Hyena Grin

Right, so. I am not actually sure how the worldgen works and how difficult it would be, but I'd love to see oceans made up of saltwater, and new salt blocks that could be mined and used for a variety of purposes. Essentially, salt water is not drinkable. Salt water could spawn new types of water-based creatures and monsters, making swimming around in the ocean unsafe, without making rivers and lakes equally dangerous. This could give rise to some interesting biomes such as salt-water marshes, rockier ocean shores, deeper oceans, etc. Rivers that connect to oceans would be fresh water, of course. How it is handled where the two water types connect would be trickier. Rivers would need to remain freshwater while lakes connected to the ocean would need to become saltwater. I'm not well-versed enough in worldgen to describe a solution. If there is one. Another thought is aquifers. This is tricky for a few reasons, but the primary challenge is simply that Minecraft does not handle water volumetrically. And of course an aquifer is essentially earth that is also sodden with water, which also can't really be done. Here are some ideas for how an aquifer might be simulated. 1) Aquifers are comprised of earth, gravel, and stone. Earth and gravel in an aquifer spawn water in much the same way as a water block, with the obvious difference that they can be mined and cannot be swum through. Blocks mined out of an aquifer become ordinary earth and gravel blocks, and due to restrictions, if replaced back into the slot they were mined from, no longer spawn water. Stone blocks do not spawn water but do 'drip' as they do when water is above stone under normal circumstances. 2) Sporadic water pockets. Simply put, fill the area of the aquifer with (frequent) pockets of water. These could be single cubes or up to 3x3 pockets of water. These would have to be quite frequent, enough so that digging near them without hitting water would be difficult. 3) Replace dirt and gravel blocks dug out of an aquifer with a water block. This water block could be removed with a bucket, however if the walls around it contain dirt or gravel, then it will become water again after a period of time. This means digging through an aquifer layer would require cobblestone at a minimum, and probably supports. Otherwise your carefully tunneled staircase down may end up submerged in water. None of these are perfect, obviously. And I don't know the mechanics well enough to say how feasible any of it would be. But it'd be nice to be able to dig a well, perhaps with a new tool made of string and a bucket and some planks for gathering water from a deep water source. This would be useful for islands that are surrounded by salt water, as above, and do not have a source of fresh water on the surface. You would need to dig down to the aquifer (as would likely be present on an island) for fresh water. And it'd be nice if there was a (relatively easy) barrier in some locations to dig beyond the aquifer. Where would aquifers spawn? Mostly around rivers and lakes and near the ocean, but could potentially exist anywhere, even under deserts. Ideally aquifers would form 'rivers' and 'lakes' beneath the ground, or as extensions of the ocean. At least in-so-far as what they would look like if you mapped them out. Areas above aquifers might be more lush, and there may be natural springs that result in things like an oasis in the desert. I realize that without a good understanding of how biomes and world-gen work this is a bit of a wishlist, but I'm just throwing some ideas out there.

I actually did not say that. I said that I did not notice a change in rates when standing still. I realize you are kind of half arguing with me and half with the OP, but let's be careful to address the things that are actually said. (Edit: I see where you might have gotten a different impression when I mentioned mining vs standing around. I was trying to emphasize 'standing around' not talk about mining vs not mining. I am aware that while sprinting and performing certain actions, that your hunger and thirst decrease more quickly)What I said, is that periods of genuine, actual inactivity should result in lower hunger/thirst depletion. I don't see a problem with having another factor which helps to determine depletion rates. Other than the fact that you appear to believe that what is implemented is 'enough.' Obviously I disagree, and I'm assuming the OP disagrees. It still makes perfect sense to slow hunger/thirst depletion when standing still. It makes perfect gameplay sense, and cheerfully, it also accurately reflects reality. Again, seems like a no-brainer, and I haven't actually seen an argument against the suggestion. Would the game be worse if this suggestion were implemented? Is it impractical to implement? Surely it's a minor thing to track whether the player is moving or not. So why is the existing hunger depletion mechanics an argument against further tweaking of those mechanics to reflect reality a little better and also make the entire food/hunger system in the early game slightly more manageable?To Hubertus, no matter what hunger/food system is implemented, you will always be able to reach a point where you have more food than you need, that's not really an argument.

