold would slightly decrease your movement speed, by 0.1 speed. They would also make drawing a bow take an extra 1/4 of a second, from 3 to 3.25. Diamond would slow you more, by 0.25 speed. Diamond would also increase draw time to 3.5 seconds. These are both assuming you have a full set of armor. If you had only one piece of iron armor, your movement speed would drop by 0.025, and your draw speed would increase by 0.0625.
These changes would give Leather and Chain more reasons to be used, and would balance out the armors better.
Honestly, another thing that annoys me is not being able to build saddles. That is so incredibly obnoxious. Why the hell should saddles be a rare commodity? It's a practical-use item. Horses are irrelevant without them.
Leather is only hard to find in the beginning of a new world. Once you find a group of cows or even just two. You basically have an infinite supply of leather.
Honestly, another thing that annoys me is not being able to build saddles. That is so incredibly obnoxious. Why the hell should saddles be a rare commodity? It's a practical-use item. Horses are irrelevant without them.
It seems like it was an intentional decision by the devs not to make them craftable. I think it's a kind of half-assed way to encourage exploration. I would agree with you but I feel like the game needs more incentive to explore in survival as it is, half-assed or not.
I think a good way to make leather armour more useful/necessary would be to make iron armour require at least one piece of leather to craft each piece. Ideally it would use the corresponding armour type of leather armour.
I think this is the best option presented on the thread. I don't think it's realistic or fun to have cows NOT drop beef at all and this would be a better way to rebalance leather armor. They wouldn't have to change the drop rates at all and it would still be balanced. You also have to think about enchanting. Making leather easier to get would make enchanting easier to have which would adversely affect balance in other ways.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To those of you suggesting new uses for Emeralds in the suggestions forum: Emeralds have enough uses. You can trade with villagers to get diamond armor/tools/weapons and enchants. Stop suggesting that Emeralds are useless, and learn to play Minecraft. Thanks.
I think this is the best option presented on the thread. I don't think it's realistic or fun to have cows NOT drop beef at all and this would be a better way to rebalance leather armor. They wouldn't have to change the drop rates at all and it would still be balanced. You also have to think about enchanting. Making leather easier to get would make enchanting easier to have which would adversely affect balance in other ways.
To be fair, balance is already pretty broken to the point where making enchanting easier (y'know, like they did in the snapshots) would be crossing the Godzilla Threshold. That is to say, it's already so broken that it would barely make a difference (though if some of the balance issues were fixed, it most certainly would make a difference).
IMO, bookcases are too expensive because of the leather requirement, which is justified since they're used for enchanting, but it makes building with them outside of creative a hassle and attempting to increase the drop rate of leather to make building with them practical (and to make leather an option beyond extravagance) would make enchanting even easier than it will be in 1.8 which is bad if Mojang ever gets around to rebalancing the game (which, if their current trend stays, will never happen). I suppose this could be fixed somewhat if enchanting uses a different type of bookcase (like, I don't know, an ender bookcase or something) that has it's own expensive recipe, which will allow Mojang to increase the leather drop rate without imbalancing enchanting.
To be fair, balance is already pretty broken to the point where making enchanting easier (y'know, like they did in the snapshots) would be crossing the Godzilla Threshold. That is to say, it's already so broken that it would barely make a difference (though if some of the balance issues were fixed, it most certainly would make a difference).
IMO, bookcases are too expensive because of the leather requirement, which is justified since they're used for enchanting, but it makes building with them outside of creative a hassle and attempting to increase the drop rate of leather to make building with them practical (and to make leather an option beyond extravagance) would make enchanting even easier than it will be in 1.8 which is bad if Mojang ever gets around to rebalancing the game (which, if their current trend stays, will never happen). I suppose this could be fixed somewhat if enchanting uses a different type of bookcase (like, I don't know, an ender bookcase or something) that has it's own expensive recipe, which will allow Mojang to increase the leather drop rate without imbalancing enchanting.
