The Ancient Cave

Those of you who were here in the days of Skyrim (the survival world, not the game.) Might remember The Ancient Cave. It's a place you can go to from Ghis, it shares inventory with Ghis. It's a little dangerous cause of the mobs (though there are not as many as there were in the Skyrim version at present.) But you can get great loot including things you can't find anywhere else in a survival world, like spell scrolls, xp potions, and spawn eggs. It's a work in progress plugin wise, but hopefully by the time we have the 1.3 survival world running it'll be the right mix of challenge and potential reward.

/warp ACave.

eventually you'll be stuck there upon entering until you find an exit portal but not yet. For now you can warp/tp/home out whenever.

You can now find: (in addition to the normal random loot)
-Potions (including the 4 unbrewable potions)
-Spawn Eggs
-Bottles o' enchanting
-Enchanted diamond gear (they each only have one enchantment)

Still to come:
-Scrolls
-Enchanted armor
-more music disks
-Emeralds

When does it refresh? or do you spawn at a different place every time? or is it a first come first serve basis?

blacknova777 wrote:When does it refresh? or do you spawn at a different place every time? or is it a first come first serve basis?

It's first come first serve, but it generates forever like a regular world, so you can always find new stuff by moving far away from spawn. I do refresh the world from time to time, mainly when I update the plugin.

Scrolls are proving to be a bitch, but I did add tnt traps. Oh and spawners work now, there's some blaze spawners.

At some point we should talk about the balancing for Skagos. I want it to be A place to go for stuff in Skagos but not THE place. Part of this will be increasing the difficulty (risk vs. reward) and making it impossible to /tp/warp/home out. I was thinking I could adjust the probabilities as we go. In the first few weeks of 1.3 bukkit you'll get decent loot, but as time goes on the odds of finding better stuff increases. In the end Scrolls will be the rarest of the rare treasure in there. I'd like to even include rare "boss rooms" (I think ender dragons are out, so probably just a lot of spawners until the MOD API comes out and I can make skeleton with 800 HP or something.) I'm also considering using the new written books in 1.3 to include "lore" (think resident evil files.) maybe that includes info (coords) on hidden treasure either in the dungeon or in Skagos.

Or we could further develop a "mythology" of skagos (we have a month.) and implement that both in the cave, main world and nether.

HeyLookoverthere wrote:I'd like to even include rare "boss rooms" (I think ender dragons are out, so probably just a lot of spawners until the MOD API comes out and I can make skeleton with 800 HP or something.)

I actually had this idea too, for people with powers to team up and take on rare super-mobs with better than usual drops. Why wait, we can do that now! Just create a new dedicated class that extends an existing entity (for example "BossSkeleton extends EntitySkeleton"), add some code to modify existing stats, initialize it then spawn it like you would any other mob using Java. I tried doing this to make mobs tameable but it won't let you mix extensions apparently.

How did scrolls work before? Was it just paper with a data value attached?

sirrus86 wrote:

HeyLookoverthere wrote:I'd like to even include rare "boss rooms" (I think ender dragons are out, so probably just a lot of spawners until the MOD API comes out and I can make skeleton with 800 HP or something.)

I actually had this idea too, for people with powers to team up and take on rare super-mobs with better than usual drops. Why wait, we can do that now! Just create a new dedicated class that extends an existing entity (for example "BossSkeleton extends EntitySkeleton"), add some code to modify existing stats, initialize it then spawn it like you would any other mob using Java. I tried doing this to make mobs tameable but it won't let you mix extensions apparently.

How did scrolls work before? Was it just paper with a data value attached?

Scrolls are still just paper with a damage value indicating which scroll it is. I can assign existing scrolls to chests no problem. Issue is if two people get a paper with the same damage value, they're both sharing a scroll basically. I need to add a scroll to the scrolls.txt in magicspells with it's own ID, and use that as the paper's damage value.

I entered the Ancient Cave with 21 bread and diamond armor. After about an hour-ish of looting the cave I came out with...

