Some thoughts on the Upgrade System with particular attention to how it compares to the old McMMO on Kadcon. My main source of information about how the Upgrade System is intended to work is from the Kadcon EOL Stream and the Status Updates on Youtube, so I might not be up to date in this regard. Of course the folloing is from my -- and thus a players -- point of view. Let's see how much your backend experienced point of view differs from all this, Kade.
I use only mining as an example here, but the basic idea applies to all gathering related activities such as digging and woodcutting.
A cool feature about McMMO was that you had milestones to work towards, such as getting Glowstone Dust from Dirt, or increase the chance for double drops. But after reaching a mining level of 1000 there was nothing to work towards. Yes, there was increased Super Breaker duration but that was more of a handycap because of its increased wear on the tool and no method to end it prematurely.
One way to always have a milestone to work towards would be an Upgrade that has no limit that increases the droprate of some or just like McMMO all blocks of a certain kind. To balance it the cost should be exponential and the gain linear or even logarithmic. The ever increasing cost would lead to a softcap, a point at which one can not turn a profit from the upgrade in a reasonalbe time. But we all know very well not just from Kadcon but also other games that people will go way beyond this softcap just for the bragging rights.
Now you might say: "wait a second! Wasn't this increased droprate bad for the econemy on Kadcon in the long run?". Well, yeah, maybe. I don't know and don't care. But who says that we have to match the old McMMO multiplier of up to 2. And who says that we even start at 1, the base droprate.
Here are some numbers for you:
- 1.00: Base droprate
- 1.33: Average of Fortune 1
- 1.75: Average of Fortune 2
- 2.00: Guaranteed drops with McMMO mining level of 1000 and above
- 2.20: Average of Fortune 3
- 2.67: Average of Fortune 4 (Not obtainable in Survival)
- 3.00: Guarantees drops with McMMO mining level of 1000 and above during super breaker
- 3.14: Average of Fortune 5 (Not obtainable in Survival)
- 4.00: Highest possible with Fortune 3
I included Fortune 4 and 5 for two reasons. One is that I simply found the numbers for their average bonus on the wiki, and the second is that there have been collector items with Fortune 5 on Kadcon. Those were quite usefull because crops are affected by Fortune.
The item material could be an additional multiplier to the droprate, with Diamond and Netherite dropping less in exchange for their high durabiltiy and speed. (As of 1.17 every block EXCEPT Obsidian, Crying Obsidian, Ancient Debris, Block of Netherite and Respawn Anchor can be mined with an Iron Pick). Some ideas for each material:
- Wood: High multiplier to get new Players started? It can break most Netherblocks including Nether Quartz Ore, Nether Gold Ore and Gilded Blackstone making it an efficient tool in the Nether and only there.
- Stone: Multiplier of 1 (effectively none) or something slightly higher than 1. Can break surprisingly few additional blocks compared to wood, but has doubble the speed and more durability.
- Iron: The "Baseline" material, as it can break everything except five different blocks. Good speed, decent durability and a multiplier of 1.
- Diamond: Over 6 times as durable as iron and can break everything. Multiplier of less than 1 (effectively reducing drops) to make up for the high durability and instant mining.
- Netherite: Over 8 times as durable as iron and can break everything. Maybe a multiplier of 1 as it is quite tedious to get Netherite in the first place. At least higher multiplier than Diamond to make it more of an upgrade of its Diamon counterpart. In my opinion Netherite is too "weak" compared to Diamond in Vanilla. Only 1.3 times as durable and only a handful of additional blocks can be insta-mined. Axes and Shovels have literally no benefit over Diamond exept 470 additional durability points.
- Gold: Quite the oddball in Vanilla. Highest base mining speed and lowest durability. High multiplier to make up for its rediculous low durability of 32. Maybe forbid the Unbreaking enchantment to balance the multiplier?
Different benefits for each material type would allow for a market of enchanted tools of all materials, not just Diamond and Netherite.
I also prepared a spreadsheet to give you an overview of how Droprate Upgrade, Material Modifier and Fortune would affect the droprate. The important numbers are in the "Total Bonus" column of each block. The Total Bonus value is the final multiplier of the base droprate. A value less than 1 would result in less drops than an unenchanted tool in vanilla, a value of exact 1 would result in the same amount of drops as in vanilla and a value greater than 1 would result in more drops than normal.
The Material Multiplier is on the right-axis, starting at 0.5 (50%) incrementing in steps of 0.05 (5%) up to 3.0 (300%). The Fortune Level is on the down-axis for the levels 0 through 5 and the Droprate Upgrade is on the down-axis inside each block, starting at 0 (0%) incrementing in steps of 0.05 (5%) up to 3.0 (300%).
The "multiplicative" tap treats all modifiers mulitplicatively with each other. The "partially additive" tap treats Material Multiplier and Droprate Upgrade additive with each other. This combined value is then multiplied with the Fortune-average.
Things to work out:
How do Droprate Upgrade, Item Material, Enchantments (Fortune, maybe Looting) and possible other droprate modifiers interact with each other. Additive? Multiplicative? Which ever yields more drops in a given situation? Should all blocks be affected or maybe only ores? Only non-ores? An additional modifier for the planet you are currently on? A hard cap for the amount of items that can drop from a singe block?
ETM-MaterialMultiplier.ods.zip