Better Than Wolves

Version 4.8999999

October 15th, 2013

• Added a couple of little something somethings to non-looted jungle and desert temples to make exploration more fun in general. This was done particularly to make the search for villages more interesting as the player will now have secondary things to search for in different biomes as they travel about. What exactly is there and what it does is left to the player to discover, but suffice it to say these temples are now worth looking for and finding. Obviously, this will only affect newly generated temples.
• Added the ability to right click on a Stake that already has string attached in the direction you are facing in order to remove the string and drop it around you current location (that sounds complicated but it really isn't in practice). What this means is that you can place a succession of Stakes while trying to measure an exact distance without having to travel back to the original one to collect all the string each time you get it wrong. Along with the other changes to them in this release, this was done to make measuring distances using Stakes and string a little more convenient, as I don't get the impression they were seeing much use as is.
• Added the ability to place Stake String through blocks than can normally be replaced by others like grass and snow for convenience, and because it felt distinctly weird when such attempts were blocked in this way, more like it was a bug.
• Added some sound to the placing and removing of Stake String to provide a little more feedback on its use, and make it a little more satisfying to play around with.
• Changed enchanting tables to no longer be player craftable. Instead they must be found in the world similar to brewing stands with witch huts. Guess that gives you a pretty strong hint as to what one of the something somethings in the temples is :)
• Changed the recipe for the Infernal Enchanter to consist of a regular enchanting table surrounded by 5 Soulforged Steel ingots in a "U" pattern around its sides and bottom, with two black candles with a bone in the middle on top. In other words, it's now an "upgrade" to the regular enchanting table instead of being something the player creates from scratch.
• Changed the Hopper, Cauldron, and Crucible rendering to correct some minor visual glitches with texture alignment and lighting. This should be most noticeable with custom texture packs.
• Fixed a problem that was causing XP orbs to get visually jittery as they were passing over the top of Hoppers in a water flow.

October 9th, 2013

• Added Stoked Fire textures back into BTW and improved the way they render to create a seamless transition between Stoked Fire and any regular fire that may be above it. Note for texture pack artists: This uses procedural textures (textures generated by code, not data) similar to how things worked in vanilla before 1.5. This means that you can not modify the animations directly. The textures will however adjust to the resolution of the texture file stubs you will find in the appropriate directory, so you can adjust their resolution to match the rest of your pack. The actual image in the stub doesn't matter, but the size will determine the resolution of the resulting texture. You'll also want to make sure the size of the various stoked fire texture stubs are the same to prevent problems.
• Changed shears to consume more durability when they're used to harvest Creeper Oysters.
• Changed the food system internally to make sure the player has valid food levels, as there was some indication they could get messed up on occasion. I also changed fat level to reset to zero if you're importing a vanilla save.
• Changed wolf howls so that they are reduced in volume as you go deeper below sea level. Note this in no way calculates sound attenuation due to traveling through stone or what have you (that would be way too computationally expensive), however it should greatly reduce the number of wolf howls you hear when you're digging deep in the earth.
• Changed webs to yield two silk when crafted instead of one, to make harvesting them with shears a little more rewarding.
• Changed Hardcore Buckets so that you can't pickup water in a bucket that you just placed. In other words, a water block must have a valid source in order to fill a bucket. This prevents exploits with being able to use the same water bucket over and over again by rapidly recollecting the water that results, in order to further promote the channeling of water for things like creating obsidian.
• Fixed the effect of beacons on compasses. It turns out this was lost in the port from 1.4 to 1.5 due to changes in the texture system, and wasn't noticed until now.
• Fixed vanilla problem that was jamming up mob spawning under certain circumstances, which was particularly noticeable after spending a long time in a specific area. This was mainly related to squid spawning, causing them to not spawn at all after awhile, but you may also notice a slight increase to mob spawning in general.
• Fixed a few vanilla item duplication bugs related to pistons, as I got curious as to what was causing them and it turns out they're super simple to correct. This should mainly affect rails.
• Removed vanilla nether brick from the creative inventory to prevent confusion with BTW's item.
• Removed the ability to place pressure plates on fences as it was leading to item detection exploits, and the same aesthetics can be achieved with BTW Tables.

September 27th, 2013

• Added the ability to place Candles on Lightning Rods and glass blocks for increased aesthetic options. Note that the shape of the Lightning Rod will adjust slightly if there is a Candle above it to make it look more like a candle holder, and like before, Lightning Rods may be stacked to form one of the desired height.
• Changed the Lightning Rod recipe to be 3 Soulforged Steel nuggets in a vertical line with a SFS ingot at the bottom, both to reduce the cost of a largely aesthetic feature, and to provide in-game justification for why it functions to disperse lightning without a ground.
• Changed the way Axles work internally to resolve a number of outstanding issues with them. Please let me know if this causes any noticeable issues with mechanical power as this change was rather involved. Note that as one beneficial side effect of this change you can now connect 3 Axles to an Axle with a power source attached (Wind Mill or Water Wheel) without any of them breaking, which allows for slightly more flexibility when placing them, and slightly fewer Gear Boxes being used.
• Fixed problem with the Block Dispenser not placing Flour as bread dough.
• Fixed problem with clay and Unfired Pottery not playing sounds when spun on a Turntable with particles turned off.
• Fixed problem with Cement not appearing to slope in liquid form.
• Fixed problem with Cement Buckets making whimpering sound when not successfully placed.
• Fixed problem with Axles sometimes not updating their visual power state (whether they're animated as spinning).

