[Balance] Cincinnasite-diamond tools and sword are overpowered

[saltyseadoggo]

After doing some testing with this mod's Cincinnasite-diamond tools and sword, I would like to express my concerns as to the balance of these items. My concern is that these items outclass more expensive, end-game materials such as vanilla Netherite or BetterEnd's Aeternium in mining speed and attack damage, whilst being far easier to make, as they use the very common Cincinnasite in place of rarer materials like ancient debris, and that their durability decrease is too small to be noticeable, especially with Mending and Unbreaking III.

Let's compare Cincinnasite-diamond tools and swords to Netherite as an example. While each Netherite tool or sword requires four rare ancient debris blocks to create, which in turn require a diamond pickaxe to break, as well as the diamonds needed to make the basic diamond equipment to begin with, Cincinnasite-diamond equipment only requires forged Cincinnasite, which is made from the very common Cincinnasite that only needs a stone pickaxe to break, as well as only needing two diamonds for the pickaxe and axe when the Netherite versions require three. In addition, the Cincinnasite-diamond sword in particular in particular is hideously overpowered for its cost. Dealing 9.5 damage per hit, it outclasses Netherite by 1.5 damage, as well as BetterEnd's Aeternium by 1.0 damage.

I wanted to open an issue about these concerns, and would like to suggest the following changes to bring these items into check.

• Drop all Cincinnasite-diamond tools and the sword's durability to that of the basic Cincinnasite tools and sword, or slightly higher. The way that I see it, the diamonds are used to upgrade the cutting edges of these items, but their bodies are still made of the apparently flimsy Cincinnasite. For the tools, this would make them a sort of glass cannon tool type, digging faster than Netherite at the cost of being unable to handle larger digging tasks without much more frequent repairs. This is a tradeoff. This would also prevent them from outclassing BetterEnd's Aeternium, which I understand was intended to be more effective all around than Netherite. The sword wouldn't see too much difference due to large-scale sword usage without repairs being less common, which is why I would also like to suggest...
• Drop the Cincinnasite-diamond sword's damage to 8.5, so it doesn't outclass Netherite so dramatically, and also doesn't outclass BetterEnd Aeternium at all.

I hope that you will consider these or your own ideas for bringing these items into line. Obtaining such powerful equipment so easily is not very enjoyable, and makes other items that require more effort to make redundant.

[MonsterTrex]

Highly agreed. The tools allow you to have end-game gear within a couple of minutes. You need less diamonds to craft these and are far superior in nearly every way for some reason. I feel like it they should either be significantly less durable than diamond gear (like you stated), or only add a slight boost to the damage and armor of cincinnasite gear rather than the ridiculous 9.5 damage on the sword... You basically have a diamond sword with sharpness 3 on them without doing anything more than adding 2 cincinnasite ingots to the diamond sword recipe... Then you add enchantments to that and bam... You outclass nearly everything and start 1 shotting various mobs.

[MonsterTrex]

I also noticed that Cincinnasite-diamond pickaxe with efficiency 5, alongside the BetterEnd armor set of Crystalite, gives you isnta-mine of stone blocks. I didn't expect that since I would have assumed the only pickaxe that would have the potential to do this, would be Aeternium from BetterEnd with the Crystalite armor set.

[Mandalorian007]

I would like to bump this. I am actually spending a fairly decent amount of time trying to figure out a way to rebalance the items in my world without having to manually modify the attributes of each one. It would be fantastic if this could be tweaked to help with the immersion of the higher quality materials meaning the better tools and weapons

[paulevsGitch]

Github is not a forum, "bumping" is not working here. If this kind of spam will continue I will lock this issue

[Mandalorian007]

Github is not a forum, "bumping" is not working here. If this kind of spam will continue I will lock this issue

My apologizes I realize that I didn't engage on this issue very well. I am not sure how things are prioritized here and I was happy to see I was not alone in hopes to see this adjusted. Instead of my last approach let me try and start a productive dialog around the topic and then see if I am able to provide a PR to support this incredible mod instead of just making noise.