Bookcases are hardly expensive. All you have to do is find a stronghold and you will have more books than you can do anything with. Just because it's expensive to craft doesn't make it hard to get.
I don't see how anything in minecraft is hard to get. Both cows and horses give leather. So make a small farm breed them and then kill them. Problem solved.
Bookcases are hardly expensive. All you have to do is find a stronghold and you will have more books than you can do anything with. Just because it's expensive to craft doesn't make it hard to get.
I don't see how anything in minecraft is hard to get. Both cows and horses give leather. So make a small farm breed them and then kill them. Problem solved.
Not hard, just ridiculously time consuming. And i'd say it's harder to find a stronghold if you want to get books, as unless you do something cheesy like use a seed that you know the stronghold coordinates of or use AMIDST to find the stronghold.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Did something happen to you in your childhood to give you this unreasonable fear of rutabaga?
Not hard, just ridiculously time consuming. And i'd say it's harder to find a stronghold if you want to get books, as unless you do something cheesy like use a seed that you know the stronghold coordinates of or use AMIDST to find the stronghold.
Isn't the point of the game to take time to do things. To feel accomplishment of completing something. If I wanted everything handed to me I'd play PtW games. Taking the time to do things is what makes the game interesting and fun. And as I've already said leather comes from horses to. So you already have multiple sources of leather. It's also fairly common in dungeon chests.
Leather isn't hard to find (cows are everywhere) and it's hardly time consuming compared to doing other things. Just breed cows it might take an hour or two of game play but that's nothing in the grand scheme of Minecraft.
While it's been said before the best way to buff leather is to make iron harder to get. One of the things I really appreciated when I briefly played the Better Ore Distribution mod was that I actually used leather armor since I couldn't find any iron.
I do agree with your suggestion to change the drops between cows and pigs. However I also agree with the sentiment that increasing leather drops from cows would unbalance the making of book cases. The best way to balance this in my opinion would be to increase the bookcase requirement for enchantments. Make people have to actually build a library of significant size.
It seems like it was an intentional decision by the devs not to make them craftable. I think it's a kind of half-assed way to encourage exploration. I would agree with you but I feel like the game needs more incentive to explore in survival as it is, half-assed or not.
Why would you need to "encourage exploration" any further? The game inherently encourages exploration just by being what it is; you explore to find new resources or to find new cool terrain to build on. I don't think making rare items to "encourage exploration" is something the game needs at all, but even if it was, they could certainly make some better items than saddles and horse armor to fulfill that function, as both of those items should be practical-use every day items. They might as well make boats and/or regular Human armor rare and uncraftable. It's just stupid.
Just put some enchanted books and some rare resources (like emerald and gold) into dungeon chests. That and the mob spawner itself are more than sufficient reward for finding a dungeon. It's not like we have a reliable method of finding dungeons so there shouldn't be anything in those chests that we can't obtain some other way.
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
A good way to deal with iron's oversupply at game beginning is COG (Custom Ore Generation) and layered veins. You'll still get iron, but in larger deposits found less frequently. So no "fully iron everything within 30 minutes".
Still doesn't address the whole "leather is too rare" issue.
(With COG, you still rely on caves/ravines to find stuff. Digging through the ground at random is not productive. The issue is just one of finding the veins, and the more exposed rock, the more likely you'll find it.)
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Is this a mod I'm unaware of? I might check it out if it is. I will say, though, that I still believe reducing the frequency of large cavern systems is the preferable solution to this problem, as I would want to preserve patterned strip-mining as an alternative to cave diving.
Support.
That is exactly what the 1.7 update did, much to my disdain (not that I can't just mod them back in, which I did); here is a before and after comparison of the same seed:
1.7+:
Well, maybe some people will still say there are lots of caves in 1.7+ but you can see that cave systems are far smaller. Also, ironically, a recent suggestion was made that caves should have more ores exposed; i.e. ore generation specifically puts more ores in the walls of caves, especially rarer ores, to encourage more people to go caving instead of branch-mining (caving is better though if you consider wear on tools and such; for example, you can just bring a single Fortune III pickaxe instead of having to use slow unenchanted pickaxes to mine stone).
