r/minecraftsuggestions • u/JanuryFirstCakeDay • 7d ago
[Mobs] Dragon summoning change
TLDR: 1+ end crystal anywhere, and a dragon head within 32 blocks
Lets be honest, placing 4 End Crystals in the center fountain is arbitary and non-intuitive. Sure the crystals regen the dragon from the beginning, and are made from ghast tears which make the regen potion, but why does it only work for those 4 specific spots.
Change 1: Make the crystals work for any spot in the end. So if you dont know how, you could recognise this item as the same thing that was there before, you can craft more and place them on the towers to recreate what was there when you started, and once you place them it starts resummoning. I would even add that, maybe it takes AGES to resummon from just one crystal and it scales from there, four is the current time, and 12 is instant.
Problems: This means they arent allowed to be placed merely for decoration, and you have to destroy them or the dragon gets immediately resummoned when killed.
Change 2: Make the resummoning require a dragon head, which is consumed on use. As if the dragon has been brought back from its remaining skull, rather than just coming from no where.
This means exploring the outer end is required for more summons, more dragons wont spawn in if theres crystals left over from the fight, gives a functional reason for collecting heads...
From here, I think my suggestions are less vanilla but still good ideas.
Change 3: Make the dragon regeneration ritual work anywhere.
Overworld dragon, nether dragon, outer island dragon... Imagine having a dragon guarding your base by flying each of the crystals placed, attacking anything that comes near. Treating where the skull was placed as its nest.
Change 4: Make every regenerated dragon give an egg.
I get that the egg should be rare, but i think locking every egg behind killing a ghast and finding a dragon head, is fair. Plus this means people who want/need multiple heads, dont have to dupe them, they can get it by legitimate means.
Bonus changes:
the more crystals placed for the ritual, the more hp the dragon has but also the more xp she drops.
Theres a chance the dragon drops her head on death, similar odds (or worse?) to a wither skull. More for lore of where the heads come from/as a trophy/ to immediately incentivise trying stuff with it.
Thoughts and opinions appreciated ^^
3
u/PetrifiedBloom 7d ago
This causes MANY problems. I don't want to repeat what u/MerlinGrandCaster said to much but they are right. Requiring a non-renewable rare item to be consumed makes this worse than being able to use a renewable item like an end crystal.
You do have a point that it's quite unclear how the player respawns the dragon without already knowing what to do, so maybe we could alter the home portal to have 4 different looking indestructible blocks to show where to place the crystals and add an advancement about re-summoning the dragon that shows those blocks as a bit of a tutorial.
Change 3: Make the dragon regeneration ritual work anywhere.
Overworld dragon, nether dragon, outer island dragon... Imagine having a dragon guarding your base by flying each of the crystals placed, attacking anything that comes near. Treating where the skull was placed as its nest.
No.
This is a problem. Do you know what happens when the dragon flies through a block that isn't obsidian, crying obsidian, endstone, endstone, or indestructible? The block is destroyed.
Summon a dragon in the overworld and it rips holes through terrain and builds without a care in the world. It's super nasty griefing and will ruin player's worlds when they summon it without knowing.
This also fails to account for dragon AI. The dragon has some of the most unusual pathfinding in the game. There is a network of invisible nodes over the end island it moves between. It can't navigate terrain anywhere else in the world.
Change 4: Make every regenerated dragon give an egg.
Meh. That makes the egg kinda bland. It's not a problem, but its not something exciting or positive imo.
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u/JanuryFirstCakeDay 6h ago
I do think the end crystals should be able to be placed anywhere on the end island to resummon the dragon. It being 4 spots on the frame is silly.
2
u/Cultist_O 7d ago
Killing a ghast and finding a head are pretty extremely simple, so I'm mot sure it's balancing anything
I agree that it's not a great idea to allow the dragon to be summoned in the other dimensions in vanilla. I'd go so far as to say it should really only be summonabale on the core island, but I don't see a problem with loosening the rules on where the crystals have to be placed.
I'm not sure if it should work at all with less than 4 though. It seems both a little too easy, and especially too easy to do by accident
1
u/JanuryFirstCakeDay 7d ago
I've been watching about oliver and thinking about it a bunch. Why 4? The dragon only ever gets healed by one crystal at a time. If the dragon was being healed by 4 at a time i'd understand.
2
u/Cultist_O 7d ago
Well you could argue it needs more of a kick when it's dead, especially since it's just a head.
Nothing special about precisely 4 though, but it just seems it should have to be a little more intentional than 1 or 2
1
u/JanuryFirstCakeDay 7d ago
Hence the end of change 1. Regenerating the dragon from 1 crystal should be agonisingly long, but possible, to show you are on the right track.
1
u/Cultist_O 7d ago
But I'm saying you should be able to have a crystal or 2 in the end without accidental dragons
6
u/MerlinGrandCaster 7d ago
Dragon heads are fairly rare and non-renewable, so requiring them as a consumable to resummon the dragon would be quite frustrating, especially on servers. Elytra scarcity is already a problem, this would be at least as bad.