What are your views on the enchanting? Not the leveling system, but the enchanting. They apparently made it less random but I have NOT found this the case. I used to always enchant at around 46-50 and never got anything under Fortune 3, Efficiency 4, Unbreaking 3, Silk Touch 1. Never. Now, though, I've been testing around and I've been getting tons of Fortune 2, Efficiency 3, Unbreaking 2. I don't think they really left enough room for those enchantments to have a place on the enchanting table anymore. I think 30 is a bit too low to really give each level of enchantment a place on the enchanting table. I'm not moaning about how I don't like it like a lot of people, I'm just saying that having the highest enchantment at 30 isn't as rewarding as the 40's were. It's even more random than before.
It is still random. No matter how much time I've spent gathering, grinding, searching etc. None of that matters if I want a "Silk Touch" pickaxe and I get a "Fortune V" pickaxe. Great item but not what I wanted. It's like going to Home Depot looking for a drill motor, ploping down my money and instead getting a Chop Saw.
That's the one thing I've never understood about the enchanting system. For everything else we have a resipe. We gather the materials, stick it in something, and presto, out comes what we wanted. Not the enchanting however. Noo. Some of the most usefull things in the game were going to make compleatly random.
"Ok player, you've just built a mob grinder takeing several days, speelunked in a cavern to the bottom of the world, drained a magma chamber just to get your 3 pieces of diamond for that axe. Would you like to trade that all for what's behind door #1, #2 or #3? Keep in mind that #3 looks the best but if the minecraft gods are spite full. Your walking out of here with Fortune 1 on that Axe"
To be fair; I am thinking alot of the "sting" of getting a useless enchantment is gone because the grinding for exp will be reduced. I would also think that haveing a smaller enchanting levels will lessen the chance of compleate and utter failure in the entire process. Also always haveing the max level enchantment available will cut down the time all of us just plop an item into the table over and over and over. So over all this looks like a vast improvement.
I would like to see us be able to hedge the bet a little. Allow us to sacrifice an item in the game to better our odds of getting the enchantment that we want. Ya know like toss in a stack of Wool into the enchanting process for a 25% better chance of it popping Silk Touch.
I think a system where you can pick the enchant and level you want for 1.5 times the highest normal level you can get that enchant at. Lets say you wanted Fortune 3 on a diamond pick and the highest level you can get fortune 3 at is 30 (with new enchantment system.) You would have to pay 45 levels to get that, plus another 45 if you wanted Unbreaking 3, and another 45 if you wanted Efficiency 5, for a pickaxe worth 135 levels. Yes that's a lot, but the new system is easier to level with. Also, those numbers are just made up, I don't know what the max levels are for each enchant, so I don't know what would be best.
Also, I know you can get fortune 1 with a level 30/50 enchant, this would require a min/max level added to each enchant.
It might also be possible to remove some of the random aspect by limiting certain enchantments to certain tools. For instance, having Fortune 3 on a diamond axe (for woodcutting) makes very little sense. Having a high level Efficiency on any shovel makes little sense as well, since shovel already breaks shovel-breakable blocks very quickly.
Here's what I propose, an extra little step AFTER all the tool material weights and such have been applied:
IF the tool being enchanted is a PICK:
Enchantment options at level 26-30 will fairly predictably be either Fortune 3 + one of either Efficiency 4/5 or Unbreaking 3; or Silk Touch + one of either Efficiency 4/5 or Unbreaking 3. With preference leaning towards Efficiency.
If you're enchanting a SHOVEL the same deal applies, except with preference leaning towards high Unbreaking as your most frequently applied second enchantment.
That way, if you enchant say, a Diamond Pick at level 30, you have fairly even odds of getting Fortune 3 OR Silk Touch, with a fair (maybe 40%) chance of getting a second enchantment, which would be high level Efficiency in most cases, but say 1/5 tries you might get Unbreaking 3 as your second enchantment, if you get one.
An axe would have a different distribution: instead of 50/50 split between Fortune and Silk Touch for first enchantment, you would instead see a 25% chance of getting Silk Touch (which is actually useful for some items, e.g. bookcases and Giant Mushroom blocks) vs. a 75% chance of getting either Efficiency V or Unbreaking 3 as your first enchantment. You also have an independent 40-50% chance of getting a second enchantment, which would be either high Efficiency or high Unbreaking, depending on whether you got one of these as your first enchantment (you would get the other, not two redundant copies of the same one).
