Better Than Wolves

September 15th, 2013

• Added Ender Slag and Soul Flux as new items. Ender Slag is produced as a result of cooking end stone in a Kiln (instead of Brimstone, and along with White Cobble). Cooking the slag in a stoked Cauldron will then separate it into Brimstone and Soul Flux. Soul Flux is required to successfully bind the souls in the process of creating Soulforged Steel in a Crucible (along with the previous iron, Soul Urn, and Coal Dust). From a gameplay perspective, it is intended to better integrate the end dimension into BTW's overall progression, further encourage the creation of gunpowder by making cooking endstone a necessary aspect of progressing (creating Brimstone as a bi-product of that encouraging players to make use of it), and to help spread out the late game tech tree a little better as it was feeling very clumped together in the final stages. This should give iron and diamond more of a place in the progression as well, since the ability to effectively use iron for tools, armor and weapons is largely gained with the Crucible (and previously made largely obsolete by SFS at the same time). It also provides a little more room in the progression for the vanilla enchanting table, and coincides with BTW's "backstory" in terms of what the end dimension and its inhabitants represent.
• Added the ability to recycle tools and other items that use Diamond Ingots in the Crucible to further encourage the use of diamond tools & armor in the middle game, make them a more prominent part of the game overall (since players had a tendency to not want to create them due to the diamonds going to "waste"), and to provide an additional reward for attaining the Crucible level of tech now that SFS has been moved higher in the tech tree.
• Changed diamond tools, weapons and armor to be equally enchantable as iron, for similar reasons, as particularly with tools, the difference between an enchanted iron tool and a diamond one, was negligible, making it arguably more efficient to not upgrade to diamond. Given such items are iron-based in BTW to begin with, this tends to fit.
• Changed the recipe for Ender Spectacles to no longer be dependent on the Anvil, since you can no longer obtain an Anvil without visiting the end dimension, and since Spectacles are more or less necessary if you want to travel there (without having nothing to worry about anyways). The recipe now consists of two Oculars of Ender with a single Strap in between, in a horizontal line. I've also changed the ocular recipe to only produce one unit, as the spectacles are now a significant enough portion of the tech progression to warrant the extra resource expenditure.
• Changed the recipe for the Screw to no longer require the Anvil for similar reasons, moving it a little earlier in the tech tree (not much mind you given glue is still required for a Screw Pump) while preventing it getting pushed much further into it with the other changes in this release. The recipe is basically the same as before, with the bottom row chopped off, and requiring 6 iron ingots instead of the previous 8.
• Changed the recipe for the Lens to also no longer be Anvil dependent. It now consists of 6 gold ingots in vertical lines with a single diamond in the middle of the top row, and a single glass block (not a pane...the idea is that the block is shaped into a lens as part of the crafting) in the middle of the bottom (you're welcome Dave ;) ). My overall feeling on it was that the Lens wasn't seeing as much use as it should have due to the prohibitive cost, so hopefully that will correct that aspect as well as adjusting its availability based on the other changes in this release. I also put in an "upside down" version of the recipe to make it a little easier to remember.
• Removed Endermen converting blocks to end stone while still in the overworld. While cool, removing this was necessary to bottle-neck progression at the player going to the end dimension, as otherwise Soulforged Steel could be created without ever visiting it, albeit in a rather time consuming manner. The conversion process is now considered to take place as the Endermen travel between dimensions.
• Removed the option to disable Hardcore Buckets. Sorry guys, but while I had left this in out of consideration for people with old worlds (myself included), my impression is that it was just being abused by new players far too much, largely wrecking BTW's balance in the process, while there aren't many of us left still playing worlds that old (and those worlds now feel "cheaty" for a whole host of other reasons that option couldn't reconcile anyways). After putting a lot of thought into it I decided that the overall design has become way too dependent on HC Buckets being enabled to leave it as optional.