Better Than Wolves

January 18th, 2014

• Added Hardcore Brewing. This is comprised of a number of small changes to the potion brewing system detailed below, to hopefully better balance it relative to the rest of the mod's content, and to up the value of various mob drops, while reducing the prominence of the whole "golden vegetable" bit. As a general heads up though: don't make any assumptions about how to brew potions or their effects and make sure to read the below changes, as it's rather different from vanilla Minecraft now.
• Added recipe to convert planks straight into Shafts with a single block for convenience, particularly in the early game.
• Added the "Mysterious Gland" as a new semi-rare drop to squid which is used in the brewing of healing potions, instead of glistening melons.
• Changed fermented spider eyes to "Venom Sacks", and removed the ability to craft them. They are now a semi-rare drop from Jungle Spiders, and are used in the same way as fermented eyes used to be within potion brewing.
• Changed the Grate and Wicker recipes to require 9 Shafts or sugar cane in a full crafting grid rather than the previous 4 for balance, particularly in the early game where they were being used by some players for excessively cheap barricades and windows.
• Changed night vision potions to be created with spider eyes rather than golden carrots.
• Changed (reduced) the drop rate of spider eyes to be a semi-rare drop to fit their new role in potion brewing.
• Changed poison potions to be created with red mushrooms rather than spider eyes.
• Changed the visual effect on night vision potions both to look cooler in terms of having interesting visual effects depending on circumstance, and so that you can now distinguish between areas in light and darkness with it active, as there were some rather severe disadvantages previously to using it as you couldn't really tell which areas were in darkness, and thus where monsters could spawn.
• Changed Creeper Oysters to brew splash potions rather than gunpowder to open up the possibility of using offensive potions earlier in the game.
• Changed Brimstone to be used to increase the potency of potions rather than glowstone dust to create more of a progression to when you gain access to more powerful potions.
• Changed the recipe for Maps to have a Soul Urn in the top and bottom middle crafting slots instead of paper (it is unchanged otherwise with paper on the sides and a compass in the middle). This was done both to better explain the "magic GPS" aspect of maps, so that they can't be relied on for navigation in the early game, and so that they fill the role more of an advanced navigation tool in the overall tech progression. All told, hopefully they will feel a little less cheaty now, and more like a legitimate gameplay feature.
• Changed jungle saplings so that 4 of them next to each other will only grow into huge jungle trees if all 4 are fully grown.
• Removed the spider eye drop from jungle and cave spiders. They are now exclusive to regular giant spiders. In combination with the venom sack change above, this gives a distinct role to the different spider types, and a specific reason to farm Jungle Spiders.
• Removed the whole "healing potions hurt undead, harming potions heal them" thing from the game, as it was just hurting potion brewing overall as a system. The problem was that it turned healing potions into a "swiss army knife" where they would both help you and hurt a good portion of the mobs in the game, including the wither, which is probably the fight where you most want potions. Meanwhile, it relegated harming potions to pretty much never being used as a result (except in PvP) due to their tendency to both hurt you and help mobs. Short version: all potions now effect undead the same way they effect other mobs.
• Removed spider immunity to poison potions for similar reasons (this applies to all spider types). Minecraft just doesn't have enough mob types to justify these kinds of rules for potion use against them. This isn't a classic RPG with over a hundred mobs or something that can support these kind of special case rules for potion use, without drastically decreasing their effectiveness to the point of being useless. If potions are only effective some of the time, players likely just won't bother with them, and certainly won't keep them in their hot bar.
• Removed the ability to craft Blight into Nether Groth as it never really suited its intent as a nasty side-effect of the player's actions rather than something you'd want to intentionally create. Mycellium is thus the only way to create it once again, but an alternate method will be coming soon in an upcoming release.
• Fixed a problem with sapling growth where they would revert to the smallest size on occasion if growing in tight spaces.