Are melons OP?

[EpicAaron]

Melons are really great. They propagate quickly, grow fast, and require no replanting. Unlike potatoes and carrots, melon seeds can be found within spawn chunks (granted, finding mineshaft chests can range from extremely easy to extremely difficult). With a steady crop of melons, players can subsist forever under minimal energy consumption. This means that finding seeds and successfully growing them can lead to a radical change in the player's situation. In theory, hunting can be postponed indefinitely. Melons open up a lot of free time and relieve a lot of stress.

Is this a problem? I traditionally didn't think so. While melons allowed me to be lazy at my base, they didn't let me cave very easily. Filling up on melons takes a lot of time, and sometimes you need to eat and move. If the player is exerting a lot of energy, melons may not keep up. I remember starving during the construction of my spawn base because I was digging and jumping around so much while building. I nearly died despite having a large melon patch at my disposal, and I realized that melons weren't much of an upgrade over meat. The melons enabled me to get into a situation that I probably wasn't fully prepared to undertake.

I am curious what other players' experiences with melons are. How excited are you when you find them? Do you go hard on melon farming, or do you try to gun for another crop like wheat or potatoes?

[dawnraider]

With a steady crop of melons, players can subsist forever under minimal energy consumption. This means that finding seeds and successfully growing them can lead to a radical change in the player's situation. In theory, hunting can be postponed indefinitely. Melons open up a lot of free time and relieve a lot of stress.

This is exactly why I think melons are OP. They are disproportionately beneficial to have, especially with how early you can get them. Most of the rest of the options for food are balanced around supplementing the player's existing diet, allowing you to slowly carve out a sustainable living, but melons uniquely break that by handing food to you on a silver platter. Every other food option pre-planters takes some investment, whether it be re-tilling crops for carrots and potatoes, or that plus also milling for wheat, or worrying about hunting or breeding for meat, or managing chickens and cows for eggs and milk. It takes a good amount of effort for all those, while the only effort melons take is weeding the stems, which you should already be doing for your hemp.

[EpicAaron]

Perhaps the embarrassing thing for me to admit is that I sort of like that about them. A little melon patch can get you by well enough, opening up the opportunity to breath a little and enjoy the world around you. It feels like such a wonderful reward after climbing out of a terrifying mineshaft, like drawing a tiny grain of salvation from the depths.

One of the things that I have learned about BTW over the years is that the moment to moment gameplay can change radically over hours of play. At some point the player needs to stop worrying about food and start focusing on building a real solid base for extended periods of time. I feel like melons smooth out that experience and help players transition into the mechanical age. The struggle to hunt and survive in the early days are compelling, but easing up on that a bit with a stockpile of fruit feels right after overcoming so much.

I suppose a question we could ask is: do melons discourage players from seeking more "interesting" sustainable food options like chicken farming? I am not sure if chicken farming is worth pushing for too hard--stick chickens in a large grass box, hope they don't suffocate in a wall while you are away. They are sort of finicky.

I really wish we could have gotten some footage of FC playing post-AAAHHH, he seemed particularly secretive about his intended vision for the game. I think players are engaging with it in many strange and unique ways, and I wonder if letting reluctant players skip the somewhat lame animal husbandry mechanics with the simpler melon supplement is actually negative. Fishing is another somewhat boring sustainable food source, though certainly more work than just farming melons. BUT melons require such a start up cost, a real risk and adventure that could easily have cost the player his life. The start up cost for melons is really high, barring the rare occasion that they are discovered easily by sheer luck.

I sometimes wonder if FC was creating these incredibly complicated systems of interaction to recreate some of the wonder of Minecraft when it was new.

[dawnraider]

I wonder if letting reluctant players skip the somewhat lame animal husbandry mechanics with the simpler melon supplement is actually negative.

