Hardcore Spawn

[FerretFitz]

So ive been a long time lurker of these forums and played Better Than Wolves (Since cement buckets lol). I love the mod and it has become my only way of playing minecraft. I check these forums daily(Seriously) and love the community here. My issue with the mod has now become the hardcore spawn. I always wait for a new release to start a new world and with the past couple of releases ive realized how much i hate hardcore spawn. Ive put about 10 hours into this last release and have not made it anywhere past iron. Ive spent my 4 lives on the world getting to the same point and facing the hard truth of death because of true bullshit. Its killing my passion for this mod. I understand why its there dont get me wrong. I understand why every feature is in this mod but for casual players like myself its not easy to be able to dedicate time to something you enjoy when you spend time doing the same thing time and time again making no progress. Maybe im just whining but i felt like i should contribute something to these forums and my observations and only feedback i can really give is this.

[Taleric]

You are in the battle we all face. Ourselves. To face and accept defeat, loss, risk/reward and endure.

HCS tips to keep forward momemtum.

-If you HCS consider a break. Flat out stop and wait till the bug hits you again after a time. By then you will have reflected on your decisions and forgotten the loss to try as if the other did not exist.

-Treat the map HCS area as one living base area. Every day you live leave a chest with some wood, stone, food, axes, picks ect. After a time your HCS will launch you right into play.

-Select different objectives. Instead of pick start a pumpkin farm and secure some chickens. If you get several renewable resources started in various HCS when you do live to connect one base to another your long term survival is further ensured.

-Treat HCS like dark souls, a lesson in every death on risks to avoid and that death/pain is unavoidable.

Ideally I think the fully experienced BTW run would have many deaths and new bases all over before you finally reach endgames.

Good luck! The challenge of the journey makes the game.

[FlowerChild]

Ok, first let me mention that I've rage quit a number of times because of HC Spawn. Let that sink in. I've designed something that causes me to rage quit, and I have zero intention of changing it. If anything, I'm often tempted to make it more challenging.

Why? Well, it comes down to this point:

Ive spent my 4 lives on the world getting to the same point and facing the hard truth of death because of true bullshit.

If that's actually true, I'll fix it. Please describe the bullshit in question, because my money would be betting on it actually being something you could have avoided. In fact, that's constantly what I'm shooting for with this design: brutal, but fair, and I know from my own rages that I either always come to the conclusion that it was my own fault as a player that I died, or the experience highlights to me something I need to fix to ensure that's the case. The latter happens very rarely these days.

But, if in some way, I've failed to plug a hole that's resulted in an unfair death, that's really what you should be telling me about, so I can make sure that doesn't occur, or so that one of us can help you figure out how to change your play to prevent such deaths occurring again.

One additional point:

but for casual players like myself

This mod isn't made for casual players. Period. Even when it was strictly a tech mod, it was made for the most technical of players that enjoyed doing things the hard way. Now, with all the survival and progression changes I've made, I suspect getting to the end of the tech progression is probably at least an 80 hour investment, which is about twice what you would expect from most modern "hardcore" games. I can't be certain it's still the case as I don't follow other MC mods, but for many years I'd say the BTW was the most non-casual Minecraft experience you could probably find.

So yeah man, if you're really looking for a casual experience, I'm really not sure why you're playing something where every second feature is named "hardcore foo" :)

[dawnraider]

You know it's rather fitting that not an hour after reading this post I just had my first death in over a year, in my new world since the recent updates. And yeah I did quit immediately, because I was stupid and lost a lot because of it. I got cornered on the edge of a ravine by three zombies and a creeper, dying by getting blown up at the edge of it and all my stuff fell down into lava. But as you said, FC, this is not a game for casuals, and that's what I like the most about it. There's a lot of stuff that can kill you that makes you think it was bullshit in the moment. But once you stop being mad about it and actually think about what caused the death and how it can be avoided, you realized that you screwed yourself over, not the game. So I just wanted to give some input on this. I absolutely hate hardcore spawn when it happens, but that doesn't mean it isn't a good feature and I don't like it in the long run.

[FerretFitz]

I think im still stuck in the tech aspect of the mod and need to change the way i play. Most of my knowledge came from battosay and i got a lot of my inspiration from him. Now that the mods changed so much since then that play style doesnt work anymore. My first objective is always iron pick because once you get it the world opens up so much more. Is renewable food the best starting objective?

