Dragons like shiny things.

[DA_HOBO2_URLEFT 6]

I searched the suggestion directory and skimmed through some pages on the suggestions forum, and was really surprised not to find the word 'Dragon' anywhere. No, I'm not talking about the Ender Dragon. I think they should be added as a sort of 'mini boss'. 

 

Why?

 

It's no secret that dragons were a 'thing' in the middle ages, and/or before then. I feel like, if they were added to Terrafirmacraft, they could be a really good way to spice things up, without making the game stressful, all while keeping the theme. A friend of mine, who was fascinated in dragons as a child, recently told me that dragons were believed to covet shiny objects, such as Diamonds or Gold. Currently, (or to my knowledge) there is no major use for gems in Terrafirmacraft.

 

How would they be implemented?

 

Extremely rare 'Dragon Dens' would randomly spawn in new chunks generated, in mountainous regions. They would look like a large cave or cavern, carved out of a distinctly enormous mountain. Initially, dragon dens would be empty. No dragon, no loot. Nothing. (When animal corpses are added, maybe they could be found here). If a Player collected enough Exquisite gems (either of the same kind, or simply in general), a Dragon would have a small chance of spawning (I'll get back to that later). Alternatively, gold nuggets could be added to the available ores received from using a gold pan on gravel. Nuggets can later be melted down into ingots, etc. Eventually, when a player gets a certain number of gold nuggets (1 ingot = 9 nuggets), a dragon would also be able to spawn. 

What would the dragons be like?
 

When the prerequisites above were met, the nearest unoccupied dragon den would 'activate'. At this point, a dragon would spawn, in a sleeping position, inside the den. When a player approached or surpassed the mouth of the cave, the dragon would awaken and fly out. This would initiate a battle with the dragon, with its purple health-bar appearing at the top, similar to when fighting the Ender Dragon or Wither. If the player dies, the dragon will pick up all of the items, and return them to its den. When it picked up the items, they would immediately appear in a chest inside of the dragons den (The chest would spawn when the den activated, and would initially be empty).

 

If a player did not approach the mouth of the cave by the end of one fortnight, the dragon would awaken, fly out, and pursue the gems or gold. If a player is holding the items the dragon is pursuing, a battle will automatically start when the dragon gets within (roughly) 300 blocks of the player. If the gold/gems is in a chest, the dragon would attack the area surrounding the chest, surrounding it in fire, and then pick up the chest, and return to its respective den (the players actual chest would disappear, and the contents would be added to the chest that spawned in the den after activation).

 

Dragons would have two attacks: Fire Breath, and Fire Ball

Fire breath- The dragon sends out a long (10-20 blocks) stream of fire, doing physical damage. The player has a 85% chance of being set on fire for 3-6 seconds. Any blocks coming in contact with the stream of fire will always catch on fire/ ignite. 

Fire ball- The dragon sends out fire balls, identical to those used by Ghasts and Blazes (Same statistics and dynamics).

Dragons would be completely over-powered and/or unrealistic. Even if it wasn't, Terrafirmacraft is supposed to be enjoyable, while being challenging at the same time - Players would work hard, and then look back proudly on their accomplishments. Not just fight a boss and then be all "Yay, I win!"

 

I don't know what would be good stats for dragons (HP, Attack power, extra powers [Resistance, Fire resistance, etc.]), but I'm sure they could easily be tested on some kind of test-server. I would just choose some placeholder-numbers, but I don't know if mobs and/or damage ratios have been customized in Terrafirmacraft, so they would probably be incredibly unreasonable. Yes, dragons are mythological, but they were popular in era that Terrafirmacraft is in (or at least that I think it's in...). If that is correct, then I don't think the concept of dragons would be unbelievable, or unfeasible. 

The dragons wouldn't make the game frustrating, as they would only become a threat after the player had accumulated a great amount of wealth. Also, they could only be a threat once a year. Assuming that the worst scenario happened (Dragon burns your house and crops down and steals everything you have, which would be coded NOT to happen [dragons only steal shiny things]), then you still have an entire year to rebuild before a dragon becomes a possible threat again. On top of that, a dragon would only steal treasure one time. After that, it would dedicate its life to defending its loot. So you would have to find another dragon den (which would be extremely rare) for a dragon to even have a place to spawn. 

