Blocks & Decoration Gem Trees

Well?

  • Gem In The Making

    Votes: 119 93.0%
  • Dirty Broken Glass

    Votes: 9 7.0%

  • Total voters
    128

LoveSpreader

Terrarian
Now, everyone loves gems. Either for reasons of vanities, colored torches, or just plain old Gemspark Blocks. But unfortunately, gems aren't a renewable source in the game. You can only get them by spelunking or silt extracting. So I'm hoping this will fix that.

The word "Gem" from now on will be interchangeable with the existing gems in the game, barring Amber.

The new item I'm suggesting will be,

Gem Seed

Crafting:
3 Gems
1 Acorn
2 Crystal Shards
1 Chlorophyte Ore
At Crystal Ball

So if you use Diamonds, you'll get a Diamond Seed, Ruby Seed for Rubies and so on and so forth. The ore is added to make the Trees post-mech, and with that I also reduced the gems you need to craft it. Also, it should act as a balance for the expensive gems. :happy:

Of course, since planting any old tree on grass and suddenly there are plenty of gems seems a bit.... boring, let's make a few changes.
1. The Gem Seeds can only be planted on Stone Blocks rather than grassed dirt.
2. The "tree" will only grow if they are planted in cavern layer or below.
3. Instead of growing upwards, you plant it on the bottom side of the blocks and they will grow downwards.

Apart from these however, they will be subjected to the same RNG process as the other trees, with the cap at 16 blocks for Topaz/Amethyst, 14 blocks for Emerald/Sapphire and 12 blocks for Diamond/Ruby. There shouldn't be that much of a hassle on the coding side either with these.
A new pet summon, the Breathing Geode. This will have a 1/300 chance to drop when you cut down the Gem Trees. It will look like a rough boulder comprised of all 6 natural gems.

Also, for further balance, the growth rate of the Trees will slow down exponentially in direct proportion to the number of specific Gem Trees in the world.
Note: You can still have any number of the Trees in a world, however, after a certain number, it will take more time for them to mature. It limits their use as a decorative somewhat, but will prevent the exponential growth of gems obtained.

Sprites made by @Milt69466
Gem tree Amethyst.png
Gem tree Topaz.png
Gem tree Sapphire.png
Gem tree Emerald.png
Gem tree Ruby.png
Diamond Gem tree.png

From left to right, according to their rarity: Amethyst, Topaz, Sapphire, Emerald, Ruby and lastly Diamond. :dryadpassionate:

Let's hear it from you, folks... Whether this idea is a Gem in the making, or just so much broken glass... Since this is my first suggestion on TCF.

Any more thoughts on this will be appreciated.
 
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Thank you for the support. :)

Just checked the wiki and apparently the limit for player planted trees are 16 blocks tall. Originally I was thinking 20 for Topaz and Amethyst, 16 for Emerald Sapphire, and 12 for Diamond Rubies. If I have to change it to 16 as limit to match, it would go 16/14/12 instead. Unless everyone thinks that it's better for all Gem Trees to keep either 20/16 cap?

Not bad, but we'll have to decrease the sell value of gems in that case. Diamonds sell for 30 silver a piece currently.
I suppose lowering the height cap for rarer gems will play some part into controlling the inflation, but the prices might have to go down a bit, like you said. Not too sure what would be the correct ones though.:dryadconfused:
Even if the cap for Diamond Trees is 12 blocks, you'd still profit 7 per tree at best growth, which is 2.1 gold. Your average profit per Diamond/Ruby trees would probably be around 3~5 Gems. Yep, with this money really does grow on trees. Rot, I'll leave it for later. %:sigh:

As for the trees themselves, since I am no spriter(nor can I draw, since my fingers were never artistic), I am not sure about the limitations on spriting them. In my mind I picture a pale blue/purple crystal branching down from the ceiling, without a solid trunk, separating and joining, repeating right up until it reaches its maximum growth, every so often a gem fruit will bloom in the hollow part of the "trunk". Since that might be rather... daunting, perhaps a spiraling crystal occasionally inlaid with Gems corresponding to the seed will do.