Diamond Helmet x1
Diamond Pants x1
Diamond Boots x2
Diamond Sword x4
Diamond Pickaxe with Fortune III x1
Diamond x2
Iron x30
Gold Block x4
Soul Sand x64
Sponge x10
Sugar x64
Chirp x1
Mellohi x1
Pig Egg x1
Ocelot Egg x1
Villager Egg x1
Slime Egg x1
Bow with Power V x1
Bow with Infinity x1
Regeneration II (0:22) x1
Regeneration II (1:00) x1
Strengh II (4:00!!) x2

Very good loot. I broke as many spawners as I could find, including the Blaze spawners, which were the most dangerous. I blew up any empty chests, all of which conveniently had TNT under them. I often found myself going in circles, and coming back to where I already was, which I'm sure was the intention. I only left the cave because I ran out of bread. :/
Ghast and Silverfish spawners would be interesting to encounter. I'd also like to find stuff like ice, cobwebs, or any otherwise unobtainable items in the chests.

It is really good loot, but now there's a catch. Once you enter the cave you cannot get out (correct me if I'm wrong, I thought of /tp, /warp /home, /f home.) The only way out is to find one of the randomly generated exits (nether portals for now) and lighting them with flint and steel and escaping. Should make things much more frustrating.

HeyLookoverthere wrote:Once you enter the cave you cannot get out (correct me if I'm wrong, I thought of /tp, /warp /home, /f home.)

/mvtp. Otherwise I think that's all of em.

Apparently all the lag was caused by the ceiling generator. I'll look at it later, but for now there's just no ceiling.

I added piston doors, but I'm not really sure what to do with them. originally I was gonna stick them randomly in the walls, but since you can just break the walls anyway (until they add the adventure gamemode in 1.3) it seems pointless. Any thoughts? good piston traps that might actually get somebody?

HeyLookoverthere wrote:I added piston doors, but I'm not really sure what to do with them. originally I was gonna stick them randomly in the walls, but since you can just break the walls anyway (until they add the adventure gamemode in 1.3) it seems pointless. Any thoughts? good piston traps that might actually get somebody?

During Astapor I came up with a trap design using pistons, gravel, lava, and signs. Player steps on a pressure plate, pistons retract, and a once stable-looking gravel path turns into a hole of lava.
Do /warp sirrus labs, there's an example of it set up there.

sirrus86 wrote:

HeyLookoverthere wrote:I added piston doors, but I'm not really sure what to do with them. originally I was gonna stick them randomly in the walls, but since you can just break the walls anyway (until they add the adventure gamemode in 1.3) it seems pointless. Any thoughts? good piston traps that might actually get somebody?

During Astapor I came up with a trap design using pistons, gravel, lava, and signs. Player steps on a pressure plate, pistons retract, and a once stable-looking gravel path turns into a hole of lava.
Do /warp sirrus labs, there's an example of it set up there.

I've set up tnt traps, but the problem is that the delay prevents them from being effective unless they trap is under a chest and the player doesn't notice while they're looting. This might work better.

Oh and don't forget tripwires. Those will be very tricky to see. I guess mobs would just set them off though... :/

nazizombies2354 wrote:Oh and don't forget tripwires. Those will be very tricky to see. I guess mobs would just set them off though... :/

Yeah I will add tripwires once bukkit includes them in the API.

I got the config file working, and started adding "biomes" So far just stone, sand, and nether. The only difference right now is appearance. I'd like to ultimately have the biomes change and get more difficult the further the player gets from spawn. Also the loot would get better. This idea works a lot better in Terraria where there are waaaay more items that can be used as loot. Hopefully they'll add more loot soon (especially since they've started adding "adventure mode.")

HeyLookoverthere wrote:Hopefully they'll add more loot soon (especially since they've started adding "adventure mode.")

That, or when the mod API hits we can just create our own items. I already have a special sword I wanna make for myself.

Hopefully I fixed the stack overflow error that was occasionally crashing the server, not sure. Anyway this new version makes the end biome harder by adding Ghast spawners. They don't look quite right but they do work. Also as usual I've tweaked the loot rates. No more enchanted leather armor in the start biome, it's enchanted chain now but with lower level enchantments than you'll find in the later biomes. Also there's a chance to find gear with 2 enchantments in the final biome. Also more food spawns as loot, and no more raw food.

I'm trying to think of some non-monster ways of adding difficulty to the later sections. Traps would be good. I considered making the end mostly lava and you have to jump from block to block but with the mobs that's way too hard. Any thoughts?