I feel like this is more indicative of the fact that animals currently have a lot of issues. I would rather make dealing with animals a better experience than provide the player with an easy bypass for it. I don't think melons should be completely axed as a food source, I just think that they are a bit too good right now. Reducing the food value of slices from 1/3 to 1/6 would go a long way in that. It would increase the tedium of shoveling melons in your face to discourage players from relying on it as anything more than a supplement, but still allow it to be used as such a supplement with a large enough farm if you so wish. The real value of melons is for chickens anyway, their value as food for the player is secondary.

I think fishing is fine, as while it is quite powerful, it is still demanding because it requires careful time management. Fishing alone requires tracking the moon cycle, and combining it with milk for chowder to be actually 100% sustainable requires having pens for cows set up and regularly milking them.

[EpicAaron]

Great observations, I think if animals were less wonky, they wouldn't pose such a mental block.

Am I too old to nerf melons, though?

[jakerman999]

Alternative suggestion to nerfing melons: remove obtaining melon slices by crafting. If dropping melons from a significant height is the only way to turn them into a edible product, the portability of them is drastically dampened without affecting their stay at home benefits. Reducing the food value of the melon would only really serve to make players carry more melons on them and plant bigger melon farms without such a change.

[dawnraider]

That's... not a bad idea honestly. There's also currently a saw recipe for turning melons into slices, that could be made the only recipe for doing so.

[EpicAaron]

That's one hard melon. I feel like butchering a melon with an axe makes sense.

[dawnraider]

Well there's a point where you have to make concessions to gameplay over realism. Does it make sense to be able to get at a melon in the field? Yeah maybe. But it would serve to directly nerf their use as a food on the go by requiring equipment to actually get at them.

[Hiracho]

I like the part where sawing and dropping are two different ways of getting different results out of melons(and pumpkins for that matter)

Here's my take on re-balancing gourds:

• Finding a seed for a gourd currently snowballs into having an infinite amount of them without effort. In general I'd like to think that exploration rewards should not give you infinite copies of themselves. because it then instantly becomes worthless to ever find more, good exploration rewards stay rewarding when finding more (think the temples/witch huts)
  • The solution here is to make it hard or impossible to get more seeds out of each plant. Something like making seeds (or more like cuttings) drop from the stem would limit the amount of gourds you have by the amount you find.

• A single gourd can feed multiple chickens per day. In current BTW standards, that's an insane amount, especially with the fact that finding even a single seed grants you a large patch within days.
  • This would be mitigated a lot by the former proposed change. Each gourd is still a better source of chicken feed compared to wheat and hemp as it is now, it's just not something that snowballs to extreme surplus anymore. further rebalance should be based on the result that change would have. another action could be to lower the amount of chicken feed that is craftable from each gourd.

• Alternative ways of harvesting the insides of the gourds are a cool and unique feat. these should be a promoted more
  • Handcrafted results could just become a fraction of the results from proper harvesting. similar to getting planks with an axe over a saw.

All the ideas come together in the following changes:

1. Wild gourds spawn with a stem, snipping the stem with a shear makes you able to plant it somewhere else.(cuttings)
2. A gourd dropped from enough height gives multiple(4) mashed melon/pumpkin.
3. Mashed melon/pumpkin becomes the item used for chicken feed instead of their respective seed, but they can't be used as seeds for planting new gourds.
4. These mashed gourds are edible for a 1/3rd(or1/2) shank, to rebalance on the fact that simple inventory crafting they become worth a lot less. but their max value when mashing them is still lower than other basic foods.
5. Handcrafted gourds give you either half as much, or simply one of these mashed gourd items.
6. For the pumpkin this includes the carved pumpkin(unobtainable with mashing would make sense, possibly needing a chisel)
7. It would be possible to add an alternative way of obtaining seeds, for instance via a farmer trade (like it wanting mashed gourd plus emeralds in exchange for a seed)

I'm not sure how sawing would fit in here, given they obsolete melon slices, it could still give those as a duplicate item similar as to how boiled eggs are the same item as fried eggs. trading the 4 mashes versus 5 slices would be a win in hunger gain, but they could be unusable in crafting chicken feed.
As a side effect of these re balances, having them only spawn outside HC spawn range doesn't make much sense anymore.