I didn't say that you don't burn calories while being still. I said pretty specifically that it should reduce the speed at which your hunger decreases. And it should. Because it does - significantly. And with good reason. As for your latter comment, it's a very noticeable feature to me, in that its absence struck me as immediately conspicuous and kind of annoying, and I consider myself a pretty average player, so you might want to reconsider your response, because from my perspective it's a little baffling! It's not like this is a concept without precedent. The Long Dark makes a pretty big deal about burning calories through activity and conserving energy is an important part of gameplay/survival. They aren't identical games, but TFC does often (particularly in the beginning) include periods of inactivity, such as waiting through nights, or waiting for things to cook/melt. It makes sense to adjust the tick of hunger/nutrition based on these kinds of factors, because its absence has a huge impact on how we play. If you are constantly mining for 24 hours straight you SHOULD require more food than someone who spent half the day indoors waiting around.It also gives a little extra breathing room for the early game, when food is scarce and periods of inactivity are more common. Later on, when lots of food is available, you can spare the extra food to maintain activity throughout the night and day cycle.It seems like a no-brainer to me.

Activity burns calories, degrees of activity burn more or less calories. That is the reality of things. So what is the actual argument against this suggestion? 'Just log off' is not actually a valid response to what the OP is suggesting. There needs to be a valid gameplay reason to not implement this before it can be so easily dismissed. I have also wondered why we don't have a system where the game recognizes when you are not moving and adjusts hunger rates accordingly. Conserving energy should be a valid strategy.

I realize on the face of it that the processing requirements for this may be prohibitive, so grain of salt: Water has a way of passing through permeable substances and even minute fissures in hard rock. I feel like digging very near to water sources should be more involved. Basically, water should begin to seep through semi-solid and solid blocks given the right circumstances. Basically, the deeper the water on one side of the block, the more penetration the water would have through adjacent blocks. Basically, water blocks would need to be aware of how many water blocks are above them, then pass that information to all solid blocks adjacent to them horizontally and beneath. This would flag solid blocks with a 'waterlogged' trait that checks a threshold (this could be different for different material types, lower for dirt/sand/gravel, higher for natural stone, higher again for masonry and certain other block types). If the threshold is surpassed, the block then passes half of its 'waterlogged' value to blocks adjacent to them horizontally and beneath. If there is open space instead of a solid block, it will generate 'moving' water, or a waterfall effect. Blocks that receive more than half of their threshold (but less than the amount to allow water to seep through) will 'weep,' causing droplets to form on the wall or ceiling - a harmless indication that digging the block out will almost certainly result in water forming. Legend: W~ = Water G = Gravel ~ = Seepage + = No seepage 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 : 0 = Water column, 1 = First block column, etc. W~ | G+ | G+ | G+ : 1 horizontal block deep, no seepage (perhaps weeping walls but no water formation) W~ | G~ | G+ | G+ : 2 H-Block deep, water will seep through adjacent block, forming a waterfall effect in 2nd block column if dug out. W~ | G~ | G+ | G+ : W~ | G~ | G~ | G+ : 4 H-Block deep, water will seep through two adjacent blocks, creating waterfall in 3rd block column if dug out. W~ | G~ | G~ | G+ : W~ | G~ | G~ | G~ : 6 H-Block deep, water will seep through three adjacent blocks, as above. G~ | G~ | G~ | G+ : 7 H-Block Deep, 1 V-Block deep. Water can only travel three blocks away from source at this depth. G~ | G~ | G+ | G+ : 8 H-Block deep, 1 V-Block deep. Diagonal fall-off of seepage is more pronounced. G~ | G+ | G+ | G+ : G+ | G+ | G+ | G+ : 10 V-Block deep, water no longer penetrates. This would make digging around lakes, beaches, rivers, etc, a little more interesting, making accessing certain clay deposits somewhat more complicated, and also simulate a rudimentary 'aquifer' type effect in some areas. I do realize that this might not be practical in terms of performance or coding, it's just something I've been kicking around in my head without the benefit of coding experience in Minecraft.

Thank you kindly!

Version #: 0.79.6.279 SSP/SMP (Single/MultiPlayer): SSP Suggested Name: Debris Duplication Suggested Category: Severe-Annoying-Minor Annoying Description: When 'breaking' rocks and sticks (debris) on the ground, two objects are spawned. Notably, when you pick one of the two objects up, both disappear and only one object is placed in the inventory. This appears to happen with all rocks I have tested it with, including nuggets of ore. Have you deleted your config files and are still able to reproduce this bug?: Yes Do you have any mods other than Forge and TFC installed?: No. Fresh install (deleted .minecraft folder and started from scratch), nothing but Forge and TFC. If yes, which mods? N/A If you have Optifine or Cauldron installed, can you still reproduce the bug after uninstalling them? I do not have either installed. Pastebin.com link of the Crash Report: No crash report.

