Game Mechanics The Skyblock Seed. Mapmaker's Thoughts.

[Freedbot]

I thought I'd take a moment to share the "catch 22"'s I've had to fight with mentally on a repeated basis when exploring different skyblock progression paths. I hope it'll be helpful to you @Redigit🌳 .

The start: Basically a way to get blocks, and then at some point dirt as the dirt bombs are a renewable path and required for so much. Either there must be a way to grow the first blocks, or start with enough blocks to get a platform for mobs to spawn to farm for blocks. Granite is a good (unobtainable) example of that latter, as it's very self renewable. It has the added bonus of making gems available to non-shimmer players. Some form of basic block that can be made from basically nothing and with no crafting station... like fallen stars or some cloud option that costs nothing but breaks if you jump on it seems like a nifty way for a 1 block start, but I'm just spitballing that idea.

Basic Crafting: Something has to be given at the start to create a crafting table. In a shimmer map, potions from slimes or magic mirrors from mimics can be shimmered into sand for cactus. Otherwise it comes down to Red's idea of making slimes drop seeds and acorns. Next comes anvil and furnace. The anvil can be ignored since it's available if the furnace is. Deciding on the furnace method is always a struggle. Do I force players to kill EoC so they can use the evil seeds and dryad to make a jungle to buy it from the merchant? Where's the water(see fishing) and dirt coming from? Do they get to make housing before fighting EoC? Do they get to fish before then? Alternatively, I can just give out stone to make the furnace... There's no good way to get stone without shimmer. I could hand out 2 stone and 1 granite (granite mobs = gems > gem trees for renewable stone), but I can only manually give out the starting stone and granite, and that still means killing EoC for acorns. Stone golems would be an amazing way to get stone... but the stupid things are hardmode only and only spawn on stone. much frustration ensues.

Fishing: Obviously most gear, ore, and health all become available from fishing. Fishing OP. But when to start, and how? Lets say fishing requires NPC's. You buy your bug net... and then what? There's no way to get water or lava. Wait, in expert+ lava drops from lava slimes. Just get a bucket and dupe the lava. Water bombs can be fished from lava. That's great progression.... wait, how do you fish in lava? There's no lavaproof stuff without hellstone or already fishing in lava... unless you do enough fishing to get the hotline rod, but there's no water... Well, hellstone is it's own problem. One solution is to just give out the hellstone and hellforge. Then players can fish in lava and get their water nice and quick. In the case of shimmer, well, you just ignore most of that, get your lava bucket and then shimmer and done. The alternative changes I could think of are to 1. Make it so the normal bug net can catch hell critters, but has a high percent chance to burn up and get detroyed, damaging the player for extra insult. 2. Make the hotline rod or lavaproof hook available some other way. or 3. Make water available. The minecraft skyblock style would be to add barrels that can liquids to the game, then make them fill with water if there's no roof above them when it rains. (as was suggested yesterday).

Queen Bee: So many good things locked by her. With shimmer it's easy, but otherwise the honey and hive are just impossible. The only way for hive is Jungle mimics... ouch. Then you can't get honey without placing hive, and you can't place hive without killing queen bee for the hive wand. This is where I start pulling out hair. I did have what I consider a very clever solution. Bee hives... no not those. The little hazard hives that spawn and fall from the ceilings. Currently, if they hit water, they fizzle out and don't spawn attacking bees. What if they converted the water block they hit into a single placed hive block?

Locked Biomes: The list is snow, desert, dungeon, temple, spider cave, granite, and marble. If it's not listed, it's not even difficult to get. When starting with shimmer the list is just dungeon, temple, granite, and marble. Add jungle mimics to the mix and suddenly the list is just natural dungeon and temple. I won't get into those 2 because reasons.
Snow: I love the ice bomb idea. Nothing else is needed and it'll probably be early game enough so summoners stand a chance. However, I will note the snow globe was the previous method to get the tundra biome. It was far too late game. I feel like it's a very underwhelming invasion in general during a part of the game full of wild bullet hell invasions. May I suggest repositioning it to be an early game invasion and making the snow globe available as a means to get snow?
Desert: I end up having to provide like 5 sand blocks. It can be used to spawn the angler, and then converted to hardened sand/sandstone wall. Then the wall can be corrupted to make it natural (this is easy, but not intuitive), then antlions can spawn and spit sand. Interestingly, antlions only need the wall and any block to spawn, but in the normal desert, they do a check for 40+ blocks of sand before they can spawn. So how to get the first sand... Perhaps extractinate stone to grind it up into sand? The extractinator sees very little use in skyblocks, but is available with basic fishing.
granite/marble: granite is useful for geodes/gems, and quickly renewable. Marble not so much. Very few good things there, but people do get cranky when they can't craft their precious ankh shield.