September 20th, 2013

• Added bread to Hardcore Baking (silly oversight on my part in the last release). Flour may now be placed as a block which can be cooked into bread in the Kiln.
• Added the ability to Hardcore Pack blocks using any surrounding solid surface, not just full blocks. In other words, if they are facing the right way, you can now use stuff like Siding, slabs, and other pistons to contain the area where the items will be packed. Worth noting is that glass also works (it did in the previous release but I forgot to mention it), which is nice if you want to be able to see the interior of the packing area. This should function with most suitable blocks, but I may have missed some so let me know if you come across any that don't work.
• Added the ability to place Candles as blocks. As an aside, Vases make for lovely candle holders, and if you find another Vase, and place it down next to the first one, you can have a nice little path running down the middle (A path! A path!).

September 19th, 2013

• Added Hardcore Packing as a new mechanic. The way this works is that if a piston (or a solid block pushed by a piston) pushes certain items into an enclosed space (an empty block surrounded on all sides by solid blocks. It doesn't work on partial blocks with solid surfaces at present, although I may add that in the future), the items will be automatically compressed into block form if they're present in sufficient number to complete the regular recipe (e.g. 4 clay balls for a clay block, 9 Dung for a Dung block). This applies to clay balls, snowballs, flint, bricks, Nether Bricks, Soap, Dung, and the various piles (dirt, sand, gravel, & soul sand). In other words, it basically works to form any simple storage block for items that wouldn't require additional work or tools in their crafting (like Padding or Iron blocks). This is of course very useful in automation builds.
• Added Hardcore Baking. This changes the crafting of cookies, cake, and pie (the recipes for which remain unchanged other than that I made them shapeless) so that they produce uncooked varieties. These uncooked items may then either be cooked in a furnace, or in a Kiln (they may be placed as blocks manually or with a Block Dispenser) to produce the finished version. This was done for the sake of consistency since it felt distinctly off that these items didn't need to be cooked.
• Added the ability to place clay balls and Nether Sludge as blocks either manually or with the Block Dispenser. Both of these items will cook into bricks of the appropriate type if placed in a Kiln, and this opens up the possibility of automating brick production.
• Changed the piston recipe to consist of 2 Wood Siding with an iron ingot in the middle on the top row, 2 cobble with a Soul Urn in the middle row, and 2 cobble with a Redstone Latch in the bottom row. This is to adjust it for the changes in the last release that created a separation in the progression between obtaining a Crucible (and Soul Urns), and only obtaining Soulforged Steel once the player reaches the end dimension, while retaining the piston's overall dependance on BTW's tech tree. It also allows for some basic automation involving pistons to be performed in the period in between.
• Changed the in-game name of the Chocolate Milk Bucket to just be "Chocolate Milk" to coincide with the milk bucket just being called "Milk".
• Changed the sounds on Clay and Unfired Pottery to be squishier. I like squishy.
• Fixed vanilla problem with piston heads sometimes moving right through items without pushing them. This was the issue that inspired people to use sticky pistons with blocks attached instead of regular pistons due to regular ones being unreliable.
• Fixed vanilla problem with other players in SMP either being invisible or appearing in the wrong location after going through a nether portal. Thanks to Youtuber Panda4994 for posting his solution to this issue!
• Removed the ability of the Block Dispenser to assemble clay and snow balls into blocks, as this is now covered by Hardcore Packing and was serving to muddy the functionality of the BD too much.

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.