I think that 48 hours makes a lot of sense in the context of a game that has additional lighting options. I originally voted that I like the mechanic and use the default values, but I am thinking about changing that to 'edited config to make it easier.' I think that until we have some longer-lasting options (candles that do not have to be relit as frequently but have a smaller light radius. Lanterns that use some manner of fuel and can last for a very long time as long as they are full) I think a good compromise might be to make torches last longer until more lighting options are available. 72 hours per torch might be a little easier to deal with in larger settlements. When we have other options for lighting our settlements that will be less labor-intensive, we can drop the torch burn-time back down to 48. Just a thought.

Disclaimer: This thread is not about inventory space. I'd like to avoid discussing it. But full disclosure; I am in favor of limiting inventory space and I think transportation features of the game would benefit wildly from limitations. But I wouldprefer it if we could avoid the topic as it has been adequately discussed elsewhere. Roads:A new kind of block similar to the soulsand found in vanilla, only reversed. The idea here is to have paths and roads added to the game as a way of speeding travel. While traveling on a dirt 'road' tile you move 10% faster than if you were walking on other terrains. A gravel road allows you to move 15% faster, and a cobblestone road might provide an addition bonus bringing it up to 20% faster. Roads would be fashioned with the shovel using a new 'Road' option, cycled to with the M button. When used on a dirt, gravel, or cobblestone block, the block size cuts in half and takes on a new Road texture. This would of course use up some of the shovel's durability. Ideally the texture would be dynamic and connect to road textures around it, creating nice-looking multi-block-wide roads. A third shovel option could (possibly) be a 'Ramp' option that allows you to dig a diagonal surface into a block, similar to stairs, that would allow the movement of wheeled vehicles. Handcarts: A wooden vehicle that when mounted, rolls behind the player. The handcart slows the player down by 50% but can carry a chest's worth of inventory space. Handcarts move faster on roads, up to 80% of a character's NORMAL walking rate on dirt roads, 90% on gravel, and 100% on cobblestone. Handcarts can also not be moved up or down blocks without aid of a pre-dug 'Ramp' (see above). In combination with roads this would allow players to move large amounts of objects between two locations very efficiently, or to function as 'crafting carts' for builders to pull their stone/wood around with them to prevent making trips back to a chest. Construction will be discussed later. Wooden Minecarts:An early alternative to the iron minecart, this includes wooden recipes for both a minecart and a wooden cart path. The wooden minecart path does not allow the cart to roll in the same way that iron rails do. In other words, you must push the cart the entire distance; a hill will not provide the cart any kinetic energy, it will remain in place even on down-slopes. Wooden minecarts may or may not hold as much inventory as a metal minecart, but suffice to say, wooden minecarts cannot be placed on iron rails and vice versa. Construction:A new object called a 'Wooden wheel' which is simply a wooden wagon wheel would be introduced. This object would be created using wooden planks and sticks. The wheel would be used for construction of handcarts and wooden minecarts. A metal variation could be used for metal minecarts. The wooden tracks would be made up of wooden planks in two vertical lines with a line of sticks between them. Ideally there would be a new process of 'treating' wood to make stronger and more malleable wooden planks (Treated Hickory Plank, for example) which would be required for certain construction, such as the outer portion of wagon wheels and the rails for tracks. This treating process could be handled in a variety of different ways. One thought would be a new barrel recipe in which amounts of planks could be treated at once. Or perhaps a whole new expansion on carpentry including a few new tools/benches. More is better, but in the spirit of brevity, ordinary planks would do. Open to other ideas also! Lemme know what you think.

Honestly I'd like to see a longer period where you are 'starving' but not 'dying.' It takes a long time to die of starvation! Maybe reduce movement speed, reduce damage the player deals to enemies, increase damage enemies do to the player, maybe apply a greyish filter to the player's vision as a visual indicator that you are in a poor state. This would make it extremely desirable to avoid being in this state. The handful of times where I have died to starvation have been pretty annoying, and it's usually because I lost track of things while exploring and have low health already, and suddenly I have very little time to get back to a source of food before I die. Just a thought.

