A look at hardcore health balance

[DaveYanakov]

I am posting this here to avoid discussing numbers and mechanics in the release thread. Basically, hardcore health is an excellent addition to the game but there are a couple places where it has added what may be more difficulty than intended. The wither skeletons in particular are now an incredible threat as they add a physical debuff now in addition to making you very fragile. Even with full health and iron armor in good repair, a wither skeleton with an ally of any kind is all but a death sentence. This makes your first hibachi a major hurdle since the changes to spawn conditions make multiple spawns far from uncommon.

I am hesitant to ask for a tweak to the system as the sense of dread when you are wounded or hungry (or both!) and trying to crawl away from a merciless spider is incredibly cool. Maybe add some form of inventory inefficient way to prep for heavy combat like the fortress assasults that would require constructing a staging base to make use of a short lived buff. I dunno, apologies for any incoherance as I am pisting this from bed and I think the double dose of percocet the nice ER doctor gave me is starting to kick in.

[Locke]

I think that sounds good, the idea of a building game not being about building is something I have been annoyed by.

Defiantly something I would like to see happen in a nice way.

[Rianaru]

I noticed this, but saw it as just more reason to automate wither skeleton slaying instead of actually doing it myself. I always try to automate killing operations because spam clicking my battleaxe at something until it dies really doesn't feel like rewarding gameplay at all. I do like what Locke said "a building game not being about building", but would have to flip around and say that it is about building an automated farm rather than using the unrewarding combat system. That being said, the numbers at this point would make it extremely difficult to set one up(mine's already done), so I'm not sure whether or not it is balanced properly. I'll leave that for others to decide.

[Gabecraft1234]

The trouble with a temporary buff is that in MC that means a potion. And potions are only attainable AFTER fighting your way through the now extremely deadly withers and blazes to a nether wart farm.

However you do have some options

Milk will cure the wither effect.

And you can get extremely lucky and get the vMC fire resistance enchant to combat the blazes.

For early game ventures into the strongholds I would recommend an enchanted vMC bow and plenty of arrows to keep your engagements at a distance

So is a buff really necessary . . . and if a buff were to be added how would it be obtained and what would it do?

[Six]

I agree that enemies that do damage over time are very powerful at the moment, however it's hard to say if it is unbalanced, or if it just requires a different method of attack. These health and hunger changes have actually drastically changed the flow of the game and how you have to do things.

Perhaps one response could be a low to mid-tech healing item, such as a bandage that used cloth and flowers, or similar?

[FlowerChild]

Honestly Dave, it's too early to make a suggestion with regards to this.

I'll create a thread in general discussion for people to discuss any perceived balance issue with regards to HC hunger though, as I do want to hear people's findings and opinions on this.