September 13th, 2013

• Added a few aspects to Hardcore Wood to make tree farming in general more interesting and a larger part of the game. First, all overworld saplings (not Bloodwood which remains unchanged) have 4 individual growth stages which vary in appearance. The time it takes for saplings to grow into trees has greatly increased (they should now take longer than any other plant to grow), meaning that particularly in the early game, the player will be much more dependent on existing forests for wood, surviving in an area devoid of trees will be much more difficult, and tree farms will need to be much larger to keep up with the same demand. Given Bloodwood is not affected by these changes, it also serves to further increase its value for automation later in the game.
• Added Jungle Spiders as a replacement for the cave/Vioki spiders that were previously spawning in jungles. They have their own texture, unique attributes, and spawn conditions now which are left for the player to discover.
• Added a new edible Cocoa Bean item that is separate from the old one. Old bean items will be converted into Cocoa Powder, which may be created by grinding the beans in a Mill Stone, and which may be used as dye in the regular manner. Note that while Cocoa Beans are edible, Cocoa Powder is not unless it is used as a cooking ingredient to form other foods.
• Added the Chocolate Milk as a new food item. It is created by mixing Cocoa Powder and a milk bucket in the crafting grid. In addition to boosting the food value of milk buckets, Chocolate Milk also retains milk's poison neutralization effects.
• Added Chocolate as a new food item. It is created by cooking Cocoa Powder, sugar, and a milk bucket in the Cauldron. Similar to other desert items it may be eaten even when the hunger meter is full in order to build up fat.
• Added "Pigs Will Eat (almost) Anything!" as a new feature. This changes pigs so that they'll eat, follow, and breed with any of the domesticated crops be that wheat, carrots, or potatoes (cooked or raw). Coincidentally, they also love to eat chocolate (go figure) which means that in some cases they may be bred slightly earlier in the tech tree. Note that they can still also be bred with Kibble, but will still not follow it (it still doesn't taste THAT good).
• Changed the growth and drop rates of cocoa plants to make farming them more interesting and balanced given their new role as an early game food source.
• Changed (reduced) the growth rate of sugar cane to better fit the balance of the rest of the mod.
• Changed the recipes for cookies to replace the cocoa beans with Chocolate. The recipe is now two flour with Chocolate in the middle, in a horizontal line.
• Changed (increased) the hunger restored by drinking milk slightly.
• Changed spawn restrictions on mobs in general in jungles so that they can no longer spawn on leaves, basically reversing the change I had previously made to the vanilla spawning behavior. This was done because of how other mob spawns now relate to Jungle Spiders.
• Changed some code internally to consolidate how animals are tempted by various items to reduce on the associated performance overhead. I just mention this in case it causes any problems with which items tempt which animals.
• Fixed problem with hat damage being reduced by armor (it wasn't supposed to be).

September 6th, 2013

• Added a brewing stand to witch huts and disabled the crafting recipe. The only way to find them in game now is to track down a witch hut. This was done to create a stronger association between witches and potions, because blaze rods are already sufficiently useful and tracking down a nether fortress was a requirement for most potions anyways given the need for netherwart to create them, and to provide an actual gameplay purpose to witch huts as finding them was largely a non-event.
• Added a sound to enchanting using the vanilla enchanter.
• Changed jack o'lanterns so that they go out in water in order to increase the value of glowstone as a lighting option. Note that this will not affect jack o'lanterns already in your world to avoid breaking existing builds, but only newly placed ones.
• Changed the way golems (both iron & snow) are created. They are built the same way as before, but now require a Soul Urn to be smashed against the pumpkin/jack o'lantern in order to bring them to life. I also threw in a few particle effects and sounds into the process to make it a little more interesting and less sterile. Note that this also provides a means of automating golem production should you be so inclined.
• Changed the sound on the Bellows as I didn't realize it had been changed to a click by a previous vanilla release. This also involved changing the vanilla sound code so that an individual sounds amongst a random collection may be played. I mention that last part in case it's also of use to add-on authors.
• Changed the positioning of ghast fireballs when first fired slightly so that they match up better with the direction in which the ghast is actually aiming. This should allow them to fire through smaller gaps without accidentally hitting the walls on occasion.
• Fixed problem with how vanilla computes line of sight through blocks, which affects a wide range of behavior like Ghasts randomly firing at the player with no line of sight (this should no longer happen). Note that this will likely have far reaching consequences to other systems (particularly to AI), as there were some fundamental problems with the related code, so you will probably notice slight improvements in other areas as well (like skeletons not randomly and repeatedly shooting at walls on occasion). I rather extensively refactored the related code (bordering on a rewrite) in the process, making a number of optimizations to it along the way, so you may also notice a slight performance boost.
• Removed the restrictions I placed on only being able to access the crafting table from the top in the last release. After more extensive playtesting, I've decided it was more of a pain than it was worth, and I'll instead endeavor to find another solution to the exploits in question in a future release. Sometimes these things work out, and sometimes they don't :)

September 3rd, 2013

• Added a few additional refinements to Hardcore Headwear that I didn't have time to get into the last release. Nothing to worry about here, as this should just make the existing behavior a little more evident and polished, rather than more dangerous. Well...mostly ;)
• Changed zombie pigmen to not drop gold nuggets in the overworld so that effective pigmen farms are restricted to the nether.
• Changed the crafting table to only be usable via its top surface to prevent various placement exploits. I've also added a message when other parts of the block are clicked since this functionality may not be immediately apparent.
• Changed Abandoned Villages to generate with all glass removed from the windows, as the glass was making it a little too easy to turn the buildings into early game shelters.
• Changed squid to only spawn in darkness. Also changed it so that spawning may occur at any height (vanilla code had it limited to below sea level and not to occur at extreme depth). I mention this as it may affect existing squid farm design, and it should be noted that the old BTW restrictions of only being able to spawn in large bodies of water still apply.
• Removed the Hemp Seed drop entirely from tall grass to make the method of obtaining it more clear cut, and because the existing rate had become so low that it was just encouraging people to do a lot of tedious grinding punching grass in the early game. If you want to find Hemp Seeds, the method to do so is through tilling regular grass blocks. If you want to lure chickens in the early game, look for pumpkins.
• Removed feather drop when chickens are sucked up by the Block Dispenser, as this was always intended as a gag feature, not as a means of automation.

