Content patch by JT
Xie's Mod adds a lot to the game. Unfortunately it also makes it insanely easy. With all of the food sources it offers, going hungry and times of trouble become not only things of the past but things of pre-history.
My efforts are designed to prolong the early game and make it harder to start your own orchard with tree based crops and high yield crops, instead encouraging moderate yield crops -- lettuce, carrots, onions, etc. -- to be used instead.
Download[]
Install and overwrite all contents in the "default" folder of your Xie's Mod installation. You must have the "Default" Xie's Mod content; at this time I have not made tweaks for the "Classic" content.
If you would like to pick and choose out of the list of balancing tweaks (see below), then extract to a separate folder, delete the ones you don't want, and then move them into the "default" folder to overwrite the originals.
If you need help, feel free to ask in the main Xie's Mod forum post on MinecraftForum.net or send me a private message on those boards (username: JT`).
Version and update notes[]
Technically, any Xie Mod content is always compatible with future versions of Minecraft, whenever Xie's Mod is updated.
However, this content is intended for the Apr 2 content; while it is "compatible" with more recent versions, it is still missing some of the newer content, and I haven't attacked the balance of the new items introduced since then (tacos, etc.).
The current release of JT's Hardcore Default is thus Version the Nothingth. I will add versioning in the next release. Consider this a piece of history or something! Or don't. Stop looking at me like that, go away.
Please don't be too too antsy; I have a full time job and I used up my vacation time to make this content patch (in addition to doing some other stuff, of course! ;-)), so my free time isn't what it used to be -- response time might be delayed in the middle and bottom half of the week, and of course I only have two days off per week which have to be split amongst playing Minecraft and doing other things.
Bugs Fixed[]
- Indentation was replaced with tabs universally as it was very inconsistent with a mix of spaces and tabs. Set tab stops to 4 for optimal viewing. (Note that in the files I corrected indentation on, I use the "closing brace at level of indentation contained within block of code" rather than the more popular "opening and closing brace at same level of indentation", but that can be fixed as you desire.
- hybridSeeds had their name set the same as their class and so showed up in game as if they were some sort of silly brand name or something ("hybridSeeds"). They have now been properly named "Hybrid Seeds".
- Xie fixed drops of onions and carrots in the Apr 2 release, but unfortunately omitted this fix for lettuce. This was due to an omission of an explicit "0%" drop chance for lower stages of growth; the default drop chance is actually 100% if not specified. Since I was tweaking things in that file anyway, I also corrected this.
- There's some sort of quirky math error with the logic behind food saturation values ("nourishment" in Xie's Mod). Because "half food points" are used in Xie's Mod (i.e., each 1.0 represents half a bar on the hunger meter), this prompted a statement that the food items' nourishment values should be reduced by half compared to those on the Minecraft Wiki to compensate. However, the values on the Minecraft Wiki are actually in the proper scale already; for instance, a bit of roast beef offers 12.8 nutrition points, which is equivalent to 64% of the hunger meter -- i.e., it is already in half-scale so it doesn't need to be divided in half again. It's possible this was an outdated holdover of the Xie's Mod documentation, since the Minecraft Wiki is a living document and Xie's Hunger Mod had its own food system that pre-dated the official hunger added in Minecraft 1.8 by a significant margin... but in any case, don't divide nourishment values in half! =)
Balancing Tweaks[]
My tweaks, which you are welcome to use any and all of as desired, perform the following:
spawns.xie + salt.xie[]
Vastly reduces spawn rates of all trees. Now plains biomes really are plains biomes again and will not be dominated by fruit trees. My point of balance was to attempt to make it unlikely to see two of the same type of tree within draw distance of one another. Loose salt spawn rates have also been significantly reduced.
Salt spawns are also within the salt.xie file (to spawn salt near water as opposed to anywhere in the desert), so you will have to apply the tweaked version of that as well; in addition to a slightly reduced spawn rate I also made the sea salt have to be within 2 tiles of water rather than the default (6 tiles), for a much better look and feel in general.
