I think that experience is stupid. You can get 50 levels by mining 2 whole chunks, and you can waste it on one enchantment book. It's just not worth it to go look for many dungeons to find bottles of XP! So here are 5 ideas on how to improve it.
1. Store it
-When you die you lose all of your XP and that is annoying. Maybe you could craft a special bottle that could store a whole level, and instead of splashing it, you drink it and receive the empty bottle..? It could also be cool to store it in a block, and then just click it to bring the XP to you.
2. Redstone Power
-Maybe if there's XP in the XP holder, it could power a short amount of redstone, full block making 15 blocks of redstone..? This would be an interesting thing for single player maps, for those with less command block skills and more redstone.
3. Achievements/Advancements
-Why aren't there any xp-related achievements/advancements in Minecraft? It would be way more interesting if that was real. And it would probably be way more useful in Bedrock Edition where you get points from Xbox One. Example achievements:
A ) Get 20 levels of XP B ) Waste 50 levels of XP in one book C ) Store 25 levels of XP in container
4. Crafting Recipe
-It doesn't have to be too easy to get, however maybe there should be a recipe for XP bottles. For example:
And maybe this could give you 7,8... 12 XP bottles at once...? I don't know. However you may like this one:
5. TRADE XP
-Maybe clerics need to up their game. They sell even ender pearls which for some players are hard to get. How about a trade where an emerald gives you a few XP bottles and vice versa? Or maybe villagers need a new type-magician. He can sell stuff like the XP bottle, totem of undying (wait a minute how can they get that from illagers that are almost like pillagers), and maybe even things from the Nether (count that as a bonus.)!
Now maybe some of these things are great maybe some of these things disgust you, however one thing is certain: these old items need a change! Have any ideas? Feel free to share them! Anyways, thank you for reading.
Calling it XP is a misnomer. More like enchantment energy.
Mining out two chunks? Seriously? I can get 30 levels in 5 min at my grinder.
And 'spend 50 on one book' is heck of overstatement. It cost 3 levels to create a top level enchantment. Really costly enchants are only when doing heavy anvil reworks.
I mean, if you wanna mess around with bottles and golden apples and paying emeralds, fine. Those bottles would have to offer some insane yield to be remotely comparable to a properly constructed mob processor.
Mods do solve this problem, but otherwise from your 'crafting a bottle o' enchanting' I'd agree but in Vanilla you get it by trading for them or loot I think the legit way without cheating or using mods to get them that do add crafting recipes for the item.
Otherwise I never use enchantments but if I did more than I used to/now never using it I just put it into books with 3 levels used and then combining the enchantments in an anvil to get the V level one or so or just put more into other enchantments of a different level to get others. While the 'randomisation' of them is annoying which is mostly why I don't use enchanting, and potions I don't use more for the timer/wearing off possibility and would rather just get higher tier gear in mods or so instead; besides all that I see reason in it working the way it does and suits with other RPG aspects in other video games pretty well all things vaguely considered.
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I have never had any issues with XP, and I still play in 1.6.4 where you have to spend 30 levels on a totally random enchantment and items couldn't get as many enchantments as they can now (e.g. weapons and armor could not get Unbreaking unless you used books), and trading was much more difficult (instead of offering 3 trades, one unlocked from the start, you had to trade many times for a 1.75% chance of unlocking one book trade, which could also be replaced with a cheaper (emerald cost) trade anytime). Nor do I use XP farms; most of the XP I need for making my "end-game" gear comes from mining, mostly quartz in the Nether, where I can get 3-4000 XP per hour, and a nice building material as a bonus. Later on I get more XP than I can ever use from normal gameplay, more than 5000 XP per play session, even as I spend a lot more to repair my gear than you would in 1.9+ with Mending (I've spent up to 8000 XP to repair a single item before due to having many more levels than needed, I often reach level 60 and sometimes 70+ between repairs of any item, which is still a lot of XP even as leveling costs were lower before 1.8. With Mending you only need 4686 XP to repair a full set of 6 items, 781 for a single item).
