Yany's Stuff & Things Addon v1.3.0 for BTW CE 1.3.X - Now with Hardcore Darkness in Hardcore Hell!

[yany]

Download
Source

Stuff & Things 1.3.0 is now out for BTW CE 1.3.X! Check out the update trailer on YouTube!

This addon mostly focuses on rebalancing existing aspects of BTW while adding some new content to support the balance changes. The intention behind most of these balance changes is to make the early game less stressful without taking much away from the experience, and to make the transition from the early game to the mid game a more gradual and smoother process. I wanted to remove the constant pressure to progress forward, while making it more difficult to actually progress, incentivizing a slow and steady playstyle. I want the difficulty to come from wanting to progress faster, rather than from having to progress faster.

Monsters only attack animals you attacked, took advantage of, or otherwise touched, to make food less scarce and exploration less frustrating. Wool can be processed into string, so your time spent without at least a few stone tools will be minimal. Renewable food is available earlier through improved fishing, making it easier and easier to survive as you progress through early tech. Gradual progression of storage and lighting reward even smaller steps forward in technology. It takes significantly more to get iron and diamond pickaxes, but they are necessary for getting back to the original spawnpoint, making HCS bases feel a lot less temporary, while also rewarding overworld exploration. The player maximum health is increased, while passive regeneration is replaced by healing totems that have to stay at your base, to make dangerous expeditions the source of difficulty instead of getting caught off guard at home.

The latest update brings a rework to early Nether progression, with Hardcore Darkness in the center of everything. The Nether is now completely dark, just like caves in the Overworld. The Dynamic Lighting addon by Hiracho is now included in the addon, and has been extended to turn many more entities into light sources as well, so get ready for some intense and spectacular fights in the dark. Check out the update trailer on YouTube to see the changes in action! The aggresion of zombie pigmen has also been changed to make them more likely to attack you, but less devastating. To compensate for the increased difficulty of exploring in the nether, certain recipes have been unlocked before stoked fire, so you can reuse iron tools and make nether sludge for mortar.

To get a detailed list of changes, check out the changelog below!

You should not install my Boat Mapping addon, or Hiracho's Dynamic Lighting together with this one, as they are already included. If you're playing with Dawnraider's Better Terrain and Deco addons, enabled Deco in the Better Terrain settings on world creation, and you want the Deco features to be generated in the nether, you'll have to use the compatibility patches I added to the 1.3.0 release. You can install them the same way as any other addon.

Crafting recipes

Show

Drop Spindle

Spin Wool into String

Bark Stitching

Use Stitched Bark to make Bark Boxes

Wicker Basket with 4 slots of storage

Hamper with 12 slots of storage

Chest

Hopper

Mix into 2 Bait to catch more fish

Turn Kibble into bait

Stone Hoe

Compass

Hemp bricks: leave them in the rain, then let them dry in the sun

Sparkilng torches that last longer (you can also make 32 with 1 Redstone in a Cauldron)

Changelog

Show

1.3.0

Show

• Added the Dynamic Lighting addon by Hircacho. From now on it is included in Stuff & Things.
• Added Hardcore Darkness to Hardcore Hell.
• Added dynamic lighting effects to entities on fire.
• Changed Zombie Pigmen to eventually forget their grievances and move on with their lives.
• Changed Zombie Pigmen to not get angry at players for attacking already angry Zombie Pigmen. Attacking calm and passive ones will still provoke a group response.
• Changed Zombie Pigmen to eventually get angry at players walking on Netherrack if there's fires nearby.
• Changed Zombie Pigmen to drop Chunks of Gold Ore instead of Gold Nuggets.
• Changed the distances Nether portals look for already existing portals before spawning new portals on the other side. In general, the new numbers make it more likely that you'll get back to an already existing portal in the Overworld, and less likely that you'll end up at an already existing nether portal.
• Changed Potash to be produced in unstoked Cauldrons.
• Changed unstoked Crucibles to be able to melt iron items.
• Changed kilns to fire Crucibles even with unstoked fire.
• Changed Sparkling Torches to be crafted 8 at a time with only 1 Redstone.
• Added a recipe for turning 32 Crude Torches into Sparkling torches in a Cauldron using only 1 Redstone.
• Changed Piles of Soul Sand to fly towards the spawn point in the overworld if it's thrown less than 200 blocks away from it, in order to help locating the always loaded spawn chunks before compasses are available if you're already close to them.
• Fixed an issue where returning from the end through a portal, or respawning at a Soulforged Steel Beacon reset the player maximum food and health to the default, and caused items dropped on death to despawn later than intended. Thanks to Hiracho for bringing it to my attention and suggesting a fix!
• Fixed an issue where Better Terrain 2.0.8 would overwrite any changes Stuff & Things made to Piles of Soul Sand.

1.2.0

Show

• Changed Zombies, Spiders, and Squids to not attack animals that spawned on world generation and haven't interacted with a player. Note that this only applies to animals in newly generated chunks.
• Removed passive, food based health regeneration. The only ways of gaining health now are potions (and Golden Apples) and the following mechanics.
• Added healing totem poles. They can be created by "enchanting" a sapling, and carving the tree trunk it eventually grow into. Saplings can be enchanted for a cost of 2 XP levels by right clicking them while holding the alternate use button (Ctrl). The eyes on carved totem poles will eventually turn green, at which point right clicking the bottom block heals the player. New totems can't be created too close to already existing totems.
• Increased the durability and speed of the Iron Chisel, and slightly decreased the speed of the Diamond Chisel.
• Added a new Drop Spindle item. It is crafted with a Pointy Stick above a Loose Stone, and it can be used to spin a piece of Wool into String.
• Changed Knitting to give 2 Wool Knit from 1 Wool instead of the previous 1 Wool Knit from 2 Wool.
• Changed Bark Stitching to be crafted with 4 Bark and no String, and Bark Boxes to be crafted with 4 Stiched Bark.
• Reverted the previous change that made Spiders notice players from further away.
• Changed Hardcore Spawn to reset the moon phase to a full moon in singleplayer.
• Fixed an issue that caused some armor indicator icons to not show up when the player maximum health was below 10 hearts.

