Better Than Wolves

March 23rd, 2013

• Added the Iron Nugget as a new item. It is created by smelting iron ore (which produces a nugget instead of an ingot) or by dropping an iron ingot into the crafting grid. They may be crafted into iron ingots with 9 in the crafting grid (same as gold nuggets). This corrects an imbalance with iron by greatly increasing the difficulty of acquiring iron tools and armor in the early game (it was trivially easy before), gives purpose to leather armor, increases the value of mob traps in the late game, increases the value of tools looted off of mobs, increases the demand for coal as a resource, increases the value of trading with villagers, and generally helps spread out the early game vanilla tech tree in interesting and challenging ways that mesh well with Hardcore Hunger.
• Added Hardcore Armor to the mod. This extends some of the concepts previously just applied to Soulforged Steel armor to other armors in the game. Basically, the way it works is that every ingot (iron, gold, or Soulforged Steel) or diamond used in the crafting of armor, adds to its weight (leather armor has no such penalty). For every unit of weight in armor your character is wearing, you gain fatigue more quickly (thus requiring more food). If you have 10 units of weight or higher on, then you will also sink in water. This does a number of things to the game, primarily related to leather armor. First, it makes leather armor more valuable throughout the game, especially for long journeys, when running low on food, or when traveling over water. Secondly, it promotes mixing and matching of armor sets instead of just wearing uniform sets of whatever happens to be "best" for the stage of the game you're in. Lastly, it further increases the danger of combat, since it makes it less likely overall that the player will be well armored at any given time, unless they've specifically prepared for it. Note that while chain armor provides only slightly less protection than iron armor, it has half as much "weight" (rounded up), thus making it rather valuable if you get your hands on some, increasing the value of villager trades in the early game. The short version of Hardcore Armor is that if you wear a lot of heavy armor, you'll get hungry faster and sink in water ;)
• Added Mail as a new item. It is crafted with 8 iron nuggets in a "checkerboard" pattern on the Anvil, and may then be used to create chain mail armor using the standard vanilla armor recipes. It is intended as a late-game lightweight version of iron armor for situations where iron or Soulforged Steel may be impractical.
• Added a high efficiency boat recipe using Wooden Siding instead of wood blocks.
• Added the Mushroom Omelet in both raw and cooked states as a new food item. It is created by combining a Raw Egg and a brown mushroom in the crafting grid, and then cooking the result. It is intended as an early game food source that can be farmed before finding a village, and prepared without a Cauldron.
• Added Scrambled Eggs in both raw and cooked states as a new food item. They're created by combining a Raw Egg, a bucket of milk, and a bowl in the crafting grid, and then cooking the result. It serves a similar role to the Mushroom omelet in terms of early gameplay.
• Added Mystery Meat in both raw and cooked states to act as an emergency food source, and added the ability to make Tasty Sandwiches and Hearty Stew out of it. A Steve's gotta do...
• Added Hardcore Lactation to the mod. This involves several changes to cows and milk production. First, a small food value has been added to drinking a bucket of milk to provide an early game renewable food source. Secondly, cows need to be able to eat grass in order to produce milk (similar to sheep for wool production), and will only do so periodically. Lastly, whether or not a cow can be milked will be visually indicated by the size of its udder, and both particles and sounds have been added to the milking process for greater player immersion. Also note that the above changes apply to mooshrooms and the production of mushroom stew (Cream of Mushroom), so you can no longer just get infinite bowls of it from them with no effort or delay. In combination with some of the new food recipes in this release, these changes make milk, and the tending of dairy animals, a more important and useful part of the early game.
• Added the ability to get cows and sheep to follow you by holding tall grass. You can't breed them through this method, but it's enough to trick them into following, which aids in penning them in the early game. Pigs don't believe it for a minute though.
• Changed mushroom stew to "Cream of Mushroom". It is made by combining brown mushrooms, and a bucket of milk with a bowl in the Cauldron. It is also meant as an early game food source from ingredients that can be farmed before finding a village, as well as taking care of a recipe conflict between mushroom and Hearty Stew. Also adjusted the hunger values on it to match its new role and ingredients. As a bonus, it fits rather well with it being produced by mooshrooms :)
• Changed Fish Soup to "Chowder" for the same reasons as above. It is made with fish, a bucket of milk, and a bowl in a Cauldron.
• Changed the Kebab to use brown mushrooms instead of potatoes in its recipe. It is now made with brown mushrooms, carrots, and mutton, combined with a stick in the crafting grid. It is intended as a middle-game food source for people that find carrots but not potatoes (much like Steak and Potatoes operates for potatoes).
• Changed the hunger status penalties to kick in slightly later than they did previously, in order to create a wider "buffer zone" between fat penalties and hunger penalties to further encourage keeping a store of fat on you for emergency use...without going overboard and riding pigs around :)
• Changed the dizziness/nausea effect from hunger to only kick in when the player is actually starving to death (losing health), as it was going on way too long before.
• Changed (increased) the durability of leather armor to make it a more practical option.
• Changed (increased) the durability of iron (and chain to match) armor given it is now much harder to come by.
• Changed (tweaked) the durability of Tanned Leather Armor to have a more direct correlation to that of leather armor. Tanned Leather Armor offers the same protection as regular, but has superior durability, and will thus last longer. Further refinements to this armor type will be made in an upcoming release, to make it more of a practical, and less of a "gag" item given that leather armor in general is no longer useless.
• Changed the way chain mail looks on your character in game, as frankly, it looked like total ass, and if it's going to see increased usage due to the other changes in this release, that was no longer reasonable.
• Changed the recipe for the compass to use 4 Iron Nuggets instead of ingots, to better match the changes to iron, especially in consideration of the impact they have on Hardcore Spawning.
• Changed the recipe for the clock to use 4 gold nuggets instead of ingots, to match the changes to the compass, and to promote the use of a small utility item created with an otherwise valuable resource.
• Changed mushrooms so that they don't turn to Foul Food when placed in a Cauldron with Dung. This is to correct a problem that prevented the creation of Nether Groth, and also makes some sense given mushrooms tend not to be adversely affected by the presence of poo.
• Changed the flint & steel recipe to use an iron nugget instead of an ingot, and made it shapeless.
• Changed (reduced) the rate at which you lose hunger with time slightly, to further balance Hardcore Hunger.
• Changed (reduced) the rate at which you lose hunger while pulling a Hand Crank slightly.
• Changed (refactored) the way a few things work internally to reduce the number of individual changes the mod needs to make to the item class. I just mention this in case any problems result.
• Changed the fermented spider eye recipe to use red mushrooms instead of brown, to better fit the new roles of the two mushroom types. Also fixed a problem with the previous release where they couldn't be crafted at all.
• Changed Silverfish so they only drop arcane scrolls in the end dimension. This is to further discourage farming them from the single spawner in each stronghold, and also fits better with the differences in their behavior between dimensions.
• Fixed problem with Hearty Stew not working with pork, mutton, or wolf as an ingredient. It was previously only working with beef.
• Fixed problem with the cake recipe using a regular vanilla egg instead of a Raw Egg.
• Fixed problem with soup bowls disappearing if the player consumed soup or stew and their inventory was full.
• Fixed same problem for potions and glass bottles.
• Fixed problem with hunger still draining with time in creative mode.
• Removed ability to get milk from mooshrooms using a bucket. They only produce Cream of Mushroom now.
• Removed easter-egg head drops from pigs.