NB: looking at the decompiled code, the cave generator pre-Beta 1.8 is almost exactly the same as after, including the same cave size/frequency parameters as Beta 1.8-1.6.4; the only difference is the fixing of a bug, resulting in pre-Beta 1.8 caves having glitches and cutting off at chunk borders, as mentioned here; so in other words, caves only seemed to get much more common because they fixed this, allowing caves to generate to their full extent. Of course, Beta 1.8 also added in ravines and abandoned mineshafts, making the underground much more extensive. However, to me Minecraft is still very much what it was originally called/based on - Cave Game, a cave exploration game - and it isn't much of one if there aren't lots of caves.
Also, for me the main problem with leather is not so much how easy it is to obtain (one of the first things I do is breed cows to get leather for books) but how effective it is; I mean a diamond chestplate by itself provides more protection than full leather armor! Durability is also an issue; no point in wearing armor that needs to be replaced all the time and requires bringing materials for new armor (a few stacks of leather?), unlike diamonds, which I mine anyway while caving, only need to bring an anvil tor repair things with. Then put Protection IV on that... diamond armor and tools are the only things I use after the very early game, and not like any armor before diamond is even necessary because you can just tunnel down and mine without ever encountering a hostile mob until you have diamond, much less iron.
In other words, making branch mining less effective, as opposed to making caves even less(!) common, would actually be a good thing - no more just digging a tunnel in total safety and quickly finding what you need (iron really is too common; with 20 veins generated over 64 blocks, that is one vein every 3.2 blocks on average; in fact, this is twice the density of coal veins (20 veins over 128 blocks), though the latter are about 4x larger). I can even see a reduction to as little as 4 veins per chunk or less (same density as gold but 2x the range), which would still get me many stacks of iron ore per caving session, if not the absurd 4 stacks or so of iron blocks I currently get. Of course, people who don't cave all the time would surely complain - if they don't already just build iron farms, a much more serious issue IMO than the abundance of iron ore (and as you can see here, Mojang was forced to un-nerf them).
That said, making cows drop more leather (3-5) would be a good idea, even if some people will just go straight to iron/diamond anyway. Maybe also make the recipe for books more expensive to compensate, say three leather instead of one, to avoid making it too easy to get high-level enchantments (45 books for 15 bookshelves = 135 leather/34 cows; still relatively easier to get than having cows drop only one leather on average, requiring 45 cows). Also, I think that cows should still drop 1 steak minimum; after all, other animals drop at least one food item, and not like leather is so OP that you have to nerf food drops so much to compensate, though pigs should drop more; 1-2 raw beef per cow and 3-5 porkchops per pig?
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
The rest still applies. Leather is weak, rare, and easily destroyed. Diamond is very hard, long lasting, and normally really oversupplied.
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
What's the point of implementing hide? Just keep leather as it is.
Pigs already eat carrots. They do not eat wheat (if I recall correctly). Their range of breeding foods should be expanded considerably to include wheat and/or mushrooms in my opinion.
That would devalue cows. Admittedly, in this case that's a good thing, but I'd rather make breeding pigs more worthwhile than make breeding cows less worthwhile.
Nononononononononononono. No. Leather armor may be pitifully weak, both iron and diamond armor are OP. Buffing all armor would make them even more ridiculously OP than they already are, and wouldn't make leather any more desirable at all? Just give leather the 35% bonus. Make it more durable, while you're at it.
Light armors would be Leather, and Chainmail. Light armors have no negative effects, like slowing you down, or decreasing your agility with drawing a bow.
