From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc
Kendrick Kerwin Chua <
kendrick@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:
Play:
Minecraft (PS4) - more of this, including a return to the woodland
mansion I apparently failed to mention visiting last time, after
trading for a map. The key feature of these seems to be beating an
Evoker (as I now have) to get the Totem of Undying, which seems to
save you from death if you hold it e.g. in the shield hand. Not having
liked using a shield much in the first place, I should probably be
using this, but only having the one leaves it feeling too precious to
use. :-) And as if to point out the problem with that, before long I
fell dozens of blocks down to my death in the Nether, managing to lose
a full set of diamond armour in the process. So that was fun.
Having looked up the nearest location online (because the
trade-for-ingame-map approach is quite a pain TBH and I'm not even
sure it's possible in this case), I tried out an ancient city, which
overall I wasn't keen on. The neat underground structure is for me
completely ruined by a pursuit mechanic (where you sneak around to
avoid making sound which effectively triggers the pursuer). It's like
they mashed together two fairly decent ideas which would probably
appeal to different players to make a single bad one which I'd imagine
few players like much. Even something as basic as just trying to light
the place up a bit was made excessively frustrating and tedious. So I
just wrote it off as far too much of a PITA, after looting the two
chests right next to where I'd entered.
I also did a jungle temple, which was very different - small, simple,
and made nice (if a bit obvious) use of a redstone-based "circuit" to
implement a few traps. The loot-quality to effort ratio was way
higher, that's for sure.
Similarly I tackled a desert temple, which was interesting because
despite already having been spoiled and knowing where the trap was, I
somehow managed to forget this and lost everything I was carrying
again (and all the loot), including... another set of diamond armour.
The next one I did a lot more carefully, wearing iron armour. :-)
During the above and some exploring I did a couple of things I hadn't
on the Vita - riding horses (which only spawn in biomes I didn't have
access to in my Vita game), and flying about to some degree using an
endgame item (which degrades just like weapons and armour, and
annoyingly has to be worn instead of the strongest part of your normal
armour while being equivalent to wearing nothing). Horses work well
enough, though I'd say it only really feels workable to just ride a
horse you happen to see in the wild for a while, rather than having a
specific horse you always ride. Useful enough to be worth having a
saddle handy, I suppose. As for the flying... it's nice in theory, at
least if you make fireworks to boost up during your glides, but the
map loading/generation simply can't keep up so it's not long before
you can't see where you're going. And having the flying item degrade
feels too no-fun-allowed, even if there are ways to counteract this to
some extent like a mending enchantment. Then there's the issue of the
fireworks needing gunpowder to make, which seems to mostly only be
available from a couple of monsters in fairly grindy fashion. So I
don't think the flying will be happening much.
One more thing the Vita lacked is the crossbow, which is very useful
and I wish I'd been using it the whole time on the PS4. It does grate
a bit that the infinity enchantment to avoid arrow consumption
inexplicably only works on normal bows, but this is still bearable if
you have the right fletcher villager's trades available (two of the
possible ones are essentially equivalent to chopping down a tree to
get 16-32 arrows).
Anyway, I think I've done most of what I was planning to in this
version, so I imagine it'll be more sandboxy nonsense and less
dragon-beating or trap-avoiding in future. Which with any luck should
mean a lot less replacement of diamond armour sets. :-)
Want:
To try Minecraft's pig-based transportation as mentioned below. I
doubt it compares favourably with riding horses, but it might be
useful in my Vita game as at least pigs spawn there.
Bin:
Minecraft saddles being uncraftable items you have to find as loot,
which seems odd when it lets you ride pigs by using a carrot on a
stick. That seems to perform roughly the same function as the saddle
does for horses, and is craftable.
-Rus.
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