1.1.0

Show

• Added a new system that determines the maximum health of the player.
• The starting maximum health in a new world is 10 hearts.
• If you have more than double the XP levels as the number of your hearts above 5 when you die, you gain an additional heart after a Hardcore Spawn, up to 20 hearts total. Similarly, having fewer levels than that results in losing 1 heart after a Hardcore Spawn, down to 5 hearts total. For example, having 14 XP levels when you die will push you towards 5+14/2=12 hearts.
• Every 5th XP level above that threshold grants additional hearts.
• You have the same amount of hunger pips as hearts, but not less than 10.
• Increased the resolution of the health meter, similarly to the hunger meter. This was primarily motivated by the following change, but it should also make player health more transparent. Also, things do slightly less damage now as damage values had to be rounded, so the 10 starting hearts are slightly more than they previously would have been.
• Changed health and food based penalties to scale as the player's maximum changes. Note that their cutoff points are no longer necessarily on whole/half hearts/pips.
• Removed hidden feature where the game was tracking quarter hearts of damage your armor protected you from. After this, the same hit should do the same amount of damage every time, regardless of previous damage blocked by armor.
• Increased the armor values of the Wool Jacket and the Leather and Tanned Leather Tunic and Pants.
• Removed the lockout timer from Hardcore Spawns.
• Changed items dropped on player death to persist in the world until the player who dropped them respawns 10 times. Items dropped on previous deaths are unaffected by this, and will despawn when they were originally scheduled to.
• Changed the calculations behind new Hardcore Spawn locations. Removed the minimum and maximum distances. Now, there's a ring in which you're most likely to spawn. The further a location is from this ring (towards or away from the original spawn) the less likely you are to respawn there. Accessing the nether in the world widens the ring, fighting the wither and accessing the end make you more likely to spawn further outside the ring.
• Added config options to change Hardcore Spawn distances.
• Changed spider web projectiles to place as blocks above slabs.
• Fixed an oversight where the Fire Aspect and Flame enchantments didn't trigger Creeper explosions.

1.0.1

Show

• Updated the addon to BTW CE 1.3.4
• Reverted the CE change which made trees grow faster and saplings retain their growth state after being broken.
• Reverted the CE change which made Sails cheaper.
• Enabled crafting the Stone Hoe. It has 12 uses, and doesn't extract Hemp Seeds from grass.
• Reverted the change which made destroying Hemp plants to leave farmland behind instead of Loose Dirt.
• Changed Zombie Pigmen to no longer attack players when they're hit by Ghast fireballs.
• Removed the ability to throw Soul Sand, so they'll no longer locate fortresses in the nether.
• Added a config option to remove the fire from creeper explosions.
• Fixed an issue where the ghost of Iron Pickaxe crafting recipe would still show up in Work Stumps in multiplayer.
• Changed crafting recipes with Diamond Ingots to also require an Anvil.
• Fixed an issue where only Oak Bark could be used to make Bark Boxes.
• Fixed an issue where charged creepers immediately self destructed by making them no longer explode as a result of being set on fire.
• Added some minor details to addon items, like filtering properties and sound effects.

1.0.0

Show

• Doubled the player maximum health.
• Increased time of passive health regeneration 10x.
• Doubled the player maximum food.
• Spaced out health and food based penalties to reflect the above.
• Reduced the number of bowls that can be crafted with Planks to 1, instead of previous 4. The high efficiency recipe using sidings remains unchanged.
• Added the new Bait item, which can be applied to the fishing rod without crafting, with the method you might know from the Click Bait Addon. 2 pieces of Bait can be made by mixing Rotten Flesh and Bone Meal in a bowl.
• Changed the Kibble recipe to require unstoked fire under the Cauldron instead of stoked fire previously.
• Added a recipe to convert Kibble to 6 pieces of Bait.
• Increased the fishing bonus of rain to be closer to that of the full moon, but slightly weaker.
• Changed fishing to only require 3 blocks of water depth, instead of the previous 4.
• Increased the range from which spiders notice players.
• Changed the top block of Hemp crops to always drop a seed.
• Changed Hardcore Trim so that it leaves the farmland below the plant.
• Changed Brick Ovens to drop a new Broken Brick item. 2 of these can be tied together with 7 Hemp Fibers in a H shape. After spending some time in the rain, and then in the sun, these will turn back to normal bricks.
• Replaced the Wicker Basket with the Bark Box. You can stitch 3 pieces of bark together with a String or Hemp Fibers, and craft a Bark Box from 2 of these components.
• Renamed the Hamper to Wicker Basket, and removed the Wooden Plank from the center slot of the crafting recipe.
• Changed the Wicker Basket lossy conversion recipe to work on the new Wicker Basket.
• Added a new storage block with a storage capacity of 12 slots, which is now called the Hamper. It can be crafted with wicker on top and in center, siding on the bottom center, and moulding in the remaining 4 slots on the sides.
• Added an Iron Ingot to the center slot of the Chest crafting recipe.
• Added a Chest to the top center slot of the Hopper crafting recipe.
• Added the ability to melt Chests and Hoppers in the Crucible to recover Iron Nuggets.
• Removed light emitted by redstone torches and blocks.
• Removed the Iron Chisel's ability to mine Redstone and Diamond.
• Removed the ability to craft Iron Pickaxes on Work Stumps, they now require an Anvil.
• Added the new Sparkling Torch. It is crafted with Redstone and a Crude Torch, and lasts 10x the time Crude Torch does.
• Changed creepers to set things on fire when they explode.
• Changed burning creepers to explode.
• Added Hellfire Dust as a rare drop for creepers.
• Changed items dropped by players on death to stay for 200 hours instead of 20 minutes. (2000 hours on servers)
• Changed the Compass to be crafted with 4 Iron Ingots and a Soul Urn.
• Removed the player locating capabilities of Soul Sand.
• Changed Hardcore Soul Mating to not be disabled by game progression.
• Included the functionality of the Boat Mapping Addon

The Stuff & Things Addon is available under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

Post Archive

Show

Things that were part of this post before, and I don't want them in the forefront anymore, but wanted to preserve them.