In fact, I added diamond-replacement items which are much more expensive to enchant and repair in part so I can make more use of the XP that I get, and slightly prolong the "early-game"; even then, it takes me about 2 days (48 hours) of playtime to complete the game (or start my "end-game" caving for fun), I have no idea how this compares to most players (or even vanilla as it has been over 5 years since I started a world without my modded items) but I don't consider it to be that long, and I could significantly reduce the time if I just wanted to beat the game since most of my enchanting is for items used afterwards (IMO getting Ender pearls is the most tedious part of the game, I've watched people play to beat the game as fast as they could and the majority of the time was spent on hunting Endermen).
Otherwise, Mojang has already improved enchanting multiple times (you only needed 50 levels for a max-level enchantment prior to 1.3.1 so your information is 7 years out of date), even making it a bit too easy/cheap IMO (e.g. before 1.8 you could not make enchanted items with more than 3-4 enchantments and afford to repair them even once; even my Sharpness V, Knockback II, Unbreaking III diamond sword, which is not really highly enchanted (only two enchantments that improve it in combat) is too expensive to repair with a sacrifice unless you damage it enough, otherwise you need to use 1-2 diamonds to partially repair it for 29-35 levels. I've often suggested that Mending be changed to work like renaming an item did before 1.8, and the old anvil mechanics returned - one reason why I added this and other things to TMCW is to demonstrate how they could have done things).
Really, I believe XP should be removed. It's too easy to grind (it's possible to make a grinder BEFORE you get diamonds), and it limits you from indefinitely repairing tools (anvils have an XP cap, you know).
Given how easy XP is to get (even prior to the changes in furnace/XP interactions), and how little use there is for it most of the OP seems to be solutions without a problem…
#1 Granted, dying is unfun; the reason being that dying is generally seen as a loss. MC does not do "GAME OVER YOU LOSE" (except in hardcore), but the principle remains. Losing (most of) XP on death is in any case an annoyance, at most.
#2 Redstone power can alread be obtained by a wide variety of means – including the comparator output taken from any of a number of extant containers making this point needlessly duplicative.
#3 XP has long been seen as the quintessential meta-game stat, and achievements/advancements are for things done in-game; nonetheless, the effect of any such additions is likely too minor to much matter.
#4 Given that Bottles o' Enchanting have no use save to give players Xp, and that getting the resources needed to produce one by the proposed recipe would generate considerably more Xp than would the crafted bottle (not to mention the several avenues for a greater return on the time), the utility of crafting the bottles would be somewhere between negligible and none.
Bottles o' Enchanting are one of those items that are either legacies from when the game was intended to be something very different, or deliberate 'gotcha' items. They drop only 3-11 Xp (ie a bit less than killing 1 zombie to a bit more than one blaze, averaging about what breeding two pairs of passive mobs gives).
#5 To the best of my recollection, I've bought BoE exactly once: because a 'good' cleric had locked everything but that and the gold trade.
50 levels (the amount claimed to be obtained by mining two 'whole chunks' and wasted on one book) is 5345 Xp (starting from Lvl0). [I'm actually a bit surprised there is that much Xp generating ore in two chunks…]
The same amount of Xp could be obtained from ~1725 times breeding animals / killing 1069 'typical' hostiles (or 535 blaze/guardians)
These may sound daunting, but either would require only about 2-3 hours play with near starter level farms even if one did nothing else while there are advanced mob farms that will do 0-30 levels in under 30 seconds.
Using the new furnace mechanics, a system that feeds an autosmelter from a fully automatic kelp farm to generate (and store) Xp in amounts limited only by the player's ability to absorb the orbs before they despawn (and the generated lag).
As an illustration of the general uslessness of Xp, I generally have 200-300 levels at any particular without making any great effort to obtain them and with fairly extensive renaming of mobs. [Once past the initial 'kitting-out', my enchanting table and anvil use becomes negligble except for renaming.]
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"Why does everything have to be so stoopid?" Harvey Pekar (from American Splendor)
WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.
Really, I believe XP should be removed. It's too easy to grind (it's possible to make a grinder BEFORE you get diamonds), and it limits you from indefinitely repairing tools (anvils have an XP cap, you know).
