HCH is brilliant

[BobSlingblade679]

First off, I want to say that I think that even though all the new food and mechanics surrounding food is awesome, imo the change to health regeneration has made the largest impact. The lower health regen has made funny things like a skeleton jumping off a small cliff, landing behind you, and sniping you, a truly fucking terrifying thing. I love it. I've always felt that combat in MC needed an overhaul but this is easily a better way and such a simple thing. Its really amazing how such a subtle tweak has made such a huge impact on the game and made for a much more survival-esque experience overall. Thanks for that, FC.

For the rest of HCH, again, I love it. I think it could get away with being a bit more difficult in the early game but I really have no complaints. The food nerf has really quite drastically altered the first couple days of MC. Before, I'd kill maybe a few pigs/cows and then start my wheat farm and then I'd be done with food. Eventually, once I got hoppers, I'd upgrade to eggs, but that's pretty much all I did with food. Now, I kill every pig/cow/sheep/chicken in sight and I'll cut a VERY wide berth around skeletons/spiders on the rare occasion I decide to brave the night before I get a full set of iron armor. Hell, I'll avoid them even after I get a full set most of the time. But avoiding mobs is mostly the health regen more than any aspect to the hunger changes.

I thought HC Movement was cool but I never seriously gave it a chance before HCH (I'll admit I was partially just sad about the loss of my speed pots haha). But HCM coupled with HCH is really awesome. Worrying about the efficiency of your low-level foods against the time and energy spent against various terrains adds a lot of interesting choices early game. The effects are lessened once you get a farmable source of food but they're still there. I've probably made three roads in MC before HCM/HCH total but there wasn't really a reason to do it except maybe as a really time-consuming terrain marking method. But the first village I found in my post-HCH world is in a desert. So... I've paved the shit out of my base.

Thanks again, FC for making this mod/game. I haven't enjoyably put this many hours into a game since Morrowind.

[FlowerChild]

Thanks for that man, I really appreciate it :)

Honestly, it feels great for me to be really cutting loose on MC's design like this and going for such an extensive rebalance. It's really opened the floodgates for me in terms of things that have bothered me over the past couple of years of play and development suddenly coming to a head in a "fuck it...I'm doing this right" kinda way.

As I mentioned in that other far less pleasant thread, I've been busting my ass the past couple of weeks pouring out one thing after another and loving every minute of it. The change list for the next release is already close to the length of that of the previous one, and I'm still not done with it yet.

Anyways, very exciting times for the mod overall. If this is the swan song of BTW as my development of it comes to a close, I think it an entirely fitting end for the project, having come all the way from a few simple blocks added to the game, to a complete rework and rebalance of it to create what I believe to be a much better experience overall.

EDIT: Actually, if I can sum up the way I'm feeling right now, I think it's like the gloves are finally off. There are many things that I am doing now that address issues that have bothered me in MC for a very long time, but which I hesitated to get into in the past because it felt like it was "going too far" in fundamentally changing how MC works.

I'm just not pulling punches anymore in terms of making BTW the *game* I want it to be, with the sole exception of the time involved before I move onto RTH. It really does feel great, and it's also the first time I've felt truly on my game since the whole BWF fiasco, so it also feels awesome to be free of that as well.

I decide to brave the night before I get a full set of iron armor.

Ah...now if I can give a small spoiler for the next release, you've stumbled on a rather key point right there ;)

[DaveYanakov]

Dude, I haven't braved the night yet with iron armor...

[FlowerChild]

Dude, I haven't braved the night yet with iron armor...

Hardcore players fearing the night once again...these are the things that make me do a little happy dance :)

It really does make me wonder how many of the people complaining about the difficulty are still trying to run around outside once the sun goes down. It really just isn't something that I want to be a reasonable thing to do anymore.

[BobSlingblade679]

Thanks for that man, I really appreciate it :)

I decide to brave the night before I get a full set of iron armor.

Ah...now if I can give a small spoiler for the next release, you've stumbled on a rather key point right there ;)

Fuuuu........ How am I going to sleep with that "?" rattling around in my skull? Does he mean HC mobs? Is he changing iron armor?


But, yeah., I've been meaning to put up this thread but I've been too busy playing. >.>
That jerk from the other thread kinda gave me the kick I needed. I totally agree with how you handled it. Don't sweat it, man. This was fucking HUGE nerf to Steve in general and players are gonna have that knee-jerk reaction ( I mean everyone in general, not the jerk in the other thread).

I'm glad you're enjoying doing your thing again. Glad for you and myself. :)

[BobSlingblade679]

Dude, I haven't braved the night yet with iron armor...

I don't recommend it. lmao

My last attempt at it resulted in the recurring "Quest for the Compass".

[tom_savage]

Here here. HCH so amazingly changes early to mid-game minecraft, it feels like survival again. The amount of time spent starting up a base feels good. The time it takes to effectively "beat" HCH feels good. Those whole update, just...yup. Brilliant.