I think they are planning on changing the way lava works so that it is less of a persistent thing. I don't know the exact details (maybe someone else does) but they have talked about geological instability and earthquakes and volcanoes and things. I never liked that lava was persistent. Lava cools into stone pretty quickly and it's rare to have a source of lava pushing to the surface for very long. Lava should turn into obsidian after a while of being exposed to air (with the exception of lava pockets below a certain Z level). ... as you can probably tell I don't really like the idea of lava blocks providing an infinite, intense heat source. Heh. Just my opinion though.

There was another thread in which this subject came up. Perhaps more than most suggestions I have seen, this one seems to have the community fairly divided. There are arguments for both sides. Hopefully we won't have to rehash them too much. The question of inventory space is a tricky one, but I think certain things are relatively clear. 1) With too much inventory space, there is little need for resource management or infrastructure. You can more or less head out into the wilderness with a couple of picks and return with a treasure trove of valuable metal with little to no effort beyond the task of actually finding/mining the ore. 2) This often means that in a rather short period of time, you can go from metal bankruptcy to having more metal than you can probably use. A single good-sized copper source can supply a settlement of a handful of people for a rather long time, and often times the mine is visited once, maybe twice, and the ore is simply stashed in a chest until it is needed. This is, at least, how my games tend to go. 3) Because you typically visit a mine site once, or twice, there is virtually no reason to invest time in building roads or developing the mine site with mine carts or stairs or support structures. Often these sites are simply 1x2 holes in the ground and don't even require supports to prevent cave-ins. The miner goes in, collects all the ore he can find, and then never returns. This applies to logging as well. Even a mighty sequoia tree can be chopped down and transported easily back home. There's no reason to build a logging camp where resources might be gathered and perhaps processed on-site for easier transport. No reason for roads. 4) Because of this 'scavenging' mentality regarding all resources, typically all development occurs back at one site. Instead of processing ore/wood/stone/other materials on the site where it would make sense to do so, it is generally less time consuming to just mass-harvest everything and run it all back to base. On the converse side; 1) With fairly strict limitations on inventory, managing resources and infrastructure becomes a vital skill. Finding a source of ore or wood would not be enough. Some effort would be needed to make harvesting those resources efficient. 2) Instead of mass-mining or mass-logging far more ore and lumber than is actually required, people would tend toward moving smaller numbers of resources when required. This would balance out some of the resource booms that people often have and keep people traveling to and from resource sites, keeping active and interacting with the world beyond their settlement. Reducing the ease with which people can move goods, would expand the lifespan of resource sites without increasing the amount of resources each site contains. 3) Because more time needs to be spent traveling between the settlement and the resource sites, there would be ample reason to develop the site, make it more efficient for gathering, and develop roads and other means of moving between the site and settlement with greater ease. The end result is a more developed world that looks more like we expect the world to look; networks of population (the settlement) intrinsically connected with the resources around it that supply it. 4) Because of inventory limitations you would likely see storage and processing shift out of the settlement and into the resource sites. It would make more sense to mine stone, mix mortar, and craft brick blocks on-site than collecting masses of stones and transporting them back to their settlement for storage. Large amounts of wood might be collected at a lumberyard in the forest, and then processed into planks to be transported one cartload at a time back to the settlement for construction. Ore might be collected and smelted into ingots at the mine site because simply transporting the ore back to the settlement would be time consuming. The point is; from adversity comes innovation. For every obstacle a person faces, new ways of overcoming that challenge will present themselves. Whether this means new ways of playing the game or new gameplay features such as roads and backpacks and carts for moving resources. The beauty of TFC has always been the addition ofnecessity to the Minecraft formula. Minecraft would always allow you to do practically anything, and allowed creativity to run wild. But while it was trivial to build impressive things, there was precious little need to do so. TFC adds a necessity to build. But because it still hasn't fully shrugged off the free-wheeling inventory system which allows enormous amounts of resources to be carried on your person at all times, all of this necessity to build has been centralized. Collection of resources is still relatively trivial and thus building outside of the settlement is unnecessary, leaving the wilderness around a settlement largely untouched; you'd hardly know where the settlement got all of that stone and lumber. Reducing inventory would add a necessity to build outside the settlement. And I think that is not only important, but it is worth the obvious drawbacks that come with such a change. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, apart from the obvious arguments against the very idea, some thoughts on how to go about reducing inventory would be nice. Some thoughts; Ideally, an inventory system would avoid irritation by allowing the character to carry a fairly large number of items of light weights and small sizes, but limit the amount of medium to large, and heavy objects the character can carry. Inventory clutter is usually the cause for annoyance, and the best way to avoid annoyance would be to have a forgiving attitude toward this 'clutter.' Really what we are interested in limiting are the base resources; ore, stone, and lumber. By extension objects like dirt, sand, gravel, and similar would be affected. One idea would be to provide the player with a number of slots for each item weight. For example; 10 Light Slots 5 Medium Slots 2 Heavy Slots This would give you a starting allotment of 17 slots to play with (the default is 27), but severely limits the number of heavier objects you can carry. Notably, any object of the weight of the slot or lighter can be placed there, but obviously if you are carrying a rose in your Heavy slot, you can't also carry a Heavy item there. Objects would be automatically sorted upon acquiring them into the lowest possible slot available that it can fit into. The trick here is that each slot size would have an equipment slot associated with it for storage items, to add one or more additional slots for carrying. For example, a craftable leather pouch might be slottable to Light the Light Equipment slot, and provide an additional 5 Light inventory slots. A craftable utility belt might provide 3 Medium Slots, while a backpack provides 2 Heavy slots. The idea here is that with the best possible equipment your inventory would look like this: 15 Light Slots (with pouch) 8 Medium Slots (with utility belt) 4 Heavy Slots (with backpack) For a total of 27 slots, the same total number as the vanilla inventory. But still, even with the same amount of inventory space, you are still limited where it comes to larger objects. If fully outfitted, you would be able to carry 4 stacks of stone in cobble or brick form, but quite a few more stacks of stone in individual rock form. You could carry 8 stacks of logs or planks (12 if you used your Heavy slots). Quickslots are another matter entirely. Someone else had the idea to have each quickslot beyond the first two (your hands) require equipment to access them. For example, you could carry a sword in slot 1 or 2 for free, but if you make yourself a leather weapon harness then you could put your weapon in slot 3 and free up your hands for things like building materials. A small tool harness would let you quickslot things like knives or chisels or hammers, and a large tool harness would let you quickslot things like mining picks and shovels. A quiver would let you quickslot a bow. And perhaps a carrying harness could be used for generic materials like sand, dirt, wood, stone, etc. This way, when you first start off, you have just 17 inventory slots and your two hands, but eventually you work your way back to something resembling TFC as it is now, just with some limitations on what kinds of objects you can carry and in what quantities. In any case, the numbers could be adjusted; the numbers given are just one example. Some people might want the total available slots (with equipment) to be less than they are right now. Personally I don't think the total number is as important as controlling the kinds of materials people can move in large quantities, and making people work for it, and think harder about how they do things. It's just one idea, in any case. I am interested in hearing others.

