Expensive Upgrades

[deadspidervenom]

While playing the hardest thing about the mod is the upgrades. The early tier are not bad price wise, however the first tier of the upgrade with 4 tiers feels out of place recipe wise compared to the others.

For the rest tier1/2 feels okays. Tier 2/3 feels a bit pricy. Tier 3/4 feels overpriced.

Echoshards are a lot more rare than you might think, and the need for 2 upgrades per line make it spike up fast.

On average you get about 6-12 shards per city, at least that what it seems like from my playthrough as i got 6 in one city and 9 in another. That is also not taking into account needing shriekers.

Since i cleaned out a end city of all ground level sculk using silk touch, shriekers number wise felt right for the teir 3/4 upgrade, leaving me about a stack. However thats excluding how dangerous collecting all it is. As often times there is 3+ shriekers in an area so mining one alerts others, so you are constantly avoiding the warden/s. Which is harder since after 4 go off it only takes one for a new warden to spawn.

While i like that idea of using sculk blocks for the upgrade materials perhaps making the shrieker and echoshards something that less used is a better idea.

Like an "shriek" upgrade which will cause emitters to shriek every so often than gather nearby dropped items. I know i suggested such a feature before i am just giving a example. The idea is a limited use upgrade that is very useful but not needed to be crafted a lot.

Then change upgrades that are crafted a lot to cheaper but not cheap recipes.

[bl4ckscor3]

More upgrades is a tricky one in general to implement, since we want the mod to be UI-less and two upgrades already take a lot of space on the block without being too crammed.

Disregarding possible new upgrades, what do you think good recipes would be?

[deadspidervenom]

Well you want them to be expensive for what you get, but easily reproducible without needing to spend possible tons of hours.

perhaps add a new item the "blank upgrade", this item takes the various sculk items, echo shards, catalyst, and shrieker. and gives you 4-16 of it.

Then for speed upgrades you do due a basic stack of, redstone, redstone block, redstone block and diamonds, redstone block and diamond block.

For stack size, Lapis, lapis blocks, gold ingot, gold blocks, and diamonds and diamond blocks.

this way you still need skulk, but the cost matches the recieved, and to then upgrade the upgrades its basic materials that increasingly get more expensive.