Original Preamble

Show

I've been working on this addon for the past couple months, adding new features to it here and there. I haven't published it, as I always had a next little idea to work on for just a few more days. With the BTW source code released, I expect the way of making addons to change significantly in the coming months, and even if it doesn't, I'd still like to port this proof of concept over to use the actual source code instead of the decompiled one, and to generally be less of a hack. For that reason, I will stop adding new features to it until the dust settles a bit. With that, I might as well put it out there in its current state for anyone interested. It's not exactly polished in certain aspects, and I haven't yet had the chance to play around with everything I added. But the things I did try out, I found to be interesting at worst, and fun at best. I hope others will too. Also, I am aware that currently the addon has a bad case of "programmer art". If anyone has the slightest inclination to make better textures for my blocks and items, I'd really appreciate the help.

With that being said...

Are you literally me? Then this addon might just be the thing for you. It changes BTW - especially the early game - to make it more interesting for my own preferred play style. I won't go into much detail about what that play style actually is in this post, as I think it would take away some of the fun of figuring out the effects of the changes I made. I won't hold back in the replies though, and I invite anyone with feedback, observations, or questions about why I did certain things, to share them in the replies.

Less spoilery changelog

Show

Also, I put together a slightly less detailed changelog for those that wish to try this semi-blind, so you get to chose your own adventure for the remainder of this post.

• Extended the player health and food bars.
• Changed the player to be less excited about fighting mobs.
• Changed certain mobs to be more excited about fighting the player.
• Changed fish to be more excited about the rain.
• Added a way and a purpose to mix Rotten Flesh and Bone Meal in a Bowl.
• Changed Kibble to be available earlier, if you ever get tired of the above mixing.
• Changed Hardcore Trim to be less destructive.
• Added a way to recover Bricks from Brick Ovens if you have some Hemp Fibers. You might also get excited about the rain as a result, but be assured, this doesn't make you a fish.
• Replaced the Wicker Basket with the Bark Box, made by stitching pieces of Bark together.
• Changed the 2x2 container to not require Wooden Planks.
• Added a larger wicker based container with a sawed wooden frame on the bottom.
• Changed Chests to include Iron.
• Changed Hoppers to include Chests.
• Changed Redstone to be even less of feasible light source on its own.
• Added a way to improve Crude Torches if you have Redstone.
• Added a pinch of hellfire to creepers.
• Changed the Iron Chisel to be less of a Pickaxe.
• Changed the Iron Pickaxe to require a more sophisticated crafting surface.
• Removed some ways of circumventing Hardcore Spawn, made some others more difficult.
• Changed the player to be more excited about finding old bases.

[Epsilon]

Hey this sounds interesting.
Looks like you're expanding on what FC did to the early game. Smoothing our progression a little bit, giving the player more options but also taking some comfort away to balance things out.
As is the nature with opinions, I like most of the changes but some I don't have that good of a feeling about ;) Could you maybe share your thoughts on why you implemented certain changes? (If you have the time)

Spoilers for my thoughts in particular:

Spoiler

Show

-I think the health change is interesting: it makes you more durable early, so you can survive better. But this comes at that you can't battle often unless you cut your losses.
-The fishing changes should encourage players to see fishing as a better source of food early. A good change, thought it's unfortunate that this devalues the full moon...
-Storage changes: I like the direction and the option for players to get some storage even earlier. Thought, over all I'm not sure what to think about all of this. True Chests becoming more expensive and early death and inventory management less punishing due to storage options. I guess my general tendency is to like it ;)
-Sparkling Torch sounds like a perfect stepping stone.
--combining that with the changes to Redstone mining and the PIckaxe this makes for a longer progression, but one that should feel more rewarding.
-The creeper changes make them way more scary, upping the value of shears by a lot :D
-The 200h despawn changes goes against the design philosophy of BTW I feel. I see the reason why this was added, and I would also argue that 1h or so might fit better than 20 min, but you're essentially removing the feature...
--This one would be nice if it was optional ;)

Over all this is a nice addition to the mod, and mostly stays true to what I think was the original spirit of it ;)

[yany]

At a first glance, the 200h despawn time seems to be your biggest concern, and I definitely have a lot of thoughts on that, so I think I'll start with that one.

Lengthy thoughts regarding death item despawns

Show

At its core, I agree with the statement that it goes against the BTW design. It practically removes that feature entirely. And I did like it a lot in pre-AAHHH BTW, as it really upped the punishment associated with death, and without it I would have been far less concerned about dying. But the thing for me was, the AAHHH updates seriously increased the punishment factor, death or no death, and that certainly did warrant axing otherwise amazing features. (I'm mainly thinking hardcore sinkholes here, which I actually thought about bringing back after I made this change, but I didn't get around to doing it.) For example, torches now burn out, so if you lose an iron pickaxe, maybe even an axe to a death, you need to invest in the torches to get back to the point in your caves where you left off, or just to go to an entirely new area to mine there. With the coal supplies of an area slowly depleting on their own, having the iron supply do the same through despawning death items just felt too much for me, especially with the new massive iron investment I added to unlocking iron pickaxes.