Other Unavailables: Hellstone/forge, ash (fireblossom, ash wood), traps of all kinds, functional statues (heart, mana, mobs), Biome chest weapons, and gnomes. Typically, skyblock map makers will put these in various locked chests.
Hellstone/forge: Hellstone crates makes sense and doesn't cheat normal progression, a craftable or similarly crated source for the hellstone forge too.
Ash: Others have posted in game suggestions a long time ago to make a furnace recipe for ash from wood. Without it, potions using fire blossom can't be made.
Traps/Statues: There's a strong overlap between skyblock players and automation/arena designers. It's all in the name of reducing the grind for mob drops. All I can think of is maybe Dungeon and Jungle Temple fishing, or some rare/random blood moon/solar eclipse purchase-ables from the Witch Doctor or Mechanic. Edit: nevermind. I just saw the trap slimes. It's evil. I love them.
Biome Chest weapons: There's a strong argument to not making these renewable. They're not needed, and including a means to get more than 1 of each per world defeats their uniqueness. Still, I can see the complaints coming already. I can only think to make them ultra rare locked fishing crates from their respective biomes or the dungeon, and once fished a flag is toggled on the world to make them never get caught again. Alternatively, since the game has too many items already, perhaps fish the weapons up directly, but only if the biome key is in the player's inventory, and then it gets consumed.
The final thing required to complete the bestiary and a very useful fellow. Gnome Chompski. There's literally no way to spawn him in skyblock until brown solution post-Moonlord. #gnomeskies !!

I really need to stop writing these book sized posts. Still, this is a compilation of many discussions from several people over 3ish years. I hope others can chime in and correct me or add more insight.

 

[Freedbot]

 

[Freedbot]

I've been told (correctly), that I'm a fool for not having mentioned the demon altar. I believe Red has probably already addressed it properly, but it's worth bringing up the challenges and work arounds we have faced with it on maps.

First and foremost, to just beat the game, it's not needed. Most skyblock maps don't even include it.

With that said, in Brutal Skyblock, it's just left out in the open for players to use when they get there. In fact it's sometimes a required part of game progression. So in this map there's a bunch of crazy wiring build out of bounds above the map. A player gets to choose from 3 different options of progression, at which point the other pressure plates explode and items are dropped on their head. Mostly the mode decides which early bosses they have to kill to start fishing, this ranges from 0 to EoW.

In SkyTerra, the demon altar is buried in temple brick to attempt to restrict players from gaining access to it until late game. The ideology is to allow for 100% completion, but still force a different and minimalistic gameplay experience.

 

[ThePlantMan]

I was suggested to comment on Red's profile posts involving the Skyblock suggestion. Consider this a "tweetlonger" I guess. I'm one of the more active Skyblock map makers. I've corroborated with a few of the other authors as well. We've all tried making suggestions for little tweaks in the past for improving skyblock viability, but not much came of it. I'll attempt to be concise. I can always elaborate when asked. I dearly hope other experienced map makers and Skyblock players can comment as well. I don't expect anything to come of this, but this is addressed to @Redigit🌳. Apologies for the ping, but you did ask. Ideally, I'd suggest looking at existing maps like SkyTerra, Brutal Skyblock, Shimmerblock, or Shimmering Skies and seeing what makes them tick, but here's the jist.

1. The ideology: Skyblock isn't a bunch of large floating biomes. It's putting as little as possible in world to beat the game (1-3 micro-islands)... ideally while getting all useful items, killing all bosses, and completing the bestiary.

