Cruuk
commented
2 years ago It's ok, but it doesn't exactly sound like "Creation" to me. It's very taming-centric, almost "Faunamancy" (this sentence is speculation, but fauna means animal, and -mancy means manipulation of an element, so you can't blame my speculation). Being able to tame so many mobs seems like a balance hassle, because mob abilities have to now keep player assistance in mind, limiting them.
What I thought Creation should be is have it associated with a Horse-esque breeding/creation system similar to Pokemon/Chao garden. Where through breeding and/or putting items in some sort of artificial creation device, you'd be able to create chimera-esque mobs with varying stats and specializations based on the variables/items used to create them
Creation Recreated
AoA has made great progress with the skill update, with only a few skills like creation currently unimplemented. A while ago I made a suggestion for the hauling skill that surprisingly had some parts of it accepted into the mod. Creation, like Hauling, has a massive amount of potential as a skill as it could pair extremely well with the mod's exploration and combat given an upgrade. Thus, I decided to make another GitHub post in hopes of helping give some ideas for future development.
I created this post with inspiration from the "Advent of Ascension Skills" document that was created, namely the line "What if Creation for example was changed so that instead of being focussed on summoning minions, it was instead focussed on taming hostile mobs and augmenting them with abilities and sending them to do your bidding?" As noted in the document, this was just an example of what the skill could be, and not necessarily planned. However, I would like to present a fleshed out example of this idea so that it might fit well into the mod.
While I tried to be very specific in how things might be implemented, this will naturally be a very broad suggestion and thus might be a bit more theory focused. It's also probably going to be extremely difficult to implement compared to adding some fish, as new AI systems may have to be implemented for minions. I know that Xolova implemented many enemies to use their abilities (like projectiles shot from a flying mob) specifically against the nearest player rather than their target, and things like this will have to be remade to suit other mobs as well. I hope this is something that could become more viable as mobs are redone (in fact, creation could be partially implemented and become more encompassing as mobs are remade), but currently some aspects of the suggestion may end up unreasonable during actual programming. Also note that all statistic stuff is theoretical and might require a bit of balancing, though I tried to make numbers reasonable.
I'm also sure you already have plans for creation, likely ones that might fit even better in the mod while not bogging down development time. I'm just throwing out these ideas in case any parts of them can help with the ones you have. Feel free to use as little of this or as much of this as you would like as you implement the skill.
With that, here's the suggestion.
Mob Taming
Creation is, first of all, reimplemented not as a summoning but as a taming skill. This involves being able to tame practically every enemy/neutral mob in the mod. Obviously, some mobs are going to be left out of this like the Destructor and bosses (plus enemies that don't work as minions, like the Alarmo). Any mobs that can't be sufficiently balanced as a minion should be left out, but I tried to make a system that supports as many mobs as possible without being so much of a hassle to implement.
While taming may still seem like a tough addition to create and balance, the amount of depth brought to the skill is staggering. Taming has the possibility to synergize with the exploration aspect of the mod by pushing the player to catch all new mobs and see how they can help as minions. It adds to the combat aspect by adding a whole element of party composition to combat, where minions often help in more unique ways based on the abilities they normally use on the player. Creation gradually becomes even more interesting as mobs might be updated and it comes at no cost of making specific minions for the player. Plus, you can tame your favorite mob (obviously the most important part).
Taming: Taming works like it does in vanilla Minecraft where the player uses items on an enemy and has a chance to tame with each one. If the player has high enough creation skill to tame a mob, and they also have the item to tame them with in their hand, then a hostile mob will stop attacking and look at them (any minions the player has will not attack a mob being tamed). If they are able to successfully give enough of the item the mob wants, then they will become tamed and follow the player as expected. The mob will follow the player around, battle mobs that the player has hit or were hit by, and use any abilities or special AI they have to make them a properly unique companion.
The materials and the number of materials used to tame mobs would be different between them. They should be something at least thematically related and often from the same dimension, such as power cores for Enforcers (something they might use as fuel), darkly powder for Stalkers (something that might help them hide), or Coral Stones for Mermages (something that might have some magical significance). This adds some nice value to mob drops and ores for people interested in taming mobs, while not relying on a specific set of items that will become far too scarce to tame with. The item used to tame a mob could be part of the Bestiary, as well as the taming tier they are in, as small statistics in the corner of their window. A nice feature could be that there's less items required to tame if a mob is a low health, after the player has proved themself against it through combat.
