Passive Mob Staying Power

[SterlingRed]

This is a little more detailed than many suggestions, as I'm sort of directly proposing a fix to a problem rather than just discussing it but I have no ability to code nor time to learn so I can't develop my own add on. CE authors and add on authors feel free to blatantly use this, the ideas, or ignore it if you prefer!

The Problem: Two nights in any given place devastates the local passive mobs with the exception of cows to pretty much zero. It makes trips to find specific resources like sugarcane, clay, etc devastating to the players potential future to survive in that area and combined with hardcore spawn, it can be brutal. As the player learns to survive, they're continually punished by previous deaths as a result of the depletion of food sources. It makes domesticating mobs later harder and many players fix it by refusing to explore in a particular direction to preserve the passive mobs in that area. This I feel is gimicky and bad behavior for the game to drive. I feel we should be encouraged to explore, not discouraged to explore. In an effort to find a happy medium between infinitely respawning passive mobs and mass genocide simply by Steve's presence, I have the following suggested changes to the early game. These attempt to keep roughly the same difficulty as we have now, but give the player more options and things to do early game.

- Increase the run speed of pigs and sheep to be faster than zombies. This greatly improves their ability to survive nights, while making them harder for the player to kill as a trade off. Cows already have a defense mechanism so they remain unchanged.
- Double the health of all passive mobs except chickens.
- Remove the ability for passive mobs to follow player held grass. This is to fix an exploit where you can lead a herd of cows into a hole and suffocate the whole lot without having to actually hunt them.
- When killed, pigs, sheep, and cows produce a carcass block (thanks epicaaron for this idea). Carcass' can be carved with sharp stones like webs.
- Cow Carcass. Yields leather, 5-8 raw beef, and a random chance at yielding a new item sinew. All resources should break down in stages and take a significant time to carve like webs. I intend for a carcass to take multiple days to completely harvest.
- Sheep Carcass. Carve to produce wool, 2-4 raw mutton.
- Pig Carcass. Carve to produce 3-5 raw pork.
- Add a 3rd growth stage to pigs where they turn into wild bores.
- Wild bores - break dirt blocks into piles, have tusks and cause damage to anything that attacks them without knockback. They are aggressive toward zombies and the player. Have similar health to cows. The intent is that this mob has the most staying power in the game and is most likely the mob the player will encounter for the longest time period in a given area.
- Wild Bore Carcass - Carving yields tusks, sinew, ~6 raw pork.
- Spiders and wolves feed on carcasses at night
- Carcasses have a chance to decay and loose stages overnight.

All of this means the player is now dependent on chickens for meat early game, which reduces the potential for string as spiders catch chickens. The following are suggestions to balance that impact.
- Half the damage to stone axes when used on logs.
- Add a fish trap made with string/sinew, stone, stick, wicker. (sockthing is playing with this idea too). This is a passive trap placeable underwater intended to catch fish slowly in smaller bodies of water than normal fishing requires. This is intended to provide the player with a passive food source. The trap can only hold 1 fish at a time and I expect the rate to be roughly 1/day.
- Bows require sinew, and cannot be made with string. Skeleton bows still provide string.
- Tusks can be crafted into a helmet using 2 tusks, leather, and string and it has the thorn 1 enchantment automatically.

Overall this creates an incentive for players to use skeleton dropped bows, extends the passive mobs time on the map, encourages the player to engage in hunting animals using terrain to their advantage and adds potential gameplay mechanics around protecting a carcass from mobs at night. It makes the world more interesting and feel more alive. Obviously the balance would need extensive play testing. The intent is that killing a passive mob takes more time, but yields enough meat to make it worthwhile.

I might add to this some more as I think about it more / get feedback from others. Thoughts?