Better Than Wolves

March 16th, 2013

Note: This release is for version 1.4.7 of Minecraft NOT 1.5. Don't even ask if it works with 1.5.

• Added Hardcore Hunger to the mod. This rebalances many aspects of how food and hunger work in Minecraft to make it a more crucial aspect of gameplay. Because this change is rather extensive, the individual changes that comprise it will be listed independently below. Please keep in mind that this feature will likely be further balanced over time based on additional play testing, given that its impact on play is rather subtle, substantial, and far reaching. Desserts in particular will receive additional attention in the near future, specifically their recipes, with this release mainly focusing on staple foods. The number of changes in this release may be daunting, but give it a try and it will hopefully all make sense :)
• Added the concept of "fat" which replaces saturation as hunger's secondary value. Fat is only built up when you eat food in excess of what is required to fill your hunger meter, OR when you eat deserts when you are already full. Having some fat is useful, as it effectively increases the amount of time you can go without starving. However, having too much fat will result in penalties. Also, unlike saturation, fat only burns off after your hunger goes below your fat level, thus it functions as a backup store rather than as just an outright bonus to hunger. Right now, being fat doesn't affect Steve's visual appearance, but I may add that in the future.
• Added visible display of fat to the hunger meter so players can better manage their overall hunger state and fat levels. Saturation being an invisible value just sucked.
• Added a number of new "complex recipes" to the mod, which will be listed as individual changes following this. As a general rule, recipes that require more than 1 ingredient will restore more hunger and are also a more efficient use of the food you have on hand (most produce multiple portions). Also, "dessert" (cake, pie, cookies, Donuts) items tend to have very high fat gain, but very low hunger restoration, making them useful for when you want to put on fat. Unlike regular food, desserts are also edible when your hunger meter is full.
• Added the Cooked Carrot as a new food item. It is made by....cooking a carrot :)
• Added the Tasty Sandwich as a new food item. It is made by combining cooked meat or fish with bread in the crafting grid.
• Added Steak And Potatoes as a new food item. It is created by combining cooked steak and cooked potatoes in the crafting grid.
• Added Ham And Eggs as a new food item. It is created by combining cooked pork and a cooked egg.
• Added Steak Dinner, Pork Dinner, and Wolf Dinner as new food items. They are created by combining cooked meat of the corresponding type along with cooked carrots and potatoes.
• Added the Kebab as a new food item. It is created by combining raw Mutton, carrots, and potatoes in the crafting grid with a stick, then cooking the result.
• Added Chicken and Fish Soups as a new food items. They are crafted by cooking chicken or fish, along with carrots, and potatoes in the Cauldron, with at least 3 bowls for the individual servings). Note that with all soups and stews, you can use either the raw ingredients or the cooked ones, but anything you dump in raw will have to cook first before the soup itself is made.
• Added Hearty Stew as a new top-tier food item (it's the most efficient source of food currently in the game). It is created by cooking either raw steak, pork, mutton, or wolf, along with carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, and flour in the Cauldron, with 5 bowls for the individual servings.
• Added recipe to convert baked potatoes into boiled potatoes in the Cauldron. This simplifies many of the soup/stew recipes above, as it means if you dump a bunch of baked potatoes into a Cauldron trying to make soup, they will first convert, then apply to the soup recipe.
• Added high efficiency bowl recipe consisting of 3 wood Siding in a V pattern.
• Added effects from low hunger, health, and excessive fat such as movement, mining speed, and attack penalties, along with a few that are left to the player to discover. As a general rule, all penalties (starting with the loss of the ability to sprint and/or heal) start to kick in when the relevant meter is around the half-way mark, so if you keep them above (or below in the case of fat) that point, you will be entirely free of detrimental effects. A short text description of the most severe effect you are currently experiencing is displayed above the hunger meter to provide further feedback.
• Added potential food poisoning effects to all raw meats, fish, and eggs to further emphasize the importance of cooking food.
• Added the ability to eat pumpkin seeds, because coming across a pumpkin while starving to death and not being able to eat it sucks ;)