I also like this idea, but it will probably just result in people carrying around a half dozen tools so that they don't have to stop to sharpen every time. And that causes inventory stress. I have a hard time imagining a way of implementing it without the net result being people finding tedious and non-fun ways around it. Which would just make people complain. Unfortunately. Because it is a good idea, in principle.

There's no point in restricting inventory until there's infrastructure in place to support moving stuff around. Any reduction in inventory capacity is going to annoy somebody. You can't really expect otherwise until more thought has gone into how you're going to alleviate inventory stress in a way that fits in with the TFC theme. Wagons, pull carts, ways to expand inventory, etc.

I like it! I'd keep them to a relatively small size so as not to completely dwarf the need for rock salts, but it'd give players a reason to explore deserts. Since at present they don't usually offer much in the way of stuff to gather (beyond endless sand for glass).

Perhaps a pale red (pink) and pale yellow dye made from the flowers that spawn? They don't need to be attractive, just available.

I am inclined to agree where it comes to games that people pay for. But when you're talking about a mod, where the developers are working within the framework of another game, and trying to build a specific experience, I start to disagree. The game is not terribly intuitive, but with like a great many free/roguelike/mod type games, the learning curve is entangled with the community. The forums, the wiki. That's how you learn to play these things. That's not a bad thing, that's a space that mods have always occupied.

Love it. I would use the heck out of this if it were implemented. I have a bad memory for the most part, so I like to organize things. Color coding ceramic vessels would make inventory management a lot easier for me. And also storage of items outside of the inventory, potentially. And frankly it would just look nice.