Also, this is more in the territory of speculation for me, but I think with the way I decreased health regen, 3rd strata caves will become even less of a friendly place to hang out, and I do expect 2nd strata tunneling to be even more powerful when looking for the initial 3 diamonds, due to the way it avoids hostile mobs for the most part. And tunneling does do a number on your iron supply. Though I definitely need to play around with this more to have a good picture about the balance around it.

Another big motivation behind it was that I often had a "meh" kind of reaction when I found old bases, as my most valuable things, my high value iron tools, were usually gone already, and I would've had to work my way up to them anyway, whether I stumbled upon my abandoned base or not. This was also my thought behind giving earlier storage options, and increasing the value of blocks you can place and leave, like an early mill stone, the cauldron, and the anvil. I want stuff to find in an old base, otherwise it's just a dark hole in the ground in the middle of a wasteland in the post-AAHHH early game. The despawn time thing might be redundant with these other changes though, and again, this is something I'll have to feel out hands on.

But maybe the biggest thing that makes me want to do at least something in the nature of this change is the way I tried to change the mentality HCS puts the me in. Before this, whenever I spawned in an even slightly familiar area, I didn't even bother doing the day 1 things, and I just wandered around hoping to maybe get my stuff back before it's all gone. This strategy paid off often enough to justify the death loops when it didn't work out. I absolutely wanted to remove any incentive to do this ever again. My first though was to just despawn the items immediately, but that was just too brutal, due to the points I mentioned earlier. Pushing it to 1h might somewhat improve that, but I think it would just push the issue to day 3 instead of day 1. And with my compass changes, the intended way of getting back to an old base IS to just naturally explore areas, as I think it's just much better gameplay than following a magic device. And the number of hours after which items despawn is mostly intended to be pressure on the player to do said natural exploring before that time for an added reward. And I agree that the current 200h is probably a bit too much, but the last thing I want is to have a feature that tells players abandon their HCS bases before they built them out to a point where they might as well stay there. I think building out a new base after a HCS, and starting a proper new life is a much more integral part of BTW than losing your whole inventory when you die. And while items despawning too late is an issue with the latter, them despawning too early is detrimental to the former. So for the time being, I'd rather play around with items despawning too late rather than too early until I can find a sweet spot with that. But that will take a lot more playtesting than what I had the chance to do so far.

Less punishing

Show

You mentioned that things seem less punishing. About that, I wanted to say that it is absolutely intentional. This might be somewhat of a controversial opinion to have around players who stuck around with BTW for so long, but I do think BTW is slightly too punishing in certain aspects. It's way too easy to run into situations where I feel like I made some mistakes and the area I'm in is just straight up useless moving forward, with animals being dead in a large radius around my base and all the nearby ores having been mined and used up already. Or to get surprised by mobs surrounding me and dying based on split second decisions in an otherwise very slow game. And I don't want to be paying 100% attention to every step I ever make in the early game, especially after I made the early progression much longer.

We did discuss having multiple difficulty options on Discord, mostly in relation to something like disabling creeper fire in easy mode. And I did think about making a hard mode besides my current balance when working on this addon to have an option for those who like things to be punishing. But I think FC did talk about how much effort it would take to balance multiple game modes simultaneously, and I didn't want to put that much effort into this prototype. I can definitely see a future where I end up doing that, but that is still quite some time away. In the meantime, I did make a patch without creeper fire, and I can tell you that my item despawn time changes are in rh.class, so if you install without that one file, they won't take effect if you want to play without them.

Fishing and full moons

Show

One of my thoughts was to remove the full moon fishing bonus entirely, and to give it some other thing to make it exciting. Mostly I was thinking about a full moon related activity that could boost health regen, but that would be a part of a bigger system around player HP that is still early in the planning phase. But even without that, I enjoy the curveball unexpected rainfall can throw at my plans while playing, and I still keep track of the moon phase after all of that. Also, I would be absolutely surprised if anyone could play with my other changes without extensive fishing. Bait progression was the first thing I added, and only after making early game food much more sustainable did I even realize that I could extend the early game as much as I did without pushing players to do ultra long hunting trips. As it is currently, I think the emphasis on fishing might even be too much, and I think some further variety in early game sustainable food progression would be an improvement.

Oh, and if the above didn't give it away already, I really like talking about these kinds of things, and I'll absolutely do it whether or not I have time. Also, thanks for sharing your opinions, I really enjoyed reading and thinking about them.

[Epsilon]

I'm glad you shared your thoughts, as you changed my opinion on some points ;)

Item despawns

Show

I can nothing but agree with your line of reasoning.
Debating what the exact number of hours should be is pointless I think, so just one last thought for that: "most AAA games take less than 200h to fully complete XD" <- but I guess that speaks for how much fun one can have with BTW.

Also thanks for sharing what file to not install in order to leave that change out.

Difficulty

Show

I like the slightly decreased difficulty, as I share how you feel about vanilla BTW experience.
Also, I tried to reason that you didn't just make it easier by increasing max health, as this is counteracted by the slower regeneration.
On that note: how does that interact with Healing and Regen Potions?

Moon and Food

Show

I like the direction you're going with this: especially to repurpose the full moon.
Warning: suggestion incoming(If you don't like getting suggestions I will delete this)
What if you solve both problems at the same time: the full mood provides some alternative food source.
That could be full moons respawning some limited amount of animals, maybe tied to some ritual or whatever that needs to be performed.
Or some kind of berry bush gets its fruits refreshed on a full moon. They would need to be somewhat rare and berries should not give much hunger: maybe 3 berries + bowl fills 1 Hunger.
(Thought I'm aware that both are a departure from BTW philosophy, and the second one might prove difficult as it ties into map generation)

I'm so happy that we can have this exchange of thoughts about this Mod. Things like that is what brings me back again and again, and some day I will hopefully manage to tinker around with the code myself ;)

[yany]