This is something that may end up having to be programmed per mob, but for simplicity mobs should simply follow the player like a wolf (teleporting when too far away) and, when targeting a new enemy, attack that enemy as if they were targeting a player. If not too difficult to program, mobs could also be told to sit with an empty hand.
If a mob is tamed, they should benefit from tablets to give some extra value to them in single player.
This leads to many fun companions to fight with, like: An Angelica that levitates up enemies for you to shoot down, A Stimulosus you have to maintain the health of for maximum damage, An ice giant who wields a powerful (yet dangerous to the player) frost breath that freezes multiple enemies at once, and much, much more across all of the mobs that may be given unique behaviors with future updates.
Mob Tiers: Every mob in the mod has a "taming tier" they are within. and they can only be tamed if the player has reached a threshold to tame their tier in the skill. These include Taming Tier 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. By default, every mob is of the same taming tier its dimension plus 1, so a Goblin is considered taming tier 1 from a tier 0 dimension and an Arcworm is considered taming tier 5 from a tier 4 dimension. Enemies that are particularly weak, such as a Nipper in the deeplands, are specifically a taming tier lower than their dimension (thus a Nipper is tier 1 instead of 2). An enemy that is much stronger than those around them, perhaps the Stimulosus for example due to its crazy strength effect and boosted stats, are upgraded one taming tier (so the Stimulosus is one of the only taming tier 6 enemies). Especially powerful enemies like the miniboss ice and forest giants, may be upgraded 2 or even 3 tiers from their base dimension (whichever taming tier it feels they belong). This system allows some progression to catch new and stronger companions, yet it isn't as difficult to balance or implement as setting specific level requirements for every single mob.
Skill Thresholds The player is able to tame taming tier 1 mobs by default. They are able to tame: Taming Tier 2 mobs at level 10 creation Taming Tier 3 mobs at level 30 creation Taming Tier 4 mobs at level 50 creation Taming Tier 5 mobs at level 70 creation Taming Tier 6 mobs at level 85 creation
If tier 5 dimensions are added in the distant future and there's some elite mob that feels like it should be taming tier 7, it could still be tameable at tier 6's threshold anyway but perhaps require extra steps to tame.
Old Minions The minions that existed in old versions had some fun designs, but most of them could serve in the new mod as neutral and peaceful mobs in dimensions (something that many dimensions currently lack). The Penguin for example, could be a peaceful snow biome animal that drops snow and fish when killed, and the construct of servility could wander around Crystevia structures to tend to them (perhaps getting angered if the player vandalizes structure blocks). However, these mobs would be able to fight if they are tamed (other than the ender carrier), and like normal mobs they would have a preferred item and a taming tier required to gain them as companions.
XP Old creation was not very fun to train, just grinding for the materials of minion slab and holding down right click on a block. This version of creation will have quite a few more ways to train however, providing a blend of active training and passive training that hopefully encourages interesting gameplay.
The player receives a large amount of experience by taming a mob, with the amount of experience increasing based on the mob's taming tier (incentivizing the player to explore tougher dimensions). This pushes the player to, in regards to the many mobs across the mod's dimensions, catch 'em all (maybe there could even be an advancement for this). If feasible to program, the player would gain much more experience taming mobs they've never caught before. This would probably be implemented by keeping track of a list of tamed mobs, but such a list would be reset if the player cycles their skill.
The player receives a fair amount of experience by using a phylactery on a minion (discussed later). The player also receives a very gradual amount of experience by having a phylactery minion out.
The player receives a small amount of experience by having a minion attack an enemy and having a minion being attacked, incentivizing the player to train by having a minion in combat.
If a minion defeats an enemy, the player gains a good boost to creation XP (with a formula similar to that used by Innervation applied to the slain enemy).
Creation can be cycled like other skills. Cycling does not affect the tamed status of already tamed creatures, only affecting whether or not new creatures can be tamed.
Creation Abilities
Being able to tame new mobs are not the only things that leveling creation gives the player access to. Creation gives the player access to new tools as they advance in the skill, as well as empowered abilities. The following shows the full list of creation abilities at each level.
Pet Health Boost: This allows the player's pet to gain +0.40% extra maximum health per level, giving extra life for the player's pets so they can get an edge against similarly powered mobs.
Pet Regeneration: This allows the player's pet to gain a static rate of regeneration equal to the Regeneration 1 effect, allowing pets to recover their wound's between fights. At level 42, this increases to double the rate of regeneration as if they had Regeneration 2, supporting the tougher mobs the player may have tamed by this point.