I'll narrow my first attempt just to sword balance and see if this approach is helpful.

Vanilla sword progression:

wood - 4 | stone - 5 (will ignore these as they aren't armor comparisons)
gold - 4
iron - 6
diamond - 7
netherite - 8

current better nether options:

ruby - 7
cin - 7.5
cin-diamond 9.5

current better end options:

Thallasium - 5.5
Terminite - 7
Aeternium - 8.5

Looking at the overall armor progression based on stats:

gold 
iron | thallasium 
cinn | ruby
diamond 
Terminite -- presumably diamond-cinn which doesn't exist would be here?
netherite
Aeternium

** Skipping Crystalite as their unique mods make it tricky to evaluate

If we look at the progression above and try to think of them in terms of sword damage:

gold - 4
iron | thallasium - 6 | 5.5
cinn | ruby - 7.5 | 7
diamond - 7
Terminite | cinn-diamond - 7 | 9.5
netherite - 8
Aeternium - 8.5

Overall, my impression is that the Better End items feel really well balanced and fit into the game well. The Better Nether ones might need a tweak.

My gut check on this is:

cinn sword 7.5 -> 6.5
ruby sword  7 -> 6
cinn-diamond sword 9.5 -> 7.5

Taking a quick look at the current code base and the fabric wiki (https://fabricmc.net/wiki/tutorial:tools). I think this location is determining our material damage:
https://github.com/paulevsGitch/BetterNether/blob/master/src/main/java/paulevs/betternether/items/materials/BNItemMaterials.java#L9
And the tool damage itself is configured in the item registry:
https://github.com/paulevsGitch/BetterNether/blob/master/src/main/java/paulevs/betternether/registry/NetherItems.java#L80

I feel confident I can provide a PR if there is a target for what the best balance here would be.

[quiqueck]

Thanks for the PR and the great write up. It is very much appreciated.

I'll leave the issue open, as rebalancing of BN-Tools is an ongoing task and we welcome any input.

[Mandalorian007]

Thank you very much for the feedback @quiqueck ! Let's see if I can't help out with tools a bit as well.

Based on my personal experience I haven't noticed anything too dramatic with the stats of the current tool line up that needs tweaking.

Using the same armor progression as above and looking at some stats on pickaxes.

Material	damage	speed	durability
iron	4	1.2	250
thallasium	3.5	1.2	320
cinn	4.5	1.2	512
ruby	4	1.2	1300
diamond	5	1.2	1561
terminite	5	1.2	1230
cinn-diamond	5.5	1.2	1800
netherite	6	1.2	2031
Aeternium	6	1.2	2196

Looking at this from this angle the only things that really stand out to me are:

• cinn durability being double that of iron is a bit surprising considering it's ease of access it might be better falling closer to thallasium or iron.
• ruby has a surprisingly high durability for something that is as easy as it is to get and craft.
• cinn-diamond's durability is probably a bit too high considering the ease of getting it and the fire resistance. Could probably be brought closer to diamond.
• aeternium's durability really isn't much higher than netherite. It might need a small buff.

Gut check on durability adjustments:

cinn 512 -> 300 (slightly better than iron)
ruby 1300 -> 750 (this is triple iron, but still about half diamond)
cinn-diamond 1800 -> 1650 (just a bit better than diamond)

Better End consideration:
Aeternium 2196 -> 2400ish? -- Food for thought on this one since that is a separate repo.

In terms of a code change it looks like these would be fairly straight forward as well as they are all configured directly in the defined item materials:
https://github.com/paulevsGitch/BetterNether/blob/master/src/main/java/paulevs/betternether/items/materials/BNItemMaterials.java

I will put something up for review in a bit which is obviously subject to changed based on thoughts here.

[Mandalorian007]

Also noting that a major portion of the power imbalance with tools is actually due to the efficiency enchantment consistently applying where it should disable. This was noted to be fixed with the BCLib migration effort as noted in this issue:
#350

Adding a tag to this here since that power issue was referenced by @MonsterTrex above.