Potions were on my mind when I made the HP changes. The decreased rate of passive regeneration is partially supposed to give a reason to make large amounts of them with ghast and squid farms, neither of which have I seen a reason to build before. With instant health potions, I mostly like their current balance. Having a stack of them costs 2⅔ mysterious glands, takes up an inventory slot on expeditions, and can give you 24 hearts if used 100% efficiently. That's basically trading an inventory slot to be able to escape certain death once, and that seems reasonable to me, given that you have to fight witches to get a brewing stand for it. Witches are another interesting point with this, as they could get you down to 1HP if they land a poison splash, and with passive regen it would take over 3 hours to get back to max health. So if you're unprepared, they're brutal. I like that, but I might want to make them maybe a little less brutal in the future. Regeneration potions do seem somewhat overpowered to me right now in theory, as a single basic potion gives you 18 hearts over 45 seconds, so a stack of those is worth 6 stacks of instant potions. I think the difficulty of obtaining ghast tears could maybe justify healing that much, but even then I might want to decrease their stack sizes. But all in all, one of my intentions behind slowing down health regeneration was to increase the value of brewing stands and potions, and I think I have achieved that. Though I will have to take a closer look at potions when I eventually progress far enough to use them. Having access to them could easily make the double max HP suddenly way too tanky.

On suggestions in general, I'm fine with them, bring them on. I looked back at the original MCF thread for BTW the other day, and even FC started out not only taking suggestions, he explicitly asked for them. I too would probably get bored of them real fast if I got a dozen "remove HCS pls" level suggestions a day, but we're nowhere near that for now.

On your specific suggestions:

I think respawning animals is a dangerous can of worms to open, considering animageddon, and the expensive breeding items. It could easily become the default way of massing hearty stew in the late game if you could somehow spawn just one new animal on every full moon. So at the very least it would have to be balanced with late game breeding, and that wouldn't be easy at all.

A full moon berry bush is somewhat closer to my idea, though I'd definitely want the player to get really busy on the full moon, and not to just pick the berries the next day. And also, I know about an addon that is currently a WIP that intends to add things like berry bushes with actual focus and content related to them, and I'd rather just wait for the time being and see how that works out before I try to do a half-assed berry bush on my own.

And yeah, I understand that the times here are massive. I haven't really touched AAA games myself though, as I tend to evaluate potentially buying games on a price vs playtime and interesting gameplay basis, and AAA games and BTW are pretty much at the opposite ends of that spectrum. And I absolutely love the time scope of BTW, it's such a good feeling to look back on a world that I played for over a year.

Also, I encourage you, an really anyone to tinker with the code, especially if you have ideas you'd like to see. I find it very rewarding to see my changes in the game, and it's not too hard to get basic stuff like items and recipes in there if you already know a thing or two about programming/Java. There's a pretty good write-up on how to get started on the wiki, though it hasn't been updated to use the source release yet, as we ran into some issues with that.

[WealthyChicken]

I realise I'm a little late to the party but I've decided to start playing again after taking a few months away from BTW.

My take on this add-on is:

Spoiler

Show

- The health change is interesting for the same reasons Epsilon stated. Not sure I personally like it but I understand the change.
- I think fishing might be a little too powerful now as I found in vanilla BTW full-moon fishing was often just enough to get by and so it encouraged me to source other food. Having fish as your only food source seems a little too easy. Granted you need to find rotten flesh but a lap around the base can often net 2-4 rotten flesh per day on average I'd guess.
- The storage change I really like. Nothing I'd change there.
- Redstone emitting light change I also like.
- Needing an anvil completely changes the early game which I both like and dislike. I'm always eager to move away from the stone pick so being forced to use it for a considerably longer time really doesn't excite me. :p (I appreciate this mod was made for your own preferences). On the flip side, I like the idea that the iron pick is so expensive (at least initially) that other tools like the axe, hoe, and shears and all collectively cheaper than an anvil pushing you in a different direction early game.
- Really like sparkling torches and I like the balance with the iron chisel change like Epsilon also said already.

- I like the 200h despawn idea, and agree with the justification you gave too.
- My big red flag is the compass change. Not so much the iron cost but the soul urn making it pretty expensive in terms of how long it takes to get to (especially considering the anvil change). I imagine this coincides with the 200h despawn idea but you seemingly need significant progress from your first life to justify starting anew and returning home. Furthermore with the loaded chunks around spawn, in many cases making a new world seems much the better choice.

Thanks for making this add-on and publishing it for everyone, I think it's really awesome! I like seeing other's opinions on the balance of BTW. :)

[yany]

New release!

Stuff & Things 1.0.1 is now out for BTW CE 1.3.4!
Get it here: Download

This one is mostly just bugfixes and code changes under the hood, updating to CE and adapting to use its addon API features, and removing a lot of redundant code. There was still a bit of room for some minor changes though.

• Updated the addon to BTW CE 1.3.4
• Reverted the CE change which made trees grow faster and saplings retain their growth state after being broken.
• Reverted the CE change which made Sails cheaper.
• Enabled crafting the Stone Hoe. It has 12 uses, and doesn't extract Hemp Seeds from grass.
• Reverted the change which made destroying Hemp plants to leave farmland behind instead of Loose Dirt.
• Changed Zombie Pigmen to no longer attack players when they're hit by Ghast fireballs.
• Removed the ability to throw Soul Sand, so they'll no longer locate fortresses in the nether.
• Added a config option to remove the fire from creeper explosions.
• Fixed an issue where the ghost of Iron Pickaxe crafting recipe would still show up in Work Stumps in multiplayer.
• Changed crafting recipes with Diamond Ingots to also require an Anvil.
• Fixed an issue where only Oak Bark could be used to make Bark Boxes.
• Fixed an issue where charged creepers immediately self destructed by making them no longer explode as a result of being set on fire.
• Added some minor details to addon items, like filtering properties and sound effects.

[AbbyRead]

Apologies for a lengthy thank you here, but I read your changelogs, and it spoke to my playstyle in a way I really appreciate. So, TLDR: Sweet! Thanks for doing this!

