I'm currently playing around with an idea involving the five classical elements (Fire, Earth, Air, Water, and Aether/Aethyr/Æther/Ether/Quintessence/Void) and their respective elementals (Salamanders, Gnomes, Sylphs, and Undines. Maybe an angelic being for Aether), but I'm not entirely sure how to implement it. Would the Aether elemental summon the other elementals as a boss fight? Would they all spawn naturally as normal-ish mobs? I'm still thinking about it and am open to suggestions.
That’s kinda interesting! I’m curious what will make destroying the phylactery challenging; if players can just walk up and whack it once to destroy it then the resurrection mechanic won’t really come into play.
Besides this, see if you can think of other abilities and mechanics that interact with this resurrection ability and the phylactery. What kind of strategies does the phylactery make players employ, and how do the other abilities help or hinder these strategies?
Alrighty then. I may have forgot to mention that phylactery is an entity with health.
Here are some small concepts, which you may pick and choose from like Halloween candy.
Idea 1: Defensive Spells: The phylactery is enchanted. It will attempt to (slowly) move away from the player and shoot projectiles at them.
Idea 2: Hey, That's Mine!: This concept relies heavily on the fact that you don't destroy the phylactery. The less health the phylactery has, the faster and stronger the Withered Emissary becomes. Still loses health upon resurrection, though.
Idea 3: A Soul a Day...: Whenever the Emissary kills any non-undead mob or player, it will regenerate. It could even play a cool animation where the mob's "soul" becomes absorbed by the phylactery.
These next two ideas don't really have anything to do with the phylactery, but they're cool nonetheless.
Idea 4: Minions Assemble!: The Emissary, being a lich, has undead minions! One of them is the Death Knight, which is basically an armored Wither Skeleton that's been hopped up on soul magic.
Idea 5: I, Monster: Lichdom is a choice. A choice the player could make. Maybe the player could craft a phylactery, use it to absorb the souls of the living, and gain the power of undeath.
There's also something about demiliches, but I think I've covered everything.
And so, like a warrior of old, I have returned! With an update for the Withered Emissary! Am I shouting too much?! Let's just do the thing!
So I've basically turned the Emissary into a lich, phylactery included. I'm not entirely sure how this'll work (despite how long I've been working on this), but the phylactery would be protected until you "defeat" the Emissary. If the phylactery isn't destroyed in time, the Emissary resurrects itself, albeit with less health.
That's... all I have. Sadly. Let's see how this fares.
The issue with the last iteration of this suggestion wasn’t that it lacked a melee attack; a boss can have only ranged abilities. The issue was that the idea was underdeveloped.
In this iteration, I think you have the opposite problem. You’ve listed a ton of relatively generic attacks. Most of them are redundant, simply doing damage via a projectile or melee hit. For a boss like this, it’s not enough to just damage the player with pretty effects and cool animations, sometimes inflicting a status effect. Mobs, especially bosses, need a hook - a core gameplay and design element that makes the mob interesting. This can be a weakness or a strength or a special role in gameplay. All of the mob’s abilities and attacks need to play off of this hook and support it in interesting ways. Players should be able to learn and understand that hook and develop new strategies and ways of playing around it. A mob is not just new because it looks different and has a different name, it’s new because it makes players interact with the game in new ways.
Take the grottol for example. It’s hook is it’s a mob that you have to chase down to get a reward - something Minecraft didn’t really have before. It’s resistant to ranged attacks, forcing players to actually chase after it to hit it with a pick. It can hop into Minecarts to get away. It can burrow and disappear if chased too long. Its design is cute and its death animation is sad, making players feel a twang of guilt after chasing it down. All of these things support its hook. (It has a secondary hook too revolving around its living ore theme, which allows you to use silk touch and fortune enchantments when you kill it.) And that’s it! It has no combat abilities, because that wouldn’t support the hook.
Now take Barako. His hook is that he’s a powerful ranged opponent, but he can’t move. So he mainly deals damage from far away with sunstrikes and summoned Barakoa minions. Players will no doubt close in to hit him, so he pushes them away with a solar flare which has high knockback but barely any damage to put them back in his sunstrike gauntlet. The sunstrikes seem to be a basic ranged attack at first, but if you think about it, they come from the sky, allowing clever players to avoid the onslaught by hiding under or building a roof. This is a valid strategy, but once Barako loses some health, he gains new abilities that expand his hook and throw a wrench in players’ plans. His solar beam is line-of-sight based but slow to focus on a target, getting those players camped out in front of him under a roof with a bow but not those running quickly through his sunstrikes. His supernova move was developed specifically to counter players who wall themselves in next to him under a roof or below his throne. It deals massive damage around him, but only after a long charge up time that allows players that haven’t blocked themselves in to get away. It only lifts mobs up and towards him to damage players that dig far down beneath his throne and try shooting his butt with arrows. Every ability has a purpose that works together and supports the hook. It’s streamlined: only 5 abilities. If I gave Barako a big wooden club to wield, it might look cool but it wouldn’t support his hook at all - so I didn’t.
