I think that Steel and the Composite Bow is overpowered.

[dyrewulf]

This is just my opinion, but I don't think how you stack up against any individual mob is really at issue, even with vMC. What steel may allow however, in terms of combat, is for you to go deeper into caves or on long night journeys, without the constant necessity to change out your armor and weapons. I never bother with diamond armor because it's relatively worthless for protection, the cost in diamonds to replace it is in no way justified for how quickly it degrades. I've yet to really use steel weapons/armor because I'm in a building phase and have been playing peaceful lately, but just in terms of the ability to re-forge it, and the fact the armor is more durable, to me makes a big improvement to what I consider a mostly broken system with vMC.

As for tool usage, I'm always a bit depressed when I see my diamond tools degrading and know that I'll need to burn some more to make new tools. As long as BTW (eventually), or other mods (buildcraft is a great one for this), give us other uses for diamonds, I see no issue with steel as the primary tool material. And always there is the ability to choose. If you think steel is overpowered, you don't need to use it, I see no need to nerf it for the sake of perceived imbalance.

[KriiEiter]

Honestly I can't see composite bows or broadhead arrows to be overpowered other than maybe adjusting the 1.5x to 1.25x range so there's a small chance skeletons can still get in range of you.

But what you guys are missing out on is the fact that once you have a mob trap, or hell, even a skeleton dungeon trap, you have an unlimited supply of arrows.

On the opposite spectrum you must dig for all your iron, get your hellfire dust, coal dust, a crucible, and hibachis, and then forge your steel. But wait you're not done, now you have to make an anvil and some hafts which requires a cauldron. All of that just to use up your steel, which has much better uses than broadhead arrows, to make a few of the things.

Did I mention that you get INFINITE arrows from a mobtrap?

On a sidenote, FC has already said that he plans to use diamonds in Lens crafting.

[emmasteadman]

Steel isn't overpowered. You simply drop diamond when you get steel the same way you drop stone when you obtain iron...it's no different, simply the next step up.
I don't find it OP at all....it still takes quite a while to chip away at obsidian for example to get a block. By your definition you could call Iron OP too because you no longer use stone tools...but do you cry about that?

[kegan187]

Hey guys, just doing a quick stop-by, but I wanted to ask one thing about this thread:

I can get why folks consider Steel to be overpowered (even if I don't agree), but wanted to ask why the Composite Bow was brought into this discussion.

All the bow does is extend the range to 1.5X that of a regular bow. Not sure why anyone would argue that as being overpowered.

I do not think the bow itself it overpowered, I think the BroadHead Arrows it fires are overpowered as you can kill monsters in 2 hits.

[kegan187]

Steel isn't overpowered. You simply drop diamond when you get steel the same way you drop stone when you obtain iron...it's no different, simply the next step up.
I don't find it OP at all....it still takes quite a while to chip away at obsidian for example to get a block. By your definition you could call Iron OP too because you no longer use stone tools...but do you cry about that?

I rarely use iron tools. I only use them if I find ores like gold and diamond. For basic mining, I use stone.

[Stormweaver]

Steel isn't overpowered. You simply drop diamond when you get steel the same way you drop stone when you obtain iron...it's no different, simply the next step up.
I don't find it OP at all....it still takes quite a while to chip away at obsidian for example to get a block. By your definition you could call Iron OP too because you no longer use stone tools...but do you cry about that?

I rarely use iron tools. I only use them if I find ores like gold and diamond. For basic mining, I use stone.

Shouldn't that be 'used'? Now that BTW has a crucible, there is no reason not to make iron tools, and simply save them just before breaking to recycle the iron.

Pre-crucibleinBTW though, I'd be agreeing. Used to mine everything with stone >.<

[kegan187]

By the time you have all the tech-tree items, however, you will likely have diamond.

Yes, I know you are likely to have diamond by the time you have reached the level in the tech-tree where you can make steel. What I am saying is that, when you do reach that level, you basically don't even need diamond anymore. In fact, I have not used diamond since I first acquired steel.

And how often did you use iron tools after you got diamond ones?

For me? Never.