As a slow and cautious player myself who’s Bugs Bunny tunneled over to a witch’s hut to forcefully avoid combat, I’m really excited to try this out. It all sounds like really great changes that make my frequent (expected or otherwise) deaths in new HCS locations less of a let-down.

I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into this game over the past several years, buying Minecraft three times just to play it after changing Microsoft accounts more than expected. But I’ve never done it in a speedrun sort of way. I’m terrible at combat and risk-averse, so I often find unique ways to solve my problems or just accept poor circumstances and overnight to die or drown myself when I’m starving. Doesn’t always make for a captivating experience, but I find this game largely relaxing and immersive while being perfect for podcast/audiobook accompaniment.

I’ve always liked that this game rewards returning to your save after death with permanent but dispersed progress, but judging by your changes I think you’d agree that the bar was too high. So many slow and pathetic deaths at new spawns, lasting no more than three days, with nothing to show for it but some terrain disturbance.

Honestly would love to see some or all this incorporated into the CE release. So happy to hear you giving the undexterous slow players some love here. I have yet to play it with your mod (must sleep), but I just wanted to thank you regardless for the work you’ve done and the care you’ve given toward it.

[EpicAaron]

I appreciate many of the changes in this update, but why remove soul sand throwing? Seems like a massive deal!

EDIT: Oh, I forgot about the creeper change. I'm enjoying taking another look at this addon now that I am working on my own. You have some amazing and some crazy ideas.

[AbbyRead]

I’m curious what the reasoning is for the oven drop change. Seems long and costly a process, but I suppose it would be a way to double your brick supply over time using help fibers. Will there be a way to do that without first building an oven, or am I missing the point entirely?

[yany]

Apologies for a lengthy thank you here, ...

... judging by your changes I think you’d agree that the bar was too high. So many slow and pathetic deaths at new spawns, lasting no more than three days, with nothing to show for it but some terrain disturbance.

No need for an apology, reading these kinds of messages is a special experience, and you're welcome :)

And yeah, I really agree with that point. If you think about it, pre-AAAHHHH BTW was already very difficult with a steep learning curve, but at least a night 1 hiding hole usually had a crafting table, a furnace, possibly a chest with supplies, and maybe even a couple (permanent) torches if you got lucky, without any significant risk of death before that point. I remember getting ambushed and killed by a hungry wolf on day 2 once, but getting back to that base after a later HCS was still rewarding, as it kept much of the day 1 progress. Getting a base half that good takes hours now, and even though I really enjoy the way those hours play out, I prefer actually leaving something behind for myself to get excited about in the future.

I’m curious what the reasoning is for the oven drop change. Seems long and costly a process, but I suppose it would be a way to double your brick supply over time using help fibers. Will there be a way to do that without first building an oven, or am I missing the point entirely?

It doesn't dupe bricks, it just gives you a way to recover them after breaking an oven. It's meant to allow you to take an oven with you on a hunting trip without permanently losing bricks, as you can get them back after you get your hemp going. I do admit that I find the impact of that change negligible in actual gameplay so far, but it's a first step in trying to make nights on hunting trips feel less empty. I already have some ideas that will impact this same area, but I don't want to make any promises about future changes considering how often I change my mind about these things while working on them.

I appreciate many of the changes in this update, but why remove soul sand throwing? Seems like a massive deal!

EDIT: Oh, I forgot about the creeper change. I'm enjoying taking another look at this addon now that I am working on my own. You have some amazing and some crazy ideas.

For one, I definitely have a bit of a thing against "go this way" type of mechanics as they seriously undermine the joy of finding something through exploration. Think about how finding a stronghold by following eyes of ender feels. And then think about how exciting it was to even just watch jackatthekilns find one without them a few weeks ago. Of course strongholds are rare and very hidden, and that overly highlights the difference, but I think it gets the idea across. Same thing goes for the compass change by the way, it is massive, but it's far from impossible to find your way home without a compass, especially in a pre-nether world.

But removing the soulsand throwing was more about compensation for the change to pigmen. Getting pigmen'd due to a ghast fireball was a bullshit way to die, there was nothing to do about it, no way to prepare for it. And yes, you guessed it, it happened to me while playtesting on my first trip to the nether after like 40 hours in the world and I got salty about it and I sent the whole concept down into a hardcore sinkhole :P But after that the nether is uncharacteristically safe to walk around (especially if you play with CE's low ghast spawns), which I plan on addressing in a later update, but again, no promises. But in the current state of the nether, I wanted at least a little something separating the power spikes of netherrack and blaze rods. And that little something is now exploration. Keep in mind, currently it's about as difficult to find a fortress in my addon as it would be in vanilla 1.5.2, so if anything I'd call it too easy.

[yany]

New release!

Stuff & Things 1.1.0 is now out for BTW CE 1.3.4!
Get it here: Download

This is big one! I started thinking about many features in this update around April, but I finally got around to implementing them. They mostly take a long time to have an effect though, so it might take a lot more playtesting to finetune everything about them. Also, opening old worlds with this update will cause some temporary disruptions, so make sure you save and quit in a safe spot before you load up an old world. Maybe make a backup too, just in case.