2. Renewability: Check this wiki list. It's not completely accurate when considering shimmer or pre-hardmode mimics, but covers all the concerns and then some. In regards to balance vs availability, simply making things available later works quite a bit. Hellstone crates (the hardmode version) is an obvious example for hellstone. Biome crates for locked biome chests. Some demon altar crafting alternative could be locked by the dungeon or in shimmer. Similarly, the hellforge would need to be craftable or dropped by a boss. I'll stop here. I have many ideas.

3. The Start: All you need to begin is a block to spawn on, some way to get renewable blocks, and whatever else that can't be made to beat the game. Examples: a planted acorn (slow), mushroom grass (slow depending on mud supply). Granite. A solidifier and just enough blocks to start spawning slimes (most fun way we currently have). Shimmer and just enough blocks to spawn mobs (pre-hard mimic drops and treasure slimes). As ChiefLogan will mention, one method is to play mediumcore or journey and shimmer your starting gear for blocks. It's all about the reward of the grind. I suggest different starting islands based on secret seed combinations. Players would love a couple more ways to get blocks from literally nothing, any old decoration block works as long as it doesn't involve a crafting table/furnace. People often suggest things like cheaper fertilizer with poo from a wooden toilet to grow more starting trees/mushrooms/grass/etc.

4. Biome Availability: This is 2 parts: blocks, and biome requirements. Stone, dirt, and sand are easy with shimmer, but impossible without it unless you start with some. Some biomes are easy, others are very convoluted to recreate. Even just the 1,500 blocks for a desert is a tall order. The dungeon has many checks that could be eased up on in hindsight. Underground dessert for example became "easy" in certain maps recently since it no longer checks for a vertical line of 50 wall above the spawn block. Just 1 sandstone wall hit with vile/vicious powder and any kind of block/platform below it. Boom, desert mobs. "Easy", but very obscure. Your average player just wants a consistent craftable/shimmerable wall with a little skull on the icon. The jungle temple also needs attention. Normally you need the natural wall, unminable brick, and altar pre-placed in world for lihzahrds to spawn. Snow currently requires snow globes or jungle mimics (tons of blocks locked by these guys), both are only useful in hardmode. Jungle mimic vomit and pre-hardmode mimics are awesome, and skyblock players would love to see more like it.

5. The Grind: Again, I suggest modifying this through the starting island on different secret seed combinations. Some people want to play a super hardcore grindfest fishing simulator. Others just want a unique take on casual normal gameplay with extra building involved. Some don't need a dungeon to beat the game. Others want to complete everything. Still, most agree on which resource grind activities are too much. Early pre-fishing blocks and ores. I'd say simply increasing the treasure slime spawn rate resolves this. Heart crystals/fruit. I think a simple rate adjustment in SOME skyblock seed combinations would fix that... And of course, fishing. It got drastically better with the last updates, particularly with the fishing quest rewards being made mutually exclusive... assuming the sand is available to get the Angler. Assuming an angler is possible, then I'd say fishing is easily resolved just by having a means to make crate potions and having an increased worm and golden worm spawn rates on multiple block types. Back to fertilizer, if only it didn't require bones, and if ash could be made by smelting wood... Then tons of grindy block and biome spread work could be sped up with it.

Edit: Fixed failure to hyperlink the non-renewable items wiki page.

one big thing is that i want there to be multiple ways of going through the game, in a supposed official skyblock seed. it would add great replayability to not only the base seed, but worlds that people will make in response to it, so any little bit of progress and variability added in adds a bunch of extra playtime IMO.

 

[Stachelbeere1248]

While most of this discussion is related to a possible special seed, there is something different that should be addressed in my opinion. The current tools map makers have to restrict / control the game's progression. My suggestions don't have to be aobtainable, just having them out there for map creators that can utilise for example TEdit would be cool.