Phylacteries: Previously, a pet who reached 0 health would die forever as normal for Minecraft mobs. However, this isn't suitable for the combat pets who the player will taming throughout their journey, and a system like this pushes the player to avoid bringing their companions into combat fearing they may die. It makes melee pets useless compared to the safer ranged ones, and honestly its just unfun to see your pet you put so much time into taming going away permanently because something snuck up on it. Not only this, but it's quite a drag to push pet's into portals and have to carry them all over the dimensions they walk through. The solution to this fatal flaw is the Phylactery item unlocked for crafting at level 15 of Creation.
These items are crafted in an imbuing table by imbuing a diamond with 3 emerald, 1 jade, and 1 runium chunk for an empty Phylactery (designed to use mostly uncommon vanilla materials so it doesn't get annoying to make a large number of these). The player can take this empty phylactery and right click any tamed mob with it to capture that mob inside. Then, the player can use the phylactery to throw the mob's essence like a projectile, respawning the mob at full health where the projectile lands. The phylactery is left in the player's inventory as an empty phylactery still linked to that mob, which will recapture that mob if right clicked anywhere or automatically recapture that mob if the mob is killed. If the mob dies, then the phylactery will be unusable for 180 seconds. If the mob is recaptured, then the phylactery is only unusable for 180 seconds times the percentage of health missing from the mob (being immediately usable again when recaptured at full health and effectively having a 180 second cooldown if the mob was at 1% health). This recharging time can be shown with a durability bar on the item, starting from zero and reaching full durability when its cooldown ends.
When the player mouses over a Phylactery in the inventory, they will see the name of the type of mob they have as well as any nametag that may be applied to them. These items can also be enchanted with intervention to prevent them from being lost on death. If possible, Phylacteries could be colored with dyes to help the player keep track of which phylactery is which, but more importantly have an inventory sprite for being empty but linked to a mob, a sprite for containing a mob but recharging, and a sprite for being full and having a mob.
Phylacteries have one downside compared to just throwing tamed mobs at enemies, which is that the player has a limit on the number of phylactery-based mobs out at a time. For every tameable tier a mob has, they essentially have that many of points they take to have summoned. The player has a total amount of available points equal to double their current taming tier level number (for example the player would have 12 points at level 85 creation, allowing the summoning of 2 Stimulosuses or 4 Flowerfaces). This could be shown in the skill menu through some bar, or perhaps just through messages saying the player has reached their summon limit (with information on what their summon limit is and the cost of what they are summoning). When a minion is taken back into the Phylactery due to be reduced to 0 health (but not when taken back in manually), the points that were used to have that pet summoned are locked until the cooldown on that minion's phylactery is over (done to prevent the player from just throwing another wave of minions at the opponent after their old ones are defeated, which would end up a bit overpowered). In addition to limiting the classic penguin swarm strategy of the mod's old days, this is designed to add some strategy to what group of minions the player brings with them and give value to lower tier minions even in the later game.
When the player dies, all points are cleared up and all phylactery minions despawn.
Pet Upgrades: After storing their favorite pets in Phylacteries, the player can upgrade them with special modifiers when they reach high enough level. Each pet has an upgrade for 0 slots at first, but they gain up to three slots by level 91. They could be applied in an imbuing table with special recipes for each upgrade if it is possible to keep the Phylactery's metadata. Otherwise, these could be applied as permanent bonuses to the mobs themselves by using it on them outside of phylacteries. Upgrades are designed to be suitable for any or most types of mobs at once so that they aren't difficult to implement. A same upgrade can be applied multiple times as well.
Here are the types of upgrades:
Armor Upgrade: Crafted with 4 Baronyte, 4 Armor Plating, and a Dense Rock. This upgrade increases a minion's armor stat by 5 points and armor toughness by 2 points.
Power Upgrade: Crafted with 4 Bloodstone, 4 Crystallite, and 1 Blazium Ingot. This upgrade permanently boosts a minion's melee damage by 15% per level. If conceivable to implement, this could also affect ranged damage or any kinds of special attacks.
Speed Upgrade: Crafted with 4 Elecanium, 4 Mystite, and 1 Power Core. This upgrade boosts a minion's walking speed by 30% per level.
