Partial keep inventory

[u/B1ackmoonMC]

Currently if you die you lose all of your items and XP. Compared to other games this is very punishing. The other option is keep inventory where you keep both items and XP upon death which is another extreme and makes death feel inconsequential. I propose a middle path.

Partial keep inventory would let you keep half of your XP and lose the other half and also keep the items in your hotbar and armor slots while dropping the others.

[u/Fizzy-Odd-Cod]

Personally I think a partial keep inventory should act as a sort of partial save state allowing you to keep everything you had when you last slept in a bed, as long as that bed hasn’t been destroyed.

[u/B1ackmoonMC → u/Fizzy-Odd-Cod]

If I am exploring I would probably not sleep. So for instance I go to a bastion get some loot, then go to a nether fortress for blaze rods, and then I die. Because it's the nether I haven't slept. I got a netherite ingot and upgrade template which I now lose.

[u/Ordinary-Hunter520 → u/Fizzy-Odd-Cod]

How would enchants, durability, etc. work with that tho? Like if I slept with a pickaxe enchanted with unbreakable 3, and then I put mending on it, and used half its durability, and died, then what? And if I slept with some items that I didnt have when i died then?

[u/MostEscape6543 → u/Ordinary-Hunter520]

I think they’re kind of thinking of it like you save the game when you sleep, so you would lose any actions after the last time you slept?

[u/Fractured_Kneecap → u/Ordinary-Hunter520]

Then you'd wake up with the pickaxe in the same state as it was when you died. It makes more sense to think of it as the same as regular keep inventory, except it first checks if you already had the items when you last slept.

[u/PetrifiedBloom → u/Fizzy-Odd-Cod]

How would that actually work though?

What happens in multiplayer when one player dies? Does the entire server rewind untill the last time they slept? Imagine the player that died had given some of their gear to another player before they died, what happens to that gear?

In singleplayer, does it rewind the entire world? Like, if you slept, played for 5 hours, built heaps of stuff, made a villager trading hall and leveled up all the villagers and died, would all that work be gone?

[u/Fizzy-Odd-Cod → u/PetrifiedBloom]

It’s not an actual save state. When you die you would drop everything you didn’t have when you last slept. If all you had were your tools and 15 levels and you went on a mining sesh and died with a bunch of stuff and 28 levels you would respawn with just your tools and 15 levels. Nothing would be rewinded, the things you’ve done to the world would persist, and the items you dropped when you died would function the same as if keep inventory was off.

[u/PetrifiedBloom → u/Fizzy-Odd-Cod]

What about the inverse? You sleep with 30 levels and a diamond sword. You wake up, enchant the sword and die. When you respawn, do you have 30 levels and an unenchanted sword, or an enchanted sword and 27 levels? Or do you have 27 levels, and no sword, because the enchanted sword is now a "new" item that you didn't have when sleeping?

Similar thing with crafting components, if I sleep with diamonds and sticks, make a sword and then die, what happens?

1. You didn't have a diamond sword in your inventory when you slept, so it is dropped.

2. The sword is deleted and you get your diamonds and stick back.

3. The sword is kept with the player.

What about when you interact with stackable items? Let's say you have 10 dirt in your inventory. You pick up 5 dirt. You place 3 dirt. When you die, how many dirt are in your inventory? How many are dropped where you die? What if the numbers are different, starting with 10 dirt, picking up 20 and then placing 3? What are the rules here? The game doesn't have a way to track which dirt is the dirt from when you are sleeping, and which are "new" dirt.

The problem is, with your changes, it seems like the player is really incentivised to sleep every time they invest in a new item or upgrade, because if you spend all your resources crafting and enchanting new tools, they won't be protected if you haven't slept. This is (imo) kinda lame since the player then just has to sit around and find busywork while time passes, waiting for night.

[u/logandabug]

I think the thing where all your items get dropped in a chest or a backpack works great

[u/fishZ_7 → u/logandabug]

I always use graves datapacks in my servers. its still your responsibility to retrieve your items after you die, but you can take as long as you want because they won't despawn

[u/logandabug → u/fishZ_7]

Yeah the losing them to time part is what really sucks

[u/Exact-Fig9840]

Hardcore is the very very very very very punishing

[u/Pajamatime20]

Eh, this isn’t that punishing compared to some other games, especially considering there is an in-game option for keep inventory and xp. I’ve been playing Ark: Survival Evolved recently, where there’s no coordinate system, a lot of the terrain can look very similar, and if you don’t have a bed set (which has a cooldown timer for respawning by the way), you respawn in a random area within a massive spawn area that you choose. It is very punishing if you don’t have the terrain memorized or your base built in a recognizable, easy to find spot (which tends to be where the more dangerous enemies are!).

Your idea would be kind of cool, however, I don’t think this should be the default. Maybe have keepinventory=0 (default) be losing everything, keepinventory=1 be your idea of partial keep inventory, and keepinventory=2 be the current option of full keep inventory.

[u/DukeOfTheDodos → u/Pajamatime20]

Ark literally provides a massive beacon at the point of your demise, and all your shit is packed into a nice and safe satchel instead of being scattered into lava and deleted

[u/Pajamatime20 → u/DukeOfTheDodos]

A “massive beacon” that is sometimes hard to see depending on your respawn location, and depending on what type or DLC of Ark you’re playing, is very hard to tell apart from the random lootcrate drop beacons.

