Villager Improvements

[PlasmaFox]

Many people have mentioned how boring and grindy villagers and the whole trading system is. It is quite old and could use some improvements. I would like this thread to contain ideas, suggestions and discussions on potential updates to villagers in the future.

My main idea was to improve the housing(enslaving to be honest) of rescued villagers.

-First of all, refresh the trades table. Open to discussion and many changes in the future but the general idea to make their trades to feel more like a mix of quests and bare resource trades. Along with that, buff trades in general so the player can get unique and powerful items/resources instead of being forces to bring resources for gated progression (gating progression should still remain to some extent).

-Require some essential infrastructure in order to start trading. For example a bed and a work station (sort of like modern vanilla).

-Add a behind the scenes comfort meter of the villagers which would increase their levelling efficiency. This would be achieved by giving them more space and miscellaneous blocks like tables, chairs, vases, chests etc. This would allow for more player creativity and a more engaging process. So each villager would have their own room with things that they could interact with (not sure how hard it would be to make them open chests and sit in chairs occasionally). In general, players will come up with unique designs to speed up the levelling process in a fun way.

-Give villagers hunger. Just like all living things in BTW, villagers should eat food. Pretty simple feature and will again require some more infrastructure hopefully resulting in actual villages being built by the player rather than trading rooms.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of these changes would essentially spice up the villager stage of the game and encourage players to build actual villages and castles to house and protect villagers. Overall, improving and refreshing villagers in BTW as I think is quite overdue.

[Epsilon]

I like the general direction of this idea.
IMHO, one of the coolest things in BTW is how the infernal enchanter works. It does not force a certain predefined structure to build upon you, but rather it requires you to have a certain number of something in a vicinity. This allows for fantastic creative freedom.
I've always wondered if this concept could be expanded to other parts of the game. E.g. Nether Portals could in theory use a similar mechanic of requiring certain structures in their vicinity; and maybe needing some kind of power source for them would also be an interesting concept to explore.

Back to villagers I think there are some things that are relatively easy to incorporate:
- for certain trades to appear the villager must have access to certain blocks in their vicinity.
- villagers needing to feed themselves by taking food from chests should also be doable without too mich trouble.
- giving them some kind of day/night cycle with activities they always trie to perform, and thus they're only available for training at some points will be more work. But it could open up the potential ti only offer certain trades if they can "work on a block" for a certain time.
- the point above would also allow for more complicated trades, let's call them contracts, where you give an item to the villager, they then work it for several days using some of their specific blocks they need to have available, and then you get the upgraded item back for a price.
- the above could lead to a new class/tier of tools only available through this... thought atm this feels a bit redundant with enchanting.
- lastly, if it were possible that farmers are able to work their fields, planting seeds, removing weeds, harvesting and repeat that would be extremely awesome... thought it need to be balanced in regards to other automation...

Anyways that is what I can add to this discussion... sadly I've yet to get around to modding some of this myself...

[EpicAaron]

- the point above would also allow for more complicated trades, let's call them contracts, where you give an item to the villager, they then work it for several days using some of their specific blocks they need to have available, and then you get the upgraded item back for a price.

I think a really practical way to mod the current system would be to take a look at the tier 2 priest trades. Currently, the random crappy armor and tool enchants on offer kind of suck.

If you could consistently trade with the priest to add to add Efficiency III, high level smite, or silk touch ( ;O ) to an already enchanted tool (like a living infernal enchanter), priest trading would be a lot more rewarding. The blacksmith could add protections to armor or low level sharpness to swords. Farmer could even give the player looting II at some point? Lots of room to push the power level of trades higher.

Besides the early butcher food pantry, villager trading doesn't really reward the player until high levels are achieved. Villagers mostly just suck up resources until they spit out a progression item or enchanting scroll. Mixing in some practical trades in the lower levels could go a long way toward making the whole process more fun.

[dawnraider]

I do already have some plans in that regard towards improving villagers.
- Rework the librarian to sell soulforge-tech items at a lower level, rather than buy them from the player, allowing early access to some capabilities there for a cost
- Make the blacksmith less of a pain to level, and maybe integrate him into progression

I like the idea of the priest giving early access to some more powerful enchants as well. It'd have to be appropriately balanced in terms of cost, but I do like the idea overall.

As for villager comfort and living quarters, I feel like that's beyond the scope of BTW (although it sounds like a good idea for an addon).

Villager hunger would just be a pain. Losing an animal is unfortunate, but not really a huge deal in the long term. Losing a high level villager on the other hand, other than perhaps a farmer, is catastrophic.