Early wheat/seed

[ko_teknik]

I don't know if farming brown mushroom and feed pigs are inside the tech tree. But i constat that with a lot of players ... They prefer travel a lot early game and find wheat ! Some players die with a chance to spawn more near a villager with wheat. Other players try to quickly get a diamond pick and travel in the nether and thus find wheat as quickly as possible.

On the servers I hosted I never saw a player making early mushroom farm or choclate for pigs... Always after 1-2 real life days they got wheat and don't have never use that feature.
And I find that traveling a lot in early part is not very interesting and not difficult! Just travel the day, kill animals, and at night make a small shelter to cook the food. There is no difficulty that just takes time.

[Taleric]

If you have not done chicken ranching you are missing out!

IMO the worst thing you can do is rush for midgame content.

There is easily about 12-24 hours of game play before you should be making bread.

To exploit the wheat you need some mechanical power and there is a ton of hemp to be worked before that. Easy to bring chickens into the fold during that time and mine while waiting for hemp growth.

I would suggest you do a solo run and see just how long you can play making sustainable food chains before wheat. This is FC's #1 gift to players, maximizing the hours of tense survival gameplay by fine tuning MC at each step of progression.

Just my opinion, don't rush it.

[ko_teknik]

I think you don't understand my post.

[FlowerChild]

I think you don't understand my post.

Chocolate for pigs isn't really intended as something everyone will use in a play-through, or part of the more linear aspects of the tech tree. It's more of an optional thing if it strikes a player's fancy to do something different.

I never use it myself, but I don't see that as an issue.

As for just walking at start to find wheat, as Taleric mentioned, I think that's a lot of wasted effort. You could have a Hemp farm going while you explore for diamonds and build a nether portal, as you're going to need a lot of Hemp to effectively use wheat anyways. Once you get a Hemp farm going, you also have access to renewable food through eggs and seeds. In the end, I'm not sure what it really gains you to spend a bunch of extra time (relative to using the nether, which can also be combined with finding a fortress for that aspect of the progression) getting early access to a food item you can't even use yet.

Honestly, I can't even remember the last time I starved to death early game, and I tend to make my time about things, building up an early base and such, not rushing to get eggs going either, as well. So while I think that food provides good tension early game, unless you really mess up, going hiking miles for wheat early game sounds a lot like a faulty solution to a nonexistent problem :)

[Gilberreke]

I think that's ko_teknik's point though. Why do so many people do the early wheat thing? He's correct that it's rampant. I think about 50% of the players I've seen lately opt to go for early wheat.

Also, I'd like to point out that I always go chocolate pigs :D. Automating pigs with chocolate is one of my favorite foods. Eggs and bacon baby! I can only imagine what pork fed purely on chocolate tastes like.

[FlowerChild]

I think that's ko_teknik's point though. Why do so many people do the early wheat thing? He's correct that it's rampant. I think about 50% of the players I've seen lately opt to go for early wheat.

Any idea what they're doing with the wheat early on? I mean, if you build a windmill to grind wheat, you also have a ton of extra hemp seeds you could be feeding chickens for sustainable food, thus largely eliminating the need for wheat :)

My best guess would be that it's vestigial vanilla syndrome.

[ko_teknik]

Any idea what they're doing with the wheat early on ?

I love early game , i love trying to survive !
When i start a new adventure i search animals , pumpkins , when a storm coming i try to get fish , i turn around jungle try to get cocoa , i make brown mushroom farm , i survive with eggs and pigs ...

You did a lot of awesome feature and i love it... chicken only give a eggs after a day , its hard to get a tons of chicken .... You did choclate, its hard making cocoa farm to feed pigs, you make fishing really good during storm ... pigs follow only with chocolate, sheep and cow follow only with grass , mushroom are hard to farm in the dark ! I love that !

But if you get wheat you don't need anything ! You can feed all animals , you can mass sheep, pigs, cow ! You have free infinite easy food ! This break all awesome feature :(
Just make a little hole and trow wheat to feed ...

Early Wheat = cheat for me and a huge game breaking experience


Sorry if i speak like a spanish cow ^^

[FlowerChild]

Early Wheat = cheat for me and a huge game breaking experience

Ah, I see. I brain farted on them using it for animal breeding.

Will think on it, because yeah, maybe the mod has progressed beyond the point where breeding with wheat fits with everything else.

[Gilberreke]

I think part of it is also that a large section of the players really likes exploring. Vanilla doesn't give you much, since after you've you've found one of every biome, that's it really. BTW dangles this carrot of far-off villages to find and that excites players to go after them. If they wait until after they've got the nether under control, that aspect fades, as you just make a long nether ceiling tunnel, plop a portal and you're outside of HCS. I think that there's probably a real cool mechanic there and I wouldn't completely stop players from doing it.