1. Chests: There are currently two stages of the game that allow the unlocking of new chests (post-skeletron and post-plantera). Adding more different ones of these could allow a finer line in progression throughout the playthrough.
2. Secure blocks: Blocks that cannot be broken or have an activator placed on them by the player and cannot be hammered by the player. Could still have coatings / paints applied. The idea is to make them a solid barrier that the player cannot get through in any way.
-> Alternative idea: A coating that does this, that can only be removed usign a spectre paint scrapper or a new luminite paint scrapper.
3. Wiring (idea not completed): A 5th wire color that can be removed with a wirecutter, but has no respective wrench to place it. Basically the player can use it, but not extend the cable.
4. More world properties / flags for creators: On by default, but map makers can toggle off certain events, like certain NPCs for example. Going too far with this part is surely too much to ask for and too much effort, I am thinking of something similar to minecraf'ts datapacks here.

 

[Freedbot]

1. Chests
2. Secure blocks
3. Wiring (idea not completed)
4. More world properties / flags for creators

I feel like most of this is just general map maker tool requests that wouldn't see quite as much use in Skyblock as adventure maps that have stuff like... blocks... in them, but sure.
1. Helpful, sure, and I've had that thought while making maps too, but I feel it's a bit much to ask for just to give some niche map maker tools. It'd have to be a new system of chests that just check the specific boss kill flags to be interactable. Like a locked variant ocean chest that unlocks when Duke Fishron is dead. This would be the simplest to code and not bad to sprite, so maybe...
2. You're basically asking for Minecraft's Adventure mode. I'd call it a ridiculous request, but it is kind of already in the game with the Old One's Army event, so who knows how hard/easy it would be to switch the effect to a coating. There could be some very serious game limitations here.
3. Basically the same as 2, you want a coating that works on wire. I've never felt limited by the wiring once I figured out how to use it. Granted I'm not using it for any kind of door system to an impenetrable room or whatever. The wiring in my map is cheat proof because I put the logic and functional portion outside the world border and then used gates to ensure it can only be triggered once. For a more full adventure map you'd need to prevent players from breaking/hammering/placing blocks, placing/breaking switches, and placing/breaking wire. So yeah... that's an adventure mode coating.
4. Ironically, of all the requests, this is the easiest to code. It's just a matter of adding more buttons to the journey mode menu, flags in front of a couple functions that may already have the needed flags, and then the rest is just using TEdit to switch the map from Journey to whatever. This already works with a few of the existing things like biome spread. I haven't tried this to see if it works, but I think you can even make a world eternal day with mob spawns disabled. All that said, you haven't given many examples of valid use cases. You won't get any fancy highly configurable data packs. Look into tModloader for that functionality. Something like "permanently disable merchant" might be more reasonable.

 

[Freedbot]

@Redigit🌳 , Thank you again for giving Skyblock such a serious look. Admittedly, I started with 0 faith. I only suggested some basic and easily coded solutions to facilitate skyblock without asking for the seed itself, but you've gone above and beyond with some nifty and appropriately brutal additions. It seems you've gotten bit by the skyblock bug considering the idea went from a rough "maybe" to you confirming today that there will be multiple different generations with seed combos. I had written that off as an over-ambitious stretch goal. I've enjoyed every spoiler that has been brought to my attention, with the possible exception of specifically jungle seeds being available pre-EoC, but that may well not matter depending on dirt, stone, and water availability.

This update will break every existing skyblock map... That's a good thing. If it didn't, it wouldn't be a very good skyblock update. My only remaining concern is whether it will still be possible to make skyblock maps with more hardcore progression. Example, if grass, wood, dirt, and water are always available at the start of the game thanks to drops, then if I want to make a map that requires beating EoC and EoW in order to mine hellstone (that I've placed) to fish in lava for water bombs, then I'd have to just not use the skyblock seed and it's features in my map, which would be sad. That's just an example, I'm not asking for that exact route to survive the update, just something on that level of "tricky". I suspect you've already planned for this with the seed combinations.

If it were me, I'd think anyone wanting to beat the game by starting with a world that only has leaf block like @Porkey Minch is insane, self-loathing, and unreasonable. I'd make sure that it's almost impossible to do, but not actually. These are the kinds of players willing to stand their 1 block for hours and pray for falling stars to hit harpies in order to get drops. I'm not that crazy, but I have to respect the dedication, and I want to facilitate that craziness.

If there's any thoughts or questions (from anyone), I can be reached easily enough here or in the discord. I treat personal messages as private and don't go spreading around information that hasn't been shared publicly.