Designing mobs is hard and takes time. But I don’t need a full design from a suggestion. Some of the best suggestions I’ve received were just cool hooks I hadn’t thought of. Think really hard and find that hook.
I've never thought about that before. Honestly, my creation process is, "Hey, that's a cool idea, I'm gonna run with it!" Which is obviously not the best process. I'll try to take your advice to heart and improve upon the Emissary (because I'm quite fond of it's concept). All I can hope for is that it turns out good!
So, I decided to give the Withered Emissary a scimitar along with its staff to help with the melee problem, as well as came up with a list of possible attacks:
Melee/Close Range:
Staff Swing: The Emissary swings its staff at the player (Common)
Soul Barrier: A wailing wall of souls bursts out of the Emissary, striking anyone that is too close. (Uncommon)
Scimitar Slash: The Emissary swings its scimitar at the player (Common)
Double Strike: The Emissary attempts to strike the player with both staff and scimitar (Uncommon)
Midrange:
Spirit Pulse: The Emissary slams its staff into the ground, creating a shockwave of souls (Uncommon)
Soul Flame: The Emissary creates a ring of blue fire around it in an attempt to engulf its enemies (Uncommon)
Unearthly Wail: The Emissary gives out a blood curdling shriek, knocking back enemies and giving them Weakness for 10(?) seconds (Uncommon)
Lunge: The Emissary lunges at the player (Uncommon)
Ranged:
Withering Orb: The Emissary launches an orb of Wither energy at the target (Common)
Spirit Flare: The Emissary gathers mass quantities of soul in preparation. Once completed, it releases a beam of soul fire at the opponent. The preparation phase goes faster if a big enough amount of Soul Sand is nearby (Infrequent)
Wither Skull: The Emissary sends out a shrieking Wither Skull that homes in on the player. Not very well though… (Uncommon)
...understand? Understand what? You need to realize that he isn’t obligated to add or even read any of your ideas dude. He’s being nice enough providing feedback, that’s not really a valid way to respond.
It wasn't my intention to be rude. I was simply trying to point out that the mob wasn't finished, but chose a poor way to do so.
Sorry, this isn’t what I’m looking for either. This sounds like a generic ranged mob. Inflicting wither with projectiles seems like their only mechanic, and it doesn’t really set the mob apart at all.
Understand that the Withered Emissary concept was made in under an hour. As previously mentioned, I don't have their spell-set figured out. Melee spells and attacks are possible.
The Withered Emissaries are mysterious necromancers who (shocker) worship the Wither. Clad in black robes and wither skulls, Emissaries focus souls into a multitude of terrifying spells (None of which I managed to come up with. I just know that they'll inflict a weak Wither Effect). They behave similarly to the Wither, in that they attack any living mob.
They spawn in a structure (One per structure), but I'm not sure what kind, just that it's chock-full of Wither tchotchkes.
When killed, they can drop their staffs (Did I mention they have staffs?), which allow you to cast weaker versions of a couple of their spells.
Honestly, they were inspired by Soulsand. Specifically, the fact that when lit it creates Soul Fire, and that it has special particles when run on with Soul Speed boots.
I really don’t plan to add any new biomes. Regardless, this sounds a lot like the myrmexes from Ice and Fire.
Crimson/Warped Forests are 1.16 Nether biomes, not something you'd need to add in yourself. And I will admit that the Myrmex were an inspiration for the Wartshredders. I'll think of something else!
Wartshredders are insectoid creatures that dwell in Crimson/Warped Forests. More specifically, they live in large Wartshredder Hive structures. The Wartshredder comes in three variants: Harvesters, which collect chunks from crimson/warped wart trees (More on that later); Soldiers, which are larger and winged, guard the Hives, as well as the last variant: the Queen. The Queen is the largest variant; and it lays eggs that, over time, hatch into any of the other two variants. There can only be one Queen per Hive, making it a sort of mini-boss. Harvesters are neutral, while the other two variants a hostile.
And, as a small detail, Wartshredders that live in Crimson Forests are a shade of red and Wartshredders that live in Warped Forests are a shade of blue.
Chunks are a sort of simulation that a Wartshredder is harvesting from a crimson/warped wart tree without actually griefing.
This is about all I've gotten, detail-wise. If you need more, I'll happily try!
Having a creature roam freely is hard, because of chunkloading. Chunks are loaded around the player. In the loaded chunks, plants grow, tile entities (like furnaces) "tick" and entities like mobs move.
As the player travels, chunks in front of them get loaded and chunks behind them get unloaded.