For me, it depends on what I am doing. If I am mining something useless like a quarry, I use stone. If I am mining out a space for something that will benefit me, like an underground factory, I use either iron, diamond, or steel. If I am exploring a cave system and mining everything in it, I use iron.

[Camerinthus]

I never got mining with stone tools. You get enough iron to make more iron tools faster than you use up the iron you get, so it's a net gain.

[gftweek]

Sometimes, depends on your luck and mining style. It wasn't necessarily true before the ore density was increased though. Once I get steel though, there is no going back, it's recyclable so the only thing you lose is the haft materials, which are all renewable, unlike diamonds.

[Damion Rayne]

I'll just make a quick point here,

Considering the amount of work you need to put into the creation both of the items you are saying are overpowered, I'd say they are more the worth it and balanced well enough against everything else in vMC and the mod.

[Xecaquan]

Not sure I understand when people say Steel tools are over powered. In my observations the tools themselves are the same speed on everything besides redstone. They just have a higher durability. As far as the axe/sword and you thinking the mobs are too easy, up the the difficulty to hard. The mobs hit harder and have more health, or even play with another mod that adds a bit more life to the types and abilities of mobs.

I generally play with Mo' Creatures myself, if you don't like that one there are a lot of others out there.

BTW adds a lot of "life" to the user side (blocks, machines etc) of vMC, to balance that you need to add life to the mob side as well to make the whole game feel in balance.

As a side note on the new arrows.... 4 arrows to 1 reinforced iron! That isn't cheap, hell I never make them for that reason alone. I do however love the new bow it really makes fighting the ghasts in the nether a bit easier.

[FlowerChild]

As a side note on the new arrows.... 4 arrows to 1 reinforced iron! That isn't cheap, hell I never make them for that reason alone. I do however love the new bow it really makes fighting the ghasts in the nether a bit easier.

It's actually 16 Broadhead arrows to one piece of steel. You get 4 arrow-heads for 1 steel, and each arrow head can be used to make 4 arrows (just like with flint). Also you get 4 pieces of steel per 3 pieces of iron, meaning you actually get around 21 arrows per piece of iron used.

Since you actually lose iron through using broadhead arrows, I wanted to make sure it was at least worth the price. I may tweak the recipe further in the future, but right now it feels about right to me where I still want to use them, but I know it is costing me.

[Xecaquan]

It's actually 16 Broadhead arrows to one piece of steel. You get 4 arrow-heads for 1 steel, and each arrow head can be used to make 4 arrows (just like with flint). Also you get 4 pieces of steel per 3 pieces of iron, meaning you actually get around 21 arrows per piece of iron used.

Ah yes, forgot about that part. Still I seem to go through a stack of normal arrows way to fast myself to justify using the new arrows normally, just a personal choice. I am not complaining about the number of or power of the arrows. I just rather keep all the steel I can until we see what is to come and how the resources play out. Heck, I haven't even made any of the new armor, since I play on hard and never wear armor anyway. Just carry lots of donuts <grin>

[Urian]

The cost for the arrows is fine with 1.7.3, if it should be changed (be it to more or less expensive) with 1.8 and the increase in damage to normal arrows so you can now 2-shot most mobs (on easy at least) with vanilla arrows remains to be seen. I like having something more powerful at my disposal and the cost makes it better since I've got several double chests full of normal arrows anyway so firing them costs me nothing.

[FlowerChild]

The cost for the arrows is fine with 1.7.3, if it should be changed (be it to more or less expensive) with 1.8 and the increase in damage to normal arrows so you can now 2-shot most mobs (on easy at least) with vanilla arrows remains to be seen. I like having something more powerful at my disposal and the cost makes it better since I've got several double chests full of normal arrows anyway so firing them costs me nothing.

Yeah, that sense of cost was one of the things I was trying to achieve with the Broadheads. In restarting from scratch a few times when balancing and such, I realized that I liked the early element of feeling the need to conserve ammunition when you're still creating your own arrows instead of just grabbing a new stack from your mob-trap whenever you like.

So I decided to create a new type of ammunition to hopefully restore some of that sensation.

