Rebalance XP buckets

[richardhendricks]

With essence berries free to plant on ic2 sticks without breeding, XP has become super cheap early game to get. This really skews XP buckets as an easy source of many resources. This ticket is to discuss rebalancing (potentially removal) of the XP buckets mechanic for resources.

[richardhendricks]

I think there are enough ways to get gallium early game

Sphalerite dust - 72 Sphalerite dust ~ 1 gallium (RNGesus) Gallium comb from Zinc drones - Not that hard to get, drop rate isn't great but if you let them run continuously easy to get enough to pass LV. Impure zinc - available from small ores - 9 zinc impure/purified == 1 dust (guaranteed) in LV centrifuge Crushed/Purified zinc - available from small ores - 9 zinc crushed/purified == 1 dust (guaranteed) in LV Thermal Centrifuge If you get Galvania from IC2 crops, you can take 1 crushed zinc or sphalerite and turn it into 4 purified for the Thermal Centrifuge. Finding ores now is super easy, and convenient. With the orewand and seismic/hand prospector players should be able to find any ore they need without spending too much time (> 2 hours IMO).

The XP buckets + the super cheap XP berries now make it trivial to skip the nether completely for any gallium, which is not what it was intended to do IMO. I would rather the XP buckets give the Galvania leaves (1 or 9 depending on how generous you are feeling - this allows bypassing ic2 crops though, so I would prefer a lower number.) - that would allow players to expand their current resource instead of completely bypassing it, and would require additional processing in a chemical reactor.

I dunno, I do know some players like setting up infinite supply farms, but doing all that via one single pathway feels wrong.

[Teirdalin]

Well as I said in the other post; perhaps we could have a distillation for liquid exp to make another magical liquid- like magic essence, which then we can combine with different shard dusts to make different types; which then can be put through chem reactors or other machines.

For example;
liquid xp>>Distill>>Magic Essence Magic Essence Chem Bath w/ Fire Shard Dust >> Liquid Fire Essence Liquid Fire Essence >> Chem Bath with Ash >> Blaze Powder Blaze Powder >> Chem Reactor w/ Liquid Earth Essence & Liquid Fire Essence >> Blaze Rod Perhaps could even keep the idea of making basic metal resources by then using enough Liquid Earth Essence, enough magic essence, enough liquid order essence, and basic metal dust to make an additional of the basic metal dust.

i kinda would rather see liquid xp being used in machines rather than buckets; and to have a bit more processing before going right to itemization. Although I can see that being a bit more work.

Mayhaps exp berries could be disabled for crops, and mob dropped exp could be nerfed a bit if possible; perhaps even preventing automated setups from grinding xp from mobs. Then giving more purpose to the education enchant, exploring roguelikes, the xp drain, and the rod that lets you transfer out your experience. As well as giving more purpose to experience itself.

Shouldn't be too hard I'd think; just disable the killer Joe and void spikes(?).

If XP can be gotten purely via manual efforts; then that'd make it a viable quest reward too if we had a nice process that we could use to make it into something useful.

Although then this would kill liquid exp being useful early game, although maybe there could still be some steam-LV recipes for it too, such as perhaps chem bathing food berries into essence berries on a 1:1 ratio of exp value, or centrifuging it into perhaps water and solid experience dust; which then can be sifted for thaumcraft crystallized essences for magic, human, undead, beast, life and death; or tossed into an alchemical furnace for precantatio essentia.

They're also rather okay as they are now too; I mean you need a fairly decent amount to make stuff, just feels like they could have some interesting potential. Didn't realize till now that you can even use exp berries on crops.

[0lafe]

My vote is for the dust recipes to be removed then simple xp->mob drop recipes added to GT machines, but tiered well. No ender pearls til HV, stuff like that.

[richardhendricks]

What do you mean with XP->mob drops? Mob-only drops, like spider eyes or ghast tears? Or things like redstone and pistons? I'm not sure I understand.

[Teirdalin]

My vote is for the dust recipes to be removed then simple xp->mob drop recipes added to GT machines, but tiered well. No ender pearls til HV, stuff like that.

Considering the ender eyes are HV I'd think pearls could be MV if we were to go with that.

[0lafe]

What do you mean with XP->mob drops? Mob-only drops, like spider eyes or ghast tears? Or things like redstone and pistons? I'm not sure I understand.

More like spider eyes and rotten flesh. Vanilla mob drops, not like infernal stuff.

Considering the ender eyes are HV I'd think pearls could be MV if we were to go with that.

Maybe, I was thinking HV because the end is HV and a lotta e pearls there. People do sorta cheese it with endermen in smelteries anyway though so MVs fine

[richardhendricks]

It is something we definitely need to look at for 3.0.

[0lafe]

What about removing the current recipes? Where we landing on changing those

[Teirdalin]

I'm pretty neutral with current recipes if not doing anything that major. Honestly I think I'm the only one over on prospercraft that really does anything with liquid xp; and that's just because I don't feel like voiding all of it. lol

[Lainiel]

If you're gonna change gallium from liquid XP then add at least some good source for the higher tier players. I'm fine with preventing people from skipping nether with XP berries, but getting enough gallium from bauxite is annoying.

You need about: 0.44 gallium for quantum EV circuit 0.88 gallium for quantum IV circuit 1.75 gallium for quantum LuV circuit 3.5 gallium for quantum ZPM circuit

Just for assembly line machine casing you need 90 ZPM circuits and 15 LuV circuits so that's 342 gallium. You get on average 1 gallium from 5 bauxite ore, so you need to mine about 1710 bauxite ore just to get enough.

[0lafe]

That's like 1-2 veins for the assembly line, that's not too bad. It used to be 3 veins of emeralds, but I'd take this over that any day. There's a source for higher tier players already, T6 planets have pure gallium ore. There's also bees that give a decent amount, and crops. UU is also a semi viable alternative at that point.

[Dream-Master]

I vote for let the poor mans uu mater in. Maybe we can adjust values. And xp berry bushes are disabled only via crop sticks which is harder as it was before.

[Teirdalin]

How much liquid xp is a level anyways if anyone knows?

I'm fine with exp crops being disabled; with mechanics like this it seems a bit much to have it that easy to get free infinite experience.

[Dream-Master]

nah not really. The crops growing very slow .It's not that big issue.

[Dream-Master]

Quest are reduce the reward by 50% on ore berries so i guess it is less an issue now. Filling a tank with xp and use buckets (not stackable) to craft a tiny pile of gallium is very tedious and not op.

[0lafe]

Except you can breed them and get more sort of easily, and all you need is a Steve's cart, ExU transfer node, or any of the pre AE ways of autocracting. Now you have all the gallium you could want.

[Dream-Master]

ae is EV so not a big deal. I dont see a real balancing issue. If you have a better idea how to balance go ahead but i want some xp recipes in the pack. @0lafe