[Mandalorian007]

As I was exploring the tools a bit more I also decided to take a look at enchantability (how easy it is to get good enchantments) from the tool perspective.

Material	tool enchantability
iron	14
thallasium	12
cinn	14
ruby	9
diamond	10
terminite	14
cinn-diamond	22
netherite	15
Aeternium	18

Overall I think the mod is pretty balanced here with the exception of cinn-diamond at 22. It's easier to enchant than anything except gold which is also a 22. (Didn't list above.)

Taking a look at the cinn-diamond gear it's difficulty is similar to achieve to that of diamond and terminite and definitely easier than netherite and aeternium considerably. From that perspective I think bringing it down between netherite and diamond makes sense which would place it in a tier similar to terminite. Sine terminite requires going to the end and a lot of processing steps I feel it makes more sense for cinn-diamond to fall a bit below that.

Recommendation:

Cinn-diamond tool enchantability: 22 -> 12

I will update the PR with this adjustment as well.

[Mandalorian007]

I also found this issue referencing axes, shovels, and hoes. Do we want to flag that as a duplicate of this issue and I can look into these here or does it make more sense to scope this down to just sword + pickaxe and pickup the thread over there?
#161

[quiqueck]

I think it will simplify things if we collect it here.

[quiqueck]

Thanks for taking this task, it is really appreciated!
I had a brief chat with paulevs, and I think it he had a good point, so I'll repeat it here in short. The nether tools should work especially well for the nether environment.

Here are some thoughts:

• Speed is not important an can be around the iron-level (for cinncinasite) up to diamond-level (cin-diamond) as Netherrack is fast to mine.
• The tools could distinguish themselves by having improved durability (forged in the fires of the nether ;) ) maybe starting from iron (or even diamond) cinncinastite, then ruby and finally cin-diamond (around netherrite)
• They could have a speed advantage for obsidian (it is a nightmare to dig, and it is available in the current dev-build for testing) and maybe deepslate (not jet in)

[Mandalorian007]

Hmm going to brainstorm on this and make a bit of a proposal. I am a huge fan of the obsidian speed boost especially since we have a variety of obsidian and obsidian glass now and it would give a large unique value proposition (potentially cinn-diamond level). The deepslate I think is an interesting value proposition. My gut feeling on that one is I would really like it on the Aeternium pick so I could go back to strip mining full speed again using "end game" gear.

My current train of thought is to back up a bit and think about it because I want to make sure that the value proposition works across all tool types. (Axe, Shovel, Hoe) and they aren't ignored. I have noticed players really like using a "set" of tools so it would be good if that value proposition was available for a whole set.

I'll do some brainstorming and make a proposal.

[quiqueck]

Some more random thoughts of mine.

• Maybe there should be ruby-netherite tools (If I remember correct, @paulevsGitch said, that the current tools were introduced before netherite was a thing)
• We could craete a new tool that is a nether/end hybrid which has the combined best specs
• Maybe the crossover tools is ruby-netherite-aeternium, so something that is really hard to obtain

[Mandalorian007]

hmm that is a really interesting idea, but might make it less logical if someone uses either the BetterNether or the BetterEnd standalone.

One thing that is throwing my framing for a loop is Crystalite armor. In raw stats they are worse than Aeternium, but in effect buffs they dramatically outscale it. In some ways it feels like the Aeternium was designed to be the "ultimate" tool you just referenced because Aeternium was created from netherite + terminite, but it lacks a bit of the "flashiness" that the current crystalite offering has which is also much easier to obtain

[quiqueck]

Might be an incentive to install both if you can only get it in combination

[Mandalorian007]

hmm okay definitely will jam on this a bit. I have a few good ideas. Hopefully, I will have something soon :)

[Mandalorian007]

Okay been reviewing a few ideas and bouncing them off some of the folks on my server. Here is what I am thinking so far:

Materials and Flavor

• Cincinnasite I can’t think of a lore reference on, but it kind of sounds like “Cinders”, so maybe it’s material formed from the ashes of a ruined world? Could fit with the ruined bastions and the ancient debris theme.