[Gilberreke]

I think im still stuck in the tech aspect of the mod and need to change the way i play. Most of my knowledge came from battosay and i got a lot of my inspiration from him. Now that the mods changed so much since then that play style doesnt work anymore. My first objective is always iron pick because once you get it the world opens up so much more. Is renewable food the best starting objective?

It depends on your playstyle. If you are comfortable with your abilities as a hunter, pick is fine, but it puts a lot of stress on you. I notice more and more people over time move away from the previously established "best practice" of hunting and just take it a bit slower, by making a hoe and getting food stable. So yes, if you're struggling, I advise a hoe first start, it takes off a lot of pressure.

Can you explain some of your deaths, so we could maybe help with correcting your playstyle?

[emptychild]

So here is the thing about hardcore spawn. It's terrible. And it's meant to be. Because hardcore spawn is the punishment for carelessness. I cannot remember the last time that I died in BTW that I didn't immediately go, "God damn it, I knew better than to do that."* Also, knowing that it's your fault you died is WAY more frustrating than dying to random bullshit because you have no one to blame but yourself. You have people willing to give advice and FC even saying if something is truly unfair he'll change it. Also I can't recommend Vioki9999's gameplay videos enough.

Let me tell you why I love hardcore spawn (even when I hate it) There are so many shortcuts and corners you could cut if you could just be a little careless. "Let me go check out that cave system real quick without securing my entire walkway because the knowledge and the time save I'd gain would more than offset the punishment for death." "Let me be careless with food because I'll spawn with full hunger." "Let me leave the no villager starting radius and just resettle somewhere with populated villages thereby invalidating a huge chunk of the game" Hardcore spawning is the most crucial aspect of this mod because it shapes how you have to act and plan in every other aspect. One reason this mod is good is because of the tension it provides and the threat of that terrible punishment is what provides the tension. The mod makes you learn to play because the penalty is so steep. Why does hardcore spawn suck so much? Because it's intended to punish you for knowingly being careless.

Many other minecraft mods (and vanilla) have tons of ways to abuse death mechanics and BTW has a lot of those same ways. However, I believe that FC intentionally made it where the penalty for death outweighs any potential cheese bonus you might get.

*(The End is the one exception to me feeling like a death was fair and that I deserve it. Although, it's been a while since I made it there so my opinion might be out of date.)

TLDR: HC spawn is so punishing intentionally to shape your play to avoid it in every aspect of the game.

TLDR 2: BTW has a small but amazing community who are willing to help you learn to be successful if you're up for learning.

[FerretFitz]

I play very fast paced. I normally think of what i can do down the road instead of just establishing a beginning point. This alone im sure is why im having such a hard time grasping hardcore spawning. I want the cool shit now lol. If i could hear how you guys sort of get your foot in the right direction that would help a great amount. I havnt really sat down and played it for myself in quite sometime. Youtuber's have been my eye for the mod and these forums have been everything else.

[dawnraider]

Playing way too quickly and rushing certainly is a good way to get yourself killed. Everything is more dangerous in BTW, so you need to properly prepare. There are some risks in vanilla that you just can't afford to take in BTW. Also just be patient. What got me killed the last time was getting cocky in a mostly lit area of a cave while I has full armor on. But I was wandering the cave at half health which immediately led to debuffs being applied when I took damage. It's also very easy to unintentionally end up in gloom, or run out of food if you didn't prepare enough. So just take things slower and always be prepared for things to go wrong because they will.

[Ethinolicbob]

I play very fast paced too sometimes FerretFitz, you just have to know where to mitigate the risk you put in to the game.

First thing to thing to change your thinking of is that when you die you just spawn in a different section of your base. If you don't recognise it you just haven't explored it yet, so get exploring.

The next part is my play-style which is subjective but I'll go through it to give you a window of how I play.

After I get up to stone and create a surplus that I can leave behind I go and explore the surrounding biomes. I used to do trips in the compass directions N, E, S, W but after a comment by Gil I have changed my current play-through. I treat the edges between biomes as roads and every crossroad (intersection of 3 or more biomes) I create a dirt pillar upside down L to suggest the direction back home.

While exploring I slaughter like a madman and try to come back with as much meat as possible so that I don't need to worry about food until post-diamond

Once home I don't tend to leave for a while again. First off I look for surface caves and start exploring. Block the entrance so that things cant sneak on me. Then I explore in sections. Delve in lighting up, then block off with a line of dirt so that 2 high mobs cant't sneak on me (I find spiders on their own not enough of a risk to worry about.) Go back and strip out the resources. Rinse repeat. I usually leave a majority of the dirt line there so if I run into anything I head back and block it off and dispatch the mob in safety.
If I find a crossroad I place a line of dirt across the other direction(s) and explore 1 at a time. If I find an area with too much risk (overhead caves, loads of intersecting caves etc) I usually block it off and forget about it. Chances are you are going to stumble of the same area from another direction and incrementally make it less risky to explore.
I do this until an iron pickaxe is available.