I also added some additional biome entries to get the Xie plants spawning in the biomes added by ExtraBiomesXL (orange trees in California-like biomes like savanna, apple trees in temperate biomes like temperate rainforest, etc.). These are obviously ignored if you don't have that mod. Note that "forest" spawns appear to spawn in any other biome with "forest" in its name (Redwood Forest, Birch Forest, etc.), but just to be on the safe side I added a few of those as alternatives anyway.
vegetables.xie[]
I mainly modified the drop rates of seeds. My aim was to make these plants generally NOT provide the same number of seeds as what was input, so that you will have to make foraging sticks to obtain more seeds from time to time. I used to avoid foraging sticks because there was no point in using them when you could just use tall grass and make a wheat crop. Now, there's good incentive to start up alternative crops like lettuce and carrots.
In addition to fixing the lettuce duplication bug, I also modified the hunger values of the raw vegetables downward and their nourishment values upward (see "food.xie" below for a fuller write-up).
wheatOverride.xie[]
Default wheat (both Xie's Mod and Minecraft) is too cheap and easy for my comfort. After planting three rows of 8 crops of wheat, even without irrigation you will have more wheat than you know what to do with. My goal instead was to make wheat a crop that is not entirely self-sufficient. The number of seeds dropped can, in many cases, be less than the amount of crop tiles harvested. While in general you will come out slightly ahead from any wheat crop, you may be short on seeds -- you can convert some of your excess wheat into seeds (using Xie's standard at 1 wheat to 3 seeds, or my standard at 1 wheat to 1 seed), or you can continue to clear tall grass and produce additional seeds.
crops.xie[]
Corn in Xie's Mod is abso-freaking-lutely insane. After planting a single crop from wild corn seeds, corn will grow to gargantuan heights. Each of the 3-metre-tall cornstalks will drop around 7.5 cobs of corn each -- if you want to infinitely harvest the corn, just shave the top two tiles off and you will get around 5 cobs per stalk. Cook 25 cobs and you almost never have to worry about food ever again -- each cooked cob refills 50% of your hunger meter.
I find this unreasonable. Each full growth of corn now offers a 40% chance of dropping just a single cob, scaled downward at lower growth levels. Since each crop is three tiles in height, you have fairly good odds of getting at least one cob when "shaving" the crop and nearly guaranteed odds when "culling" the crop.
flowerbushes.xie[]
Rose bushes and dandelion bushes offer unreasonable amounts of flowers for minimal trouble. In my "actual gameplay" world, I was able to plant enough rose bushes to completely surround the fort in a Millenaire Gros Bourg within two days of starting the world, to plant actual roses all across its tiers, and to have enough roses left over to make the red wool upgrade to the marche a laughable effort. (My only regret is not renaming the fort from "Clinchamps-sur-l'ocean" to "La Mer de la Rouge".) They now have low odds of dropping only ONE flower each. If they fail to drop a flower, you will have to try again after it has grown some more. Each flower now produces only one seed, remembering that as a bush it can produce an infinite number of flowers over time.
foragingstick.xie[]
This makes the foraging stick last much longer and break bushes slightly less, but is also less successful. One thing it does do is give slightly higher odds of getting more seeds from dandelions or roses than actually picking the flower can, as previously it was pointless to use it on them as opposed to just picking the flower and converting it into 2 seeds. (I fixed that too, remember. One flower now equals one seed. I figure if you can get an infinite number of flowers with rose bushes or dandelion patches then there needs to be a balancing factor to slow down the rate of dye production.)
One other tweak is changing the foraging stick so that tall grass continues to drop lettuce seeds when bashed with a foraging stick (while still dropping onion seeds and carrot seeds of course). It also removes tea leaves from the tall grass, moving it to shrubs instead.