[wirer]

I have to agree with the impact HCH makes on survival. i have renewed appreciation for boats and camping huts.

Armor is more irrelevant for tackling mobs now. it's more a case of "Can I Kill it before it can Harm me?"

[ion]

poison spiders are the worst of them all. there is no proper way to remove that poison without carrying a big amount of milk buckets. still at initial stages of my world so only iron armor.
@wirer armor is more relevant now for going mob hunting as it was before, mostly and good enchanted armor with protection will save your day.

[wirer]

fair enough, but i find that armor is less impacting as their defensive ability is simply a matter of lengthening the amount of damage you can take, when avoiding damage at all is of higher priority, especially early game.

[JiiKoo]

Yeah, I have to agree that the health regen thing is pretty big. Those damn cave spiders... Three times yesterday I had to dig into a wall (while fighting off zombies I couldn't see until they were very close. Thanks, blindness effect!), take a short break and read the forum on the side while waiting for my health to regenerate. And this was not a bad thing!

I've been having a blast with HCH in general. I made 5 test worlds I played until I found a village or was otherwise very well off regarding food. Out of those 5, in 3 I found a village within 30 minutes or so, in one within an hour and in the last one didn't find one in one and a half hours, but had a few stacks of steak and could have kept going. Surviving and finding food was never an impossible task, but it was still something I had to pay attention to all the time. It added a whole new element to the game.

Hidden because a bit long and maybe slightly off-topic, though it tells why I find HCH so great.

Spoiler

Show

After those tests I made a hardcore world to see how well I'd do. Having no villages on the (fairly large) island I spawned and thanks to a HUGE ocean I found a village after five or so hours total, of which 1 or 2 I spent sailing (and swimming. Damn squids...). My spawn island had a lot of cows, though, so food wasn't really an issue. In fact, I had a diamond, redstone, lapis and pumpkin and melon seeds from my first mineshaft and some digging before even leaving for the sea with three stacks of steak as supplies. Circling nearby islands I found a desert temple which contained a few more diamonds. But no village...

After a long time on the sea seeing nothing I came across my very first mushroom biome ever! Too bad I didn't have saplings for trees or wheat for the mooshrooms, otherwise I could have stayed there. I dug into a mountain and down, since I had read no mobs spawn under those biomes, and I wanted stone for a pen, just in case I found my way back at some point. And as luck would have it, I found a mineshaft there. I soon discovered spawners still function under mushrooms... Found more diamonds and some other stuff. Mushroom stew from the cow-things kept of going, letting me save the steaks for later.

With a heavy heart I set sail again, hoping to return some day. I ended up sailing for another hour or so before seeing land. A plains biome! With hope in my heart I ran around, looking around. I thought I saw cobblestone behind a hill... Scaling the small hill, a wonderful view opened before me; a village of ten or so houses, bustling with activity. I had found home.

Now I've managed to fence the village and light it up. I've planted some hemp, pumpkin and watermelon while expanding the existing farms. In my old, pre-HCH world (and first BTW world) I almost had a working saw at that point.

HCH really extended my early game and made me work to even get started. I had never used leather armor before, but now it ended up saving my ass on multiple occasions during those first caves. Almost 30% damage reduction is still quite enough, even if iron is strictly superior. Not enough to brave the night, mind you, but enough to fend off some monsters and save you from creepers.

So, thank you, Flowerchild. Without these changes I don't think I would ever have found a mushroom biome. I already hated ravines and mineshafts and now they are even more stressful. Which isn't bad at all, since a fear of mobs is just healthy. Making hunger relevant is simply awesome. I liked BTW a lot even before these changes, but this was the one thing that drove me to register here. Others have said it before, but it is worth repeating: this is how Minecraft should have been from the start. I'm really looking forward to your next update.

[Marasambala]

Dude, I haven't braved the night yet with iron armor...

I play with BOD, so finding the first iron is a pretty big deal. Finally, iron armor, I thought. Mad an excursion at night thinking I was all set. Wrong. HCS with BOD is not as simple is just getting enough food to find redstone. Instead you have to establish sustainable food in order to explore for redstone and iron again. Yeah, I'm scared, now...and there was much rejoicing.

[SterlingRed]

Yeah I had some issues with cave spiders in the last few days on the official server. 4 spawners resulted in 3 deaths. By the time I got to the forth one I'd figured out a pretty good way to work my way closer to a spawner and minimize my dmg. Hint: fences are your friend.
I loved how hch made me come up with a new approach to these spawners instead of just tanking it like before. I'm looking forward to having to learn how to deal with the nether next!

[piter_50]

Hardcore players fearing the night once again...these are the things that make me do a little happy dance :)

It really does make me wonder how many of the people complaining about the difficulty are still trying to run around outside once the sun goes down. It really just isn't something that I want to be a reasonable thing to do anymore.

Night? Pah! I am even starting to fear the Rain during the day!
I created a new world and got pincushioned by arrows and chased by a zombie forcing me to hole up in a quick underground hovel riding out the storm. Loving the change!