This would mean that a wandering creature, even one that is limited to moving within a radius around a specific location, would get "frozen" when all players leave their vicinity.
Furthermore, if it belongs to a structure, then it would need to be generated along with that structure. And since players are most likely to find any random structure while they are actively exploring the world, they would most probably find the creature still wandering very close to the structure, since it did not get the time to wander further from the structure.
An idea that I would find more appropriate myself would be a creature that roams in an area that gravitates around the player themselves, rather than a structure. Also, in programming logic, the movement/location of this creature could be controlled from outside the "entity" so it can "move" in unloaded chunks. I mean that the creature Entity itself only exists when the Controller says that it is close enough to the player and in a loaded chunk.
Actually, I think that this could be very well combined with some aspects of the original idea.
I appreciate the explanation, but it doesn't work with my idea for the creature. Maybe you could make something for this?
I also have a name (maybe): The Ventus. Which translates from Latin to "wind".
I'm up for a wind-magic boss, and even one that resembles a Quetzalcoatl. But I don't think these specifics will work. Is there a reason players would try to fly or build up to it while it is flying above them? If they can't interact with it while its in flight, why bother having it fly above the overworld in the first place?
The mod is designed so players can figure out mechanics and secrets without the use of wikis or guides. If a player with no knowledge of the mod found this structure and the boss wasn't there, they would assume it was an empty structure and just keep moving. Even if they did figure it out, having to wait for the mob is very frustrating.
I'd suggest picking one: it can be fought in its structure, or it can be fought flying above the overworld. The way it is now, it kinda can't be fought in either.
I understand. I simply wanted a wandering creature that would actually roam, unlike the Wandering Trader. But I see how annoying that would be. Let's do the temple/altar structure.
I have a concept for a sort of air deity boss, which doesn't currently have a name (Considering "The Djinnis").
The creature (Contemplating whether it'll resemble an air elemental, or more of a Quetzalcoatl style dragon) will mainly be found flying through the air, out of reach. If a player managed to reach it using an Elytra or a modded flying mount, the creature will blow the player (and the mount, if one is used) away using a gust of air, and fly off. The only way to fight it would be to find it's "roost", a ruined temple or altar dedicated to the creature, as evidenced by decorative blocks and items, that can be found in the mountains. You may have to camp out here, because the creature only comes here every 5(?) days.
When challenged, the creature will perform air-based attacks, like strong gusts or miniature tornadoes. I don't know what exactly it'll drop, but maybe something along the lines of an item that can push enemies back, or grant temporary flight.
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I'm currently playing around with an idea involving the five classical elements (Fire, Earth, Air, Water, and Aether/Aethyr/Æther/Ether/Quintessence/Void) and their respective elementals (Salamanders, Gnomes, Sylphs, and Undines. Maybe an angelic being for Aether), but I'm not entirely sure how to implement it. Would the Aether elemental summon the other elementals as a boss fight? Would they all spawn naturally as normal-ish mobs? I'm still thinking about it and am open to suggestions.
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Alrighty then. I may have forgot to mention that phylactery is an entity with health.
Here are some small concepts, which you may pick and choose from like Halloween candy.
Idea 1: Defensive Spells: The phylactery is enchanted. It will attempt to (slowly) move away from the player and shoot projectiles at them.
Idea 2: Hey, That's Mine!: This concept relies heavily on the fact that you don't destroy the phylactery. The less health the phylactery has, the faster and stronger the Withered Emissary becomes. Still loses health upon resurrection, though.
Idea 3: A Soul a Day...: Whenever the Emissary kills any non-undead mob or player, it will regenerate. It could even play a cool animation where the mob's "soul" becomes absorbed by the phylactery.
These next two ideas don't really have anything to do with the phylactery, but they're cool nonetheless.
Idea 4: Minions Assemble!: The Emissary, being a lich, has undead minions! One of them is the Death Knight, which is basically an armored Wither Skeleton that's been hopped up on soul magic.
Idea 5: I, Monster: Lichdom is a choice. A choice the player could make. Maybe the player could craft a phylactery, use it to absorb the souls of the living, and gain the power of undeath.
There's also something about demiliches, but I think I've covered everything.
0
And so, like a warrior of old, I have returned! With an update for the Withered Emissary! Am I shouting too much?! Let's just do the thing!
So I've basically turned the Emissary into a lich, phylactery included. I'm not entirely sure how this'll work (despite how long I've been working on this), but the phylactery would be protected until you "defeat" the Emissary. If the phylactery isn't destroyed in time, the Emissary resurrects itself, albeit with less health.
That's... all I have. Sadly. Let's see how this fares.
1
I've never thought about that before. Honestly, my creation process is, "Hey, that's a cool idea, I'm gonna run with it!" Which is obviously not the best process. I'll try to take your advice to heart and improve upon the Emissary (because I'm quite fond of it's concept). All I can hope for is that it turns out good!
