Better Than Wolves Forum

I started up a new world, first one since all the early game changes. Good lord, I love it. I actually have to worry about my resources now. It used to just be "Get a wheat farm going, breed animals, and never worry about food again". Now, I'm constantly thinking about whether I'll have enough food to get back, or what happens if I get attacked by a spider. I've been making a new expedition each day. Just went on a jungle run, got tons of meat and cocoa beans, and almost starved on my way back because I forgot my food at home. I ended up finally reaching home after eating 2 zombies flesh, and freaking out every time I saw a skeleton in the distance.
...I think I'll be playing a lot more for the next few months :)

Awesome stuff man! Yeah, I've certainly been investing a lot of work into the early game experience the last few months :)

FlowerChild wrote:Awesome stuff man! Yeah, I've certainly been investing a lot of work into the early game experience the last few months :)

Heh, it's certainly working :) It feels a lot more expansive now; Before, I started the game from the beginning, focused on climbing the tech tree, and survival was always more of a background focus. Now, I haven't even had the time to worry about the tech tree. The game feels much more... Expansive, I guess. It's easily lengthened the game by hours, if not much much more :)

Oh yeah, I'd say the overall play time of the mod has at least doubled. Don't know about others, but I get the sense that even really starting the old BTW tech-tree is around 10 hours off from start :)

And yes: I know there are those of you that can burn through everything in a few hours. No need to swing your dicks around about it ;)

FlowerChild wrote:Oh yeah, I'd say the overall play time of the mod has at least doubled. Don't know about others, but I get the sense that even really starting the old BTW tech-tree is around 10 hours off from start :)

And yes: I know there are those of you that can burn through everything in a few hours. No need to swing your dicks around about it ;)

Shit man, if I started focusing on tech this early in the game (I'm on day #6 right now, I think), I would die. Nearly all my time is devoted to hunting and gathering right now. I think I'm actually packing up and moving a bit next time I load up the game. I'm trying to set up a mushroom farm to sustain me while I go for iron, but it's not near enough on it's own. Even early-game, you need to utilize several different systems to really support yourself with renewable food now.

FlowerChild wrote:Oh yeah, I'd say the overall play time of the mod has at least doubled. Don't know about others, but I get the sense that even really starting the old BTW tech-tree is around 10 hours off from start :)

And yes: I know there are those of you that can burn through everything in a few hours. No need to swing your dicks around about it ;)

A lot of that dick-swinging in the past was me, but it wasn't really because of bragging rights, just to establish a base-line. Obviously the numbers changed a lot, I should do another run to recalculate, but I haven't played enough of the new versions to get good enough at it (I'm a pretty lousy video gamer at best).

I always find it interesting when companies say "contains 60 hours of content". At what pace though? I want to try a bare bones tech run in the newest version, maybe even record it.

Gilberreke wrote:I always find it interesting when companies say "contains 60 hours of content". At what pace though? I want to try a bare bones tech run in the newest version, maybe even record it.

I think a lot of times, those figures focus on the average play time for a new player (at least that's what I do), because yeah, of course an experienced player going full-tilt directly towards the end on a speed run will be able to get it done *much* faster.

I think such speed runs are inevitably missing the point and much of the enjoyment of the game though. Even when testing, I make sure to just play at a normal pace and take my time so as to not create an artificial play experience.

Gilberreke wrote:I want to try a bare bones tech run in the newest version, maybe even record it.

I would definitely watch something like that.

FlowerChild wrote:I think such speed runs are inevitably missing the point and much of the enjoyment of the game though. Even when testing, I make sure to just play at a normal pace and take my time so as to not create an artificial play experience.

Problem is, if I go at a "normal pace", I end up spending hours and hours building elaborate, but unneeded stuff and I don't get any further than vanilla tech.

With the newer versions, that means I get to experience a fair bit of BTW, but in the past, it meant I had to force myself to play at different paces to experience different parts of the mod.

So yeah, I force myself to go quicker, so I don't get bogged down in creating testificate villages of large proportion and terraforming mountains. The question "how quick can I do this without rushing it" comes quickly after that. I never speed-run my tech runs, I just make sure that everything I do is geared towards advancing towards a goal in an efficient manner.