• Rubies took a bit of digging, but I was able to pull up two references that could add some flavor. The first is that Noblemen of India and China used to use them to create ornate armor and scabbards. While that point is cool it doesn’t fit into the flavor here. The second is that the traditional Hindu astrological beliefs hold rubies as the “gemstone of the Sun”. Now this has some really cool flavor potential we can work with.

Distinguishing the Nether Tool Sets

• Cincinnasite: I am still not sure what to do about the base version of these tools. They are super common and I tend to think about it like the “iron of the nether”.

• Cincinnasite Diamond: The diamond being applied could be like a "sharpening effect" allowing extra capabilities while farming

Pickaxe: should be extra effective at dealing with obsidian. Maybe so much so that a Haste 2 beacon + Efficiency 5 could insta mine.
Axe: “sharper” could mean more efficient at cutting logs&bark with a small chance of giving extra
Shovel: Not sure
Hoe: Not sure

• Ruby playing off the “Gemstone of the sun” concept could borrow an idea from another mod around “auto smelting ores”. Playing off the “fire like” concept and keeping mining speed around iron level as the trade off

Pickaxe: auto smelting ores
Axe: auto-converts logs&bark into charcoal
Shovel: certain blocks could be smelted (sand -> glass)
Hoe: cooked vegetables when harvested

-- Note: I will nail down some balance points and tradeoffs once we figure out the unique value proposition of the tools. As a note I initially thought of this as a way to make the tools useful overall and not just the nether, but if you have ideas to narrow the effectiveness to the Nether I think that is okay as well.

@quiqueck @paulevsGitch Let me know how you feel about this train of thought. I do think that something along these lines would help to create some tools that could be uniquely valuable for certain situations.

[quiqueck]

I like the lore aspekt very much.

The lore for cinncinasite does not have to be rooted in reality. We had a suggestion somewhere that giving piglings cin instead of gold should agro them, which would make it something that is offending/dangerous to them. So we could make it a material that is more powerful than others when used in the nether. But as a downside it will agro piglings around you. Adding the diamond could make it more usefull in the overworld then.

The idea with cooking the ores for you is nice. But I am not sure how easy it will be to implement it. We'd need to override the drops for every ore block. I think to balance it out, mining an ore should have a greater hit on the durability of the axe, making it (for ore mining) about as durable as gold.

Or we make ruby a set of tools that can be charged somehow...

[Mandalorian007]

I like the aggro mechanic being used for the piglins it could effectively be the same as if you were breaking gold or opening chests. Using cincinnasite could "disable" the gold protection as well. I could totally see the "sword" of this set having bonus damage against pigmen which could be great for trying to take care of bastion brutes. I am not quite sure what kind of flavor we could apply to the other tools with this train of thought

For auto-smelting I was poking around and I did see this implementation for it as a mixin mechanic where it was recipe based so I don't think it should be too hard coding intensive ideally. It would be great as a way to distinguish the nether tools with a really unique value proposition.

[abamacus]

Wow, this thread got busy all of the sudden! I started drafting some suggestions on rebalancing these items a couple months ago, but now I'm late to the party =-]

Summary:

• Make Cincinnasite like Iron except a bit less durable and a bit more damaging.
• Make Ruby like Diamond except a bit less durable and a bit more damaging.
• Replace Cincinnasite-Diamond tools with Ruby-Netherite tools; add Ruby-Netherite armor
• Fix the over-efficient mining; add a new "Ancient Tool" to actually have this effect on purpose
• Replace Nether Reeds in the tool recipes with sticks or stems
• And a couple tangential things -- mine netherrack bare-handed, adjustment to Cincinnasite mining/smelting, an idea for Nether Firework Rocket.

I wrote this all up in detail as a blog post:
http://blog.abamacus.net/2021/11/even-better-nether-fixing-cincinnasite.html
If this is all too divergent from this "issue", let me know and I will start a new one.

