Well, hello there and welcome to my first ever post on this feedback website. Congrats on finding this post in the thousands of others! Now, I'm the guy who has a very extensive imagination and after playing a lot of minecraft, you could probably imagine how many ideas have popped into my mind. Being a mainly adventurous player of Minecraft, the bosses used to be a great challenge to me. Now everyone has accustomed and mastered their patterns and mechanics. I'm here to suggest things that could be implemented to the bosses and maybe a possible new one while still keeping to the vanilla minecraft characters. So buckle in Boys, girls, and devs and get your reading levels to the max. TRCI and his typewriter have joined the feedback party!
Today on this post, we'll be talking about our good ol' friend/miniboss, the Wither.
The Wither is the only boss that a player can summon (more on that later). The summoning materials are already hard enough to get in Vanilla. Heck, it takes forever, but it's a good buildup to a boss battle. However, the final outcome of the battle is....disappointing. How can it be disappointing?Think of it this way - I'm a new player who needs a challenge but isn't prepared for the ender dragon. So I go grind for wither skulls and grab some soul sand. Afterwards, I'm prepped for the Wither. I manage to kill the Wither only to receive a nether star. Then I find out that the nether star can only be used for a stationary structure that buffs me at a certain range. While that is good, that really wouldn't add much to help your avatar progressing in the game. The drops should be something that helps you out. Here are some ideas:
Drops
Nether Star ( An explanation to this will be added in the Items Topic section) Drop Rate- 100%
A possible Wither I enchantment book (An enchantment for swords that inflicts wither on those that are damaged by the sword) Drop Rate - 25%
1-2 Wither Skulls. Drop Rate - 15%
Maybe Wither tipped arrows? Drop Rate - 25%
These drops would make the player feel more accomplished and as well make the Wither more worth our time for those drops, rather than making that decorative buff structure. As for the nether star, I''l have a post for that soon.
Battle Mechanics
Right now, all the Wither does is zoom around and eradicate everything in sight. While it's fun to see sheep get blown off the face of the earth, battling the wither ourselves isn't very exciting. Most of the time the Wither is either moving around missing every shot or hovering above us, bombing us. First there should be a way that the Wither isn't always right above us but at the same time not render swords useless. Honestly, I don't have a clue as to what kind of solution there is to that. I'll leave that to you guys.
Now Wither attacks mechanics. I've come up with 3 or 4 that fits the Wither's profile.
Mechanic 1: Adding onto the Wither Skull Projectiles - The Wither Skulls are main ranged threat of the Wither. The Black Wither Skulls mainly hurt you and give you the wither effect, while blue ones pretty much pack an extra punch. I'm not gonna change the Black, rather the Blue skulls. These should come up either uncommon or rare, with a 15% chance of the Wither actually launching them. Keep their slow movement, but remove the Wither status effect and replace it with a Wither lingering effect. This could last up to 5-8 seconds. The explosion would be removed to blocks but not to entities or players.
Mechanic 2: Wither Minions - The Wither is a flying 3 headed Wither Skeleton without limbs. Seeing that it's been created by 3 heads of its own brethren, it would make sense that it would spawn Wither Skeletons, right? During this mechanic, the Wither will stay in place for 30 seconds and stop launching skulls at the player. It would spawn 2-3 Wither Skeletons. These skeletons would not be holding swords and would be doing the same damage as a normal zombie. Think of it as a king backing off to recollect its bearings and let its minions do its dirty work. After those 30 seconds the Wither continues its regular barrage of skulls.
Mechanic 3: Wither Beam - The Wither seems to drop a power source, which we all know as the Nether Star. Seeing that the Nether Star is capable of creating a beam of light, why wouldn't the Wither be able to use that power source for its own use. Introducing the Wither Beam! A black, gray or white (using the color scheme of the Wither) the shoots from the main head of the Wither. This beam does 5 hearts of damage. This beam may also have the chance of instead inflicting wither, it could inflict blindness. A good change up from the withering death the Wither inflicts upon the world. The beam is a continuous beam. Think about it this way: The Wither locks onto you and the beam hits you. Instead it appearing for a second, inflicting damage, it stays onto you for maybe 5-7 seconds. During this period 5 hearts are drained away from you. However, you can cancel out the beam if you run behind cover. If the beam hits a block, that block will turn into soul sand. Also, as long as the beam stays on you, you will have blindness or an alternative can be slowness. During this attack, the Wither stops launching skulls and after the wither remains in an idle state for 10 seconds.