A whole new game indeed !

As said in the release thread, before this Friday I thought I had said my goodbye to MC / BTW. And since Friday night, I've been playing the shit out of it. And "Good Lord I love it" was a perfect way of putting it BinoAI !

I died once, after a fair amount of time (had "loads" – after nowadays standards for early game any way ^^ – of iron, pick, sword, hoe and leftovers), food, and the stupid feeling that I could beat two zombie /very/ close range with my iron sword. Yeah, it didn't work.
Luckily, after spawning on a very narrow island, jumping to another one with two (TWO !, not enough for the obligatory 18 planks) trees I saw a swamp in the distance, beyond around 100 blocks of water. And yes, there it was, THE swamp biome right next to my base. Short story, I got there in time, took food and went scavenging my death loots...

And man, I know you don't like it when deaths has no consequence, but the only fact that when I died I /thought/ it would take me forever to return home (no, not that one) I couldn't stop blaming myself for acting so stupidly. Oh and the relief when I saw my base... It's an awesome experience.


Now, to the point I intended to make regarding the time needed before one can really start with the BTW tech tree (beside growing hemp).
To me, it only depends on one thing : decent food supplies. And to achieve that, I don't see any other solution than growing wheat and breeding animals. I haven't tested the hand crank yet, but I bet it will feel like it's hurting my hunger way more than before.

Let the village hunt begin !


tl;dr :
- FC the early game is so awesome that I want to steal babies for you.
- No BTW tech tree progress for me until wheat and sustainable meat source.

2 things I've found:

Yes, water is very overpowered. I should have probably died here: And the wolf howls have got me fucking paranoid, man! I was hunkered down in a temporary hidey-hole, mining some stone for my travels. I heard a wolf howl, which is already unsettling. THen, I heard the sound of dirt being broken and freaked out, whipped out my stone axe, and fell ~5 blocks into the mini stripmine I created. Turns out, it was just a badly timed sheep eating grass. But I don't think I've ever been so terrified in this game :)

Gormador wrote: Now, to the point I intended to make regarding the time needed before one can really start with the BTW tech tree (beside growing hemp).
To me, it only depends on one thing : decent food supplies. And to achieve that, I don't see any other solution than growing wheat and breeding animals. I haven't tested the hand crank yet, but I bet it will feel like it's hurting my hunger way more than before.

Let the village hunt begin !

That's the vanilla in you talking there. BTW has revamped the food progress, so you may want to look at this page on the wiki for good sources of food pre-village. Mushroom omelettes, scrambled eggs, cream of mushroom and chowder are what you want to be looking at. If you can lure chickens and cows, and get a source of seeds, those are renewable sources of decent food. You're only really intended to go looking for villages once you're confident heading through the Nether.

Six wrote: That's the vanilla in you talking there. BTW has revamped the food progress, so you may want to look at this page on the wiki for good sources of food pre-village. Mushroom omelettes, scrambled eggs, cream of mushroom and chowder are what you want to be looking at. If you can lure chickens and cows, and get a source of seeds, those are renewable sources of decent food. You're only really intended to go looking for villages once you're confident heading through the Nether.

Ah, thanks for that link, I totally forgot about all the new food sources. I finally have an efficient use for mushrooms! :)

Six wrote: That's the vanilla in you talking there. BTW has revamped the food progress, so you may want to look at this page on the wiki for good sources of food pre-village. Mushroom omelettes, scrambled eggs, cream of mushroom and chowder are what you want to be looking at. If you can lure chickens and cows, and get a source of seeds, those are renewable sources of decent food. You're only really intended to go looking for villages once you're confident heading through the Nether.

As a matter of fact, I stumbled across that page today after writing that post. And yeah, I had forgotten about all this early efficient food. But still, it is very slow to gather seeds for my chickens (I have 4 of them trapped inside my base) through hemp and pumpkins (which I have both). And even though there is a swamp right next to my door, I find acquiring those early food not fast enough for my liking ;-)

So yeah, village hunt FTW ! :-)

I just started playing with all the HC modes enabled (due to the let's play Icy and FC did, it really made me want to experience BTW to it's fullest.) and I must say, I've never had so...little accomplished in the course of one MC day. And I freakin' love it. After I had gathered enough wood to build myself enough pickaxes to have any decent level of productivity, I ran into a wolf. We made eye contact. I decided to play it safe and gave it one of my precious porkchops, maintained eyecontact and said: "Please, don't eat me." After that I rushed to find the nearest natural cave to set up shop in. I wonder if that creature will remember the hand that fed it that day. But the world of BTW is no fairytale world, and I'm afraid it would've done me a world of good had I slain the beast where it stood, for now it's night and the howls are growing louder and more frequent.