Technically tea is a tree, which I intend to add in an additional separate mod as new content is beyond the scope of a balancing effort.
hybridWheat.xie[]
Increases the randomness of hybrid wheat -- anywhere from 0 to 3 bushels of wheat -- and significantly tanks the drop rate of seeds, as if you "shave" the plants instead of culling them completely you'll always come out ahead anyway. On average you will get between 0 and 1 bushels of wheat per tile mown, again with the understanding that it will always grow infinitely. Cash crop ahoy!
food.xie + sammichesAndSalads.xie[]
Tweaks the nutritional values of all the foods. The nourishment values of Xie Mod food are way too low, the hunger values way too high! Thus, I went ahead and tweaked the nourishment values of food items in Xie's as appropriate: I heavily modify (obvious) "hunger" values down and even more heavily modify (hidden) "nourishment" values up, to be more in line with the default vanilla content. This balancing actually has a net effect of increasing the total value of all foods, so you won't have to eat as often -- part of the reason I had to make the food so much rarer!
Your hunger bar should "bounce" less and you won't have to eat as often to prevent the meter from declining, but each food item will not restore as much of the meter either.
I ascribe to the rule of "greater than the sum of its parts" in general, so the more work you did in preparing the food the greater its nutritional value, even if the hunger value isn't as significant, justifying the effort. Note that condiments like ketchup and guacamole generally make the food more satisfying (better for hunger) but less nutritious ('cause of the salt). Aside from beef and cooked porkchops, which are already so badly out of balance in vanilla Minecraft that it's impossible to balance around them, pretty much no matter what combination of ingredients you use you'll come out with something that is slightly more satisfying and nutritious and yet still quite balanced.
Happy nomming!
trees.xie[]
Well, Xie actually almost completely fixed this in the latest release, so all I needed to do was tweak down the shed saturation (the limit on drops in range of a given leaf block at which point it can no longer spawn drops), reduce the drop rate on saplings, and ever so slightly drop the shed rate from his rates. I doubt the shed saturation will ever even be reached at this point, mind you.
My vanilla test using the Apr 2 content gave me 32 oranges over a 12 hour dedicated patrol of a tightly-planted 18-tree orchard (rows of trees staggered with each other, thus rows of 5 trees, 4 trees, 5 trees, and 4 trees), so my balance was to drop that by 50% so you would average 16 oranges per 18 trees per 12-hour day of tending orchards. A lone tree will thus probably net you around an orange a day, a little more in line with expectations of other crops which take time to regrow after harvesting (if you want more than that, plant an orchard -- it's pretty cheap and easy after all). Don't forget to check the tree tops, oranges can drop onto the leaves too!
Note that food does still drop even when you're not tending the orchard, so you don't have to tend it so religiously. After tweaking the settings, I managed to get 13 oranges in the morning after sleeping overnight directly above the same orchard, using Somnia so the world is still simulated and oranges will still drop and spawn while sleeping.
Sadly there's an unfortunate point of balance where more fruit drops would be ideal when cutting down a tree or punching the leaves, but more fruit drops directly equates to more trees plantable because each fruit dropped can be converted to seeds too -- fruit is thus easily twice as useful as a sapling drop. Shy of preventing you from converting fruit to seeds at all, I decided just to leave fruit drops as-is.
One thing tweaked is the recipe for a cocoa sapling. Because converting a regular sapling to a cocoa sapling with cocoa beans conjures images in my head of grinding up cocoa, sprinkling it over the sapling, and uttering some sort of magic chant, I opted to replace the sapling part of the recipe with a block of dirt. Makes much more sense to me! So on that note I added similar alternatives for the other recipes too -- in their case it has no real benefit over just planting the seeds, but it's nice and consistent as an alternative.
I'll probably make an optional drop-in replacement available later on which forces seedless fruit (and no plantable cocoa beans!) and which then increases the fruit drop rate from breaking leaves so when starving you can chop down a tree and actually get more than one apple for your trouble -- I figure a slash-and-burn operation shouldn't be as effective as proper orchard tending, but it should at least give you at least a proportion of the apples that are theoretically still on the tree. ;-)