Stars worth earning, and bosses that remember you
This one started with CRVD in the Discord. Once you have cleared a biome, going back to it for materials is mostly walking past creatures that cannot hurt you, and the starred ones you actually want, for the drops or for taming, are rare enough to be a chore to find.
The idea was to let progress change that. Here is the shape it has taken, and I would rather hear what you think of it now than after it is built.
What it would do
- Kill a boss, and its own biome gets tougher. Killing the Elder raises the chance of starred creatures in the Black Forest, Moder does it for the Mountains, and so on. The biome you have not beaten yet stays exactly as it is.
- Kill it again and it climbs further. Every repeat kill of that boss adds to the chance, up to a ceiling.
- The boss comes back harder too. Each time you summon one you have already killed, it arrives a star stronger, capped at two.
- It is personal. All of it follows your own kills, not the server's. A player who joined last week walks into a normal Black Forest while a veteran standing beside them does not.
The numbers I have in mind
Vanilla gives a creature a 10% chance of gaining a star when it spawns. The plan is to add 5 percentage points per kill of that biome's boss, stopping at 25 extra, so a biome whose boss you have killed five times sits at 35%. Creatures still cannot go past two stars. Only the odds change, never the ceiling.
The part I expect arguments about
The credit for a kill goes to the player who made the offering, and to nobody else. Help a friend kill their Bonemass and you get nothing from it; summon your own and it counts. That is what keeps the whole thing personal, and it is deliberate, but it does mean a group that always fights on one person's offerings only moves one person's world.
The other side of it: starred creatures drop more, so a well farmed biome pays better, and the harder boss you summon drops more too. The mod gives you a reason to go back rather than a reason to skip.
What I want to know
- Is 5 points a kill too slow, too fast, or about right?
- Should the boss really get harder every time, or should that be a separate switch you can leave off?
- Summoner-only credit: fair, or does it punish the people who show up to help?
- Does anything here make a biome worse to live in? Star spawns near a base are a different experience from star spawns out in the field.
Nothing is built yet. The name is Vandi, which is Old Norse for trouble, and that is as far as it has got. Tell me what you would change.