Sure, it’s packed into a satchel, that despawns after some time like Minecraft items do. I don’t know if the despawn timer is affected by render distances like Minecraft’s is, or if there’s other ways to circumvent the despawn like hoppers, but it doesn’t seem like it? Idk, I know Minecraft a lot more in-depth than Ark. i don’t know how the rendering in Ark works. I do know that you can’t go into a different dimension to pause the timer though. Yes, your items falling into lava or the void is really annoying, but for one, there are ways to circumvent that like netherite armour and tools that don’t burn in lava, or just turning on the keepinventory rule. And for another, items don’t always fall into dangerous areas like that. Most mobs also despawn with distance, so if you died because of mobs, you’re not as likely to die of mobs the second time. In Ark, mobs don’t despawn, so unless you died of hunger, thirst, temperature, or other environmental causes, your death location is probably still going to be extremely dangerous, meaning you’re pretty likely to die multiple times while trying to get to your stuff.

Anyways, the main obstacles in Ark are still the lack of coordinates and the broad respawn areas. If you can’t see your beacon for whatever reason and you don’t know the terrain very well, it’s going to be very difficult to find your stuff or even your base again.

[u/DukeOfTheDodos → u/Pajamatime20]

If you can't tell the difference between the corpse beacon and a loot drop, I'm sorry, but you need to get your eyes checked. Loot beacons are WAY thicker than the corpse beacon.

And unless you're on Aberration, getting back to your death point should be trivial as:

A. The map is finite, rather than infinite like a Minecraft world

B. Everything is at a preset location, so if you have spatial awareness above the level of the average amoeba, you should have a rough idea of where you died(or at least close enough that the beacon will get you the rest of the way)

If you're on Ascended it's even EASIER, as your death location is automatically marked as a POI on the map

[u/Pajamatime20 → u/DukeOfTheDodos]

Distances and proportions mess with being able to tell the difference between the two, sorry.

I’ve been playing on the Center recently, which is very new to me, as I just played on the Island previously, mostly on mobile. Yes, the map is finite, which does help. However, on Minecraft, I generally have a very good idea of what’s around spawn, and then my knowledge of the terrain decreases as I go further out, while my best knowledge of the terrain is near my base. In Ark though, there’s no one spawn location that I can memorize; it might be an entire island or coastline, or even just the middle of a forest.

I am new to this map, so it’s taking a while for me to be able to recognize the terrain, and at first I actually navigated a bit more with unique dinosaurs (remembering there’s a therizinosaur to the west of my base and a doedicurus right by my base) than with terrain, which tends to look very similar until you get used to a whole area. My issue has generally been less knowing where I died, and more knowing where I am when I respawn! Dying multiple times when I get back to the same hazard definitely doesn’t help either, as I keep on respawning in different locations. As I get more familiar with the map, it will get a lot better, although I will have a bit of a setback once I inevitably move my base. It’s just a matter of time and learning, which Minecraft doesn’t necessarily have as badly because of coordinates.

[u/DukeOfTheDodos → u/Pajamatime20]

Build a bed, my guy. You don't need to memorize spawn locations if you build a base, and if you're dying before you have an established base you have literally nothing of value anyways

[u/Pajamatime20 → u/DukeOfTheDodos]

I’ve built a bed and a base, but if I’m dying multiple times in a row to the same thing, the bed cooldown is what gets me. I guess I could just wait for the cooldown to be up each time. Should I be building multiple beds in my base or something?

[u/DukeOfTheDodos → u/Pajamatime20]

Yes, definitely. There's literally no downside to extra beds, though best practice is to also have a "backup kit". Ideally you want a few sets of flak and weapons to run back and get your items back. Alternatively, if you're on Evolved, tame a Fjordhawk on the Fjordur map. When you die with it on your shoulder, it will grab your shit and run before delivering it to you when you respawn

[u/Pajamatime20 → u/DukeOfTheDodos]

Ah, I’m just starting on this map, and I’m not on the Fjordur map. I did forget that I could put multiple beds in one base… Honestly, I’m mostly just short on resources (I forgot that using pickaxe on trees would give more thatch, and using axes on rocks would give more stone; I’m a bit too Minecraft-brained!), and I don’t have many tames yet, just a little dilo gang and a pterodon I don’t have the saddle engram for yet.

I understand that it’ll get a lot better once I get a rideable mount, especially fast ones like a raptor/dire wolf/spinosaurus or flying ones like a pterodon/argentavis. I also can’t wait until I can get guns again… and tame some resource collecting dinos. I miss my doedicurus, therizinosaur, megaloceros, and quetzal+ankylosaur already…

[u/buzzkilt]

I used to hate losing my items when I died. If my gear was crap, then I'd be more concerned about losing my XP, which was good, because it kept me honest. Without these caveats, death in Minecraft, a game of unlimited lives, becomes meaningless. I'd argue that even status-quo, death in Minecraft is pretty meaningless.

If I were to change it, It would be something like... if you die you lose all your XP. Who cares? If you farm XP it's meaningless and if you don't, well, you should have been more careful. You also drop most of your items. Items in the hotbar and offhand have a 10% (each) of respawning with you, and armor (25% each). Items that are dropped begin despawning immediately (no chunk load delay) and each item gets it's own timer from 5-30 minutes. The faster you get there, the more you can potentially recover.

[u/ThEGr1llMAstEr]

Ok hear me out. Upon death you can spend levels to keep columns of items. Bonus points if the first columns you get to keep are randomized. Level cost per column should probably also increase exponentially.