[dawnraider]

I think having the mashed melon and pumpkin is a good way to reconcile them being good for chickens without drowning you in seeds to replant them.

So then:
- Make the stem, not the gourd, drop seeds
- Make smashing them give you mash for chickens
- Pumpkins can be carved with a chisel, melons can be cut on a saw (maybe an axe for fewer returns)
- Farmer villager can trade you seeds for the mash

I think that's a good solution. Instead of targeting the food value directly, just make it harder to amass significant quantities. Farmers asking for melons and pumpkins would probably need their numbers tweaked but that's not a huge deal.

I like not having pumpkins be affected by HCS anymore after that change. One additional thing: thoughts on melons in jungles? They'd be less of an instant solution to early game food, while also giving players another reason to risk their lives in a jungle.

[Hiracho]

I think it's still important to gate getting pumpkins/melons behind some tech. Needing a shears to cut the stem would stop a hc spawner from just grabbing these seeds instantly. Just having a onetime snack to eat without conveniently being able to move where they are growing. With this whole stem being important change they should also be tougher to destroy because that's something that happens quite a lot and becomes really consequential with this change.

I think the farmer asking for pumpkins and melons should still be an easy trade, a rebalance on that is probably something to look at after it's been changed for a while. Right now you can easily accomplish their trades without ever automating them by making a huge manual farm, this might be enough of a push to prefer automating it more. Only automating like 8 stems each already gives you more than ever needed in villager trades in my experience.

I don't have a strong opinion on melons in jungles after this proposed change. they would have lost their absolute power. I'm not sure if they'd be able to spawn in jungles much as most ground is covered? I'd say even putting them in plains like pumpkins wouldn't be a bad thing, but it would be kind of bland. So yeah, jungles seems fine to me. ( on second thought. it would prevent people from ever needing to go into a mineshaft, with a lucky find..)

needing a chisel/axe to handcraft them sounds fair (with reduced returns yeah) it'd make sense to get melon slices again that way, like 2? making them essentially really bad travel foods, but reasonably unchanged in their foodvalue if staying at home with tools at your disposal, albeit more difficult to keep a compact stack in your inventory.

I'd like to point out that I feel cutting the stem for an actual seed would be weird, hence introducing a "cuttings" and then have actual seeds still be obtainable in specific ways, like finding them in minecarts or trading them from a villager.

[dawnraider]

Gating behind shears makes sense. Using shears to harvest an intact stem and then replant it would definitely make melons and pumpkins feel more unique, which is I feel a decent part of what vegehenna was going for.

[Gilberreke]

I definitely think in that case, mineshafts should give a different reward then, melons being the main reason to brave them. The problem with melon seeds in mineshafts is that once you find them, you've got infinite, so maybe the mineshafts could do with some rare item that is always worth it instead. I would personally prefer enchanted gear instead, with low-ish durability (half durability maybe?). Finding the occasional enchanted pickaxe, shovel or axe would be really rewarding, without affecting balance much.

[jackatthekilns]

I would personally prefer enchanted gear instead, with low-ish durability (half durability maybe?). Finding the occasional enchanted pickaxe, shovel or axe would be really rewarding, without affecting balance much.

I like this idea even if the occasional melon seed is also found. (assuming other balancing options)

[Hiracho]

I'm all ears for more interesting and unique rewards in the mineshafts. But the melon seeds with the proposed changes wouldn't be a bad treaasure to have there, since they wont mean infinite melons anymore :)

I think mineshafts holding significantly more raw ores / redstone / lapis depending on depth would be really nice to have. as is, they are just a bother once you have the melon seeds. if its actually more profitable to run around them than to branchmine (which is how you find them mostly) people would prefer to explore the area. The chests are pretty rare and random as is though. mineshafts in general probably need some updating in the future

[dawnraider]

What if mineshafts spawned additional ore in the walls? I feel like that's more engaging than walking around looking for chests.