Next phase is that I carve a path down to the bottom of the second strata from my cave-base and then do a little strip mining looking for caves. Listen for mobs, water etc and then head towards the noise.
Once I find one I engage the above strategy and explore as safely as possible. Rinse & repeat and you will find yourself with diamond in no time. Go to the nether, get some netherrack, create a cauldron. My current playthrough it took me 4 hours.

Usually at this point I create a compass and explore the entirety of HCS leaving beacons pointing back however my initial explore revealed that I am surrounded by ocean and swamp so I want to get a sail sorted.
Collected a bunch of cows & chickens and started on my hemp and pumpkin farm.

That's where I am on my current playthough. I am holding off on exploring the HCS until I progress through up to the windmill so that I can manufacture sails. Given that a lot of my immediate surroundings are water I am going to leave caches of sails so that if I die returning is manageable.

Once I got my egg production up I was pretty happy to find I still had 1.5 stacks of cooked pork-chops in my food-stores which combined with the eggs boosted my food store nicely.

If I do end up dying I would do the same from the beginning. This is were you can self grief your map if you try to rush it. By spawning somewhere different you are going to cause the food sources in the area to get killed so its its even more important that you build up a halfway base because next time you spawn near this base is going to be the key to your survival.

I haven't died my current playthrough but if I did my strategy would be to build a base on a crossroad and when exploring leave beacons that point back to it on the other crossroads that differ from the ones that point back to original spawn. On past playthroughs most of the times I explore out I come across my original beacons back to original spawn and downtime is fairly minimal.

[FlowerChild]

*(The End is the one exception to me feeling like a death was fair and that I deserve it. Although, it's been a while since I made it there so my opinion might be out of date.)

This came up in the chat of a recent Vioki stream. I'll be taking a look at the end fight shortly, because yeah, while it's been quite awhile since I did it, I definitely remember some rather unfair elements to it, especially the way you spawn in. You can see from the stuff I've been working on in recent releases (villager trading, whither fight) where I roughly am in my current play through, and I've also been building up slowly towards getting to the end while working on a few other things as well.

The designer was a bit of a jerk with some of the late game trades that are required to get there, but one of these days I'll work up the hutzpah to get myself over the hump :)

[Niyu]

I've never found the end battle to be unfair if you are prepared well enough. You just need the ender googles, with some extra ones in case they break, a few stacks of potions(health, regen and strength), a composite bow(don't remember right now if you can enchant it with the regular enchanter, it's been a while), tons of arrows, A few stacks of ender pearls in case you need a quik jump back into the floating island( for those unfortunate original spawns and in case the dragon pushes you outside) and a bucket of water. Then you work towards clearing all the healing altars, pop down an strenght potion and shot the dragon until it's dead, replacing the googles when tehy are about to break if you have the time.

If a dragon attack breaks your googles, immediately look up or down to avoid looking at endermen and quickly put on the next pair. and if you accidentally look at one try to use the water bucket to shield yourself.

The tools are there, you just need to prepare and use them.

[dawnraider]

I wouldn't necessarily call it unfair, but it is incredibly boring.

[Niyu]

I wouldn't necessarily call it unfair, but it is incredibly boring.

Yeah, that definitely. It always felt more of a chore than a challenge.

[SterlingRed]

Hopefully this is the appropriate place to post this.

On a restart, my orginal spawn was really close to a witch hut. I managed to dance around them for a day but by day two the witches had wandered a bit and were unavoidable. I suppose the way to avoid this death would have been to "get out of dodge" as soon as I spawned but I wonder if it's possible to even spawn closer to them so that running away isn't even an option.

[Sarudak]

Hopefully this is the appropriate place to post this.

On a restart, my orginal spawn was really close to a witch hut. I managed to dance around them for a day but by day two the witches had wandered a bit and were unavoidable. I suppose the way to avoid this death would have been to "get out of dodge" as soon as I spawned but I wonder if it's possible to even spawn closer to them so that running away isn't even an option.

At that point given I have nothing to lose and will keep respawning at the same spot I'd probably just try and punch them to death over a few successive deaths. That or at least lead them away from the hut. Sometimes hardcore spawn puts you in a bad spot but remember that at that point the death calculus has changed.