I've been working on a modpack of late, and as often happens when I'm updating a modpack, I started looking through all the most recent and interesting mods out there. I kept stumbling across brewing mods, and of those that didn't have to do with brewing potions, they essentially had to do with making alcohol that had potion-like effects. Often they included silly side-effects or seriously OP positive effects.
It may just be me, but that seems more than a little redundant and boring, and so I started brewing (heh. heh.) up an idea of my own. Something that would provide hours of fun for explorers and farmers alike, and give benefits that could be lasting, worth the effort, but without being too stupidly OP.
Thus was born the foundation concept for "Toast the World!"
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It Starts:
The world is full of strange and wonderful ingredients and mankind has, from the beginning of the time, found new and interesting ways to make them into alcoholic drinks. The number of varieties and permutations of alcoholic drink are seemingly endless. From your basic beer, to wine, mead, and the more unusual fermented horse milk favorite of the mongols, if it can be made alcoholic, we've drank it.
Explorers:
Those players who are explorers will be able to plumb the depths of the world, travel to far off places, and bring back all the strange and bizarre ingredients the world has to offer the dedicated libationist (Which is just a fancy word for 'Besotten Drunk'). While they can bring back the usual array of plants from far off reaches, zombie meat gathered from the walking dead, bone dust for that ol' (Bone) Dry Wine, and netherwort for that famous Hell Lager, they can also bring back the most vital part of any Brewer or Vinters Trade.
Yeast:
Now back in the dawn of time, yeast was an unruly beast, and came in as many variations as the flowers in the field. The problem was, it was microscopic (or nearly so), and it certainly wasn't going to just bottle itself up for you. So how did one manage to get yeast? Well, largely they just left the top of the brew vat open and hoped something tasty might decide to go for a dip and leave behind some delicious brew. But soon they realized that different kinds of yeast came from different parts of the world, and one could actually alter the flavor of their resulting libation by using just the right yeast. They just needed to catch the blaggards. Enter the yeast pot... Part sugar, part water, all stirred up in a cauldron with some other things that yeast like, and you take a stroll while nature does her things. When you come back and find something growing in it, congratulations! You caught a strain of yeast (or some strange and perhaps hallucinogenic fungus or bacteria... but hey, no risk no gain, right?)
Once they caught them, they learned how to cultivate them, but that comes later.
Yeast spawns in different biomes and altitudes, and as several types of yeast can exist in any given biome, you can image something of a heat map with different types of yeast available at different points within a plain, and at different altitudes. Only luck and a little bit of knowledge is going to let you get the strain you're really looking for, mostly it's setting out the pot and hoping for the best.
Once you've got it, you can use it in your upcoming brew.
I mean, you can also do it the easy way... That's setting up vat to brew, and just letting whatever falls in fall in.
Ingredients:
Ingredients can be anything (literally anything, the config file would allow you to brew iron ingot ale if you want, you just have to tell the mod that it's a viable ingredient, and what it brings to the party), in a world where people have literally put battery acid, greasy nuts, and cactus worms in a drink to give it its signature flavor, who are we to judge?
A lot of ingredients can be farmed, and there's a few things that just stand as "this is how it works". You have to have hops to make a beer (Well.. Except Lambics, but let's not get particular at this point, neh?), grapes/fruit to make a wine, honey to make a mead, so some things will need the tender loving care of a ground digger.
Brewing/Vinting/Distilling
This is where things get interesting... See, there's a lot to brewing that people don't consider. What kind of barrel did you let it brew in? Did you use an iron pot? A gold one? Did you let it age in an oaken cask? A birch one? How long did you let it sit? Did you throw in an apple or two? A sprinkling of redstone dust? What did you bottle it in? Did you distill it? Once? Twice? Three times the charm?
Distilling Vinting and Brewing will be a convoluted and complex process capable of producing literally hundreds of different kinds of alcohol (or just a few dozen, as it suits you).
Wait, You promised interesting benefits and results, what about those?
Yeah mate, we'll get to them, not quite yet, though.. Sit down and have another drink, and let's talk about the hallmark of the true alcohol connoisseur. Sampling and collections.
Sampling
This here is a fancy term for "knocking back a drink". Whenever you take a drink, you expand your palette and understanding of the glory of the drink. When you do this, you get to add a little mark to your little black book of drunkenness, and start on your path to collections.
Collections
Collections are groupings of different types of drinks. They can be flavors (Citrus Drinks, Bitter Drinks, Apple Drinks), or types (Pale Ales, Bitters, Lagers, Weisbeir, etc), etc. It'll vary a bit depending on the whim of yer drinkmaster (configure that up, you crazy modpacks), though there's a base set for those too stewed to bother.
Intrinsics:
Here's where we get to the fun stuff. As you complete a collection, you get a permanent intrinsic trait that gives you some small (yes, configurable) benefit.
It could be a small boost to your healing rate.
A permanent buff to your health (more hearts)
A boost to beneficial potion length or effectiveness (You know a thing or two about drinking)
A reduction in negative potion lengths/effectiveness (And how to deal with a hangover)
A resistance to explosions (You've been blasted plenty of times)
A reduction to the speed at which hunger is consumed (liquid diets make you hardy)
or any number of a dozen other things I'm not going to list out here. No more wacky potion effects, and a reason to explore the world and sample the finer things in life.
So There It Is:
The wacky idea spawned from a desire to make brewing and vinting a fun and rewarding experience, and a reason for there to be hundreds of varieties of booze. Even better, those intrinsics could be temporary! Just make it so your sample duration isn't infinite, and when it wears off you've got to top off with another drink to finish out the collection.