Death Explosion Upgrade: Crafted with 4 Ornamyte, 4 Unstable Gunpowder, and 1 Confetti Pile. When a minion with this upgrade dies, it releases a strong, non-block-breaking explosion against all nearby mobs based on its max health. The power of the explosion is boosted with more of this upgrade added.
Deathless Upgrade: Crafted with 4 Darkly Powder, 4 Ghastly Ingots, and 1 Zhinx Dust. When a minion with this upgrade is put back into their Phylactery, they have a stacking 25% reduction in cooldown before they can be used again (multiplicative, so 75% at level one, ~56% at level 2, and ~42% at level 3.
Radiant Upgrade: Crafted with 4 Flammable Dust, 4 Glowstone Blocks, and 1 Block of Gold. The minion that this upgrade is applied to can emit bright light as a mobile entity. Helpful for exploring caves or dark dimensions. If the player stacks a second or third slot of this upgrade, then any enemy within 7 or 14 blocks is inflicted with glowing respectively.
Farmhand Upgrade: Crafted with 4 Rosid Roots, 4 Goldicap Petals, and 1 Magic Marang. The minion this upgrade is applied to cannot trample crops and boosts the growing speed of crops within 5 blocks by a fair amount. They have double the crop boosting radius at 2 stacks of the upgrade, and quadruple at 4 stacks of the upgrade.
The following upgrades give unique bonuses but can't normally be stacked:
Aquatic Upgrade: Crafted with 4 Coral Stones, 4 Amphibyte lungs, and 1 Bubble Berry. The minion this upgrade is applied to moves much faster when in water, and it cannot drown (intended for flying pets that can follow the player underwater).
Swapping Upgrade: Crafted with 4 Orbulons, 4 Mushroom Spores, and 1 Rainbow Druse. The player can shift right click on this minion's phylactery to swap places with them no matter how far they are away. Reusing swaps places with them again. This costs 50 soul power to use. A very versatile ability that can be used for combat or utility purposes.
Vacuous Upgrade: Crafted with 8 glass and 1 Void Scale. When supplied to a minion, it clears any upgrades that minion has so that new upgrades can be slotted.
Some of these upgrades will likely not be implementable in a reasonable way, and if not then they can be scrapped.
No Friendly-Fire Going back to abilities, this toggleable ability makes the attacks and projectiles of player not affect their own pets. Helpful for allowing the player to attack enemies without worrying about harming their melee minions drawing attention.
Damage Boost This Supplies minions with +0.3% damage to minions per creation level. If conceivable to implement, it could affect ranged damage and special attack abilities, but otherwise it will only affect melee damage. This upgrade stacks multiplicatively with the damage upgrade that can be slotted to minions.
Glimmering Enemies When the player reaches this level, they will begin to very rarely come across enemies with a randomly colored, sparkling particle effect around them in dimensions. These enemies behave normally, but if they are tamed then they give an extremely large amount of creation XP. Their particle effect continues to exist even after they are caught but has no mechanical effect.
Warcry At the expense of 20 Energy while jumping, the player can mark any non-minion entity (whether an enemy, boss, or animal) they are currently looking at as a target for any minions that follow them. All minions that are notified of this target receive the strength 2 potion effect for 7.5 seconds and immediately aggro against it. Using this on any enemy gives a fair amount of creation XP.
Sidekick The final creation skill power. By holding shift right click on a full Phylactery for 5 seconds, the player can set one of their minions as a "Sidekick." This minion receives a boost to damage and armor, and an especially large boost to health. Perhaps most of all, they do not count toward the limit of how many companions can be summoned at once. Increases to stats are scaled to be stronger for lower taming tier sidekicks to ensure that any mob is viable for this ability. Only one companion can be set as a sidekick at a time, and it cannot be changed if the old sidekick's phylactery is on cooldown from having been defeated. Tier 6 boost: +3 armor, +5 damage, +40 health. Tier 5 boost: +4 armor, +7 damage, +55 health. Tier 4 boost: +6.5 armor, +9 damage, +80 health. Tier 3 boost: +8 armor, +12 damage, +115 health. Tier 2 boost: +10 armor, +15 damage, +150 health. Tier 1 boost: +12.5 armor, +17.5 damage, +175 health.
Helm of the Leader When worn, the player will gain 50% more XP when training their Creation skill like other skill helmets.
Ending Message
Thank you for reading my suggestion. I hope that anything I may have written gave some inspiration for what could be done with Creation as a skill.
EDIT: Made some minor updates to polish the writeup and update the recipe.