As for its bottom most growth, rather than a solid crystal bush like normal trees, I was thinking of something like the 1st panel of this page. Even then I don't know if that's doable. :p
Let's see if @Hunited is up for the task.

Of course, if anyone else has a different image to bring forward for the trees go right ahead.
 
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I love the concept, but I'm not sure trees is the way to go. Maybe there could be an artificial biome that can only be built by the player that constantly spawns gems on the walls?
 
I like this. I really like this. Perhaps the stone its planted in could become something special after one full Gem Tree has grown. It could be like Mineral Stone. After the one growth, Gem Trees will grow faster and they gain a new ability. Combining a Topaz Seed with approximately 10-20 of an ore will make a seed of that ore. Then it can be planted in Mineral Stone and grow like a Gem Tree with the same properties: the more late game an ore is, the shorter the tree will grow and the longer it will take to grow. Is that a good idea?
 
I love the concept, but I'm not sure trees is the way to go. Maybe there could be an artificial biome that can only be built by the player that constantly spawns gems on the walls?
I like the idea of a Crystal Tree bearing Gem Fruits. If that was a done thing in the game, that's what I would've suggested instead. And a biome constantly spawning gems would need further balancing by making it obtainable later(possibly post-plantera) and the materials for creating the biome to be more expensive as you will need only one to get it going. A crystalizing Tree is simpler. And it feels right for the game.

I like this. I really like this. Perhaps the stone its planted in could become something special after one full Gem Tree has grown. It could be like Mineral Stone. After the one growth, Gem Trees will grow faster and they gain a new ability. Combining a Topaz Seed with approximately 10-20 of an ore will make a seed of that ore. Then it can be planted in Mineral Stone and grow like a Gem Tree with the same properties: the more late game an ore is, the shorter the tree will grow and the longer it will take to grow. Is that a good idea?
To be honest I'm not all too fond of growing ores. The major difference between ores and gems is that they are far more abundant in a single world. I'm not too sure about the ratio but it definitely feels like 10:1, or maybe even more(or less). Not to mention, ores/bars are already renewable with fishing. You'd have to have the devil's luck to actually get enough ores for building, but the method is there. And Chlorophyte is practically infinite already as its farm is very simple to make. Though I could work with the changed stone blocks though. Might have something to use that for.

We could balance the more expensive gems by making them take longer to grow, couldn't we?
I would like that as well. The only issue here is that trees just go full grown straight from saplings. Chloro grows by converting mud into ores, but I don't want these Trees to be solid blocks, but remain in the furniture/object layer. If we make the tree to crystallize block by block, then people can simply shear off the bottom section and farm it indefinitely with just one seed. Unless of course we make it so that once the tree is sheared off even by one block, the process will stop completely. And once it reaches the cap for each respective gems(16/14/12), then there will be foliage at the very bottom, to indicate its max crystallization. That does sound like it could work towards balancing the price vs gem growth thing. ;)

But... I don't even want to know how messy the coding will be if that's the case. %-_-
 
I think the ore trees would be just for looks, mostly. Just picture a big red shiny tree of Adamantite or a glowing green tree of Chlorophyte. Perfect for that underground dungeion you were building!;)
 
Maybe the trees could give off the gem's color of light!

And as for how they could look, I was thinking multiple little shards shoot out from the bottom, and as it reaches downwards, it is a jagged, huge cylinder gem.

Either way, I like this idea. Though something would have to be adjusted to not make this over-powered.
 
I like this idea! however to solve the danger of it being OP perhaps it should be made craftable late game as of now it is early hardmode but pushing it post Plantera would make it appear at a time where large quantities of money can be obtained just by going out and killing things...
 
Well, now that I think about it. Either making it late game or take long as Baconfry suggested would be a pretty decent idea. I mean, you can sell a diamond, or kill two armoured bones.....

And that’s why about 80% of my income comes from the dungeon.
 
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