Just because it is too easy to farm XP is not a valid reason to remove it - instead, remove/hinder the things that make it too easy to grind; for example, in my own version I made it that mob spawners "burn out" and the mobs they spawn stop dropping XP and loot if they spawn too many in too short a time, with a very slow recovery, set that that when you find them while caving they are unlikely to burn out. The same happens to naturally spawning hostile mobs if too many are killed too quickly (faster than any player could kill them just by running around at night/in caves), nerfing darkroom spawners (plus changes to spawning mechanics, which change the despawn rules and halve the spawn rate per chunk). Likewise, mobs shouldn't even drop anything unless killed by a player or in special cases, like creepers dropping music discs when killed by a skeleton (I didn't go quite that far but I made all mobs that drop mineral resources and other valuable loot require player kills. Fun fact: Mojang even tried doing this in a 1.8 snapshot to break automated iron/gold farms but the outrage from the community "forced" them to remove the changes).
Also, the anvil cost limit is no longer really applicable; everybody should be putting Mending on their good gear, and otherwise 1.8 was the only version with anvils where you were limited by the cost limit (before then simply renaming an item would fix the penalty at 2 levels; of course, it was far more expensive to repair items since you had to pay the enchantment and durability costs (1.8+ only charges a fixed 2 levels for an item/1 level per unit; before then you had to pay 1-17 levels for the durability restored, making diamond tools particularly expensive), but that was much more balanced than being able to max out all of your gear; for example, my main sword has Sharpness V, Knockback II, Unbreaking III while I have a separate sword with Sharpness V, Looting III, Unbreaking III for killing animals to get materials for trading - it would be far too expensive to add Looting to the first sword (it would be impossible to repair, not that you couldn't add it), plus I don't care about mob drops while caving). You also require resources, not just XP, to repair items (as mentioned before, Mending should work like renaming used to, along with the old anvil mechanics - my modded items cost as much as 48 levels (3012 XP under the pre-1.8 system) to repair for 3/4 the durability of diamond (they have 3x the durability of diamond but you can only repair them with one unit at a time, compared to fully repairing a diamond item with a new item) yet I still get enough XP by a large margin):
Max cost for amethyst items = 49 levels, other items = 39
Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending 43 levels (amethyst)
Efficiency V, Silk Touch, Unbreaking III, Mending 34 levels (diamond)
Efficiency V, Silk Touch, Unbreaking III, Mending 29 levels (shears)
Sharpness V, Looting III, Unbreaking III, Mending 38 levels (diamond)
Sharpness V, Knockback II, Unbreaking III, Mending 48 levels (amethyst)
Power V, Infinity, Unbreaking III, Mending 33 levels (bow)
Protection IV, Mending 35 levels (amethyst)
Protection IV, Unbreaking III, Mending 42 levels (amethyst)
Protection IV, Feather Falling IV, Mending 44 levels (amethyst)
All are for one unit, except for shears and bow. Cost without Mending is 8 levels less for an item repair and 9 less for a unit repair.
Even 48 levels for my sword is not that expensive when you consider that I get 4684 uses per repair (1171 durability), which is enough to kill 2342 mobs, giving at least 11710 XP, nearly 4 times what I have to spend per repair (for vanilla diamond the cost is 38 levels using an optimally damaged sacrifice, which gives a full repair due to the 12% bonus, which costs 1517 XP for a return of 15600 XP - a 10:1 profit margin). Likewise, the 43 levels to repair my main pickaxe (the Silk Touch one is only used on ender chests and emerald ore) is 0.465 XP per use, while I average about 0.742 XP per block mined (all blocks, not just ore; for vanilla diamond the cost is 31 levels for an optimal repair, or only 0.142 XP per use; even back when I used a Fortune pickaxe (37 levels for a 1 unit repair) for all mining I was able to sustainably repair it using only XP from caving despite a cost of 0.9 XP per use, meaning that I actually needed additional XP from mobs, which must also be split across armor and other items, but it was still enough; repairing my pickaxe with one unit as soon as I could when it was below 75% (not near 0%) meant I could maintain a large durability buffer, always being able to keep it above 50%).
50 levels (the amount claimed to be obtained by mining two 'whole chunks' and wasted on one book) is 5345 Xp (starting from Lvl0). [I'm actually a bit surprised there is that much Xp generating ore in two chunks…]
This is an extreme exaggeration; using the numbers I found here you'll get about 788 XP from all of the ores in 2 chunks; for comparison, while I get a similar amount of XP per play session while caving I explore around 100 chunks and I get a lot of XP from mobs (in a recent world I averaged 5308 XP per play session spent caving, 3248 of which came from ores and 2060 from mobs. Also, I averaged 3485 XP per non-caving session, 2853 XP when excluding the Ender Dragon; overall I gained 708515 XP, 642307 XP while caving).
