It has been brought up multiple times that some aspects of progression in Botania are a bit disruptive to the flow of the game. For example, the Rune of Fire is the only tier 1 rune that requires nether access, and the Munchdew would be an idea second generation mana flower, but requires a sin rune to make.
Here's a collection of thoughts from the Discord today. Suggestions are very welcome!
Rune tiers
The materials required for the various tiers should follow straightforward rules and respect availability in current Minecraft versions:
- Tier 1 materials for the "elemental runes" should be easily obtainable in the overworld without access to special tools or hard to find or "scary" places. This definition may result in different materials for Garden of Glass, but then again, skyblock has its own rules and can have its own (although similar) recipes. There is no requirement for these materials to be easily automatable early on, as long as they are readily available in the world. Once they become automatable, they should be cheaper to make than tier 2 runes. (Which they currently are not, due to their manasteel requirement.)
- Tier 2 materials for the "season runes" should be obtainable with manasteel or diamond equipment, but without access to Alfheim, the End, or large amounts of mana. Even if their automation is not viable until later, they should be more complex to make than tier 1 runes, but less complex than tier 3 runes.
- Tier 3 runes ("sin runes") should absolutely be Nether-gated and require a larger variety of materials than tier 2 runes.
- Rune of Mana is fine as it is, it's mana-gated, which is perfectly on theme.
Current materials for tier 1 runes are mostly fine, with the rune of Fire being the major exception due to its nether wart requirement. Nether brick might actually be fine for non-skyblock play, since ruined nether portals are reasonably easy to find. It might also be worth moving the block of coal from the Rune of Earth to Fire, replacing it with a block of raw copper. Flint and Steel would also be a reasonable candidate as fire rune ingredient, since the Rune of Water requires a fishing rod. Technically you also have access to blaze powder without going to the nether, but it requires a fair amount of preparation, so that would be more of a tier 2 material.
Tier 2 runes currently have unexpectedly complicated ingredients. There's no playerless way to automate leaves, except through copious use of mana, for example. Spider eyes rely on witch drops, for example, since Botania has no way of getting them from spiders.
Tier 3 runes need ingredients that reflect their high tier, which the mana diamond does a good job of representing. They also need nether-gating, e.g. through nether quartz or its mana-infused version. And lastly, a thematic ingredient for each of them also wouldn't hurt, e.g. some weapon or TNT for the Rune of Wrath, good food for the rune of gluttony, etc.
Generating Flowers
Endoflame and Hydroangeas as the starter flowers are mostly okay (spamming them should be punished, but that's a different topic), but players need an incentive to make the next step by offering them an easily obtainable alternative that doesn't cause too much trouble in terms of providing resources to consume.
- The Munchdew would be an ideal second generating flower, but unfortunately its tier 3 rune requirement is a huge turn-off. Surprisingly, the Gourmaryllis only requires a T1 and T2 rune, each, but is a lot harder to use in the earlier stages of the game. These two should have their rune requirements swapped.
- Another okay second flower in terms of mana output is the Thermalily, which also requires a tier 2 rune, but has a very high automation ceiling.
- Narslimmus might be the best second flower for skyblock, if you can find a slime chunk. In regular play it's not great until you can create perimeter conditions somewhere, or you can identify a slime chunk in a nearby swamp (good luck).
- Then there's the Rosa Arcana with the Rune of Mana requirement. It's expensive to make and at that stage of the game the player still values XP a lot more on their own person.
Once the player took this second step, the rest of the flower progression is probably fine. Flowers like the Munchdew incentivize making farms and get players to understand what Botania wants from them.
Completely End-gated content
Lastly, there have been complaints that some of the most interesting automation content, namely Corporea (and to a lesser extent also redstring) is compeltely gated behind End access. While I can't support completely moving it before the end, I wonder what options there are to get players interested enough to continue their progression for that last bit of non-Gaia content.