[jackatthekilns]

I think ore in the walls is great (again, despite any possible changes to melons) I want to point out that this would reduce the drawback of exploring with crude torches and setting everything on fire. Ore in the walls would not be affected. Personally, I'm OK with that, but I didn't want it to not be considered.

[Blacklands]

I hope resurrecting this thread is okay.

Is there an update on the state of this? Would more people working on the code for this help, maybe? Or is this stuck in the design phase?

Will pumpkins also be considered? They kind of ruined the food progression for my playing group because there isn't really a need for anything else once you have pumpkins and some chickens. Most of the time you can just eat pumpkin seeds, and for longer trips or activities like caving where you need better food you just eat chicken eggs that you have tons of because of the pumpkins. And you can farm them anywhere, any outpost or small base you build somewhere, you can just quickly make a pumpkin farm (just needs a puddle of water there) and then anyone can survive there indefinitely.
And they were way easier to get than melons, one of us just stumbled over them accidentally after a hardcore spawn (which must have been close to the outside Hardcore Spawn radius, and they happened to walk outside of it and come across some wild pumpkins). I really, really want to see them nerfed hard. :(

[EpicAaron]

I hope resurrecting this thread is okay.

Is there an update on the state of this? Would more people working on the code for this help, maybe? Or is this stuck in the design phase?

Will pumpkins also be considered? They kind of ruined the food progression for my playing group because there isn't really a need for anything else once you have pumpkins and some chickens. Most of the time you can just eat pumpkin seeds, and for longer trips or activities like caving where you need better food you just eat chicken eggs that you have tons of because of the pumpkins. And you can farm them anywhere, any outpost or small base you build somewhere, you can just quickly make a pumpkin farm (just needs a puddle of water there) and then anyone can survive there indefinitely.
And they were way easier to get than melons, one of us just stumbled over them accidentally after a hardcore spawn (which must have been close to the outside Hardcore Spawn radius, and they happened to walk outside of it and come across some wild pumpkins). I really, really want to see them nerfed hard. :(

Can you post a picture of your chicken setup? I am curious how you are keeping them and how many pumpkin plants you grow.

In my own design, I ultimately tackled this issue by requiring the gourds to have a larger footprint and take longer to grow. The design is all Sock's, based on Vintage Story's gourds.


(this is me setting the vine growth rate very high. the gourds you find in-game do not grow expand so prodigiously)

In practice, though, I accidentally just soft deleted them from the game. The official release of SBTW 1.0 is bugged and gourds will not grow at all. The plant itself grows, but the fruit die on the vine.

Playing without melons forced us to make some huge animal farms, which we operated manually to feed a server. Ham and eggs, lots of milk. Not having melons makes you confront another amazing source of food: CHOWDA!! We ate a lot of chowda by the harbor. Is harvesting melons more or less interesting at that stage of the game than fishing and keeping a cow? Probably. Fishing is a great server event, everyone gathers around and goes hard. Melons don't require you to have a cauldron, or some cows in a pasture, or to gather bait for big fishing events.

In single player (Pre-CE mind you), I got bored of fishing and never made a fishing area at spawn. Melons and hunting got me to https://sargunster.com/btw/index.php?title=Hearty_Stew hearty stew. I would survive by binge hunting and then eating a ton of melons to supplement myself during long stays at base.

Upper Man plays in consistent intervals where he begins a session on a full moon and fishes the whole night away. Then he plays for an in-game week and logs out when the next full moon starts to rise ready to fish again next time.

People that play a lot of CE should chime in and correct me, but CE tackled the problem with mashed melons. Basically, you need a saw to cut melons. Otherwise, Steve mashes the melons with his strong but clumsy fist to create a mash that you cannot extract seeds from without a hopper (saw tech). So, you can't propagate melons all that hard until you have a mechanical infrastructure set up. Once you have a saw going, though, it seems like you can enjoy melon farming as usual?


(as an aside, it is pretty amazing to have TMI with BTW. we have access to so much functionality, someone just has to sit down and implement it. imagine craft guide integration with tmi released as an official addon?! Or craft guide integrated with Sock's achievements?)