I think this is all fine... for the early game. By the late game concepts like storing XP are entirely irrelevant. It goes to show flawed the system is.
Support... fixes the initial problem.. while maintaining the underlying issue. Still better than what we have now.
I think this is all fine... for the early game. By the late game concepts like storing XP are entirely irrelevant. It goes to show flawed the system is.
Support... fixes the initial problem.. while maintaining the underlying issue. Still better than what we have now.
I never considered deleting items a problem, thats what void pipes and trashcans are for.
Just because it is too easy to farm XP is not a valid reason to remove it - instead, remove/hinder the things that make it too easy to grind; for example, in my own version I made it that mob spawners "burn out" and the mobs they spawn stop dropping XP and loot if they spawn too many in too short a time, with a very slow recovery, set that that when you find them while caving they are unlikely to burn out. The same happens to naturally spawning hostile mobs if too many are killed too quickly (faster than any player could kill them just by running around at night/in caves), nerfing darkroom spawners (plus changes to spawning mechanics, which change the despawn rules and halve the spawn rate per chunk). Likewise, mobs shouldn't even drop anything unless killed by a player or in special cases, like creepers dropping music discs when killed by a skeleton (I didn't go quite that far but I made all mobs that drop mineral resources and other valuable loot require player kills. Fun fact: Mojang even tried doing this in a 1.8 snapshot to break automated iron/gold farms but the outrage from the community "forced" them to remove the changes).
Also, the anvil cost limit is no longer really applicable; everybody should be putting Mending on their good gear, and otherwise 1.8 was the only version with anvils where you were limited by the cost limit (before then simply renaming an item would fix the penalty at 2 levels; of course, it was far more expensive to repair items since you had to pay the enchantment and durability costs (1.8+ only charges a fixed 2 levels for an item/1 level per unit; before then you had to pay 1-17 levels for the durability restored, making diamond tools particularly expensive), but that was much more balanced than being able to max out all of your gear; for example, my main sword has Sharpness V, Knockback II, Unbreaking III while I have a separate sword with Sharpness V, Looting III, Unbreaking III for killing animals to get materials for trading - it would be far too expensive to add Looting to the first sword (it would be impossible to repair, not that you couldn't add it), plus I don't care about mob drops while caving). You also require resources, not just XP, to repair items (as mentioned before, Mending should work like renaming used to, along with the old anvil mechanics - my modded items cost as much as 48 levels (3012 XP under the pre-1.8 system) to repair for 3/4 the durability of diamond (they have 3x the durability of diamond but you can only repair them with one unit at a time, compared to fully repairing a diamond item with a new item) yet I still get enough XP by a large margin):
Even 48 levels for my sword is not that expensive when you consider that I get 4684 uses per repair (1171 durability), which is enough to kill 2342 mobs, giving at least 11710 XP, nearly 4 times what I have to spend per repair (for vanilla diamond the cost is 38 levels using an optimally damaged sacrifice, which gives a full repair due to the 12% bonus, which costs 1517 XP for a return of 15600 XP - a 10:1 profit margin). Likewise, the 43 levels to repair my main pickaxe (the Silk Touch one is only used on ender chests and emerald ore) is 0.465 XP per use, while I average about 0.742 XP per block mined (all blocks, not just ore; for vanilla diamond the cost is 31 levels for an optimal repair, or only 0.142 XP per use; even back when I used a Fortune pickaxe (37 levels for a 1 unit repair) for all mining I was able to sustainably repair it using only XP from caving despite a cost of 0.9 XP per use, meaning that I actually needed additional XP from mobs, which must also be split across armor and other items, but it was still enough; repairing my pickaxe with one unit as soon as I could when it was below 75% (not near 0%) meant I could maintain a large durability buffer, always being able to keep it above 50%).
Keep in mind that not everyone lives a lifestyle of near-continuous caving. Most people (like me) strip-mine for ores only every so often, and spend the rest farming or exploring (which don't yield much XP). Those people need a mob grinder to get enough XP for enchanting.