• Added a new system that determines the maximum health of the player.
• The starting maximum health in a new world is 10 hearts.
• If you have more than double the XP levels as the number of your hearts above 5 when you die, you gain an additional heart after a Hardcore Spawn, up to 20 hearts total. Similarly, having fewer levels than that results in losing 1 heart after a Hardcore Spawn, down to 5 hearts total. For example, having 14 XP levels when you die will push you towards 5+14/2=12 hearts.
• Every 5th XP level above that threshold grants additional hearts.
• You have the same amount of hunger pips as hearts, but not less than 10.
• Increased the resolution of the health meter, similarly to the hunger meter. This was primarily motivated by the following change, but it should also make player health more transparent. Also, things do slightly less damage now as damage values had to be rounded, so the 10 starting hearts are slightly more than they previously would have been.
• Changed health and food based penalties to scale as the player's maximum changes. Note that their cutoff points are no longer necessarily on whole/half hearts/pips.
• Removed hidden feature where the game was tracking quarter hearts of damage your armor protected you from. After this, the same hit should do the same amount of damage every time, regardless of previous damage blocked by armor.
• Increased the armor values of the Wool Jacket and the Leather and Tanned Leather Tunic and Pants.
• Removed the lockout timer from Hardcore Spawns.
• Changed items dropped on player death to persist in the world until the player who dropped them respawns 10 times. Items dropped on previous deaths are unaffected by this, and will despawn when they were originally scheduled to.
• Changed the calculations behind new Hardcore Spawn locations. Removed the minimum and maximum distances. Now, there's a ring in which you're most likely to spawn. The further a location is from this ring (towards or away from the original spawn) the less likely you are to respawn there. Accessing the nether in the world widens the ring, fighting the wither and accessing the end make you more likely to spawn further outside the ring.
• Added config options to change Hardcore Spawn distances.
• Changed spider web projectiles to place as blocks above slabs.
• Fixed an oversight where the Fire Aspect and Flame enchantments didn't trigger Creeper explosions.

[Moldiworp2]

Oh I immediately love the idea of xp being rewarded in some way, that seems like a really elegant way to boost value of early xp and mitigate spawn sadness. Interesting stuff, good work Yany!!

[yany]

Thanks! It's nice to know people see what I had in mind with this update :)

[AbbyRead]

I’m loving this update. Was a little off put by the huge health bar before, but I like how this just makes the pips more fractionalized. And I like how the more you screw up, the less brazen you’ll want to be going into combat.

I think the default hardcore spawn settings might be a tad forgiving. I managed to find my way to my base before noon three spawns in a row just based on landscape familiarity. The fact that I’m using Better Terrain with Deco might be helping in that regard since vanilla BTW has that old Minecraft samey-ness. It’s kind of hard to complain when there’s a config option I can use to adjust it, but I suppose I don’t want to feel like I’m being given any more or less of a chance than anyone else at surviving. Like less options makes for a wider collective experience in our little community. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I seriously LOVE that creepers set stuff on fire now when they explode. Makes me less ready to use them as a cheap and easy tunneling device. Makes sheers more worthy of investment. Combined with the slow health regen, I have to unteach my habit of LETS F’ING GO!!, drop down a shield log in front and wait, rinse repeat.

I think the oven breaking mechanic is kind of gangly right now. Like before, stuff just got lost into the aether, and you were left with about half (exactly half?) of the bricks you used to make it and that was that. But now I have a butt ton of broken bricks that I can’t store on their own like you can with dropping down bricks, brick slabs, or blocks. And if I wanted to make use of them I’d have to be way higher on the tech tree to make repairing them feasible and worth the time. And even without Better terrain making smaller pockets of clay on nearly every shore, I didn’t have so much trouble finding it that I had to treat it like a limited resource. It is a neat mechanic needing to hydrate them, and I’d like to see how it could be made more enticing to do. Like maybe these bricks infused with organic material could be used as a spawn blocker like wood. Now you can have unlit brick/tile roofs or something without needing to worry about creepers and spiders dive-bombing you in the morning. Also would be a big upgrade from wood if it doesn’t get set on fire in lightning storms.

Anyhow, I like your additions a lot, and I’m going to keep playing with them in place. Looking forward to any updates you might make and trying those out. Thank you for the hard work and sharing it with us.

Edit: I may have just gotten lucky on those three base adjacent spawns. Haven’t experienced that since. Winding up in different places now.

[yany]

Thanks for the kind words!

The HCS thing does sound like luck. The actual distances at the end of the calculation with the default parameters are usually fairly similar to the distances in regular BTW (especially pre-nether), with small a chance to get lucky or unlucky with them.

I don't want to comment much on the future of ovens just yet, but I'm curious about one thing. How do you end up with the broken bricks before having the tech to repair them? They're somewhat analogous to metal fragments, and you're not really supposed to encounter them frequently, especially before you can use them, so hearing that you have a stockpile of them makes me think I might have missed something. Otherwise, just make sure your ovens stay where they are, and you won't have problems storing broken bricks. Making them placeable sounds like a reasonable idea though, I might just do that at some point (no promises).

I like the way non-gravity blocks and roofs are in BTW already, I'm not really looking to change that. Planks are mostly unaffected by lightning as the rain puts out the fire fairly quickly, and you can get lightning rods, or just a couple dirt/cobble pillars if your base is still getting messed up by storms.

[AbbyRead]

How do I end up with a bunch of broken bricks, you say? I’m an idiot. 😂. Also sometimes I just want to move locations entirely because the original place I nested down in was shite, and I don’t mind making one oven out of a previous two.

That being said, I pretty much want to hoard anything I can’t use yet but is unique. Intentionally letting something despawn is something I have to train myself to do for THE GREATER GOOD. This is my burden to bear.

Relating to my previous comment about loving creeper flames, ooof. Surprise bombings of my current largest base wrecking the hell out of it (especially with my attempts to douse each flame block using any non-flammable block on-hand), makes this love a trying one. But I still believe in this love and plan to have firestops in my next base. Damn though, three creepers in a row before having the chance to repair. I have upset the gods.

[angra_mania]

Thank you for this add-on!
I have been playing with the BTA, Deco, and this add-on fyi.

The death changes were what drew me to this mod at first. A hardcore spawn is already hard enough and with the loss of the valuable items you were carrying was too much for me. I would be tempted to save scum in dangerous situations. Anything that lessens the pain is good in my book and the added health upon death is ingenious in how it solves death spirals.

