Minecraft Forums

What if water was changed, so that we could no longer get infinite amounts of it so easily?

Or more plausibly, what if there are game modes (Adventure, belike) where water can't be generated by players?

I think Thirst would be a great mechanic in those cases. People would need some way to carry it with them - a canteen item, or the like - and ensuring adequate access to water would be as important as ensuring adequate food supplies. You could even have types of undrinkable water - like swamp water and salty seas.

I rather like the things that have been added to deserts thus far. Even the subtle things, like the alteration to world gen that means desert hills are more likely to be completely covered in sand, instead of having visible stone exposed. That's all great!

But I would like to see Desert Biomes made both more challenging, and a viable challenge. If you spawn in a desert, you'd better hope that there are other land biomes relatively close by, because otherwise you'll have no trees. And without trees (and thus wood), crafting is extremely limited, and there aren't really any available food sources - the harvesting techs. usually need wood products at some point. If there are close biomes, you can just leave and exploit them - but there's not a whole lot you can do with the desert. By itself, it's almost impossible to survive in - with other biomes, there's no challenge to it.

So, here are my suggestions:

1) Remove almost all of the water lakes which normally spawn in the top levels of the terrain.

2) Have occasional 'oasis' locations occur in deserts instead of the removed lakes. These would essentially be standard lakes, perhaps surrounded by a thin strip of green grass and plants. Some work would have to be done to make sure they weren't partly underground as desert lakes often are now.

3) Create a new type of tree - a date palm - which provides wood and fruit, and is found only around oases. And regrows only very slowly, possibly only if at least one nearby block is water (somewhat like reeds). Eating the fruit can provide a seed, which can be planted to create a sapling.

4) Implement a thirst bar - I know, it's controversial, but I think it's interesting.

5) Instead of rain never occurring in a desert, it occurs uncommonly. This can provide a way to refill cauldrons without generating new water blocks.

Does anyone else have any suggestions?

Y'know, I'm really hoping that they will deign to add Rubies and Sapphires, in addition to Emeralds, to the game. We already have multiple varieties of wood - which I'm very pleased about - so multiple varieties of gemstone would be a nice flourish.

They wouldn't even have to have different values in trading. Although that's certainly a possibility.

New thought: should there be Pigman villages in the Nether?

I would like to suggest that monster spawner blocks should be activated and deactivated by the presence/absence of redstone signals. I recommend making them automatically 'on' - that is, no signal means they spawn monsters, a signal deactivates the spawner.

Why?

Primary Reason: to make interesting new traps
It's fairly easy to construct a one-time switch with redstone and pistons - that is, a switch that is changed once when activated and doesn't change again. It's even easy to make a switch that conserves resources but can be changed irreversibly. With such a switch, you can make temples and pyramids and such trapped in such a way that, if they're triggered, hideous monsters begin to attack the player from then on.

Other Reasons:
It would make dealing with dungeons slightly simpler, without being less challenging. It's already pretty straightforward to illuminate all regions around a spawner sufficiently to prevent monsters from appearing, but reversing this takes a lot of work. Letting a switch placed on the spawner - or connected to it via redstone - toggle it on or off provides a much more elegant way of manipulating it once we've fought our way to it and begun turning it into a controlled resource.

The jungle temples are pretty nice. But the secret is something of a death trap -- or at least, it will be in Adventure Mode. You can get down into it, but can't climb out again - and without the ability to dig or place blocks, there's no escape.

Will we be able to place ladders and things? Although I can't imagine where we'd get them. Rats.

Colored sand is an interesting idea. But for the sake of simplicity, I think the dye should be fused directly to the glass blocks instead - it would result in fewer block types needing to be added to the program.

What if any given Enderman only removes a set number of light sources before vanishing?

I'm all for anything that makes the darkness more our enemy.

Endermen aren't all that common in caves. I don't think lights will vanish anywhere nearly as quickly as you think they will. And I've never, never, had an Enderman teleport into my house without my activating one first.

If it's that much of a problem, just say that Endermen can't teleport into lit areas.

Not to mention that turning clouds into an actual block - and making them "move around" obstacles - would require a great deal of processing. Much more so than water, in fact, since water is practically stationary compared to clouds.

It's a nice idea, but not plausible to implement.

Quote from CommanderM

when you get trapped into a cave and you have no light left.... How do you get out?

Hmm. An excellent point. Perhaps not *absolute* blackness, then. But I do think it should be much harder to see anything in the dark, compared to how it is now.

Quote from Rogueblawd

So basically we would have griefers in our worlds. That's what I've always wanted.

We already do have griefers - Endermen do a lot of damage to terrain. This suggested change removes the damage to the natural terrain, and puts a certain class of placed blocks at risk. It seems a reasonable trade-off to me.

I'd like for there to be a real advantage to glowstone. As it is, there are few benefits to using it rather than a jack'o'lantern. Sure, there are a few - jol's can't be easily placed without under-support, and they can't be made into lanterns. But at present, there's very little reason to bother mining glowstone at all.

But if it's the only real light source that Endermen won't remove...

I like the idea of glowstone being growstone - but it should happen very, very slowly. And should require a sacrifice of a major resources - possibly combining a diamond with glowstone powder yields a glowstone seed.

Quote from otafraid

wouldnt endermen end up destroying all your light if you didnt have glowstone

They would only spawn in pitch-dark places. So if you've illuminated your tunnels and buildings, they wouldn't be able to show up there. They would only be a real risk when dealing with caverns and tunnels that had un-illuminated sections.

BUT, once they started to show up, they would show up more and more, as their removal of light sources opened up more suitable places for them to spawn.

Does anyone have any feedback regarding the important aspect of these suggestions: that Endermen should seek out and remove certain light sources?

Pumpkin masks, sir. Pumpkin masks. Suddenly, everyone seems to be wearing them.