Keep in mind that not everyone lives a lifestyle of near-continuous caving. Most people (like me) strip-mine for ores only every so often, and spend the rest farming or exploring (which don't yield much XP). Those people need a mob grinder to get enough XP for enchanting.
Enchanting or repairing? I "farm" most of the XP that I need for enchanting by mining quartz in the Nether, which is something I only do once to make my gear so not being renewable isn't an issue, and I can easily collect 3-4000 XP per hour, afterwards I get enough XP from playing to keep it in repair, and if you use Mending in current versions at least for armor and weapons should be sustainable regardless of playstyle (the XP from each hostile mob can restore up to 10 durability, or 1.67 durability per item if you have the maximum of 6 items being held/worn; this is 6.67 uses each for your sword and bow and 2.37 hits (I take about 1.7 damage per mob killed, which is less than the damage dealt by most mobs, e.g. zombies deal 3 on Normal) taken per mob killed if they have Unbreaking III on them. This XP can also go to tools if you switch to them while absorbing the XP).
Note that even when I was not caving I still averaged over 2800 XP per play session, more than half the XP that I got while caving and enough to restore a total of 5600 durability to all Mending items, so this isn't just because of my playstyle.
I agree with hat fishg said. Getting xp is difficult in the early game, but considerably easier when you make an exploitative mob farm. Currently experience is way too easy to collect once an guardian or enderman farm is setup. The xp system need a serious rework.
Enchanting or repairing? I "farm" most of the XP that I need for enchanting by mining quartz in the Nether, which is something I only do once to make my gear so not being renewable isn't an issue, and I can easily collect 3-4000 XP per hour, afterwards I get enough XP from playing to keep it in repair, and if you use Mending in current versions at least for armor and weapons should be sustainable regardless of playstyle (the XP from each hostile mob can restore up to 10 durability, or 1.67 durability per item if you have the maximum of 6 items being held/worn; this is 6.67 uses each for your sword and bow and 2.37 hits (I take about 1.7 damage per mob killed, which is less than the damage dealt by most mobs, e.g. zombies deal 3 on Normal) taken per mob killed if they have Unbreaking III on them. This XP can also go to tools if you switch to them while absorbing the XP).
Note that even when I was not caving I still averaged over 2800 XP per play session, more than half the XP that I got while caving and enough to restore a total of 5600 durability to all Mending items, so this isn't just because of my playstyle.
Well, and repairing.. Forgot to mention that. Nonetheless, Mending should also go - having your gear repair themself is very OP.
I think that experience is stupid. You can get 50 levels by mining 2 whole chunks, and you can waste it on one enchantment book. It's just not worth it to go look for many dungeons to find bottles of XP! So here are 5 ideas on how to improve it.
1. Store it
-When you die you lose all of your XP and that is annoying. Maybe you could craft a special bottle that could store a whole level, and instead of splashing it, you drink it and receive the empty bottle..? It could also be cool to store it in a block, and then just click it to bring the XP to you.
2. Redstone Power
-Maybe if there's XP in the XP holder, it could power a short amount of redstone, full block making 15 blocks of redstone..? This would be an interesting thing for single player maps, for those with less command block skills and more redstone.
3. Achievements/Advancements
-Why aren't there any xp-related achievements/advancements in Minecraft? It would be way more interesting if that was real. And it would probably be way more useful in Bedrock Edition where you get points from Xbox One. Example achievements:
A ) Get 20 levels of XP B ) Waste 50 levels of XP in one book C ) Store 25 levels of XP in container
4. Crafting Recipe
-It doesn't have to be too easy to get, however maybe there should be a recipe for XP bottles. For example:
And maybe this could give you 7,8... 12 XP bottles at once...? I don't know. However you may like this one:
5. TRADE XP
-Maybe clerics need to up their game. They sell even ender pearls which for some players are hard to get. How about a trade where an emerald gives you a few XP bottles and vice versa? Or maybe villagers need a new type-magician. He can sell stuff like the XP bottle, totem of undying (wait a minute how can they get that from illagers that are almost like pillagers), and maybe even things from the Nether (count that as a bonus.)!