[Mandalorian007]

I love a lot of the flavor in the above post, but it also addresses a wider issue than just the tools and redesigns the whole tool flow rather than just a re-balance. From my perspective preserving the existing materials and armor is important for world forward and backwards compatibility. Crafting recipes, material scarcity, item effects are all easily in scope and shouldn't break the compatibility of older worlds.

A few changes have already been added:

• nether sword damage has been balanced
• nether pickaxes now mine obsidian more efficiently than other pickaxes
• The broken efficiency enchantment effect which turned the pickaxe into a "multi-tool" has been fixed.

@quiqueck As a note should nether pickaxes also have a mining speed buff on netherrack? It would be good to also add some sort of flavor text or note to the tool about this mining speed enhancement effect so it's obvious to users that it exists

[quiqueck]

@Mandalorian007
Netherrack is so weak, not sure of anyone would notice a buff there :D

@abamacus
No, you are not late. We are in the middle of rebalancing. :)

Maybe abamacus idea of the "Ancient"-Material could be combined with Mandalorian007s idea of the auto-smelting tools. Adding a new ruby-based tool-set/multi-tool above netherite tools with some built in enchantments. Maybe that armor and sword could set attackers on fire...

But the Piglings fear it, such that they really agro when you have any of those items equipped. But it needs to be End-Game, so we need something that is hard to get.

[Mandalorian007]

One concept I have been considering is the idea of keeping the nether tools minorly unique. nice quality of life properties like faster obsidian mining is already pretty sweet imho and gives me a reason to maintain a cinn-diamond pickaxe all game.

If I am thinking about scaling out the materials one thought I had was a bit closer tied to the balance of better end.

Considering that effects are granted by crystalite it's actually stronger than aeternium in many ways while still being dramatically easier to acquire. So an idea that popped into my head was that crystalite could be achieved with aeternium as a base and then a player could tweak the ritual with different materials to "trim" the armor.

so for example:
ruby trimmed crystalite could be fire themed with auto-smelting tools.
cinn trimmed crystalite could be cinnificantly more durable to represent the "forged in the fires of the nether"

Crystalite could be adjusted to have a set bonus for each trim which is a beacon effect which would give players a reason to gather and create a variety of armor sets for different purposes.

Still a rough idea, but curious about your thoughts

[quiqueck]

Moving to our Enhancement List.

[quiqueck]

I'll reopen this to keep the discussion alive :)

[Joulanh]

Hi. I'll share my Ideas as well.

First of all concerning content that is only accesible if you have both the better nether and better end and maybe in the future eden ring installed, I'm all for it :D. I dont think it's not logical if you have only one installed its just bonus content. What i mean is it wont make the rest thats already there worse, on the other hand, in my opinion, it would make both mods a lot better and more... im not sure how to say it... refined and whole? It'd tie things together in a way, make it feel more like one big game instead of independed mods.

Ruby Tools/Armor

I think Ruby Armor and especially Tools are in a position where its not really needed, which doesnt mean i think rubys should be thrown out of the window but there might be other uses for them. I at least have a suggestion but i'll come to that later.
Let's start with ruby tools. If you enter the Nether, normally youd build a nether portal out of obsidian which needs a diamond pickaxe to be obtained (well not always but most players will use one), which is already better than the ruby pickaxe. You will also, most likely, have enough iron to build iron pickaxes, which are as good as ruby in everything but the durabillity. But lastly and maybe most importantly, with the newly gained acces to the nether you will already have materials for a better pickaxe (cincinnacite), that has durability that is lower than ruby but also higher than iron. And not only that, cincinnasite ore also spawns more frequent than ruby ore, if I'm not wrong.
The last reason goes for every other tool as well.

The Armor set is basically the same except for a slight boost in durability for the ruby set, which is negligible if you compare ruby durability to diamond durability, and having two item sets that are that similar gives no real benefit in my opinion.

