Thoughts on potentially radical changes to mana infusion catalysts

Wormbo

We just had an interesting suggestion pop up in the Discord:
What if there was no conjuration catalyst as such, and the alchemy catalyst's functionality was restructured to not compete with exploration that much?

Based on the discussion (it goes on for a bit) following an addition to the 1.21.1 ToDo list, I'm going to capture some thoughts in the replies of this post. Feel free to chime in.

Wormbo

First, the conjuration catalyst. It's just bad game design just mindlessly duplicate items, and from an era when a lot of these were actually harder to obtain renewably.

Let's look at them in categories:

Leaves. There should be a better way to just harvest them off trees. Botania should be able to do it somehow. Maybe with a special type of mana lens, maybe with some other combination of features we already have. Leaves are somewhat important, as they are ingredients for the Autumn rune.
Grass. Same thing. Botania features should be able to somehow do the shears thing with grass, and also ferns and dead bushes, for that matter. These three items are also part of the alchemy catalyst's "shrub cycle", which I'll get to later.
Quartz, soul sand, gravel. These are barter items. Now I know not everyone is a fan of bartering, but it's better than straight-up duplicating those items. Also, Botania now has overworld bartering as a late-game feature via Loonium next to a ruined portal.
Coal. Yeah. The biggest byproduct of Orechid automation probably doesn't need a duplication option.
Snowballs. You don't need a shovel for these. Any automated breaking of snow blocks or snow layers yields snow balls. Snow blocks can be obtained by purifying water, and snow layers are created by just having a snow golem stand on almost any block.
Netherrack. The only actually non-renewable vanilla resource here that actually needs a new solution if the conjuration catalyst goes away. There could, for example, be a conversion option between the various nether "stones", like there already is for the special overworld stone types, allowing netherrack to be renewable via a basalt generator.

Some of these things may need better solutions for Garden of Glass, but none of them should really be needed in base Botania.

Wormbo

Now for the alchemy catalyst, which actually has some very useful one-way conversion recipes. But there are also a couple of cycles and conversion I'm not too sure about.

Let's have a look at the cycles first:

The crop cycle. This is a series of conversions that just convert all the farm crops/seeds into each other. It's actually the most expensive of the cycles and you will probably only use it once to skip exploring for other seeds, carrots, or potatoes, then just cultivate the crops. Very practical for GoG, where you'd have to kill a lot of zombies to obtain carrots and potatoes, and have to punch a lot of grass to get all the seed, but seems unnecessary in base Botania.
The sapling cycle. Similar to the crop cycle, but way cheaper. Practical for GoG, but may need to cost more. Not really great for base Botania, though.
The logs cycle. This one is actually good. It's an easily obtainable resource, and you might not want to have to deal with more complicated tree shaped, so you spend some mana to convert the easier to harvest logs into the variants you want for building purposes. There may be an argument for shuffling around the order in the cycle a bit to have the complicated trees and easy-to-farm trees roughly alternate, but that's pretty much the only complaint I have about it.
The shrub cycle. Grass, fern, and dead bushes. Not sure about this one. As mentioned in the previous reply about grass duplication, harvesting these blocks should really be a thing Botania can automate. It even has a (slow) way to produce dead bushes by having Hydroangeas expire. Maybe they could decay faster in the Nether or something, if farming dead bushes is a thing people want to do.
The flower cycle. Another cycle that skips exploration, but this one has a reason: Many flowers are only renewable in specific biomes, or even at specific locations within those biomes. Still it seems suboptimal outside of GoG, considering Bedrock Edition presents an easy solution through bonemealing small flowers. We'd let vanilla decide about that parity issue later, and instead could make it a Floral Fertilizer feature.
The berry cycle, featuring apples, sweetberries, and glowberries. Again, useful for GoG, but it's a strange combination. Unfortunately, apples are really hard to obtain without resorting to villager trading. Not sure what to make of this, but I don't really like the conversion between the berry types, for the same reasons as the crop cycle.
The froglight cycle. I'm not sure I've ever seen a vanilla froglight farm that wasn't set up to produce all three variants. And it's not even like the log cycle, where you' have to perpetually deal with an annoying tree shape. Should probably be limited to GoG, where biome shenanigans are always a hassle.
The fish cycle. Just the four types of fish you can catch converting into each other. These are hard to automate even with Botania, and always require a player presence or even involvement. This cycle mostly smooths out the ratios at which the fish would be spawning in the various biomes, or caught from fishing with a fishing rod. I guess it's very useful to skip over having to explicitly obtain pufferfish for waterbreathing potions. I don't have any big opinions on this one.
Finally, the stone cycles. There's one for the "1.8 stones" (andesite, diorite, granite), and another for the "1.17 stones" (tuff, calcite, deepslate).
- The 1.8 stones cycle technically only saves nether quartz, as all three stone types can be crafted from cobblestone and nether quartz in some combination. This is just a shortcut to replace quartz with some mana. There is also an alchemy recipe for turning stone into andesite, as alternative entry point instead of crafting cobblestone and quartz into diorite and then maybe adding more cobble or quartz to obtain andesite or granite. Seems fine as a resource conversion cycle, similar to the one for logs. The cycle, including its entry point, also conveniently increases the relative amount of quartz per item, so it feels natural.
- The 1.17 stone cycle is different, though. Neither calcite nor tuff are craftable without this cycle. Deepslate is not renewable or craftable in vanilla either, but Botania has an option with ender air turning various stone types into endstone, endstone being purified into cobbled deepslate (releasing more ender air), and that cobbled deepslate being smelted into natural deepslate as entry point into the cycle. This makes it a reasonably end-game cycle for renewable access to tuff or calcite, which seems unreasonable. Unfortunately these three materials have no real relation to each other (except the version they were introduced) or to the "quartz-based" 1.8 stones. Deepslate already has a renewability option via the endstone loop, while tuff and calcite would need other ways to obtain. The lazy approach would be to add them to the 1.8 stones cycle, but that doesn't seem very topical. Then again, tuff as a volcanic eruptive material, and calcite as the same chemical substance as the shells of various small animals, don't have much in common with each other either. Maybe this is a case where two different ways to make the materials is the way to go.