Now maybe some of these things are great maybe some of these things disgust you, however one thing is certain: these old items need a change! Have any ideas? Feel free to share them! Anyways, thank you for reading.
The Creeper of the Days
Play modded and put your xp in an xp obelisk. Better yet, make a mob farm and pipe in the xp chunks by the thousands.
Calling it XP is a misnomer. More like enchantment energy.
Mining out two chunks? Seriously? I can get 30 levels in 5 min at my grinder.
And 'spend 50 on one book' is heck of overstatement. It cost 3 levels to create a top level enchantment. Really costly enchants are only when doing heavy anvil reworks.
I mean, if you wanna mess around with bottles and golden apples and paying emeralds, fine. Those bottles would have to offer some insane yield to be remotely comparable to a properly constructed mob processor.
Mods do solve this problem, but otherwise from your 'crafting a bottle o' enchanting' I'd agree but in Vanilla you get it by trading for them or loot I think the legit way without cheating or using mods to get them that do add crafting recipes for the item.
Otherwise I never use enchantments but if I did more than I used to/now never using it I just put it into books with 3 levels used and then combining the enchantments in an anvil to get the V level one or so or just put more into other enchantments of a different level to get others. While the 'randomisation' of them is annoying which is mostly why I don't use enchanting, and potions I don't use more for the timer/wearing off possibility and would rather just get higher tier gear in mods or so instead; besides all that I see reason in it working the way it does and suits with other RPG aspects in other video games pretty well all things vaguely considered.
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I have never had any issues with XP, and I still play in 1.6.4 where you have to spend 30 levels on a totally random enchantment and items couldn't get as many enchantments as they can now (e.g. weapons and armor could not get Unbreaking unless you used books), and trading was much more difficult (instead of offering 3 trades, one unlocked from the start, you had to trade many times for a 1.75% chance of unlocking one book trade, which could also be replaced with a cheaper (emerald cost) trade anytime). Nor do I use XP farms; most of the XP I need for making my "end-game" gear comes from mining, mostly quartz in the Nether, where I can get 3-4000 XP per hour, and a nice building material as a bonus. Later on I get more XP than I can ever use from normal gameplay, more than 5000 XP per play session, even as I spend a lot more to repair my gear than you would in 1.9+ with Mending (I've spent up to 8000 XP to repair a single item before due to having many more levels than needed, I often reach level 60 and sometimes 70+ between repairs of any item, which is still a lot of XP even as leveling costs were lower before 1.8. With Mending you only need 4686 XP to repair a full set of 6 items, 781 for a single item).
In fact, I added diamond-replacement items which are much more expensive to enchant and repair in part so I can make more use of the XP that I get, and slightly prolong the "early-game"; even then, it takes me about 2 days (48 hours) of playtime to complete the game (or start my "end-game" caving for fun), I have no idea how this compares to most players (or even vanilla as it has been over 5 years since I started a world without my modded items) but I don't consider it to be that long, and I could significantly reduce the time if I just wanted to beat the game since most of my enchanting is for items used afterwards (IMO getting Ender pearls is the most tedious part of the game, I've watched people play to beat the game as fast as they could and the majority of the time was spent on hunting Endermen).
Otherwise, Mojang has already improved enchanting multiple times (you only needed 50 levels for a max-level enchantment prior to 1.3.1 so your information is 7 years out of date), even making it a bit too easy/cheap IMO (e.g. before 1.8 you could not make enchanted items with more than 3-4 enchantments and afford to repair them even once; even my Sharpness V, Knockback II, Unbreaking III diamond sword, which is not really highly enchanted (only two enchantments that improve it in combat) is too expensive to repair with a sacrifice unless you damage it enough, otherwise you need to use 1-2 diamonds to partially repair it for 29-35 levels. I've often suggested that Mending be changed to work like renaming an item did before 1.8, and the old anvil mechanics returned - one reason why I added this and other things to TMCW is to demonstrate how they could have done things).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Support
I also like advancements for xp, before it had a use it was pretty much for showing off skill.
Hey guys I'm James, I used to be a noob but now I'm not, I finally figured out how to use TextCraft so here's a banner for one of my suggestions.