August 30th, 2013

• Added Hardcore Headwear. This isn't at all related to Hardcore Nothing To Worry About, but you still shouldn't worry about it regardless. Just think of it as a new clothing option with which to further accessorize your Steve! Huzzah!
• Added the ability to use Soul Sand Piles in the nether to help find nether fortresses. It is rather short range, still requiring a fair amount of exploration, but throwing a pile will give you an indication as to whether there is a fortress in the vicinity, and in what general direction.
• Added the ability for witches to spawn in swamps. They will spawn in darkness around and above sea level in swamp biomes and this replaces their witch hut spawns, making swamps slightly more dangerous overall. On generation of witch huts, witches will spawn in their general vicinity once and once only, and these hut witches will not despawn, which means that when you first find a hut, it will almost always have witches nearby, and thus be dangerous. This was done as the spawn conditions on witches were extremely gamey and resulted in rather cheezy traps. Also, many players were never even seeing witches, so this is intended to make them a more integrated and interesting part of the game overall.
• Changed animals to be more responsive to tempting items the player is holding, so that if you switch items or move out of range, there will be less of a delay before they will become interested in them again.
• Fixed vanilla problem with lava not decaying properly. This is largely an import of Mojang's fix for 1.6, but I also changed it around slightly to make the decay a little less uniform as the vanilla version looked a tad weird.

August 23rd, 2013

• Added ability to use Potash to bleach colored wool items in the Cauldron. It takes a lot of wool though (32 of them) due to the ratio with wool blocks.
• Changed (increased) the rate at which ghasts spawn as part of Hardcore Hell, as it was still a little weak.
• Changed (further reduced) the range of Rotted Arrows as there still wasn't enough incentive to upgrade to normal arrows.
• Changed the chances of mobs picking up items to be uniform across difficulty levels.
• Changed enchanted equipment that spawns on mobs so it has uniform strength across difficulty levels.
• Changed the chances of villagers turning into zombies when killed by zombies to be uniform across difficulty levels.
• Changed chance of flaming zombies setting things they attack on fire to be uniform across difficulty levels, since this could actually make things both harder or easier in BTW given it will both do more damage and cook animals for you.
• Fixed problem with lava buckets not retaining their cook time in furnaces on save/load. This should only be applicable with HC Buckets turned off.
• Fixed problem with fat levels not being properly communicated to other players in multiplayer.
• Fixed problem with the Block Dispenser sucking wool blocks off of sheep rather than wool items.
• Removed peaceful and easy difficulty levels as they were was no longer relevant to BTW given the large role mobs play in the mod overall, given BTW has not been balanced for them and thus they represented a fairly random play experience, and given these setting were just prone to exploiting. It should be noted that with the changes I have made in this and previous releases, game behavior should be entirely consistent between the remaining difficulty levels (normal and hard), with the one exception of the damage that mobs do to players when attacking (and related aspects like poison duration). This means that players should be able to make slight adjustments to the difficulty of combat to suit their tastes without worrying about it affecting other ambiguous aspects of the game such as the rate of output from mob traps, or the rate of fire spreading. It is also worth noting that I have always balanced and tested BTW on normal difficulty alone, so if you're interested in playing the mod as it was designed and intended, then normal is the way to go. I have left hard in for people that want to make things slightly more challenging, particularly in co-op play, but I make no guarantees as to its balance.