 

[Freedbot]

I've avoided talking about seed combinations for skyblock. Who wants to chime in for what they would want to see?

Personally, I think the basic seed should start like the picture Red showed. Plenty of cloud, dirt, trees, water. I suspect there's other islands with biomes which I'm fine with or without for the basic "easy" seed.

Remix would obviously in the Underworld on ash with ash trees. Maybe lava. For sure no water, and water has to be a struggle to get.

Celebration seems like a good combo to start with a shimmer pool and practically nothing else since shimmer is OP.

For The Worthy... Dare I ask for the dreaded one block start? Would Red dare to make it as convoluted and cruel as I'd dream it could be?

 

[Freedbot]

No surprise, but folks are hitting me up with seed ideas directly in discord instead of the thread.

Unique ideas from napstablook22 and @MyJorts :
Drunk: either include 1 island of each corruption/crimson, or make the start island half corruption and half crimson.
Not The Bees: a hive island with a slightly smaller "giant" mahogany tree planted in it.
Constant: snow island start, small but still counts as the biome. Possibly with the potential for Deerclops to randomly drop by and say hi.

 

[Impostor]

Drunk: either include 1 island of each corruption/crimson, or make the start island half corruption and half crimson.

I like this, but I think the starting island being a Jungle/Ice hybrid like how the standard Drunk World has those biomes combined, and on its floating islands would be a lot easier manageable than both evil biomes being the starting island. That way NPCs could move in without having to build super far away from it, but I wouldn’t mind 2 smaller evil biome islands away from the main one.

All other suggestions I like though and have no complaints with, Curious to what NoTraps could be like. Maybe those dart slimes from the 1.4.5 teaser could spawn, making dart traps a resource to build with?

 

[Porkey Minch]

If it were me, I'd think anyone wanting to beat the game by starting with a world that only has leaf block like @Porkey Minch is insane, self-loathing, and unreasonable. I'd make sure that it's almost impossible to do, but not actually. These are the kinds of players willing to stand their 1 block for hours and pray for falling stars to hit harpies in order to get drops. I'm not that crazy, but I have to respect the dedication, and I want to facilitate that craziness.

Sanity is overrated anyway
Now that I've been called out, I do indeed seek to beat the game from a 1 leaf block with no starting items. I've already done it with 1 sandstone using some special transmutation glitches I came up with, but I'd like to see it be possible without glitches. Also for that map I had to move spawn up and to the side for harpies to spawn, get hit by stars and hopefully drop presents. Technically free starting blocks (cloud, stars) aren't *required* but I'm probably one of the few people insane enough to say that.

I don't know if seed combos change what items drop, get sold by NPCs etc. but for now I'll assume it only changes the starting island.

Since there will now be the ability to get lihzahrd stuff in skyblock, the only thing missing is mud for plantera. I would like there to be a way to get dirt & water that doesn't require *any* specific starting requirements, but also doesn't ruin any of the fun progression ideas @Freedbot has come up with for his maps.

In fact, I planned to make an entire thread about getting dirt & water but it's still a WIP so for now I'll just say; we need access to dirt and water at some point before plantera, and that without either fishing or a furnace then a bucket can't be crafted for the rain filling water method, so another method is needed (possibly lava fishing for water bombs like Freed has suggested?). But to fish one would need a fishing rod. The only ones obtainable would be ones sold after skeletron is killed (which is technically a hardmode boss now) and ones made with wood and iron (which need either dirt or mud to obtain.)

I can already feel myself rambling... but I must stop here because I have to leave in a few minutes, but in conclusion: dirt + water with zero hard requirements = good; obsoleting progression of other starts (either seed combinations or custom) = bad.

 

[Freedbot]

...Curious to what NoTraps could be like. Maybe those dart slimes from the 1.4.5 teaser could spawn, making dart traps a resource to build with?

Maybe the bad luck aspect is involved with spawning trap slimes? Who knows. It's a very mysterious mechanic, and slimes hold many secrets... literally.

...In fact, I planned to make an entire thread about getting dirt & water but it's still a WIP so for now I'll just say; we need access to dirt and water at some point before plantera, and that without either fishing or a furnace then a bucket can't be crafted for the rain filling water method, so another method is needed (possibly lava fishing for water bombs like Freed has suggested?). But to fish one would need a fishing rod. The only ones obtainable would be ones sold after skeletron is killed (which is technically a hardmode boss now) and ones made with wood and iron (which need either dirt or mud to obtain.)
...

