Bootstraps

This is a very early alpha for the mod Bootstraps. So early, that the art assets are... very abstract! Everything is subject to change based on community feedback.

Bootstraps

This mod is basically a complete remake of the early-game stage of progress. Ever get tired of your friends constantly speedrunning to diamond? Now they have to wait, just like you, in order to progress through the game!

Note: creating a furnace will take substantially longer in this mod. This was intended to encourage exploration of Minecraft's earlygame, but may be a problem for some modded worlds. Due to this, village furnaces will still spawn until compatibility recipes are added.

Major Features

Progression is loosely based on real technology, requiring you to assemble a Kiln from dirt and clay to fire bricks and charcoal. Once you've got bricks and some charcoal, you'll build a Crucible right over a campfire.

Side note: if you like steak made well-done, feel free to place it on a campfire. That is all.

The Crucible is a passively heated smelter, but it. Is. Very. Passive. In my personal tests, it took 4 in-game days to smelt enough stone and iron for a furnace. Why is the furnace so expensive? Well...

The changes to recipies and trees. You cannot break a full-grown tree with your bare hands. But with a big rock... maybe. Combine two flint to make a weird, improvised hand-axe. This lets you cut down logs, but isn't good enough to strip bark properly.

And that bark is important! the bark of Oak and Acacia Trees contains large amounts of Tannin (a substance which makes your mouth feel weird when you drink tea), which can be used to tan... hide. Minecraft calls this leather, but cows don't have tanned skin now, do they?

This means that Leather Armour cannot be crafted like how you used to do it. As consolation, you get several pieces of actual leather from tanning a single hide.

This will protect yourself over the few days it takes to get enough Stone, Stone Brick, and Iron to build a Furnace. In the meantime, take a mental note of how long this process will take, and focus on building your base, alongside another major thing:

Food Rot (And preservation)

Food Rot is an extremely complex (and trust me, I could've made it far more if I didn't care for your CPU) system. It takes into account both the humidity and temperature of your biome, alongside how deep underground you are.

Hot environments make food rot up to 2 times faster, and the same applies to humidity. Raw food is especially vulnerable to rot and cannot be campfire-cooked past a certain point, so make sure to cook it as soon as possible!

This also means that the best way to store food is within a chest near the surface of a very cold, dry biome. In these places, certain foods can take extremely long periods of time to rot at all! Especially if you use... Preservatives!

Once you've grown sick from all the rotting matter you've been digesting, you'll probably want to figure out how to preserve food better. This is where the new-and-improved cauldron is most useful, as it can now be used to extract Sea Sal- I mean- Brine!

Brine (or extremely salty water) is created by boiling a cauldron over a campfire. Items placed within this boiling water will be preserved by the salt, and the water level of the cauldron will drop. If you just want the salt for whatever reason, throwing a bowl in will work.

Once preserved with brine, the food will become slightly less... appetizing, but last significantly (5X!) longer compared to regular food. Food can potentially last weeks inside a cold, dry storehouse when preserved this way.

If you don't want to eat salty food for the rest of your life, Honey is an alternative, as it doesn't spoil even when left in the hottest of climates.

--- I don't have a good transition here ---

Crops!

Crops now grow differently between biomes! Some crops (like pumpkins) grow well in all environments, while others grow in warmer or cooler environments (wheat only grows normally in biomes as hot as the Plains!). Growing crops outside their ideal conditions halves their growth rate, so make sure you check how fast your crops grow!

There are many other small features hidden throughout this mod, so have fun finding them! Half the stuff I've put into this mod is just easter eggs honestly.

Other notes:

This is best played with survival mods such as Tough As Nails and Serene Seasons.