Better Than Wolves

May 5rd, 2013

• Added Hardcore Fishing. This makes a number of changes to the way fishing works to make it a more interesting part of the game. First, fishing rods must be "baited" by combining them with various items in the crafting grid. Most "useless" meaty items work as bait, such as rotten flesh, spider eyes and Creeper Oysters. You can still go through the motions of fishing with an unbaited rod, but you won't catch anything. Each time you get a nibble, there's a chance that you'll lose your bait in the process, and when you catch a fish, you will always lose your bait. Also, fishing may only be performed above ground, and if the bobber is in large bodies of water (away from the shore and in deep water...cast into a lake or ocean and you'll be good to go). The chances of catching fish are also much higher in the day than at night, also increased during rain and further increased if you do it during dawn or dusk. The exception to these rules is that fishing at night on a full moon will provide the best chances of all.
• Added Hardcore Piles. When the player digs dirt, sand, or gravel, using a tool other than a shovel (or Mattock), they will get piles of the corresponding material instead of the full block. These piles may be crafted back into blocks, at a cost of 4 piles per block (blocks may also be split into piles if you so desire in the crafting grid), but it should be noted that you only get 3 such piles when digging without a shovel. In other words, if you don't use a shovel, some of the material you are digging is lost as you scrape away at it with your bare hands. Note that Piles of Dirt may also be crafted into dirt slabs by placing two of them side by side in the crafting grid, and that Dirt Slabs will also break apart in this fashion when dug with your hands. This was done to make shovels a more integrated part of the game, and more useful tools overall. Note that at present all piles pass through Wicker filters unmodified (this is particularly relevant to gravel), but future features will address that.
• Added Bat Wings as a new bat drop to further incentivize batting bats while exploring bat caves. Note that Bat Wings may be used as bat bait for Hardcore Fishing.
• Added Cut Scoured Leather. This is simply for convenience, to allow leather to be cut before being Scoured in a Mill Stone, and then Tanned, so that players don't have to worry about cutting excessive leather or what have you, then not being able to tan it as a result. Note that tanning Cut Scoured Leather, will require two pieces per Dung, plus the corresponding number of logs.
• Changed fishing rod recipe so that it consists of two sticks diagonally, with 2 string, and an iron nuggest. In relation to the vanilla recipe this means the top stick is replaced by a string, and the bottom string by the nugget. I've also added the ability to melt down the various types of fishing rod (regular, baited, and carrot on stick) in the Crucible to recover the nugget.
• Changed (rebalanced) the hardness of various vanilla blocks so that they make more sense relative to each other.
• Changed (increased) the amount of time it takes to harvest blocks "by hand" when an appropriate tool is not used to further emphasize the advantages of proper tool use.
• Changed the crafting table so that it may not be used if it has a solid block above it, similar to chests and other similar blocks.
• Fixed vanilla problem that was introduced back in 1.3 with blocks insta*harvesting under certain circumstances. This was most noticeable with netherrack and vegetation.
• Fixed vanilla problem where blocks like slabs, or mod blocks like moulding, would change orientation immediately after being placed in SMP.
• Fixed problem with the sides of snow on slabs not always displaying correctly.
• Fixed problem with bone meal not immediately appearing on the blocks on which it is placed in SMP.
• Fixed problem with tools not breaking at the correct time in SMP.