A third enchantment option would still be available at the current rate (I think it's about 5-15%). It would be selected randomly from the remaining unused enchantment types that could be applied to that tool.
As the quality of materials went down, the total chance of getting the first and second enchantments would also go down, but not the relative ratios of enchantment types. For instance, spending 30 levels on an iron pick would still have a 50/50 chance of Silk Touch vs. Fortune, but the overall chance of getting either Silk Touch or Fortune would be reduced overall from 100% (diamond) to 30%. Then it would be possible to get a null first enchantment, and only get a second enchantment (the same as getting an iron pick with Efficiency 3 or Unbreaking 2).
Thus it would still be somewhat chancy, but less random in the quality of enchantments per level cost and the availability of particular enhancement types. Just as it's still possible to flip a coin and get heads 6 times in a row, it's still possible for you to try for silk touch 6 times and get 6 diamond Fortune 3 picks. But rather than a guaranteed crapshoot, it would approach certainty after a modest investment of time and materials.
The only other thing I can think of which would offset the highly random and punishing nature of enchantments as they are, is some sort of trainable skill whereby you can choose to increase your chances of getting particular enchantment types. For example, instead of spending all your XP levels on an item to get the highest possible enchantment, you could choose to earmark a percent of your levels beforehand on "learning" a skill such as "ore refining", "Gemology", "Blast Furnace" etc to give you a small permanent preference towards Fortune, Silk Touch, or Efficiency type enchantments.
As your xp grew, a portion would always be set aside automatically (like direct deposit) for you to spend on your skill the next time you went to the enchanting table. Instead of just an item slot and 3 random enchantment options in the Enchantment Table grid, you would also see two or more categories of Skills that apply to that tool. Before you pick an enchantment for the tool or item, you must decide whether you want to put the earmark amount in one or another of those skills (one only). The amount you choose to set aside for Skills would be fixed, or could be variable. Then you pick an enchantment with the remaining levels. The amount you put into a Skill weights the likelihood of getting the related enchantment type by a certain amount.
This sort of savings account for particular skills makes grinding above 30 (or 50) viable and desirable in some cases. It makes defeating the enderdragon more appealing because now you can almost guarantee a certain enchantment type on a number of items by having a very large amount of total and skill-earmarked XP levels.
Example: I want a Sharpness V Looting 3 diamond sword. The skill savings rate is a fixed 25% of all my XP going into a fund earmarked Looting. I know that Sharpness V is fairly common at levels 26-30 but both Sharpness V + Looting 3 is only 1% chance at levels 26-30. I can increase the chance of getting Looting 3 at that level to 40% if I have 20 levels in the earmarked fund. This means I have to grind to 80 to fill the earmark tank and get approaching a 50% chance at the two enchantments together.
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That's the one thing I've never understood about the enchanting system. For everything else we have a resipe. We gather the materials, stick it in something, and presto, out comes what we wanted. Not the enchanting however. Noo. Some of the most usefull things in the game were going to make compleatly random.
"Ok player, you've just built a mob grinder takeing several days, speelunked in a cavern to the bottom of the world, drained a magma chamber just to get your 3 pieces of diamond for that axe. Would you like to trade that all for what's behind door #1, #2 or #3? Keep in mind that #3 looks the best but if the minecraft gods are spite full. Your walking out of here with Fortune 1 on that Axe"
To be fair; I am thinking alot of the "sting" of getting a useless enchantment is gone because the grinding for exp will be reduced. I would also think that haveing a smaller enchanting levels will lessen the chance of compleate and utter failure in the entire process. Also always haveing the max level enchantment available will cut down the time all of us just plop an item into the table over and over and over. So over all this looks like a vast improvement.
I would like to see us be able to hedge the bet a little. Allow us to sacrifice an item in the game to better our odds of getting the enchantment that we want. Ya know like toss in a stack of Wool into the enchanting process for a 25% better chance of it popping Silk Touch.