Also, dragons wouldn't be a end-game scenario. They would have less than, or equal to half of the Ender Dragons health, and they would not possess the ability to fly through blocks. They could only destroy blocks with their secondary attack: fire ball. That being said, they would be a fairly easy boss (one might even say a "mini boss"). After killing it (of fending it off. That could be a thing too), life would continue as usual for another in-game year. Since most gems don't currently have a use, players would opt to summon a dragon by collecting gems. If they did not want a dragon to be summoned, they could simply destroy the gems. 

That's all well and good for single-player, but what about multiplayer?

 

I'm not sure if it would be easy (if even possible) to add to multiplayer servers, but it could be toggable when generating  a map. It could even be included under "Generate structures". As far as how a dragons den would work on a multiplayer server, the dragon would be summoned by - and only interact with - the nearest player. 


Thanks for reading, and I look forward to seeing comments on this suggestion, as it's my first one.

[Srgnoodles 1,030]

Dragons ain't happenin' yo. Sorry

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Dragons ain't happenin' yo. Sorry

 

To elaborate on this, TFC is a mod aimed at believability, not fantasy. Things like magic, enchanting and dragons where you can't explain how they work without using your imagination to make it up aren't likely to be added to the mod. If they were ever to be added to the mod, they would be one of the very last things implemented, after everything else that the devs want to do has been done.

[DA_HOBO2_URLEFT 6]

Thank you, Kittychanley, for elaborating. Well, maybe one day they'll be considered.

[DA_HOBO2_URLEFT 6]

By the way, a few quick questions:1. Is there an appropriate place for quick questions like these, other than in the comments of threads? Because I don't think it's worth making a thread over, and it doesn't really belong in the comments. 2. Is there an official TFC server, or is there multiple servers hosted by multiple players?3. It's totally cool that my suggestion was denied, and I understand why, but you guys did actually read the whole post, right? Or did you just see dragons, and immediately say no?

[Kittychanley 1,002]

1. We have an IRC channel that you can come chat with us in at #tfcraft on esper. If you aren't familiar with IRC, there is a button on the far right of the navigation bar at the top of the page that says IRC Popup. Clicking that will open up a temporary webclient for you to use, and will auto-connect you to our channel.

 

2. There is no "official" server. All servers that are open to the public are advertised in our Server Sub-Forum. They are simply hosted by random users who decided to put in the effort to create a server.

 

3. Your suggestion wasn't denied per se, if it was I would have locked the topic. It is still open to discussion, and it is also possible that another user might want to create an add-on for TFC that incorporates it.

 

The biggest issue I see with your suggestion is the summoning of the dragon by any method other than coming across it. A range of 300 blocks is quite large (Average mobs despawn around 40 blocks iirc) and would require excessive chunk loading, which would generate lag. On top of that, tracking AI is pretty difficult to code, especially if the dragon can't fly a straight line through blocks, and has to avoid stuff like hills and trees. The summoning would also be hard to code. How do we keep track of if the player has enough gems? Do they all have to be in the players inventory at the time? Would extra, memory-hogging information need to be added behind the scenes of the gems so that they keep track of who placed them in a chest?

[DA_HOBO2_URLEFT 6]

1&2: Okay, cool. I'll check those out. 3: Okay, thanks, I just wanted to make sure. I guess the first comment seemed a little... biased, to me. Of course, tone of voice can be hard to interpret over text, especially on something as informal as an online forum, so maybe that was my fault.

The 300 blocks was just kind of a number off the top of my head. It's what I meant by "placeholder-numbers". Things like that would obviously need to be re-evaluated to be more reasonable. As far as coding goes, that would be up to whoever decided to make it an addon (which I hope someone would; I still think it's a neat idea), as I don't know anything about coding. As far as the gems go, I guess it would be calculated per-chunk. If chests were lockable by each player, then (I think) you would be able to use that to somehow make coding for the gems a little easier. Maybe the dragon only attacking one specific player was a bad idea, as I can see how that would just complicate things. 

[transcengopher 349]

See, this "more reasonable" number in Minecraft environment is almost implies you live in direct vicinity of a dragon's lair, if not inside of it. That's just how Minecraft works. That's one of the reasons we don't have flowing rivers that reach ocean and many more stuff in the game.