The first night of all MC games, vanilla or mod, all have mobs on the first night. It's not exactly a surprise. I'd be more shocked if someone came to the game not having played Minecraft, and not being fully aware that the first night is a hurdle to get over. It sounds like you had a particularly frustrating experience, but I'm not sure I would extrapolate that to every single first-time-player's experience. Yeah TFC requires you to do more prior to surviving the first night, but it's not that hard. I have literally never died the first night in TFC and I've played it a lot. That said, I'm not explicitly against removing or decreasing the number of spawns on the first night. It just may be a lot harder to do than you think. You should go to the Suggestions forum if you would like to discuss that as a possibility.

I have to admit I kind of liked the potion effects with meals. It was a nice little thing to explore. Yeah there's still some exploration, but it's sort of like with Diablo; finding items with +4 damage or whatever was alright, but what was really interesting was the special effects that rare items would have, that other items didn't. Maybe food isn't the right place for potion effects. I wouldn't mind seeing that switched to alcohol brewing, maybe. Brewing alcohol could be expanded upon to make room for potion effects.

I would really, really, really like to be able to adjust the length of days. They're too short, I agree. By about five minutes or so. It'd be really nice if the length of the days vs nights could be modified by the calender, so in the winter nights are longer and in the summer days are longer. This would also kinda help with the First Day Problems that crop up with newer players, where it's tough to get enough done in the first day to survive the first night (since the game starts in the summer). Sadly, I dunno how feasible that is. I should look for a mod that does this and see if it's even possible.

The crashing etc isn't really all that relevant re: new player perspective. Neither is spawning in the ocean. These are bugs that only got introduced in the last week, and are being rapidly patched. If you're having problems you should head over to the technical forum. As for mobs, I'm not sure what to say. Sometimes it happens. It happens in regular minecraft too. Sometimes the mob spawns aren't too bad - I've had nights where I had no trouble avoiding mobs, and I've had nights where it seemed like the entire world was on top of me. Does this lead to boring nights in a crappy shelter? Yes, just like in vanilla MC, but at least you have to put more thought into it in TFC. And frankly, as you progress, there's a lot more you can do in the safety of your shelter than you ever could in MC. TFC is supposed to be a slower game, a more challenging game. If a new player is turned off by that, then it might just not be the mod for them. They can either stick it out and accept some 'tips and tricks' for surviving the first few nights, or they can play something else. TFC isn't trying to be all things for all players.

New updates is what generally brings me back to playing the game after a hiatus, it's what keeps things fresh and interesting.I know some people have servers and worlds they are understandably reluctant to restart. My thinking, though, is that people are not required to update. They can keep running older versions until they are ready to restart, and if archived older versions are available to download (which they are, if memory serves) then I don't see an issue with shorter updating frequency.I've been rather looking forward to Build 78, and check the site almost daily for an update even after all this time, but I am also patient and realize that this is a project of love, and you guys can only dedicate so much time to it. So I would say this: update when it's ready. The people who want to start new games will start new games. The ones who don't will wait and keep playing on whatever version they have.

That's a pretty wild exaggeration. =P Cannons were extremely powerful weapons, they had no trouble hitting large defensive structures from pretty significant distances. They would eventually completely change naval warfare, and render traditional defensive fortifications obsolete, changing the face of warfare forever.After the development of rifling cannons became extremely accurate, but obviously anything that went into the game would no doubt be pre-rifling. In the period, cannons were pivotal in the sieges of Constantinople in the 14th and 15th centuries. Muskets and other hand-operated firearms were very inaccurate (in that their purpose was shooting a relatively small target, and they were bad at it), but cannons were quite capable of hitting the relatively larger targets that they were used for.Firearms and cannons etc have come up quite a lot, and thus far there hasn't really been a good reason to implement them. I think there's more potential for a cannon than for handheld firearms, however. The upkeep of iron for ammunition and significant amounts of gunpowder would make them costly to use (yes many devices of this kind used dense, polished stone, but for the purpose of balance I'd think iron would make a better requirement), and most people would actually have little use for them. They'd really only be useful in PvP to bring down player-made fortifications, as I can't see them being used against mobs at all. That said, a catapult, trebuchet, or ballista would more than adequately fill the same role, except you wouldn't as easily be able to lock these types of siege weapons behind rare resources. They were pretty much built with readily available materials, and used stones as ammunition.

I have often wished that the thatch block wasn't so blocky. Being able to fashion them into stair blocks to make them a little cleaner for roofing seems like a perfectly good idea.