The main thing I am proud to have fixed in regards to OP gourds is the floating pumpkin issue:

Carved pumpkins should not be a free gravity block man. When I saw people building floating pumpkin fortresses on a server once, I cried out in pain!

[Blacklands]

Carved pumpkins don't only float, they also do not burn! They are being abused heavily (in my opinion) in my group right now, lol. We're sitting on so many from all the easy pumpkin farming, we're building all our markers out of them, we build bridges from them, we use them during caving in various ways (including getting over lava lakes deep down), one of us even built a house around a lava fall (for the permanent lighting) out of them...

For chickens, we ended up making a checkerboard pattern out of trapdoors on top of the grass. It prevents spiders from spawning in the chicken pen and the grass under the trapdoors doesn't die (the chickens can't eat it, but that's fine). Before that we had single fence posts, but somehow we kept coming back to all the chickens being dead and a spiderweb inside the pen telling us what happened. We never figured out if the fence posts just don't work (technically there is exactly 2 blocks of space in between them, I guess? I thought they counted as a full block as far as spawning rules are concerned, but maybe not), or if the spiders got in from the outside despite our efforts to prevent that. The pen itself is just dirt/sand walls, and fence pieces at the top to prevent spiders climbing in. Once we had a saw, we actually just made a roof entirely out of trapdoors and fence pieces to prevent anything from jumping in.
Of course skeletons, creepers and zombies still spawn in there, I don't know if there is a way to prevent that before you have permanent lighting, but it isn't really an issue. The side with the entrance has a row of trapdoors and a door so you can see inside and kill creepers safely if they're in there (the undead just burn up in the mornings).

And the pumpkins we just plant in a checkerboard pattern so that the stems aren't getting crushed by neighboring pumpkins. The pumpkins themselves can theoretically crush each other when growing, but we found that the space savings outweigh the occasional lost pumpkin from that. The first design had the stems further apart to make pumpkins crushing each other impossible, but it just wasn't worth the additional space usage. It also makes it easier to have all the farmland pieces hydrated. A handful of water source blocks is really all you need for a big pumpkin farm.
We go for like about 20-30 pumpkin plants per person, that's enough to exclusively eat pumpkin seeds while you're at your base doing stuff and also making chicken feed. For caving and long trips we eat eggs and fish (basically just fish through each full moon night, that nets like 20 fish, as long as enough bait is available).

Better food doesn't really seem required, unfortunately. All you seem to get is some inventory space savings. Maybe it's more worth it once you're wearing heavy iron armor all the time? Right now I don't even know why you would breed sheep or pigs. (Cows are different because they give leather and milk.)

As for changing pumpkins (I can't speak for melons because we don't have any):

Honestly, I don't think gating them behind tech but keeping them the same otherwise is enough. (The same would probably be true for melons.) That moves the problem further back in the tech tree, which would be an improvement of course. Tying them to e.g. a saw would also mean you at least only can use them in "major" bases where you also have a mechanical power source and all the other setup.
But they would still, as soon as you have access to them, generate virtually infinite food with no investment. Should that be part of BTW, at least before you're able to take major automation steps (like mob farms)? Right now they're basically like finding wheat, but they're far easier to find.

I feel like it would be better to change them more drastically.

I think one possible change that was already mentioned in the past (for melons) was making the seeds infertile. You can only eat them, but not plant them again. You would harvest wild stems and replant them, with no other way of generating more stems. Basically how sugarcane works now.
That means they couldn't sustain you on their own, at least unless you did a LOT of exploring and found a LOT of them. They would just be a little supplement or you would use them entirely for chicken feed. (Although it could be debated if even that is still too strong. For hemp we at least have to use shears now, and thus spend iron, to collect seeds for chicken feed from it.)

I would also not be opposed to making the seeds restore no hunger/be inedible on their own, like with hemp seeds. They could only be mixed with other food, or generate food indirectly (by making chicken feed with them).