Finally, a reason for SMP Taverns!
It may just be me, but that seems more than a little redundant and boring, and so I started brewing (heh. heh.) up an idea of my own. Something that would provide hours of fun for explorers and farmers alike, and give benefits that could be lasting, worth the effort, but without being too stupidly OP.
Thus was born the foundation concept for "Toast the World!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It Starts:
The world is full of strange and wonderful ingredients and mankind has, from the beginning of the time, found new and interesting ways to make them into alcoholic drinks. The number of varieties and permutations of alcoholic drink are seemingly endless. From your basic beer, to wine, mead, and the more unusual fermented horse milk favorite of the mongols, if it can be made alcoholic, we've drank it.
Explorers:
Those players who are explorers will be able to plumb the depths of the world, travel to far off places, and bring back all the strange and bizarre ingredients the world has to offer the dedicated libationist (Which is just a fancy word for 'Besotten Drunk'). While they can bring back the usual array of plants from far off reaches, zombie meat gathered from the walking dead, bone dust for that ol' (Bone) Dry Wine, and netherwort for that famous Hell Lager, they can also bring back the most vital part of any Brewer or Vinters Trade.
Yeast:
Now back in the dawn of time, yeast was an unruly beast, and came in as many variations as the flowers in the field. The problem was, it was microscopic (or nearly so), and it certainly wasn't going to just bottle itself up for you. So how did one manage to get yeast? Well, largely they just left the top of the brew vat open and hoped something tasty might decide to go for a dip and leave behind some delicious brew. But soon they realized that different kinds of yeast came from different parts of the world, and one could actually alter the flavor of their resulting libation by using just the right yeast. They just needed to catch the blaggards. Enter the yeast pot... Part sugar, part water, all stirred up in a cauldron with some other things that yeast like, and you take a stroll while nature does her things. When you come back and find something growing in it, congratulations! You caught a strain of yeast (or some strange and perhaps hallucinogenic fungus or bacteria... but hey, no risk no gain, right?)
Once they caught them, they learned how to cultivate them, but that comes later.
Yeast spawns in different biomes and altitudes, and as several types of yeast can exist in any given biome, you can image something of a heat map with different types of yeast available at different points within a plain, and at different altitudes. Only luck and a little bit of knowledge is going to let you get the strain you're really looking for, mostly it's setting out the pot and hoping for the best.
Once you've got it, you can use it in your upcoming brew.
I mean, you can also do it the easy way... That's setting up vat to brew, and just letting whatever falls in fall in.
Ingredients:
Ingredients can be anything (literally anything, the config file would allow you to brew iron ingot ale if you want, you just have to tell the mod that it's a viable ingredient, and what it brings to the party), in a world where people have literally put battery acid, greasy nuts, and cactus worms in a drink to give it its signature flavor, who are we to judge?
A lot of ingredients can be farmed, and there's a few things that just stand as "this is how it works". You have to have hops to make a beer (Well.. Except Lambics, but let's not get particular at this point, neh?), grapes/fruit to make a wine, honey to make a mead, so some things will need the tender loving care of a ground digger.
Brewing/Vinting/Distilling
This is where things get interesting... See, there's a lot to brewing that people don't consider. What kind of barrel did you let it brew in? Did you use an iron pot? A gold one? Did you let it age in an oaken cask? A birch one? How long did you let it sit? Did you throw in an apple or two? A sprinkling of redstone dust? What did you bottle it in? Did you distill it? Once? Twice? Three times the charm?
Distilling Vinting and Brewing will be a convoluted and complex process capable of producing literally hundreds of different kinds of alcohol (or just a few dozen, as it suits you).
Wait, You promised interesting benefits and results, what about those?
Yeah mate, we'll get to them, not quite yet, though.. Sit down and have another drink, and let's talk about the hallmark of the true alcohol connoisseur. Sampling and collections.
Sampling
This here is a fancy term for "knocking back a drink". Whenever you take a drink, you expand your palette and understanding of the glory of the drink. When you do this, you get to add a little mark to your little black book of drunkenness, and start on your path to collections.
Collections
Collections are groupings of different types of drinks. They can be flavors (Citrus Drinks, Bitter Drinks, Apple Drinks), or types (Pale Ales, Bitters, Lagers, Weisbeir, etc), etc. It'll vary a bit depending on the whim of yer drinkmaster (configure that up, you crazy modpacks), though there's a base set for those too stewed to bother.
Intrinsics:
Here's where we get to the fun stuff. As you complete a collection, you get a permanent intrinsic trait that gives you some small (yes, configurable) benefit.
It could be a small boost to your healing rate.
A permanent buff to your health (more hearts)
A boost to beneficial potion length or effectiveness (You know a thing or two about drinking)
A reduction in negative potion lengths/effectiveness (And how to deal with a hangover)
A resistance to explosions (You've been blasted plenty of times)
A reduction to the speed at which hunger is consumed (liquid diets make you hardy)
or any number of a dozen other things I'm not going to list out here. No more wacky potion effects, and a reason to explore the world and sample the finer things in life.
So There It Is:
The wacky idea spawned from a desire to make brewing and vinting a fun and rewarding experience, and a reason for there to be hundreds of varieties of booze. Even better, those intrinsics could be temporary! Just make it so your sample duration isn't infinite, and when it wears off you've got to top off with another drink to finish out the collection.
Finally, a reason for SMP Taverns!
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