Phase 2: Changing the Wither Armor - Now, there are 3 ways this could go. All options are for the half health stage:
Option 1: Buffing the Wither Armor - Right now, the Wither Armor doesn't really change that battle all that much. In truth, I feel like the Wither feels the same when it has the armor. To me and maybe others, all the Wither Armor really does is make the Wither fly down to sword reach and have a snazzy new particle design. Maybe significantly reducing the damage that the Wither receives would help a lot.
Option 2: Enraged Mode- This idea was originally for the Ender Dragon (yes, I will have a post for it as well). The Wither's particle shield will be colored red and white. The eyes and mouths will glow red as well. All attacks will gain 1 heart extra of damage. When the Wither flies down to the ground, it won't destroy the blocks around it. Rather, it would turn all blocks in a 5x5 radius around it into soul sand, magma blocks, lava, or netherrack. The King of the Nether making his presence know to the Overworld. His armor be the same stats of the what the Wither Armor is now. It makes sense, something angry at everything having an enraged mode.
Option 3: This is my final form! - The Wither realizes that it cannot stand up to you in it's current form, so it evolves into a fierce being. It begins glowing with a white bright light, slowly morphing into another shape. The Wither shrinks to a humanoid, 2 block tall being. HE is now the Wither Lich! The Wither Lich is a Wither Skeleton with ragged robes and a charred crown. His eyes glow a very light blue. The 2 heads from the original Wither, now dangle at his waste. He holds a staff in his right hand. At the top of the staff is a Nether Star. He makes the sound of the original Wither but with a twist of insane laughter. Just like the Enraged mode, wherever he stands, lava, soul sand, netherrack, and magma blocks will replace the blocks around it. Regeneration will be much slower however. The Wither Lich will have the same attacks and abilities (but boosted), along with some new ones:
Negative Energy- The Lich will eject a 12 block radius shock wave. This ability doesn't damage the player, but rather affect any passive mobs nearby. These mobs will immediately turn hostile to the player, attacking it.
Life Drain - this one is self explanatory. Take away your health add it too mine.
Wither Illusion - This is rather a more tactical ability. The Lich creates 2 other copies of itself, but those 2 won't inflict damage on the player. These copies will have 40 Hearts.
Teleportation - I don't even have to explain this one.
The Wither Lich would be a very challenging boss, with an epic battle. Just to make note here, once the Wither has transformed, it won't revert to its original form after it regenerates after half health.
Summoning and Death Animation - The Wither has a very boring summoning animation. Nothing very intimidating. It just spins around and explodes. Well, I've come up with another 3 options for Summoning and Death animations. ( Only deaths would count for the Wither Lich, if you decide to go down that way):
Particle Summoning and Death - The Wither would spawn in a reverse animation of the Ender Dragon's defeat, without all the exp and light shows. It slowly comes to existence and slowly deteriorates from existence.
Glowing Shift - the structure of the Wither glows a white light and slowing morphs into the actual mob. For Death, it will begin to glow and fade away, leaving its drops.
Emerge and Pull back from the Nether - The summoning structure glows, but instead of morphing into the boss, it opens a Nether portal, from which the Wither emerges. When the it dies, a portal opens from beneath it, sucking the Wither back in. Once completely gone, the portal spits out the items/drops, and closes.
Alright, two more sections! The Wither is based of a Nether Mob, so lets give it what it deserves. In the Nether, the could be a extremely rare structure. The Nether Castle (not fortress) is a gigantic structure in the nether. Mobs such as variants of both Wither Skeletons and Blazes will spawn there (that's for another post). There would be a main chamber that holds the soul sand T structure. Laid throughout the castle are the 3 skulls for the Wither. Like I said, I will go into more detail on that another time. Probably in the Structures Topic sections. As for the Variants, that too will be posted sometime in this topic section.
Finally, the last section. Here, I feel just for fun I'd like to add some lore to the Wither.
The Wither was a being of devastation and destruction. One day the Villagers of the minecraft world had enough of the Wither's destruction. They called forth mighty warriors of the Overworld. With their help, they were able too seal the Wither away into a structure made of soul sand and skeleton skulls. The Wither was now stuck in a dimension of nothingness. They then took the structure apart and threw its remnants into a nether portal. There the pieces of the Wither manifested into the nether, creating patches of soul sand and Wither skeletons. Only gathering the skulls of its brethren and the material of the original structure to create it would be able to the Wither. But what fool would do that?
ANYWAYS, thanks for coming by this post! This took awhile to write, so I hoped you enjoyed it! Don't worry, I'll be doing this for the Ender Dragon as well, and might even suggest a boss from one of the characters of minecraft itself! Well, I'll see you guys in my other posts!
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