Making arcane scrolls

[Horizon]

I, personally, think it would be interesting to be able to, instead of (or, in addition to) keeping a mob farm to farm the scrolls, you could put an arcane scroll and a piece of paper into the arcane enchanter, and turn the paper into a scroll without spending the first one. Naturally this would require a lot of xp, enough to make the player wonder if this was the better choice, morally speaking. I think it might add a bit of moral conflict to the mod. Either slaughter monsters and villagers by the hundereds to get a steady supply of scrolls, or slaughter monsters by the thousands to do the same.

[Awfulcopter]

I, personally, think it would be interesting to be able to, instead of (or, in addition to) keeping a mob farm to farm the scrolls, you could put an arcane scroll and a piece of paper into the arcane enchanter, and turn the paper into a scroll without spending the first one. Naturally this would require a lot of xp, enough to make the player wonder if this was the better choice, morally speaking. I think it might add a bit of moral conflict to the mod. Either slaughter monsters and villagers by the hundereds to get a steady supply of scrolls, or slaughter monsters by the thousands to do the same.

Getting one lucky drop would oblivate the need to build a farm to collect that kind of monster forever more. I think FC would call that a bad result.

[BinoAl]

Requiring another scroll to begin with would balance it a bit more, but idk. I like the balance as it is now, I don't feel like we need another way to get scrolls

[Horizon]

But, you aren't reading the whole thing. You still need a massive monster farm, arguably a bigger one, to get the same output, because you need shit tons of xp. Also, you could still go with the other path. This is simply another path you could take.

[BinoAl]

But, you aren't reading the whole thing. You still need a massive monster farm, arguably a bigger one, to get the same output, because you need shit tons of xp. Also, you could still go with the other path. This is simply another path you could take.

So then what's the point? The other path would make things a bit too easy

[Rianaru]

I think it would probably be better to wait until FlowerChild impliments mining scrolls, if only because there might be a system like this that he has in mind for obtaining them. Your suggestion is interesting, as it would still require a large volume mobtrap to replicate the scrolls.
On the other hand, looting(which is the one I assume you mean in particular, since it's the only one that we have to kill villagers to obtain) is less valuable as an enchantment because any extra drops that we would get from it would be made insignificant by having even a decent-sized mob trap, unless you wanted to make your mob trap manual, which I don't really see the point of since the introduction of dragon orbs.
But, as I said before, my stance is wait and see what FlowerChild does.

[Awfulcopter]

But, you aren't reading the whole thing. You still need a massive monster farm, arguably a bigger one, to get the same output, because you need shit tons of xp. Also, you could still go with the other path. This is simply another path you could take.

You need one monster farm, to collect a resource shared by all monsters (exp).

I think the main point of arcane scrolls was to make it so you wanted to build a mob farm for each individual monster type: nether farms, ender farms, water based squiddy farms.

[FlowerChild]

But, you aren't reading the whole thing. You still need a massive monster farm, arguably a bigger one, to get the same output, because you need shit tons of xp. Also, you could still go with the other path. This is simply another path you could take.

Yes, but it decreases the variety of mob-farms that you need to maintain/make effecient/whatever.

One of the interesting parts of mob-farms is that there are several different varieties and you need to tailor them to what you're trying to do. A single design doesn't work for all mobs, or all environments.

What you're suggesting would mean that the player would only need a single main one for XP production, and inefficient ones for the other mob-types to get a single scroll off of each.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and I don't see what be broke enough here to warrant this suggestion.

[Rianaru]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and I don't see what be broke enough here to warrant this suggestion.

I think he's going off of the morality discussion from earlier about having a harder 'good' path and an easier 'evil path'. Since he mentioned killing villagers, I would imagine that he wants to replicate the looting scroll without killing villagers all the time. I definitely agree with you, FlowerChild, just trying to explain what I think his though process behind this is.

[ExpHP]

But, you aren't reading the whole thing. You still need a massive monster farm, arguably a bigger one, to get the same output, because you need shit tons of xp.

There's already plenty of incentive to have a massive XP farm. Most people will likely still build one regardless of whether or not it will save them from having to build a Villager farm capable of producing multiple scrolls.

(four times Ninja'd)

[Sarudak]

I think he's going off of the morality discussion from earlier about having a harder 'good' path and an easier 'evil path'. Since he mentioned killing villagers, I would imagine that he wants to replicate the looting scroll without killing villagers all the time. I definitely agree with you, FlowerChild, just trying to explain what I think his though process behind this is.

But it's OK! I only had to massacare masses of villagers ONCE! It's not like I'm doing it over and over again continually. Come on guys! What's the big deal??

[FlowerChild]

Oh, and one point I forgot about mob-traps above:

The need to DEFEND multiple traps.

Building mob-traps in SMP, which by their nature are very large constructions, is a whole other ball-game. Me providing a way around having to defend a variety of them would just be plain bad design.

[Horizon]

That is an accurate representation of what my thought process was. And this requires a shit ton more xp to do. You may already have a decent xp farm, but if you want to be able to make scrolls while also using them, you'll need a monster of an xp farm. One that is really massive. As in, hard to hide. It's like either hiding 5 rocks, each a cubic meter, or a single rock that's 8 cubic meters.

[Itamarcu]

Oh, and one point I forgot about mob-traps above:

The need to DEFEND multiple traps.

Building mob-traps in SMP, which by their nature are very large constructions, is a whole other ball-game. Me providing a way around having to defend a variety of them would just be plain bad design.

Just a question -
Why would any player try to destroy another one's mob trap? Stealing sounds more plausible. Damaging a mob trap will only cause lag and stop the opposing player from earning some EXP.

[BinoAl]

That is an accurate representation of what my thought process was. And this requires a shit ton more xp to do. You may already have a decent xp farm, but if you want to be able to make scrolls while also using them, you'll need a monster of an xp farm. One that is really massive. As in, hard to hide. It would take about 20-odd mountains to cover it up in an inconspicuous way.

You still haven't addressed the issue of needing multiple different types of mob trap being a balancing factor

[Rianaru]

That is an accurate representation of what my thought process was. And this requires a shit ton more xp to do. You may already have a decent xp farm, but if you want to be able to make scrolls while also using them, you'll need a monster of an xp farm. One that is really massive. As in, hard to hide. It would take about 20-odd mountains to cover it up in an inconspicuous way.

Or you could dig it into the ground under a mountain, which would give you 100+ blocks of vertical space to use. I'm surprised that no one mentioned this, because it would be relatively easy to hide that way.

[FlowerChild]

Just a question -
Why would any player try to destroy another one's mob trap? Stealing sounds more plausible. Damaging a mob trap will only cause lag and stop the opposing player from earning some EXP.

Stealing a mob-trap puts you in the position of basically having a base in a known location. It's not something you can pick up and take with you. Destroying one (or at least messing with its internals, which is mostly what I've run into in anarchy since completely removing it would be incredibly time intensive) deprives an opponent of a steady flow of resources.

If the mob-trap isn't worth having, then it wasn't worth putting all the work into building in the first place, and wouldn't exist.

Anyways, this has run its course. Let the blissful silence redescend.