Whoops, seems like I got a little carried away. I just wanted to share my feelings now that I actually got to try the new early game. Things are just...so much more interesting now that I have to divide my time in order to survive and prosper.

*Insert Zelda item get theme*
That wasn't too bad, the nerf to iron wasn't near as painful as I thought. I managed to find a rather nice cave system in one of the places I stopped, so I think I'm camping out here (I've got a huge supply of food) til I can use nether transport.
This is my first time seeing the final strata layer... I know it's not *actually* more difficult aside from being unable to break stone there currently, but... Damn, I'm terrified :D

I restarted recently to check out stratification and a few other changes to early game. It's taken me a while but I finally got 4 diamonds to get me to the nether. Oh, what's this? I need to smelt diamonds with iron and creeper oysters. Wtf is a creeper oyster?

I've spent almost a minecraft week trying to get 3 oysters. I've only got one. Of all the resources that I'd have trouble collecting...

Creepers are like shrub people right? Do oysters have better drop chances if I use sheers?

PatriotBob wrote:I restarted recently to check out stratification and a few other changes to early game. It's taken me a while but I finally got 4 diamonds to get me to the nether. Oh, what's this? I need to smelt diamonds with iron and creeper oysters. Wtf is a creeper oyster?

I've spent almost a minecraft week trying to get 3 oysters. I've only got one. Of all the resources that I'd have trouble collecting...

Creepers are like shrub people right? Do oysters have better drop chances if I use sheers?

...I have to do WHAT? xD
To the wiki, I suppose lol
EDIT: Aha, I see. Too bad I ate the only creeper oysters I've gotten, out of curiosity... Lmao

PatriotBob wrote:I've spent almost a minecraft week trying to get 3 oysters. I've only got one. Of all the resources that I'd have trouble collecting...

Creepers are like shrub people right? Do oysters have better drop chances if I use sheers?

I think they have better drop rates if killed with bow and arrow, but that could just be a coincidence. I can't remember a creeper who I've killed at range that didn't drop oysters(admittedly, a much smaller sample size than number of creepers killed).

PatriotBob wrote:Creepers are like shrub people right? Do oysters have better drop chances if I use sheers?

Lol...so tempting...

Neutering creepers with sheers to harvest their oysters and remove their explosive ability just sounds sooooo BTW :)

FlowerChild wrote:

PatriotBob wrote:Creepers are like shrub people right? Do oysters have better drop chances if I use sheers?

Lol...so tempting...

Neutering creepers with sheers to harvest their oysters and remove their explosive ability just sounds sooooo BTW :)

Oh God... did I just waste a suggestion that FC likes outside of the suggestion forums? :)

The concept of the creeper's "explosive" power being tied to their oysters... what's that say about being creeper bombed?

PatriotBob wrote:The concept of the creeper's "explosive" power being tied to their oysters... what's that say about being creeper bombed?

Hehe...well that part was the idea I always had in mind, so it was just a natural extension of what was mentioned about sheers.

I see the potential for neutered and tethered creepers acting as "pets" in the future ;)

So I might finally achieve my dream of hugging a Creeper without dying?! :D Or maybe scaring the crap out of people with creeper traps... hehehe

FlowerChild wrote:

PatriotBob wrote:The concept of the creeper's "explosive" power being tied to their oysters... what's that say about being creeper bombed?

Hehe...well that part was the idea I always had in mind, so it was just a natural extension of what was mentioned about sheers.

I see the potential for neutered and tethered creepers acting as "pets" in the future ;)

Even when it comes to virtual pets... Still, Better Than Wolves. :)

Great. Now every time I see a creeper running at me, all I'll be able to the l think about is that he's just trying to pollinate me...