Wormbo

And finally, the single item conversions, either one way or bi-directional. Some of these are more useful than others:

Rotten flesh to leather. A classic, often implemented as smelting recipe instead. It's so much easier to obtain rotten flesh, so having this option means you don't have to either breed cows (or llamas, or horses, you monster) or farm hoglins. This recipe converts a plentiful byproduct into a useful resource at a reasonable price.
Stone brick to chiseled stone brick. Why? No idea. Crafting is automatable for a long time already.
Snow block to ice. A logical sequel to purifying a water source to a snow block, and much easier than trying to silk-touch ice from a water pool where it had to freeze first.
Lily pad to vine and back. I guess it's an option to obtain vines from fishing junk, but it's a strange conversion. Back in t he days only vines could be used to make mossy stone bricks and mossy cobblestone, but now there is actual moss for this, and it's way easier to farm. Vine harvesting seems like it could benefit from the same kinds of improvements grass and leaves need. And as for lilypads, those could benefit from the same floral fertilizer mechanic already proposed for small flowers. There's just the task of obtaining the first of either in a GoG setting, but conveniently there are vanilla mechanics for both.
Unpoison potatoes. For when you really want to use the entire harvest. In the Discord discussion the suggestion of a "poisonous tiny potato" came up as replacement. It believes in you. But it may also need a hug.
Blaze rod to nether wart. This one requires you to find a Nether fortress and be unlucky with the stair rooms. You no longer need it once you have any nether wart at all, as that is easier to multiply than blaze rods. Not sure if it's really needed.
Gunpowder to flint and back. This is mostly a way to automate the Entropinnyum without requiring mob spawns, but obtaining the flint in the first place is not easy to do at a reasonable rate. I don't know if the other way really is of much use, as you probably never need that much flint if you don't want to convert i it to gunpowder.
Book and quill to name tag. I'm not very high on this personally, but it some people value not having to interact with villagers very highly, and I understand that. Also an automatable way to supply the Labellia.
Cactus to slime ball and back. IIRC this was mostly a replacement for having to build a slime farm for the rune of summer, but slime farms not only exist in swamps now, but can even be made using the oozing effect. The other way around works well, once you did actually set up an efficient slime farm, for faster cactus production to make cellular blocks for the Dandelifeon. I don't know if either conversion is still particularly useful anymore.
Ghast tear to ender pearl. This is supposed to be used with splashing a captured ghast with ender air bottles in the overworld to make mana pearls and pixies dust without a separate enderman farm. Along with the endstone-deepslate loop, this become a self-sustaining system in the overworld, and can probably stay that way.
Glowstone dust to redstone dust and back. Depending on what you do you'll probably need one more than the other, and any non-conjuration way to farm either comes with the other as well. Makes sense to keep, similar to other resource cycles, especially if Botania is going to add a non-witch option for making either material, and the presence of at least two other "glowing" items in vanilla means there are multiple possible ways to implement a glowstone dust recipe.
Cobblestone to sand. Sand still isn't renewable in vanilla, if you exclude the wandering trader. I guess this is one boring way to automate sand production, but I'm not sure what better options there could be.
Terracotta to red sand. Probably more obvious than the cobblestone to sand recipe, and more complicated to pull off as well. Terracotta requires a multi-step process for its production, and Botania's of way via Clayconia is only one option.
Coarse dirt from dirt. This one is redundant, since there's a crafting recipe and gravel is vanilla-renewable via bartering.
Soul soil from soul sand. Definitely a better option than crafting and breaking soul campfires.
Chorus fruit to chorus flower. A little less useful now that chorus flowers can be harvested more easily via projectiles, but still makes chorus tree farms a lot easier to maintain.
Shrinking of special flowers and big dripleaf. Core functionality (and logical extension to a vanilla plant that only grows bigger on its own).
Hydroangeas to motif variant. Hard to use it as decoration otherwise, if you don't want to use a flower pot.
Block deconstruction recipes. Breaks blocks, such as bricks or wool, back into their original crafting components. Mostly a set of uncrafting recipes for 2x2 compacted blocks, but also a source of string from a wool farm. One possible way to retain the conjuration catalyst block with different functionality that still somewhat fits the existing assets would be to rebrand it as "deconstruction catalyst" and move all the deconstruction recipes to there. This has the advantage that a few blocks that have other recipes already could be deconstructed this way, e.g. snow blocks.