Really, I believe XP should be removed. It's too easy to grind (it's possible to make a grinder BEFORE you get diamonds), and it limits you from indefinitely repairing tools (anvils have an XP cap, you know).
My suggestions: Enhancements - Throwable Fire Charges - On Phantoms and Elytra. Also check out The Minecraftian Language. This signature is not here to waste your space.
Given how easy XP is to get (even prior to the changes in furnace/XP interactions), and how little use there is for it most of the OP seems to be solutions without a problem…
#1 Granted, dying is unfun; the reason being that dying is generally seen as a loss. MC does not do "GAME OVER YOU LOSE" (except in hardcore), but the principle remains. Losing (most of) XP on death is in any case an annoyance, at most.
#2 Redstone power can alread be obtained by a wide variety of means – including the comparator output taken from any of a number of extant containers making this point needlessly duplicative.
#3 XP has long been seen as the quintessential meta-game stat, and achievements/advancements are for things done in-game; nonetheless, the effect of any such additions is likely too minor to much matter.
#4 Given that Bottles o' Enchanting have no use save to give players Xp, and that getting the resources needed to produce one by the proposed recipe would generate considerably more Xp than would the crafted bottle (not to mention the several avenues for a greater return on the time), the utility of crafting the bottles would be somewhere between negligible and none.
Bottles o' Enchanting are one of those items that are either legacies from when the game was intended to be something very different, or deliberate 'gotcha' items. They drop only 3-11 Xp (ie a bit less than killing 1 zombie to a bit more than one blaze, averaging about what breeding two pairs of passive mobs gives).
#5 To the best of my recollection, I've bought BoE exactly once: because a 'good' cleric had locked everything but that and the gold trade.
50 levels (the amount claimed to be obtained by mining two 'whole chunks' and wasted on one book) is 5345 Xp (starting from Lvl0). [I'm actually a bit surprised there is that much Xp generating ore in two chunks…]
The same amount of Xp could be obtained from ~1725 times breeding animals / killing 1069 'typical' hostiles (or 535 blaze/guardians)
These may sound daunting, but either would require only about 2-3 hours play with near starter level farms even if one did nothing else while there are advanced mob farms that will do 0-30 levels in under 30 seconds.
Using the new furnace mechanics, a system that feeds an autosmelter from a fully automatic kelp farm to generate (and store) Xp in amounts limited only by the player's ability to absorb the orbs before they despawn (and the generated lag).
As an illustration of the general uslessness of Xp, I generally have 200-300 levels at any particular without making any great effort to obtain them and with fairly extensive renaming of mobs. [Once past the initial 'kitting-out', my enchanting table and anvil use becomes negligble except for renaming.]
Just because it is too easy to farm XP is not a valid reason to remove it - instead, remove/hinder the things that make it too easy to grind; for example, in my own version I made it that mob spawners "burn out" and the mobs they spawn stop dropping XP and loot if they spawn too many in too short a time, with a very slow recovery, set that that when you find them while caving they are unlikely to burn out. The same happens to naturally spawning hostile mobs if too many are killed too quickly (faster than any player could kill them just by running around at night/in caves), nerfing darkroom spawners (plus changes to spawning mechanics, which change the despawn rules and halve the spawn rate per chunk). Likewise, mobs shouldn't even drop anything unless killed by a player or in special cases, like creepers dropping music discs when killed by a skeleton (I didn't go quite that far but I made all mobs that drop mineral resources and other valuable loot require player kills. Fun fact: Mojang even tried doing this in a 1.8 snapshot to break automated iron/gold farms but the outrage from the community "forced" them to remove the changes).