The problem seems to be early breeding mostly, since that makes the mod so much easier. If they do decide to take The Great Explorer route, once they finally get there, getting to breed all animals is a bit much, the villagers, enchanting tables and potion tables should be reward enough.

I think this thread is maybe missing the opinion of some of the players that like to take that route?

[FlowerChild]

I think this thread is maybe missing the opinion of some of the players that like to take that route?

Because I like basing my design decisions on a diverse array of player opinion? ;)

[jakerman999]

Wheat is still gated behind Hoe, isn't it? Even if you go gung ho nomad in one direction to find a village, you still need to find and smelt 18 iron ore before you get wheat. That sounds more difficult to me than building a sustainable living (which I can normally get down in about an in game week) then working towards a nether tunnel. Although I suppose overworld does lead to wheat before diamond... Still seems risky. Then again I have terrible luck finding structures.

[Gilberreke]

Because I like basing my design decisions on a diverse array of player opinion? ;)

You should totally re-open the suggestion forum, then we can get a BUNCH of opinions!

[jorgebonafe]

Did I hear right? The suggestion forum will reopen? Then I want to sugest an obsidian saw. It's like a regular saw, but it cuts stone!

[ko_teknik]

Please stop or lock.

[FlowerChild]

Please stop or lock.

Hehe... don't worry man, we're joking around here :)

There's still a useful conversation to be had.

[Rob]

The hoe wouldn't gate the use of the wheat you found. Since you could just utilize the farmland in the village you got the wheat in.

[ko_teknik]

My observation is that : if you get wheat you don't need any other feature to have food , you don't need other early awesome feature . Mushroom farm / chocolate / fish / chicken.

I believed , it was clear.

[EtherealWrath]

The hoe wouldn't gate the use of the wheat you found. Since you could just utilize the farmland in the village you got the wheat in.

If you get wheat- making a hoe is easy as you quite often find iron ingots in dungeon loot.

I think part of it is also that a large section of the players really likes exploring. Vanilla doesn't give you much, since after you've you've found one of every biome, that's it really. BTW dangles this carrot of far-off villages to find and that excites players to go after them.

The survival tweaks and hungry zombies also makes exploring a lot of fun.

[jstu9]

My observation is that : if you get wheat you don't need any other feature to have food , you don't need other early awesome feature . Mushroom farm / chocolate / fish / chicken.

Yet if you have journeyed far enough to get wheat, you have come across a lot of animals anyways and probably killed them thus negating hunger from being a major issue.

I never do mushroom farms anymore since they were nerfed (aside for trading). Chocolate, not worth the effort, not sure I have ever bred with chocolate. Fish, not sure I have ever fished.

And I probably explore more than most and I typically find wheat earlier than most (I would guess). But even then my main food source is still just animals I have killed early on. Then eggs and/or ham & eggs, the ham mainly coming from animals I have killed.

But it is an interesting point. You probably could breed up pigs and/or sheep with wheat and use that as your sole food source. Though I'm not sure that is an exploit rather than just a different way of playing.

[jorgebonafe]

I used to do these early game long trips to find wheat a long time ago... But I guess I can thank my old age, as I seem to have grown out of these tendencies :P I actually find the old "go on hunting trips and slowly progress" method to be more fun after all. By the way, fishing saved my life multiple times on my latest playthrough.

[ko_teknik]

My observation is that : if you get wheat you don't need any other feature to have food , you don't need other early awesome feature . Mushroom farm / chocolate / fish / chicken.

Though I'm not sure that is an exploit rather than just a different way of playing.

You confirm what i say. But it's not a different way of playing ... It's a bad way , missing all early feature.

By the way, fishing saved my life multiple times on my latest playthrough.

I can just say YES !

[ion]

it's a game mate, deal with it. how i play is none of your concerns. bad, good all that it matters is do you have fun playing it?

[ko_teknik]

it's a game mate, deal with it. how i play is none of your concerns. bad, good all that it matters is do you have fun playing it?

you know in vanilla you can kill cow with bow ?
you know in vanilla you can explore caverns only with torches ?
you know in vanilla you can explore ocean and stay away from squids ?

If flower child make cow dangerous it's to prevent players kill it easy.
If flower child make gloom effect it's to prevent players from exploring caverns without torches and some other good way to play.
.........

[FlowerChild]

Guys, english is not k0_teknik's first language and I think people are taking this thread wrong as a result.

Take it easy guys. Other than a couple of posts it's all been friendly with a bit of joking around between old forum members (myself included) thrown in.

I think his initial point is valid: wheat has become a disproportionate reward for finding villages early. It used to be that villages served no purpose really other than wheat. Now, finding them is an actual part of the tech progression which I think is best left for later on.

As I said earlier, I will think on it further. Will lock this down as k0_teknik suggested, as it seems to be taking a nasty turn.