adarsh

Thank you for the in-depth writeup! I echo a fair few of the ideas/suggestions laid out here, so below will only be the ones I have additional thoughts/a different take on. I'll start with just base Botania.

Alchemy:

Can do away with shrub cycle imo. Even ferns can be bonemealed and broken to dupe them (via shears, or whatever mechanic we end up with for other plant matter like vines etc.)
re. berry cycle, it'd be nice if there were a way to encourage Apple drops somehow. Even then, they're useful for only three Botania recipes: Soul Cross effects, Absorption pot, and player heads. I think just having a Agri-boosted Oak farm is probably enough, so imo another cycle that can go.
Fish cycle. Can also go, it's not like fishing can really be automated anyways. Marine Allure exists, and if a player really hates fishing, Cocoons in water would do the job. Anyways, the Brew of Gills outclasses vanilla water breathing pots and takes Prismarine instead.
Honestly I doubt 90% of players would kick up a fuss over the 1.17 stone types being a cycle despite not really fitting together. There's a case to be made for Talc -> Calcite and Gneiss -> Tuff given the former are both minerals and the latter can both (kinda) be classified as sedimentary rock, but it'd "unbalance" the metamorphic stones, so to speak. Might be good to brainstorm this a bit more with the rest of the community?
With the flower cycle, in addition to the floral fertiliser bedrock parity idea suggested, perhaps when applied to Enchanted Soil, any kind of vanilla flower (minus sniffer specialties and wither rose) can show up on there, ignoring biome restrictions. Or the different pasture seed grasses could support different vanilla flowers when bonemealed/floral fertilised?
Rotten flesh to leather. I think it could cost a bit more and still be good.
Poisonous potato -> poisonous tater could be a neat hidden alchemy recipe.
Gravel -> flint -> gunpowder for entro automation in vanilla+botania is painful. Could remove if only creeper spawners were in vanilla, or you could somehow influence what a spawner spawns (maybe with a mob head?)
Big fan of book and quill -> name tag.
Finding slimes in vanilla sucks, and cactus isn't used for much else anyways. This is one of the classic alchemy recipes imo, it'd be nice to see it stay.
I've mentioned this before but I find almost every deconstruction recipe pretty useless, other than Wool -> String. It'd defo reduce the bloat in the lexicon entry at least, and make more space for other recipes if needed.
I like the sound of a Basalt -> Netherrack -> Blackstone cycle

On the topic of GoG and additional recipes - I went back and checked 1.7.10's GoG modpack. I do appreciate how to this day, the number of changes GoG makes are minimal. Any extra recipes should reduce aimless void exploration and circumvent the need to wait for the wandering trader:

Crop cycle could go if there's an alternate way to get cocoa beans and beetroot. Building a mob farm is part of GoG's gameloop, and chances are you either kill a Zombie and get a potato/carrot drop, or you cure a zombie villager. I guess it kinda sucks if you manage to get pigs from your early cocoons and can't breed them. I guess it can stay.
Can probably make the sapling cycle cost the same as crop cycle.
Re. flower cycle, could be removed if above flower cycle suggestion implemented or something along those lines.
Froglight cycle isn't needed on GoG either. Most biomes will spawn Temperate frogs from cocoons, Nether biomes produce warm frogs, and the End produces cold frogs. It's just a matter of bringing them home and setting up a magma cube farm.
Blaze rod -> nether wart would be crazy useful for a void nether run, assuming fel blazes drop rods in the nether and structure compass is past elven or end tech.
Probably want a way to get Bamboo a little easier. Perhaps Sugarcane <-> Bamboo with the same cost as crop cycle? Maybe that opens up cheap endo fuel a little too soon vs tree farming. Kelp <-> Bamboo seems slightly better.
Can remove the Heart of the Sea recipe with the Loonium changes, assuming we get a structure compass of sorts.