You describe it as if the water collector has to require an iron bucket to craft and as if there'd be no way to get stone for a furnace to smelt the iron. There's been no spoiler for how to get water so far, just suggestions. I like the method of a water barrel, and I like gating it behind a furnace. That could have very different implications of progression in different seeds. If the starting island has dirt, water, trees, and the jungle is available either early or post EoC like it is now, then it's super simple. If the NotTheBees seed starts in a jungle, then you just buy one right away... Perhaps in a one block type world you'd have no dirt or stone until after either fishing or a furnace (my gravedigger shovel idea from earlier), but maybe the way to get the hellforge is for none to be in the world and to kill WoF? So you'd have to somehow get through WoF. It's doable with pre-hard mimic drops (Remix) but it'd be nice if there was some restricted way to get a little health to enable fighting earlier bosses and gearing up. So WoF > "furnace" > (gravedigger shovel > dirt) + (bucket > rain collector) = mud = Plantera.

You got me spit-balling and making longwinded rants again.

 

[Freedbot]

Crawdad105 has just put out a very concise and well informed (no, I was not involved in any way) video on skyblock minimalism. Though it's a bit lacking on the how and why, explaining that on any proper level would turn a 10 minute video into a 2 hour video. I haven't yet watch it myself, but I think his playthrough videos of his map probably cover that well. I'm still sad that there's no nifty, tightly edited playthroughs of Shimmering Skies or Brutal Skyblock that I can point people at, but I'm not really capable as an entertainer. One day I hope to have the time and knowledge to do my own videos, but I'm sure it won't be soon.

 

[Freedbot]

Oh... Crap, I just realized there's something I should mention. @Redigit🌳 , There's a bug that doesn't impact normal gameplay but breaks skyblock runs. If a town NPC falls out of the map, sometimes it isn't killed off and then it's just permanently gone. They don't teleport back at night either, but the home flag will still be set. It's a rare issue, but I've had it happen, and I've seen it reported in Discords a few times. I fix it for people with TEdit to manually place the NPC. In my maps I have a net of bubble, lava, and titanium to prevent the bug. I regret not saving a copy of a world file with the bug. I'll ask around if someone still has one.

 

[ThePlantMan]

Oh... Crap, I just realized there's something I should mention. @Redigit🌳 , There's a bug that doesn't impact normal gameplay but breaks skyblock runs. If a town NPC falls out of the map, sometimes it isn't killed off and then it's just permanently gone. They don't teleport back at night either, but the home flag will still be set. It's a rare issue, but I've had it happen, and I've seen it reported in Discords a few times. I fix it for people with TEdit to manually place the NPC. In my maps I have a net of bubble, lava, and titanium to prevent the bug. I regret not saving a copy of a world file with the bug. I'll ask around if someone still has one.

ooooh, thats why i cant find the bartender in skyblock

 

[Impostor]

I think the Don’tDigUp Sky killbox on the borders for any NPCs that pass it could work. Forgot if it worked on anything other than the player, but it’d mean that the player stays inbound without harm while NPCs that go out of bound respawn instead of going to the shadow realm

 

[Freedbot]

ooooh, thats why i cant find the bartender in skyblock

No, he just doesn't spawn until you've killed EoC/BoC, which aren't available in many skyblocks. Unrescued NPCs are like mobs, they despawning on a timer.

 

[Freedbot]

So, I'd actually been threatening to force myself to learn enough to make a mod, and I promised I'd make a skyblock mod. If I wait for the update to come out, then it would be too late so.... Here's a steam collection of mods featuring my brand new (still probably buggy) skyblock mod. This is NOT a copy of what Red has done, nor is it even all of the ideas I have posted. The changes from my ideas would be due to either my lack of coding ability or some revisions for better progression over all. For those interested, you'll need to switch your brain on for this one. There's no tutorials or handholding on what to do next, just some obscure tips in a guide book and what you can gleam from Recipe Browser and the item tooltips.