As someone coming back to the game after a couple years, the extra wiggle room in health and hunger was helpful especially in the early game since I still struggle there. Although, BTA probably doesn't help there.

The anvil/Iron pickaxe change coupled with the slow health regen was hard to adjust to since it made caving for iron particularly difficult since a couple fights with skeletons would put you out of commission for a couple in-game days which would be frustrating. But I adjusted and started exploring the the overworld, setting up small bases, hunting and finding exposed Iron. I've been enjoying on early base building due to the constraints there and I think you have succeeded in giving value to HCS spawn locations. However, I feel like the slow regen is a little too punishing once you need to start caving. Especially at lower health when you are crippled and can't do much but wait for an hour or so. Overall, I found the change enjoyable though.

The sparkling torches, storage changes and fire creepers are all really great additions too.

[AbbyRead]

Okay, so, latest way I ended up breaking my ovens was a sort of elaborate process. I tinkered around in creative mode with various fire starting objects like campfires, ovens, torches and lava. So, knowing that the only block where fire can appear is directly in front of the oven, I brazenly stuffed ovens in the plank walls of my survival base. So long as you don’t put them on the corner or have a plank shelf in front or a low plank roof, it’s all good! However, I like to have an open air roof with blocks every other space so that I can fight spiders all night. NOT REMEMBERING that spider webs are flammable. One lucky shot and half my base is destroyed and I’m dead. Also didn’t help that I was on top of a frozen lake. So not only did the fire not go out via snow, but the floor planks gave way to a now-thawed opening into the pit of hatsies. Did I say I’m an idiot? Because I’m an idiot. 😂

[dawnraider]

Flaming spider webs are one of the more brutal ways to die :P You're definitely not alone in that one lol.

[yany]

Also sometimes I just want to move locations entirely because the original place I nested down in was shite, and I don’t mind making one oven out of a previous two.

I think that's the key difference in our approaches. I never really felt comfortable breaking old ovens, even when I had a kiln and a cauldron and stopped using the ovens. I just felt like the moment I break them I'll lose those 6 bricks, and clay being as scarce as it is I felt better about preserving them, just in case. But now I can just get back to those old locations once I have a better base with a windmill. And yeah, my changes make accidentally getting ovens destroyed more punishing in the short term, but they give a little something to look forward to, and an incentive to start an early hemp farm. Anyway, I don't think I'll be changing anything that would fundamentally change your experience with broken bricks. If anything, I'd like to encourage leaving ovens where they are after moving away. One of my favorite things about BTW is how HCS forces me to have more than one centralized base with all my stuff. That makes the world feel so much bigger. A big oven wall in the middle of a wasteland is the opposite of that, and I'm not a big fan of those.

[yany]

New release!

Stuff & Things 1.2.0 is now out for BTW CE 1.3.X
Get it here: Download

This release mostly contains changes that were at least partially inspired by discussions I either participated in, or just read through passively. There's barely anything in here that would be exactly the same if it wasn't for the feedback I got, both about previous releases, and about this one behind the scenes. So I would like to thank everyone that discussed the addon (and just BTW in general) for making this release better.

Also, this release is compatible with the latest CE version (1.3.8 at the time of release) it might override some minor changes of CE versions later than 1.3.4 as I haven't made any efforts to adapt those changes to the addon.

• Changed Zombies, Spiders, and Squids to not attack animals that spawned on world generation and haven't interacted with a player. Note that this only applies to animals in newly generated chunks.
• Removed passive, food based health regeneration. The only ways of gaining health now are potions (and Golden Apples) and the following mechanics.
• Added healing totem poles. They can be created by "enchanting" a sapling, and carving the tree trunk it eventually grow into. Saplings can be enchanted for a cost of 2 XP levels by right clicking them while holding the alternate use button (Ctrl). The eyes on carved totem poles will eventually turn green, at which point right clicking the bottom block heals the player. New totems can't be created too close to already existing totems.
• Increased the durability and speed of the Iron Chisel, and slightly decreased the speed of the Diamond Chisel.
• Added a new Drop Spindle item. It is crafted with a Pointy Stick above a Loose Stone, and it can be used to spin a piece of Wool into String.
• Changed Knitting to give 2 Wool Knit from 1 Wool instead of the previous 1 Wool Knit from 2 Wool.
• Changed Bark Stitching to be crafted with 4 Bark and no String, and Bark Boxes to be crafted with 4 Stiched Bark.
• Reverted the previous change that made Spiders notice players from further away.
• Changed Hardcore Spawn to reset the moon phase to a full moon in singleplayer.
• Fixed an issue that caused some armor indicator icons to not show up when the player maximum health was below 10 hearts.

[EpicAaron]

- Added healing totem poles. They can be created by "enchanting" a sapling, and carving the tree trunk it eventually grow into. Saplings can be enchanted for a cost of 2 XP levels by right clicking them while holding the alternate use button (Ctrl). The eyes on carved totem poles will eventually turn green, at which point right clicking the bottom block heals the player. New totems can't be created too close to already existing totems.

Hardcore Weirwood Trees? Does the tree cry when you cut into it?

This sounds like a very cool feature, and the healing changes sound ultra hardcore.

[yany]

Heh, I've actually never watched Game of Thrones, but the friend I brainstormed the idea with has, and he made the same comparison. So I might have been indirectly inspired by those trees, but I didn't intend to make them a full on reference. I'm not really sold on their current appearance thoguh, I kinda just threw that together in a few hours, and I mostly focused on balancing them. And yeah, they are hardcore in almost every setting when I'm not at my base. Once I've spent enough time in an area and have a enough of them, I can gain health faster than in previous releases. But getting injured when I was exploring, about 1k blocks away from my nearest base? Yeah, getting home was hardcore.

[PlasmaFox]

So there is no passive hp regen? Does that mean getting injured in the early game means death because of you being stuck at low hp and de-buffs?