August 19th, 2013

• Added Hardcore Hell. This involves several tweaks to the nether (mostly to ghasts) to substantially increase its difficulty as it was feeling very weak compared to what it used to be. There was a time when just waltzing around in the open in the nether was really not a feasible option, and that brought along with it a sense of tension and specific building requirements that were unfortunately lost somewhere in MC's ongoing development. I've basically tried to restore the nether to being the terrifying experience I remember it as when I first started playing Minecraft (shortly after the nether was first introduced), and in the process extended the mid-game portion of BTW giving players good reason to spend time upgrading their equipment at the iron and diamond levels before progressing further.
• Added wool as a new item, which is dropped from sheep instead of wool blocks. Wool blocks may still be created by surrounding a Wicker block by 4 wool items in the crafting grid (plus sign pattern), with the resulting color of block being a mix of the colors of wool used in its creation. This was done to reduce the effectiveness of wool in the early game in creating cheap barricades, to make wool blocks feel more "solid", and along with other changes in this release, to increase the value of keeping sheep as livestock (particularly in the early game where shearing them can provide a renewable source of cloth and padded armor). Thanks to DaveYanakov for this idea!
• Added a visual indication of fat level to the player model so that others will have a better idea of when someone is a particularly nutritious food source.
• Added recipe to convert snow blocks back into snow balls.
• Added some variance to where you will respawn after dying in the same area multiple times with Hardcore Spawn. This was done both to decrease the number of incidents where the player would continually respawn in the same location only to be killed again by the same monsters, and to decrease the viability of intentionally killing yourself to exploit the hunger/health system. You'll still respawn in the same general area, but your precise location will usually be different.
• Changed the Wool Slab recipe to require three Wool Blocks side by side in the crafting grid, similar to the recipes for vanilla slabs.
• Changed the Padding recipe to consist of 2 fabric with 1 wool in the middle, in a vertical line.
• Changed the wool armor recipes to use the new wool items instead of wool blocks.
• Changed the wool armor recipes to produce armor of a color that's a blend of the various colors of wool that are used in its crafting.
• Changed (decreased) the regrowth rate of wool on sheep. Similar to cows producing milk, they will now need to consume grass several times before their wool grows back. Also added a sound effect for when the wool regrows.
• Changed the chance of fire spreading to be identical across difficulty levels. It now always works as it did on hard difficulty previously.
• Changed (increased) the spawn rate of ghasts in the nether to increase the difficulty of the nether overall.
• Changed (increased) the hit point value on ghasts as despite their large size, they were actually one of the weakest mobs in the game, and their hit points were never adjusted when bows became more powerful with the "adventure update". This also helps to further promote the use of Broadheads in the late game, or at least the use of normal arrows as opposed to rotted ones when first visiting the nether, since archery is the primary method of dealing with ghasts.
• Changed (increased) the minimum distance at which ghasts can spawn from the player, to reduce instances of players getting blasted soon as they first emerge from a nether portal, or having a ghast pop up out of nowhere to immediately start shooting at you. This should also mean that once you clear an area of ghasts, it should at least temporarily remain that way until they wander back into range.
• Changed a small thing about Hardcore Nothing To Worry About, which you also shouldn't worry about.
• Fixed vanilla problem with ghasts not actually aiming at the player (often it would be over your head if the ghast was above you).
• Fixed vanilla problem with "living" sounds on entities (chickens clucking, cows mooing, ghasts moaning, etc.) tending to play all at once for all entities when you first loaded the game or changed dimensions. This was particularly noticeable with ghasts and caused a fair amount of stutter when entering the nether, but may result in an overall performance boost on game/chunk load.

August 13th, 2013

• Added a few tiny little insignificant things related to how various creatures react to nether exposure. Absolutely nothing to worry about here, as they like the nether lots and lots. Mmmmm, mmmm...can't get enough of that nether exposure.
• Added recipes to incinerate/melt down the following items in the Crucible to retrieve the metal used in their creation: Gear Box, Saw, Pulley, Screw Pump, note block, and the various pieces of the gimp suit.
• Changed various in-game visual effects such as the Ender Spectacles, confusion, pumpkins, etc. to function even if the player has the GUI turned off in first person view.
• Changed (optimized) the code to prevent animals spawning in leaves from the last release as some performance problems were reported that I believe may have been related to it. Note that due to these changes, animals may still very rarely spawn stuck in leaves (I haven't seen it happen but it's theoretically possible), but it should be greatly reduced from vanilla and I doubt it will ever happen in jungles (which is what that change was primarily meant to address). Players may actually notice a slight boost in performance during chunk generation from what it is in vanilla or before the last release, as I also cleaned up the related vanilla code as part of this process.
• Changed the recipe for melting down iron doors in the Crucible so they return the gold used in making them as well as the iron.
• Changed (decreased) the drop rate of the Arcane Scroll associated with bats, as automated bat farming is now possible.
• Fixed problem with a crash in creative mode when breaking lily pads.
• Fixed vanilla problem with bows leaving a ghost item in your inventory when they break due to use.
• Removed pigmen spawning randomly around nether portals as it couldn't really be prevented in game, wasn't related to pigmen actually having access to your portal on the nether side, and was largely just an annoyance with no real in-game justification. The stuff you should most definitely not worry about largely replaces this kinda thing now anyways, so any concern, dread, or sense of impending spikey doom you were experiencing over this is entirely unwarranted. Sheeesh...you're just opening portals to hell, so I have no idea what you're getting so nervous about. Chill.