Also, the anvil cost limit is no longer really applicable; everybody should be putting Mending on their good gear, and otherwise 1.8 was the only version with anvils where you were limited by the cost limit (before then simply renaming an item would fix the penalty at 2 levels; of course, it was far more expensive to repair items since you had to pay the enchantment and durability costs (1.8+ only charges a fixed 2 levels for an item/1 level per unit; before then you had to pay 1-17 levels for the durability restored, making diamond tools particularly expensive), but that was much more balanced than being able to max out all of your gear; for example, my main sword has Sharpness V, Knockback II, Unbreaking III while I have a separate sword with Sharpness V, Looting III, Unbreaking III for killing animals to get materials for trading - it would be far too expensive to add Looting to the first sword (it would be impossible to repair, not that you couldn't add it), plus I don't care about mob drops while caving). You also require resources, not just XP, to repair items (as mentioned before, Mending should work like renaming used to, along with the old anvil mechanics - my modded items cost as much as 48 levels (3012 XP under the pre-1.8 system) to repair for 3/4 the durability of diamond (they have 3x the durability of diamond but you can only repair them with one unit at a time, compared to fully repairing a diamond item with a new item) yet I still get enough XP by a large margin):
Even 48 levels for my sword is not that expensive when you consider that I get 4684 uses per repair (1171 durability), which is enough to kill 2342 mobs, giving at least 11710 XP, nearly 4 times what I have to spend per repair (for vanilla diamond the cost is 38 levels using an optimally damaged sacrifice, which gives a full repair due to the 12% bonus, which costs 1517 XP for a return of 15600 XP - a 10:1 profit margin). Likewise, the 43 levels to repair my main pickaxe (the Silk Touch one is only used on ender chests and emerald ore) is 0.465 XP per use, while I average about 0.742 XP per block mined (all blocks, not just ore; for vanilla diamond the cost is 31 levels for an optimal repair, or only 0.142 XP per use; even back when I used a Fortune pickaxe (37 levels for a 1 unit repair) for all mining I was able to sustainably repair it using only XP from caving despite a cost of 0.9 XP per use, meaning that I actually needed additional XP from mobs, which must also be split across armor and other items, but it was still enough; repairing my pickaxe with one unit as soon as I could when it was below 75% (not near 0%) meant I could maintain a large durability buffer, always being able to keep it above 50%).
This is an extreme exaggeration; using the numbers I found here you'll get about 788 XP from all of the ores in 2 chunks; for comparison, while I get a similar amount of XP per play session while caving I explore around 100 chunks and I get a lot of XP from mobs (in a recent world I averaged 5308 XP per play session spent caving, 3248 of which came from ores and 2060 from mobs. Also, I averaged 3485 XP per non-caving session, 2853 XP when excluding the Ender Dragon; overall I gained 708515 XP, 642307 XP while caving).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I think this is all fine... for the early game. By the late game concepts like storing XP are entirely irrelevant. It goes to show flawed the system is.
Support... fixes the initial problem.. while maintaining the underlying issue. Still better than what we have now.
I never considered deleting items a problem, thats what void pipes and trashcans are for.
Keep in mind that not everyone lives a lifestyle of near-continuous caving. Most people (like me) strip-mine for ores only every so often, and spend the rest farming or exploring (which don't yield much XP). Those people need a mob grinder to get enough XP for enchanting.
My suggestions: Enhancements - Throwable Fire Charges - On Phantoms and Elytra. Also check out The Minecraftian Language. This signature is not here to waste your space.
Enchanting or repairing? I "farm" most of the XP that I need for enchanting by mining quartz in the Nether, which is something I only do once to make my gear so not being renewable isn't an issue, and I can easily collect 3-4000 XP per hour, afterwards I get enough XP from playing to keep it in repair, and if you use Mending in current versions at least for armor and weapons should be sustainable regardless of playstyle (the XP from each hostile mob can restore up to 10 durability, or 1.67 durability per item if you have the maximum of 6 items being held/worn; this is 6.67 uses each for your sword and bow and 2.37 hits (I take about 1.7 damage per mob killed, which is less than the damage dealt by most mobs, e.g. zombies deal 3 on Normal) taken per mob killed if they have Unbreaking III on them. This XP can also go to tools if you switch to them while absorbing the XP).
Note that even when I was not caving I still averaged over 2800 XP per play session, more than half the XP that I got while caving and enough to restore a total of 5600 durability to all Mending items, so this isn't just because of my playstyle.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I agree with hat fishg said. Getting xp is difficult in the early game, but considerably easier when you make an exploitative mob farm. Currently experience is way too easy to collect once an guardian or enderman farm is setup. The xp system need a serious rework.
Well, and repairing.. Forgot to mention that. Nonetheless, Mending should also go - having your gear repair themself is very OP.
My suggestions: Enhancements - Throwable Fire Charges - On Phantoms and Elytra. Also check out The Minecraftian Language. This signature is not here to waste your space.