• Added the ability to eat raw mushrooms for the same reason. This unfortunately required a new item internally, so the old ones are labeled as "Old Mushrooms", and are not edible, but may be converted to the new ones just by dropping them into the crafting grid.
• Added the ability for mushrooms to grow on any block with a solid top surface, not just fully opaque cubes. This means they can now grow on stuff like upside down slabs and Tables.
• Changed hunger to decrease slowly with time, regardless of whether you are doing anything or not, which discourages AFK play (Steve will die if you leave him unattended for too long). Extra hunger on top of this is still drained based on your activities.
• Changed hunger so that it now applies consistently across difficulty levels, and will cause you to starve to death regardless of the setting to discourage switching difficulty to avoid its effects. The only difficulty this does not apply to is peaceful, given its limited value in AFK play.
• Changed (reduced) stack limits on all food items to 16 to make the quality of food you are carrying more significant. Note that this will not affect existing stacks, so all your items are safe, but any newly created stacks will be limited to 16. This also includes increasing the stack limit of mushroom stew to 16, so it is now stackable like other food items.
• Changed (tweaked) the values on most existing food items to generally make them less effective.
• Changed Donuts so that they require both Flour and sugar to cook in the Cauldron.
• Changed the mushroom stew recipe to require a brown mushroom, and flour in a Cauldron with 2 bowls for the individual servings.
• Changed the pumpkin pie recipe to require a pumpkin, sugar, a Raw Egg, and Flour.
• Changed (reduced) the growth rate on edible vanilla crops as part of Hardcore Hunger, and to both encourage larger farms, and the use of bone meal as a fertilizer. This also serves to balance them more relative to each other, with, for example, potatoes and carrots taking longer to mature than wheat.
• Changed (reduced) the number of "seed" items that crops drop to make creating a large farm a more significant long-term effort, to reduce the number of excess seeds in the game, and to give melons a more clearly defined role in producing seeds for chicken feed.
• Changed (greatly reduced) the rate at which the player heals to increase overall level of challenge, the importance of staying fed under Hardcore Hunger, and to give an actual purpose to healing items & potions.
• Changed the way Minecraft works internally so that blocks with different subtypes can play different step sounds per subtype. At present this change only affects dirt and Packed Earth Slabs, but will likely be used for other blocks as well in the future.
• Changed Dung blocks so that they are part of aesthetic earth blocks, which allows them to behave in a manner more consistent with their material type. This necessitates a conversion for previously existing Dung blocks, which will now be labeled as "Old Dung", and may be performed by just dropping them in the crafting grid. Note that this change will affect Dung beacons, which will no longer function with the old blocks.
• Changed the Wood Blade (used in making Water Wheels) to have a max stack size of 1, to suit its bulky nature. Similar to the food stack change above, this will not affect existing stacks.
• Changed the amount of hunger you need in order to be able to heal, to be a bit more forgiving, given that managing your hunger is now a larger challenge overall, that it now takes place at a slower pace, and so that it's more obvious when it happens. You now lose the ability to heal when described as "Peckish", which is the first detrimental hunger effect.
• Fixed vanilla issue where you could silk touch harvest lit redstone lamps, as that problem was also extending to the Block Dispenser.
• Fixed vanilla issue where you could still feed animals their breeding item (e.g. wheat) when they were already in love mode by right clicking on them ("player choice" my hindquarters).
• Fixed vanilla issue where mushrooms appeared so visually low in your inventory that they were covered by the stack count and became hard to identify as a result.
• Removed the apple drop on oak leaves. I have additional plans for apples for a future release, but for now, I wanted to remove them as an easy food source from performing unrelated activities (like chopping wood) to fit with Hardcore Hunger. The apple drop always just felt rather weird anyways, in a "oh look...random food in my inventory from nowhere" kinda way.
• Removed wheat seed drop from tall grass. Domesticated crops like wheat, potatoes, and carrots, must now all be obtained through finding a village.
• Removed melon slice to melon block recipe so that they can't be compacted into an easy to transport food source without the use of a silk-touch enchant.

Enjoy starving to death! :)