August 6th, 2013

• Added functionality to flint & steel for it to only have a chance of starting a fire each time its used, and to scare animals in the vicinity with each attempt. This is both for immersion and to prevent exploits involving using it as a rather cheap (both in terms of cost & usage) weapon. Also added a more satisfying sound for when it successfully starts a fire.
• Added a couple of sounds to witches in an attempt to make them cooler. It didn't work.
• Added recipe to melt down Redstone Latches in the Crucible.
• Changed the Bellows to be able to blow items through blocks like pressure plates, and ones that can't be collided with (like torches).
• Changed Gear Boxes and Pulleys to drop a couple of gold nuggets when they break due to overpowering, and to not drop redstone dust (it is lost in the breakage) to adjust for the Redstone Latch being a part of their recipe now.
• Changed Bellows to drop a number of Straps instead of whole pieces of Tanned Leather when they break, as they were dropping more leather than was used in constructing them with the high efficiency cut leather recipe. It also makes some sense that smaller pieces of leather would be all you could salvage.
• Changed animals to no longer be able to initially spawn embedded in blocks during world generation. This should primarily affect animals spawning buried in leaves and unable to move, and should be particularly noticeable in jungles (although this affects animals in all biomes to a lesser degree as well). Obviously, this won't affect animals already spawned into the world, so you may still see embedded animals in old chunks. In combination with some of the below changes, this should make jungle biomes significantly more difficult to survive in as they were way too easy before.
• Changed (increased) the movement penalty associated with moving on leaf blocks to represent the difficulties of moving through dense foliage. This should both make jungles more difficult to navigate, and further encourage clearing paths through them rather than just jumping onto leaves.
• Changed the smaller animals (chickens, pigs, and ocelots) to not be affected by movement modifiers due to terrain and vegetation, making catching them in dense brush much more difficult.
• Changed jungle biomes to not spawn the larger animals (cows and sheep) given the difficulty such animals would have navigating and grazing in such an environment, and given they didn't particularly suit the character of the biome.
• Changed a small thing about mob behavior in jungles. Nothing to worry about. It's all good. Honest.
• Fixed snowmen being inconsistent in their ability to place snow on slabs and other partial blocks (tall grass etc.), and not being able to place snow in front of Detector Blocks or Lens beams.
• Fixed problem with not being able to place blocks while swimming in lava.

August 2nd, 2013

• Added increased resolution to the hunger meter to accommodate foods with smaller hunger values (such as mushrooms). Previously, it only worked in half-pip increments, which meant that was the minimum amount of hunger any food could restore. This made balancing the foods any further extremely difficult. Now, any food item can restore a minimum of 1/6th of a pip making staying full on low value food sources much more difficult. Hopefully, this should also make activities that burn hunger quickly (such as jumping and sprinting) much more evident, as they'll have a more immediate visual impact.
• Changed mushrooms to only restore 1/6th of a pip of hunger instead of 1/2. This adjustment was made primarily to decrease the value of swamps in the early game, as previously they were veritable horns of plenty.
• Changed Mushroom Omelets, Cream of Mushroom & Hearty Stew to require three mushrooms instead of 1 to create. The only mushroom based recipe that doesn't require 3 now is the Kebab.
• Changed pumpkin seeds to also restore 1/6th of a hunger pip.
• Changed milk to have a fat value when consumed.
• Changed the piston recipe to require a Redstone Latch instead of redstone dust to be more consistent with the other recipes that involve the latch, and from a balance perspective because piston traps are one of the primary forms of nether mob traps with gold being one of the primary outputs of those traps, creating a nice feedback loop (collect gold, expand trap, etc.). I hesitated on this at first because of the in-game logic behind why pistons would work the way they do ("shocking" the souls to move them versus giving them a little push), but in the end, decided this was the right way to go. With the additional changes in the last release, the resulting recipe relative to the vanilla one then is Siding in place of the wood blocks, a Soulforged Steel ingot in place of the iron, and a Redstone Latch in place of the redstone dust.
• Changed crafting sounds (creeper oysters, shears, chopping logs with an axe, etc.) so that they will be heard by other players in SMP.
• Changed monsters so that they don't stop targeting something if they take damage from an environmental source (such as falling). This should be particularly noticeable with spiders not stopping targeting the player if they take fall damage.
• Removed vanilla's decreased charge time on creepers when they fall on you from heights as it was just a silly artificial increase in difficulty that resulted in random deaths the player could do nothing about.