Also, I know you can get fortune 1 with a level 30/50 enchant, this would require a min/max level added to each enchant.
Here's what I propose, an extra little step AFTER all the tool material weights and such have been applied:
IF the tool being enchanted is a PICK:
Enchantment options at level 26-30 will fairly predictably be either Fortune 3 + one of either Efficiency 4/5 or Unbreaking 3; or Silk Touch + one of either Efficiency 4/5 or Unbreaking 3. With preference leaning towards Efficiency.
If you're enchanting a SHOVEL the same deal applies, except with preference leaning towards high Unbreaking as your most frequently applied second enchantment.
That way, if you enchant say, a Diamond Pick at level 30, you have fairly even odds of getting Fortune 3 OR Silk Touch, with a fair (maybe 40%) chance of getting a second enchantment, which would be high level Efficiency in most cases, but say 1/5 tries you might get Unbreaking 3 as your second enchantment, if you get one.
An axe would have a different distribution: instead of 50/50 split between Fortune and Silk Touch for first enchantment, you would instead see a 25% chance of getting Silk Touch (which is actually useful for some items, e.g. bookcases and Giant Mushroom blocks) vs. a 75% chance of getting either Efficiency V or Unbreaking 3 as your first enchantment. You also have an independent 40-50% chance of getting a second enchantment, which would be either high Efficiency or high Unbreaking, depending on whether you got one of these as your first enchantment (you would get the other, not two redundant copies of the same one).
A third enchantment option would still be available at the current rate (I think it's about 5-15%). It would be selected randomly from the remaining unused enchantment types that could be applied to that tool.
As the quality of materials went down, the total chance of getting the first and second enchantments would also go down, but not the relative ratios of enchantment types. For instance, spending 30 levels on an iron pick would still have a 50/50 chance of Silk Touch vs. Fortune, but the overall chance of getting either Silk Touch or Fortune would be reduced overall from 100% (diamond) to 30%. Then it would be possible to get a null first enchantment, and only get a second enchantment (the same as getting an iron pick with Efficiency 3 or Unbreaking 2).
Thus it would still be somewhat chancy, but less random in the quality of enchantments per level cost and the availability of particular enhancement types. Just as it's still possible to flip a coin and get heads 6 times in a row, it's still possible for you to try for silk touch 6 times and get 6 diamond Fortune 3 picks. But rather than a guaranteed crapshoot, it would approach certainty after a modest investment of time and materials.
The only other thing I can think of which would offset the highly random and punishing nature of enchantments as they are, is some sort of trainable skill whereby you can choose to increase your chances of getting particular enchantment types. For example, instead of spending all your XP levels on an item to get the highest possible enchantment, you could choose to earmark a percent of your levels beforehand on "learning" a skill such as "ore refining", "Gemology", "Blast Furnace" etc to give you a small permanent preference towards Fortune, Silk Touch, or Efficiency type enchantments.
As your xp grew, a portion would always be set aside automatically (like direct deposit) for you to spend on your skill the next time you went to the enchanting table. Instead of just an item slot and 3 random enchantment options in the Enchantment Table grid, you would also see two or more categories of Skills that apply to that tool. Before you pick an enchantment for the tool or item, you must decide whether you want to put the earmark amount in one or another of those skills (one only). The amount you choose to set aside for Skills would be fixed, or could be variable. Then you pick an enchantment with the remaining levels. The amount you put into a Skill weights the likelihood of getting the related enchantment type by a certain amount.
This sort of savings account for particular skills makes grinding above 30 (or 50) viable and desirable in some cases. It makes defeating the enderdragon more appealing because now you can almost guarantee a certain enchantment type on a number of items by having a very large amount of total and skill-earmarked XP levels.
Example: I want a Sharpness V Looting 3 diamond sword. The skill savings rate is a fixed 25% of all my XP going into a fund earmarked Looting. I know that Sharpness V is fairly common at levels 26-30 but both Sharpness V + Looting 3 is only 1% chance at levels 26-30. I can increase the chance of getting Looting 3 at that level to 40% if I have 20 levels in the earmarked fund. This means I have to grind to 80 to fill the earmark tank and get approaching a 50% chance at the two enchantments together.