Hardcore Beacons *SPOILERS, CHEAT FREE*

[Extreme Boyheat]

Really enjoying the Lapis Beacon, makes torch placement an OCD thing. :p

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/44gu17wrmf78in ... -20-87.jpg

[Syruse]

Alrighty then! I have built my Level 4 soulforged steel beacon and I'm currently trying to figure out just what it all does.

Things I have found so far

• When right-clicking on it you get the message "You have been bound to this beacon"
• It makes amazing noises when at Level 4

That's all I have, I don't really know where to begin with this thing. :P

[Ferrus.Manus]

Alrighty then! I have built my Level 4 soulforged steel beacon and I'm currently trying to figure out just what it all does.

Things I have found so far

• When right-clicking on it you get the message "You have been bound to this beacon"
• It makes amazing noises when at Level 4

That's all I have, I don't really know where to begin with this thing. :P

Die?

[Syruse]

Yeah, I just did that. The SFS beacon is a type of fixed spawn point, I have yet to test the range of it. I think there's still more though :D

[Psion]

Huh, guess I really am psychic. I predicted the spawn point thing before it even came out! :D True to my name!

(kidding aside, that's awesome.)

What else could it do though... perhaps cause ghasts to spawn? Try placing netherrack in the area to see if nether creatures spawn? lol

[odranoel]

Yeah, I just did that. The SFS beacon is a type of fixed spawn point, I have yet to test the range of it. I think there's still more though :D

i suspect thats more of a bonus feature of sorts for the SFS beacon. im sure FC didnt spend a week on them just to make a super expensive bed xD

Edit to add, maybe they are also the first step in creating "the device"?

[FlowerChild]

i suspect thats more of a bonus feature of sorts for the SFS beacon. im sure FC didnt spend a week on them just to make a super expensive bed xD

What? Rebalancing beds to go from 3 wood/3 wool to 164 blocks of SFS isn't worth a week's worth of effort just for the lolz? :)

[Gawonni]

These beacons are maddening! As much as I'd love to go and try some of my theories out, I'm nowhere near close to getting a beacon.

I've been thinking, perhaps the iron beacon draws the effects of all nearby (or possibly global) beacons into itself, in a single beacon? You could say the beacon effects are really just expressed through transformations of electromagnetic waves and the iron beacon picks up on these waves and harmonizes with them (as any ferromagnet does with magnetic fields), creating its own parallel field of effect... Maybe?

As for SFS, I'm truly stumped :p

[odranoel]

I've been thinking, perhaps the iron beacon draws the effects of all nearby (or possibly global) beacons into itself, in a single beacon? You could say the beacon effects are really just expressed through transformations of electromagnetic waves and the iron beacon picks up on these waves and harmonizes with them (as any ferromagnet does with magnetic fields), creating its own parallel field of effect... Maybe?

dude....mind = blown, that would be freakin amazing! and would seem to make sence with what FC has hinted so far.

either way i just got my first three wither skeleton heads! (took freaking forever, when i got back to base after getting the last two, i had more then half a stack of bones with me, with no looting enchanment.) and now im gearing up for the fight. this should be intresting. the dragon was much easier then i thought he would be, lets see how the wither holds out. cant wait to get my first beacon!

[The great randomo]

Sorry, double post.

[The great randomo]

The one and only criticism of beacons I have is that they encourage old-style xp grinders, where the player punches glitching masses of mobs. Why auto kill mobs when you can kill them yourself and get double the loot?
Other than that, I love the beacons :)

[Sandrew]

The one and only criticism of beacons I have is that they encourage old-style xp grinders, where the player punches glitching masses of mobs. Why auto kill mobs when you can kill them yourself and get double the loot?
Other than that, I love the beacons :)

As a counter-argument, don't most mob traps already produce excessive amounts of junk?

[DaveYanakov]

The one and only criticism of beacons I have is that they encourage old-style xp grinders, where the player punches glitching masses of mobs. Why auto kill mobs when you can kill them yourself and get double the loot?
Other than that, I love the beacons :)

Because I can either sit there for a half hour to get one stack of zombie meat and get bored enough to quit for the day, or I can go do something interesting for two hours and get two stacks of zombie meat. False economy is false.

[nmarshall23]

Latter today, I will be building my first, and second Beacons. I've collected 6 heads, now I just got to kill a wither.
Not sure what types of I will be building. Probably Hellfire, and Iron in the nether, so I can continue working on my Wither skeleton farm.

I have some wild speculation, compasses naturally point to the spawn point. Why? Could that have something to do with Home? Could Beacons be sending signals back Home?
Has anyone build a Beacon at the spawn point?
What about at the Strongholds?