July 23th, 2013

• Added Hardcore Archery. This makes a few changes to the way bows work. First, it requires players to have arrows in their hot-bar in order to use them, abstracting the idea of a quiver, making bows a little more inconvenient to use to balance their power, and also allowing the choice of precisely what kind of arrows to use at any given time. Arrows are used in left to right order should the player have multiple arrow types in their hot bar, and note that infinity enchanted bows do not require arrows in the hotbar (although they will use them if present) increasing the value of that enchantment. Secondly, it reduces the range of Rotted Arrows when used with a regular bow (they still always break when used with a Composite Bow), reducing their effectiveness to further encourage making your own arrows. Lastly, it reduces the output on the arrow recipes so that you only get 1 arrow instead of 4, making them a much more valuable commodity (the Broadhead recipe has had its output boosted slightly to compensate for the amount of Soulforged Steel it consumes).
• Added Hardcore Enchanting. This rebalances the vanilla enchanting table in various ways to make it a better integrated part of the BTW tech tree, and to make it feel more like a feature and less like an exploit. This feature is comprised of various changes that are listed individually below.
• Added the Redstone Latch as a new item. This device creates a small amount of physical force when a redstone signal is applied, which can then be used to trigger various devices, and is meant to bridge the gap between redstone as a pure signal and various blocks that produce physical results (such as doors), following the in-game logic of powered rails producing similar results. It is created by crafting redstone dust with a horizontal line of three gold nuggets above. This is intended to bring both a bit more consistency to the internal game logic of what redstone does, and is also intended to increase the value of gold throughout the game.
• Added Soulforged Steel Nuggets as a new item for consistency with the other metals, and because the recipes involving ingots were getting overly complex for nothing, especially when the items were being melted down in a Crucible.
• Added high efficiency recipe for Black Stone (nether quartz) Stairs, made out of three Black Stone Moulding.
• Added a slight delay in recovering your air supply upon surfacing to prevent exploits involving placing temporary blocks like torches to create air pockets.
• Added sound effect for when the player is underwater and wearing a Soulforged Steel Helm with a respiration enchantment. Yes, that's extremely special case. I couldn't resist :)
• Changed the recipes for the following blocks to use the Redstone Latch in place of redstone dust: iron door, dispenser, note block, Gear Box, and Pulley. The recipes remain unchanged otherwise.
• Changed gold ore to smelt into nuggets instead of ingots. In the end, I decided that while previously it had been my hope to maintain the value of mining gold throughout the game, that it wasn't winding up being particularly compelling anyways, and that I'd prefer to further incentivize the construction of nether mob traps in the late game given that. Additionally, gold was primarily getting abused as an early game tool substitute for iron given its relative abundance. In the early to mid game, mining gold now has value given the changes with the redstone latch, and in the late, the desire to create additional redstone devices hopefully serves to further promote nether mob trap construction.
• Changed Crafting Tables and Furnaces to drop parts instead of whole blocks when harvested (unless a silk touch enchant or Block Dispenser is used) to fit better with the concept of these being non-portable workstations in contrast to the small crafting grid the player has in their inventory. This is intended to encourage putting a bit more thought and planning into the setting up of more permanent installations for these crafting devices rather than just carrying them around and placing them wherever and whenever they're needed.
• Changed the vanilla enchantment table to not be able to apply some of the more powerful enchantments, which now may only be acquired through finding pre-enchanted tools and weapons, or through using the Infernal Enchanter (or through beacons in some cases). This applies to silk touch, fortune, sharpness, father fall, and protection. Basically enchants that have very specific (and powerful) effects (like silk touch & feather fall), or those that apply general bonuses (such as protection & sharpness) as opposed to specific ones (like blast protection or smite), have been moved higher in the tech tree to create more of a progression to enchanting overall.
• Changed the vanilla enchantment table to no longer be able to enchant bows and wood tools (the latter for consistency, implying that wood is a particularly difficult material to enchant). This is strictly the domain of the infernal enchanter now.
• Changed the vanilla enchantment table to be crafted using Black Stone (nether quartz) blocks instead of obsidian, and an Ancient Manuscript instead of a book, to bump it up slightly in the overall tech tree as well as to increase the value of quartz.
• Changed the vanilla enchantment table to only be able to apply enchantments up to level 15 instead of 30.
• Changed the number of book shelves around the vanilla enchantment table required to get the maximum level enchant (level 15) back to 30 instead of 15. In other words, it will require 2 book shelves for ever level of enchanting. Additionally, the enchantment table will only produce level 1 enchants without any bookshelves at all.
• Changed the vanilla enchanter so that the top slot will always provide a level 1 enchantment, the bottom slot will always provide an enchantment of the maximum level allowed by the shelves present, and the middle slot will provide some random value in between the two to minimize annoyance in its usage.
• Changed the Broadhead Arrow recipe to use shafts instead of Moulding. It was confusing for no good reason.
• Changed the Broadhead (arrowhead) recipe to use Soulforged Steel Nuggets instead of ingots.
• Changed the piston recipe to require a Soulforged Steel ingot instead of an iron one, and to require wood panels along the top instead of wood blocks (not just the high effeciency version anymore). This was done to better integrate it into BTW's tech tree and to better explain how it functions in-game.
• Changed creepers so that they will not drop records if deoystered. They're just too depressed to appreciate good music anymore.
• Changed trip wires to no longer be able to detect items to prevent exploits involving this behavior.
• Fixed crash when placing a Crucible (and potentially other blocks with associated tile entities) in a location recently occupied by dried cement.