[Waughoo]

Is there any possibility of making a quick change for which arrow you are going to fire next? Normal arrows are fine 90% of the time for me, but if things start getting crowded then switching to broad heads would be great.

[Urian]

Is there any possibility of making a quick change for which arrow you are going to fire next? Normal arrows are fine 90% of the time for me, but if things start getting crowded then switching to broad heads would be great.

Can normal bows fire broadhed arrows? If not you could simply have two bows on your hotbar and switch between them. (I'm on a mini vacation and have only my phone so I can't test it myself)

[Waughoo]

Is there any possibility of making a quick change for which arrow you are going to fire next? Normal arrows are fine 90% of the time for me, but if things start getting crowded then switching to broad heads would be great.

Can normal bows fire broadhed arrows? If not you could simply have two bows on your hotbar and switch between them. (I'm on a mini vacation and have only my phone so I can't test it myself)

Yeah, you're right. But you'd think you would be able to fire any arrow from any bow.

[Deepsniper]

No actually because of the way the coding works its actually pretty tough to have it fire any arrow...
Currently I am trying to figure that one out myself with my coding and every time i come to the same conclusion of modifying the dreadful inventory GUI stuff...

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, you're right. But you'd think you would be able to fire any arrow from any bow.

That's not necessarily true. Heavier arrows require heavier pull on a bow to be able to be fired effectively. I intend to explain as much in the item description for the Composite Bow (and typically, Composite Bows have higher pull for the same size of bow). Broadheads are one of the heaviest kinds of arrows that were in use during the middle ages, and I believe they were typically fired from longbows as a result.

Also, it's easy enough for me to have a regular bow fire any kind of arrow (not sure what the guy is talking about above in saying it's difficult), but it would require me to modify an additional base-class which I'd prefer not to have to do, especially since the Composite Bow is much lower in the tech-tree than Broadhead Arrows, and you only really need to ever make one.

It would seem rather rediculous for me to modify a base-class then to allow something which will probably hardly ever be used (on the contrary, as is it actually gives you the ability to switch between arrow types), and which does have *some* real-world justification as I describe above.

[Deepsniper]

Also, it's easy enough for me to have a regular bow fire any kind of arrow (not sure what the guy is talking about above in saying it's difficult),

Thanks for bursting my bubble XD I guess i'm just looking at it in a really bad way then... And am now going to be quiet...

[FlowerChild]

Thanks for bursting my bubble XD I guess i'm just looking at it in a really bad way then... And am now going to be quiet...

Well, I don`t normally discuss programming details, but if memory serves me correctly, you just have to modify the ItemBow.class to search your inventory for other types of ammo and fire it if present in the same section that checks for regular arrows.

That may all change with 1.8 however given the changes coming to the bow, but I don`t think it`s much harder than that. I checked it over when I created the broadheads to see what I`d need to do to change it, and I believe I just copy/pasted the regular bow code for the composite one, so I don't see why the above wouldn't work for a regular bow as well.

[Deepsniper]

Thanks FC :) I see what you mean now...

[danielngtiger]

I can see where you are going with this, but I view it more as an upgrade earned through the work required to get to the point of steel. Take, for instance, waterwheels. They are much better than windmills or hand cranks for mechanical power, not requiring nearly as much space, not needing to be outside, and not breaking under extreme weather, but they are not considered to be overpowered. They are a reward for progressing far enough up the tech tree to be able to make them.

Most of this has already been said, but I decided it was worth posting.

[darahalian]

That's not necessarily true. Heavier arrows require heavier pull on a bow to be able to be fired effectively. I intend to explain as much in the item description for the Composite Bow (and typically, Composite Bows have higher pull for the same size of bow). Broadheads are one of the heaviest kinds of arrows that were in use during the middle ages, and I believe they were typically fired from longbows as a result.

I don't want to turn this into a suggestion thread, but maybe since the broadhead arrows are heavier, they will only fly as far as arrows shot from the regular bow, while the normal arrows when shot from the Composite bow will still fly as far as they do now. I think this might help some with the balancing aspect that some people are worried about, and it would make sense.

Coding this on the other hand might be too difficult to really make it worthwhile, but if it's not too hard, I think this would be a good change.