It's worth reviewing the rune and flower recipes too, so we can make sure those remain automatable and maybe update some sticking points. There should be a post floating around on the forum addressing exactly this.

Wormbo

Hmm, about the cocoa beans availability. Maybe some way to just have them grow on jungle trees? I wonder if anything would break if they could just spawn on growing jungle trees somehow.

QuickBASIC

Maybe allow Floral Fertilizer to create immature seed pods on jungle logs (as if you had just clicked it with a cocoa bean) instead of changing the vanilla behavior. Maybe too cheap, but it really just enables brown dye and cookies.

adarsh

I suppose for GoG, Botania could just add cocoa to jungle fishing loot like Bedrock and call it a day. Or maybe add it to Loonium loot as a throwback to old times. A Botania way of encouraging them to spawn on Jungle trees from saplings would be cool though, bit like how Bee Nests can spawn on trees grown near flowers. Not like it’s essential to progression.

Wormbo

It could be triggered by something like a nearby Agricarnation, similar to the way flowers may cause a bee nest to generate on growing oak/birch trees. Not sure if there is any more specific block that could be used instead.

LeoBeliik

yes yes!

Wormbo

Random idea for leaves and grass: what if the horn/drum of the wild/canopy had a chance to just drop the block item? For leaves that would be equivalent to using a silktouch tool. For grass (and fern) that would be equivalent to using shears.

I just wonder what the best way to implement this could be. The two options I immediately thought of were: Random chance (e.g. 5% or so, compared to the 12.5% chance for grass to drop seeds) or actual silktouch enchantment on the horn/drum.

Wormbo

More ideas on the potential "Deconstruction Catalyst" replacement for the Conjuration Catalyst block:

It should not become a generic "uncrafting" feature, just reversing certain 2x2->1 and 3x3->1 recipes for full blocks (potentially with some loss, as is already the case for string from wool), and a few special cases.
It could take apart chest boats and the various minecart+block variants, since those don't do that on their own anymore.
Decorated pot items could be taken apart without having to place and smash them.
We plan on "flattening" spreader block cover variants into their own block types, which may have corresponding item types. The deconstruction catalyst could be one way (in addition to the crafting table and in-world interaction) to get back the wool. If the attached scaffolding becomes part of the item as well, it might also be recoverable with this option.
A covered spreader with scaffolding would be deconstructed into the spreader, one scaffolding item, and one wool item of the appropriate color. (Note: This requires a change to mana infusion recipes to allow more than one item type to be returned.)
More complete 2x2 "unpacking" support for building blocks that are not actually storage blocks, although maybe it's fair to reduce the number of returned items by 1 if there is no vanilla way to do it (e.g. snow block and clay break into 4 items by mining without silktouch):
- clay -> clay balls (existing alchemy recipe)
- dripstone -> 4 pointed dripstone
- glowstone -> 4 glowstone dust (existing alchemy recipe)
- honeycomb block -> 4 honeycomb
- magma block -> 4 magma cream
- nether bricks -> 4 nether brick (maybe also red nether bricks -> 2 nether brick, the nether wart is lost)
- prismarine -> 4 prismarine shards (probably no unpacking of prismarine bricks or dark prismarine)
- quartz block variants -> 4 corresponding quartz items
- snow block -> 4 snowballs (similar to clay, this is just for convenience; maybe also snow layer -> 1 snowball)
- amethyst block -> 4 amethyst shards
Maybe also support some 3x3 "unpacking" for non-storage building blocks (again, maybe at varying amounts of loss):
- bamboo block -> 9 bamboo
- blue ice -> 9 packed ice, and packed ice -> 9 ice (these maybe not, since Botania can just increase ice "density")
- melon -> 9 melon slices
- wart block -> 9 nether wart (Although on second thought, this might be too powerful. Maybe just a "wart block -> 1 nether wart" alchemy recipe as a way to enable the botanical brewery without finding a nether fortress, as crimson fungus growing is almost too efficient.)

Wormbo

For reference, there is nor a Pull Request with a specific implementation as discussion basis: https://github.com/VazkiiMods/Botania/pull/4916

It doesn't yet cover what to do exactly with the Conjuration Catalyst but that block gets repurposed as the catalyst for deconstruction for now. (Lexicon is not updated.)

uiu490

One of the new things I am currently wanting to have access to in my GoG world is suspicious sand/gravel. Maybe the conjuration catalyst would be a good way to get these from sand/gravel. It could cost a lot of mana to balance out the normal rarity of them.

Wormbo

What do you want out of suspicious sand/gravel, exactly? The blocks themselves don't do much on their own. The loot you get out of them is specified as they generate in a structure (or feature) in a regular world. The items you can obtain from them are made available via the Loonium, and I don't currently see a good way to just give players the blocks and add any particular loot table to them.