[FlowerChild]

The one and only criticism of beacons I have is that they encourage old-style xp grinders, where the player punches glitching masses of mobs. Why auto kill mobs when you can kill them yourself and get double the loot?
Other than that, I love the beacons :)

Actuallly...I think this might be a somewhat fair point.

I hear what others are saying about the false-economy aspect of it, and to an extent I agree, however, I also wouldn't underestimate people's desire to get a few more items out of their grinders and to put themselves through hell in the process.

Ideally, I think the optimal solution to this would be to apply the looting enchant to *all* (player originated or no) deaths within the area of effect of the beacon.

However, this becomes problematic for the reasons I was talking about in my recent dev diary with regards to having to scan through the full entity list within the region being a performance hog, while only scanning through the players is rather quick.

One workaround might be for me to create a global list of all such beacons using the new functionality I have for such things, which I could then quickly scan through on a mob's death to check if they are in range of such a beacon. However, that would still be a rather involved effort for such a potentially trivial thing.

If people can keep me appraised of the long term impact the current looting beacon has on their play style, I would be much obliged. Like, if it seriously inspires you to go back to punching mobs in the long-term, please let me know. I think it's still too soon to tell whether the added output will really inspire people towards mob punching other than as a passing thought. In the meantime, I'll keep mulling over potential tweaks I can make to it.

[FlowerChild]

Actually...I really like the idea of the effect being universally applied. It really gives a reason to build a looting beacon as it would up the output of all your mob traps and automated animal farms within the region.

At present I probably consider it the least useful beacon, and probably the one I wouldn't even be personally inspired to build *at all* in my main world. However, if I cause it to work like the above, I'd be wanting one post-haste.

Yeah...I'll definitely be considering this one further. Given BTW's focus on mob traps, I think this is the kind of bonus that suits to mod perfectly. Given that, it may inspire me to go through the trouble of maintaining the global list I mentioned to make this a reality.

Not sure about the current material for that beacon though. One of the reasons I chose emerald is because it is one of the easiest materials to acquire through trading, and I didn't want to necessarily motivate the click-fest that is trading too much. If I go this route I may decide to assign looting to another material and make emerald do something else.

[EtherealWrath]

Edit; My apologies FC.

[Foxy Boxes]

I would check if this works myself, but new computer = no old world.
Does the SFS beacon work in the nether?

[FlowerChild]

Thinking about looting beacon effect- would it work if the looting bonus only occurred for chopping block deaths?
(It was a brilliant way of auto-collecting skulls instead of players sitting there with a battle-axe)

Don't start with suggestions please. One of the main reasons I don't share my thought process more freely with regards to such things is that it often inspires people to make suggestions...which I hate.

Please restrict suggestions to the suggestion sub-forum, and refrain from making them about work-in-progress features.

[FlowerChild]

I would check if this works myself, but new computer = no old world.
Does the SFS beacon work in the nether?

Gratz! That's actually an extremely relevant question ;)

[Syruse]

Gratz! That's actually an extremely relevant question ;)

Well damn, here I was thinking I was done stockpiling SFS :P

[odranoel]

hurray! i finally got my first beacon! now im just missing enough matireals to fullactivate it. :P

im intrested in each levels range as well, so for now iv only been able to test the first levels range (9 blocks of matireal) but ill update this post with the other ranges once i get enough yummies.

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Beacon ranges:

Level 1: 20 block range

Level 2: ??

Level 3: ??

Level 4: *150 - 200* (based on other players comments and screens, it seems to be about the view distance on far render distance.)

Edit: also that wither i must say was much harder then i thought hed be. he just kept hovering above me and shooting relentlessly, and it was impossible to run away from. he would just stay right on top of me even with swiftness potions, and never stopped shooting, suficet to say i died a good few times. i dont see how it can be killed without heavy enchants and potion use. deff the hardest battle iv had yet in MC, and makes the dragon look like a total pussy.

[Ceunon]

Heh, I thought the purpose of the iron beacon was to propagate the effects of other beacons (maybe even make them global), but it looks like I was wrong. Guess I'll be playing with those for a looooooong time.

And, damn, that Wither surely is nasty. Holy cow. I'll have to build an arena with an explosion-proof floor to kill him. I never notice when he blows up a hole around me and I'm unable to keep running around, because I'm always looking up at him, lol.

[Extreme Boyheat]

Finally, a use for obsidian. :P

[RalphKastro]

actually, the blue head projectile can destroy even obsidian