Cincinnasite Tools and Armor

I think the basic tools and armor set is in a really good position, its a little better than Iron , which is fair if you risk dying in the nether for it, but not as good as diamonds. What i dont really understand from a logical point of view is how the Cinncinasite-Diamond Tools gets a boost in both stats compared to diamond and cincinnasite. Maybe its a bit far fetched since nothing is really logical in minecraft but i dont know, i thought it would make more sense balance wise to just combine the best stats. That also brings me to my suggestion.

Suggestion

-> Remove the ruby armor and toolset and save rubys for another feature
-> Raise the durability of cincinnasite stuff a lot, but the stats stay slightly better than iron. So higher durability than diamond with slightly worse stats then diamond, but the ability to mine obsidian faster.
-> Combine the durability stats of cincinnasite and the other stats of diamond tools in the cincinnasite-diamond tools.
-> Set the crafting recipe for cincinnasite-diamond tools to cincinnasite tool + diamond in the smithing table.
So you get a tool that is not better than a diamond tool but has more durability, can mine obsidian faster in case of the pickaxe and uses less diamonds overall
And if the recipe change is too op, the other changes are still pretty good even if the price stays at 2 diamonds.
-> This would also maybe give an opportunity to introduce diamond-plated-cincinnasite armor or something of that sort.

My approach for other uses for rubys

I really liked the idea of abilities for items and autosmelt and so on so here is my go at it.

There are rubies in better nether and amber in better end and maybe some other gem will come to eden ring. My idea was to use those gems to upgrade tolls and armors and give them abilitys. Those abilitys, whatever they may be, will have something to do with where the gem comes from, for example the pickaxe with a ruby could mean auto smelting applied or the helmet upgraded with amber could replace the end veil enchantment. To make it a little more balanced my approach would be to give the upgraded tools a second "durability" bar that doesent break the item when empty but disables the corresponding ability, kind of like fuel. That fuel can then be refilled with a certain item for example blaze poder and end dust were the first ones that came to mind. Its kind of like tinkers construct upgrades but with a balancing twist.

And since you can only place one gem on each peace of equipment youd need to make a really specific toolset to fit your needs at the moment.

My rough ideas so far:

Ruby upgrades:

Tools -> Autosmelt
Boots -> Lava walking or higher speed while swimming in lava
Chestplate -> Fire resistence for a short period of time
Helmet -> Dig speed in lava or more visibility while diving in lava
Legs -> ?

Amber upgrades:

Tools -> Drops directly transfer into the inventory
Boots -> Double Jump
Helmet -> End Veil
legs -> ?
Chestplate -> Levitation Protection

Eden Ring ?

maybe somthing to help against the windy biome which would give you only a limited timespan to explore the biome since you loose fuel while you are in it

You could also easily balance these features since youd just need to raise or lower the fuel usage

This is all maybe a little bit much but if you find even one thing that peakes your interest then writing all this would have been worth it :D

[ZenoCoding]

Ok. Woah. I've just recently read through this thread, and it looks like quite a bit has happened, along with some rebalancing as of last month- but I have to say, going through a survival world and eyeing it, the default ruby spawn rates seem incredibly common (with a fortune 3 netherite pickaxe, I was able to find almost 2 stacks of it in less than 5 minutes), almost comparable to iron, despite the balancing changes making them comparable to netherite, if not better, with their special abilities and such.

Overall, I think ruby is great, but definitely needs one of two things:
A. Ruby should be much rarer, being more biome specific, or simply just similar to the rarity netherite.
B. Ruby should be made to fit more of the niche of the nether

I'm not sure what else could be done, or if I'm simply incorrect, but the fact remains that as I'm hosting a server, players have been simply obtaining a netherite pickaxe, then getting ruby and achieving what is basically full netherite in less than 2 hours of playing on the server, which is obviously concerning for balance reasons.

I hope that these issues will be addressed, as I've had to greatly decrease ruby spawn rates and reset the nether as disabling ruby will crash the server repeatedly upon startup.

[ZenoCoding]

That is actually by design. Ruby gear partially outperforms netherite gear now. In order to counter balance this, we increased the mining level.

As stated in #546, ruby partially outperforms netherite. I find this to be incredibly concerning due to the extremely low rarity of the ore.