Heavy armors would be Iron, Gold, and Diamond. Iron and Gold would slightly decrease your movement speed, by 0.1 speed. They would also make drawing a bow take an extra 1/4 of a second, from 3 to 3.25. Diamond would slow you more, by 0.25 speed. Diamond would also increase draw time to 3.5 seconds. These are both assuming you have a full set of armor. If you had only one piece of iron armor, your movement speed would drop by 0.025, and your draw speed would increase by 0.0625.
These changes would give Leather and Chain more reasons to be used, and would balance out the armors better.
I do not care about mods for this case. It also doesn't have bow things, does it?
Use the quote feature, also.
It seems like it was an intentional decision by the devs not to make them craftable. I think it's a kind of half-assed way to encourage exploration. I would agree with you but I feel like the game needs more incentive to explore in survival as it is, half-assed or not.
I think this is the best option presented on the thread. I don't think it's realistic or fun to have cows NOT drop beef at all and this would be a better way to rebalance leather armor. They wouldn't have to change the drop rates at all and it would still be balanced. You also have to think about enchanting. Making leather easier to get would make enchanting easier to have which would adversely affect balance in other ways.
To be fair, balance is already pretty broken to the point where making enchanting easier (y'know, like they did in the snapshots) would be crossing the Godzilla Threshold. That is to say, it's already so broken that it would barely make a difference (though if some of the balance issues were fixed, it most certainly would make a difference).
IMO, bookcases are too expensive because of the leather requirement, which is justified since they're used for enchanting, but it makes building with them outside of creative a hassle and attempting to increase the drop rate of leather to make building with them practical (and to make leather an option beyond extravagance) would make enchanting even easier than it will be in 1.8 which is bad if Mojang ever gets around to rebalancing the game (which, if their current trend stays, will never happen). I suppose this could be fixed somewhat if enchanting uses a different type of bookcase (like, I don't know, an ender bookcase or something) that has it's own expensive recipe, which will allow Mojang to increase the leather drop rate without imbalancing enchanting.
Bookcases are hardly expensive. All you have to do is find a stronghold and you will have more books than you can do anything with. Just because it's expensive to craft doesn't make it hard to get.
I don't see how anything in minecraft is hard to get. Both cows and horses give leather. So make a small farm breed them and then kill them. Problem solved.
Not hard, just ridiculously time consuming. And i'd say it's harder to find a stronghold if you want to get books, as unless you do something cheesy like use a seed that you know the stronghold coordinates of or use AMIDST to find the stronghold.
Isn't the point of the game to take time to do things. To feel accomplishment of completing something. If I wanted everything handed to me I'd play PtW games. Taking the time to do things is what makes the game interesting and fun. And as I've already said leather comes from horses to. So you already have multiple sources of leather. It's also fairly common in dungeon chests.
Leather isn't hard to find (cows are everywhere) and it's hardly time consuming compared to doing other things. Just breed cows it might take an hour or two of game play but that's nothing in the grand scheme of Minecraft.
I do agree with your suggestion to change the drops between cows and pigs. However I also agree with the sentiment that increasing leather drops from cows would unbalance the making of book cases. The best way to balance this in my opinion would be to increase the bookcase requirement for enchantments. Make people have to actually build a library of significant size.
Why would you need to "encourage exploration" any further? The game inherently encourages exploration just by being what it is; you explore to find new resources or to find new cool terrain to build on. I don't think making rare items to "encourage exploration" is something the game needs at all, but even if it was, they could certainly make some better items than saddles and horse armor to fulfill that function, as both of those items should be practical-use every day items. They might as well make boats and/or regular Human armor rare and uncraftable. It's just stupid.
Just put some enchanted books and some rare resources (like emerald and gold) into dungeon chests. That and the mob spawner itself are more than sufficient reward for finding a dungeon. It's not like we have a reliable method of finding dungeons so there shouldn't be anything in those chests that we can't obtain some other way.
Normal stuff is craftable, wears out, and is re-crafted.
Horse saddles/armor, if crafted, would be made once, and then never again.
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?