[Simurgh]

Part of what I'm liking about it is that your next activity can be a big deal. When you set yourself a goal, get a plan of action together and go do your next challenge - whatever it is, the sense of accomplishment is much higher.

Also for the first time early game has actual gameplay - previously after day one you were pretty much set to survive forever.

[SterlingRed]

A quick note about hch driving choices, I was pushing the tech tree in my builds on the server pretty rapidly before hch was launched. I switched off of that to expand my farming. Now that I've got that sort of going, I've found I want to spend some time in the nether. I realized with hch this poses a huge risk and has driven the need for some farms in the nether. Which I don't have the surplus seeds for at this point. I'm now faced with an interesting choice, continue overworld expansion of farms to sustain a surplus for branching into the nether, or sacrifice part of my overworld farms as they are currently to get into the nether now. I've never had to choose between developing one dimension over another before, I've always been able to do both at any given time without any serious delay to progress in the other. Hch now makes me have to choose one or another in the early stages of sustainable farms for hch. Its amazing and wonderful that hch is driving in game choices with consequences (in this case time and delay of tech tree). I love it!

[Sarudak]

Night still isn't really *that* bad. You just need to be cautious. With a stone sword you can kill any enemy except a skele without damage if you're careful. You just need to stay aware of your surroundings. I've gone out into the night several times with no armor and haven't died yet.

[Kazuya Mishima]

I agree, HCH is the best thing to be added to MC in a general sense. I didn't get a chance to respond to that other thread in time but the obvious fault lies in a very lax building layout. My home and systems are typically subterranean and only open to the surface at key points, why build walls when you can use the natural environment as one large wall? I've always employed that building philosophy and now with HCH my builds promote that additional feeling of security because of all the impending doom above.

[Sarudak]

Yeah. Base protection has suddenly become even far more important than it ever was before. Honestly though I want survival at the beginning at least to be far harder than it currently is.

[Kaitocain]

Yeah. Base protection has suddenly become even far more important than it ever was before. Honestly though I want survival at the beginning at least to be far harder than it currently is.

You aren't the only one on that stand. I have been able to go out at night and do pretty much whatever I've been wanting to do, as long as I'm paying attention to everything around me and avoiding skeletons. I've yet to build any armor, because I've much better uses for leather and iron at the moment than to try to protect myself when I can just play it safe, keep enough food on me to not starve (and not eat too much to get too fat), and I'll be set.

[FlowerChild]

Guys...you do realize the direction you're beginning to steer this thread in, yes?

[Caboose]

I couldn't agree more with BobSling. Hardcore Hunger has rekindled my desire to play Minecraft again. The added health effects were a truly surprising and exciting addition, too. Before HCH, taking on three spiders is child's play, but the debilitating effects of low health soon proved that assumption wrong, and gave me my first experience with Hardcore Spawn, which was also very cool. (It also taught me I need to be a lot more careful when I'm using creepers as demolition.)

Thanks FC for bringing me back into the game through your mod.

[Mud]

I found an abandoned mineshaft while digging a branch mine (Another practice I've revived as a result of HCH) and I've only been brave enough to explore it until I find a chest with some melon seeds in it.

The underground is now a very tense place. I enjoy it.

[BobSlingblade679]

I found an abandoned mineshaft while digging a branch mine (Another practice I've revived as a result of HCH) and I've only been brave enough to explore it until I find a chest with some melon seeds in it.

The underground is now a very tense place. I enjoy it.

Tell me about it! My example of a skeleton jumping off a cliff and sniping you from behind was actually a result of one of my caving expeditions. Scared the shit out of me. I haven't gone caving since. lol, I'm a wuss.

[haphazardnuke]

First near-death experiences with HCH tonight.

I was caving because I've hit a brick wall in the tech tree, obsidian. My undergound is woefully stony...
Anyway, I came across an abandoned mineshaft while exploring a cave system and immediately was on guard. I'd heard the tales on this forum of the horrors of cave spiders.
I came across a thicket of cobwebs and my heart rate doubled. I threw down a torch and backtracked, grabbed some fences and advanced.
The fences, placed diagonally from solid blocks, make excellent spider-killing windows. With one major issue. The spiders can bite back if you get too close.
Long story short, I was repeatedly poisoned and experienced a few minutes' worth of blindness, with spiders hissing five blocks away as I cowered in terror behind my fence.

I loved every second of it.
HCH makes caving so much more terrifying. The above happened while I was wearing full iron armor, but armor, as we know, doesn't do a thing against poison.
I'm not much of a horror fan, but somehow seeing that half of heart in sickly green and the darkness shrouding everything around me... was fun. I was laughing the whole time.

This is why I play BTW, I suppose. There's no way I would have gone caving like that without the mod's hunger for Nether materials and the prerequisite 10 obsidian.
Thanks for the best laugh a game has given me in a while.