July 19th, 2013

• Added Hardcore Smelt. At its core this adds different cook/smelt/bake times for ores and bricks in the furnace. Smelting and creating smoothstone out of cobble will now take much more time and fuel to accomplish, while baking bricks and cooking glass will take more time than cooking food, and less than smelting ore. This was done to increase the value of tree farming in the early to mid game, create a more distinct transition when moving up to iron tools/weapons, and to increase the value of the Kiln in the mid to late game. It was also done to provide some slight advantages to a sedentary lifestyle as opposed to going nomadic, as it will now take a significant amount of time in a single location to smelt ores. This addition involves several other changes in this release as well, which are listed individually below. Note that I've included internal hooks for add-on authors that want to specify their own cook times for custom items.
• Added the ability to harvest Creeper Oysters with shears. You're welcome.
• Added sound to crafting with Creeper Oysters.
• Added high efficiency item frame recipe involving sticks and cut leather, as it was a little odd that it required Moulding (it still works with Moulding too though).
• Added texture overlay for when various blocks (such as ores and logs) are cooking in the Kiln to make the process more evident. Note for texture pack artists: the overlay replaces the old unfired pottery texture, which is no longer used by the mod.
• Changed (increased) the cook times of the Cauldron, Crucible & Kiln to relate better to the adjusted values of the furnace, and to provide a more significant advantage to having more fire blocks beneath them. The minimum time it takes to cook something has remained unchanged (with 9 fire blocks), but the maximum time it takes to cook (with just 1) has increased significantly, making it much more rewarding to upgrade your builds with time.
• Changed the way the Kiln works internally so that the time it takes to cook something should be slightly more consistent.
• Removed furnace recipes to smelt ores other than metals (like diamonds, redstone, and lapis), as it just didn't make a whole lot of sense for them to be in there in the first place, and it muddied the functionality of the furnace in weird ways.

July 15th, 2013

• Added Soul Sand Piles to the game. These function similarly to the other piles, in terms of Soul Sand breaking apart into them if a shovel (or Mattock) isn't used to harvest it. However, they also have some additional functionality associated with them...
• Added the ability to use Soul Sand Piles to locate players after death. Right click with a Soul Sand Pile in your hand to get started, with the subtleties of this behavior left to the player to discover. Note that players who died before this change went into effect can not be tracked in this manner (this means you Charlie ;) ), but dying again will cause it to register.
• Added the ability to pass the various pile types through the appropriate Hopper filters. I had neglected to do so in the past.
• Changed weapons to take damage to their durability when they are successfully used to block damage.
• Changed the name of the "Hunger" status effect to "Food Poisoning" for the sake of clarity.
• Changed Jack O'Lanterns so that they can be placed without having a solid block beneath them. Previously, they couldn't be placed this way, but would remain in place if the supporting block was removed, which was just silly.
• Changed boats and minecarts so that they don't collide with items. This should prevent some rather odd behavior such as boats self-destructing when the player cuts logs while in one.
• Fixed problem with rendering books (of all types) in a Cauldron creating half as much glue as they should have.
• Fixed problem with villagers not being able to open and close wooden doors.
• Fixed slight visual vertical offset on cow heads. They were appearing a bit lower than they should have (and than they do in vanilla).
• Removed the option to disable Hardcore Spawn. With the addition of Soul Sand Piles, this feature is now finalized, and it's simply the way BTW plays.

July 7th, 2013

• Added additional effects to the Gloom.
• Changed status effects text to not display when you are dead.
• Changed the way Hardcore Of Darkness works to hopefully resolve problems with it rendering properly with texture packs that use custom colors.
• Changed the way Hardcore Of Darkness works slightly to smooth out the edges between where ambient light meets the Gloom. It should more closely resemble the borders with torch light now.
• Fixed problem with the Refined Axe (NOT the Battle Axe...that's still 5 ingots) using 3 Soulforged Steel ingots instead of the 2 of other axes.
• Fixed problem with axes returning the wrong number of ingots when melted down in a Crucible.
• Ported Mojang's "fix" (it doesn't appear to always work..but it does help) from 1.6.2 for animals escaping fences or suffocating in blocks during chunk load so that BTW players can benefit from it ahead of time. Note that I've spotted the occasional animal (mostly babies) still escaping fences in both 1.6.2 and with this version of BTW. This doesn't appear to happen on chunk load, but rather as a result of collisions with other animals. Please refer any problems that you may encounter with this to Mojang, as all I've done is duplicate their bug fix here, and it appears the issue is not fully resolved. I'm hoping at the very least it takes care of the random animal suffocation, but I wouldn't put any money on it.

July 6th, 2013

• Added Hardcore Of Darkness to the mod. This consists of two things: first, areas that are in total darkness (note, this does not apply above ground where ambient light will always allow you to see), will appear absolutely pitch black regardless of your gamma settings. Secondly, I've added status effects for the player being in total darkness that will seriously impede your ability to function under such conditions. This was done to further emphasize light (and torches...and coal) as a resource (particularly in the early game), to discourage exploits involving jacking up brightness to effectively see in the dark, and to induce general pant-soiling goodness :)
• Changed axe recipes (for all axe types other than Battle) to only require 2 stone/ingots instead of 3. The recipe is the same as before, with the stone/ingot on the top of the shafts removed. This is to help balance the relative usefulness of the various tools, with an axe being nowhere near as valuable as a pick at pretty much any stage of the game.
• Removed Mojang's update pester from the title screen, given BTW is not yet available for 1.6, and given that it was frigging annoying :)
• Fixed problem with hardcore spawn setting the time of day to the next morning in LAN play (it shouldn't do that).