0
So, I decided to give the Withered Emissary a scimitar along with its staff to help with the melee problem, as well as came up with a list of possible attacks:
Melee/Close Range:
Staff Swing: The Emissary swings its staff at the player (Common)
Soul Barrier: A wailing wall of souls bursts out of the Emissary, striking anyone that is too close. (Uncommon)
Scimitar Slash: The Emissary swings its scimitar at the player (Common)
Double Strike: The Emissary attempts to strike the player with both staff and scimitar (Uncommon)
Midrange:
Spirit Pulse: The Emissary slams its staff into the ground, creating a shockwave of souls (Uncommon)
Soul Flame: The Emissary creates a ring of blue fire around it in an attempt to engulf its enemies (Uncommon)
Unearthly Wail: The Emissary gives out a blood curdling shriek, knocking back enemies and giving them Weakness for 10(?) seconds (Uncommon)
Lunge: The Emissary lunges at the player (Uncommon)
Ranged:
Withering Orb: The Emissary launches an orb of Wither energy at the target (Common)
Spirit Flare: The Emissary gathers mass quantities of soul in preparation. Once completed, it releases a beam of soul fire at the opponent. The preparation phase goes faster if a big enough amount of Soul Sand is nearby (Infrequent)
Wither Skull: The Emissary sends out a shrieking Wither Skull that homes in on the player. Not very well though… (Uncommon)
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It wasn't my intention to be rude. I was simply trying to point out that the mob wasn't finished, but chose a poor way to do so.
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Understand that the Withered Emissary concept was made in under an hour. As previously mentioned, I don't have their spell-set figured out. Melee spells and attacks are possible.
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Withered Emissary
The Withered Emissaries are mysterious necromancers who (shocker) worship the Wither. Clad in black robes and wither skulls, Emissaries focus souls into a multitude of terrifying spells (None of which I managed to come up with. I just know that they'll inflict a weak Wither Effect). They behave similarly to the Wither, in that they attack any living mob.
They spawn in a structure (One per structure), but I'm not sure what kind, just that it's chock-full of Wither tchotchkes.
When killed, they can drop their staffs (Did I mention they have staffs?), which allow you to cast weaker versions of a couple of their spells.
Honestly, they were inspired by Soulsand. Specifically, the fact that when lit it creates Soul Fire, and that it has special particles when run on with Soul Speed boots.
(Images from the Minecraft Wiki)
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Crimson/Warped Forests are 1.16 Nether biomes, not something you'd need to add in yourself. And I will admit that the Myrmex were an inspiration for the Wartshredders. I'll think of something else!
0
Alright, I have returned with a new mob idea.
Wartshredders are insectoid creatures that dwell in Crimson/Warped Forests. More specifically, they live in large Wartshredder Hive structures. The Wartshredder comes in three variants: Harvesters, which collect chunks from crimson/warped wart trees (More on that later); Soldiers, which are larger and winged, guard the Hives, as well as the last variant: the Queen. The Queen is the largest variant; and it lays eggs that, over time, hatch into any of the other two variants. There can only be one Queen per Hive, making it a sort of mini-boss. Harvesters are neutral, while the other two variants a hostile.
And, as a small detail, Wartshredders that live in Crimson Forests are a shade of red and Wartshredders that live in Warped Forests are a shade of blue.
Chunks are a sort of simulation that a Wartshredder is harvesting from a crimson/warped wart tree without actually griefing.
This is about all I've gotten, detail-wise. If you need more, I'll happily try!
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I found this image online, and I believe it could prove useful.
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I appreciate the explanation, but it doesn't work with my idea for the creature. Maybe you could make something for this?
I also have a name (maybe): The Ventus. Which translates from Latin to "wind".
1
I understand. I simply wanted a wandering creature that would actually roam, unlike the Wandering Trader. But I see how annoying that would be. Let's do the temple/altar structure.
1
I have a concept for a sort of air deity boss, which doesn't currently have a name (Considering "The Djinnis").
The creature (Contemplating whether it'll resemble an air elemental, or more of a Quetzalcoatl style dragon) will mainly be found flying through the air, out of reach. If a player managed to reach it using an Elytra or a modded flying mount, the creature will blow the player (and the mount, if one is used) away using a gust of air, and fly off. The only way to fight it would be to find it's "roost", a ruined temple or altar dedicated to the creature, as evidenced by decorative blocks and items, that can be found in the mountains. You may have to camp out here, because the creature only comes here every 5(?) days.
When challenged, the creature will perform air-based attacks, like strong gusts or miniature tornadoes. I don't know what exactly it'll drop, but maybe something along the lines of an item that can push enemies back, or grant temporary flight.
0
I'm glad you like it! Makes the mental strain worth it!
(That last sentence is a joke, by the way. No brain cells were harmed in the creation of this mob.)