HeyLookoverthere wrote:Hopefully I fixed the stack overflow error that was occasionally crashing the server, not sure. Anyway this new version makes the end biome harder by adding Ghast spawners. They don't look quite right but they do work. Also as usual I've tweaked the loot rates. No more enchanted leather armor in the start biome, it's enchanted chain now but with lower level enchantments than you'll find in the later biomes. Also there's a chance to find gear with 2 enchantments in the final biome. Also more food spawns as loot, and no more raw food.

I'm trying to think of some non-monster ways of adding difficulty to the later sections. Traps would be good. I considered making the end mostly lava and you have to jump from block to block but with the mobs that's way too hard. Any thoughts?

Maybe make some sections underwater, so the player has to swim under walls to get to the next section? Put some mazes in the water.

A floor made of ice with some sand blocks with cacti, so like the player has to correct their momentum or they'll run into them.

Nothing but fences suspended over lava, so players need to keep their balance.

If you wanna get really technical, could make a small parkour course the player would have to navigate to reach the next section.

sirrus86 wrote:

HeyLookoverthere wrote:Hopefully I fixed the stack overflow error that was occasionally crashing the server, not sure. Anyway this new version makes the end biome harder by adding Ghast spawners. They don't look quite right but they do work. Also as usual I've tweaked the loot rates. No more enchanted leather armor in the start biome, it's enchanted chain now but with lower level enchantments than you'll find in the later biomes. Also there's a chance to find gear with 2 enchantments in the final biome. Also more food spawns as loot, and no more raw food.

I'm trying to think of some non-monster ways of adding difficulty to the later sections. Traps would be good. I considered making the end mostly lava and you have to jump from block to block but with the mobs that's way too hard. Any thoughts?

Maybe make some sections underwater, so the player has to swim under walls to get to the next section? Put some mazes in the water.

A floor made of ice with some sand blocks with cacti, so like the player has to correct their momentum or they'll run into them.

Nothing but fences suspended over lava, so players need to keep their balance.

If you wanna get really technical, could make a small parkour course the player would have to navigate to reach the next section.

the water...

FyreCat wrote:the water...

Hate to break it to ya but we're not gonna take something off the table just because the power you requested prevents you from making full use of it. See a pit of lava? Swim across. See an underwater room? Well, good thing I made neutralizer grenades huh...

I think the problem had something to do with trying to warp back from dungeon_nether to the dungeon. I just disabled it for now, use /mv tp to get out for now.

may have fixed it, re-enabled the portals.

sirrus86 wrote:

FyreCat wrote:the water...

Hate to break it to ya but we're not gonna take something off the table just because the power you requested prevents you from making full use of it. See a pit of lava? Swim across. See an underwater room? Well, good thing I made neutralizer grenades huh...

This is what I like about the power plugin, the challenge of adapting to your environment to overcome any weaknesses of your powers, or use it to your advantage.

For example if you die in water, build a tunnel or something.
If you don't want me going through your walls, build a second wall ect ect.

FyreCat wrote:

sirrus86 wrote:

HeyLookoverthere wrote:Hopefully I fixed the stack overflow error that was occasionally crashing the server, not sure. Anyway this new version makes the end biome harder by adding Ghast spawners. They don't look quite right but they do work. Also as usual I've tweaked the loot rates. No more enchanted leather armor in the start biome, it's enchanted chain now but with lower level enchantments than you'll find in the later biomes. Also there's a chance to find gear with 2 enchantments in the final biome. Also more food spawns as loot, and no more raw food.

I'm trying to think of some non-monster ways of adding difficulty to the later sections. Traps would be good. I considered making the end mostly lava and you have to jump from block to block but with the mobs that's way too hard. Any thoughts?

Maybe make some sections underwater, so the player has to swim under walls to get to the next section? Put some mazes in the water.

A floor made of ice with some sand blocks with cacti, so like the player has to correct their momentum or they'll run into them.

Nothing but fences suspended over lava, so players need to keep their balance.

If you wanna get really technical, could make a small parkour course the player would have to navigate to reach the next section.

the water...

on the other side of this coin...dat water!

On an unrelated note, I've decided it will always be raining in Skagos.