The MAJOR Problem with Minecraft's 1.20 Update

One thing I want to touch on is gold farms which a lot have mentioned in the comments. In my opinion I don’t see that as an issue to my solution, as setting up a gold farm would be about as difficult, if not more so, as finding a bastion in a single player world. I did like the idea from the comments that each piglin would only ever be able to trade one template though, so I would add that to my solution!

As for getting it from bastions, the fact that most servers have to have a world border to function makes this an even bigger problem

I imagine some servers might have a monopoly over smithing templates already.

One correction: Minecraft creates chest loot only once you OPEN the chest, not when generating it. This is an important difference, because that means you can have the chest/chunk be generated before, but still get the updated loot table, as long as you haven't opened it yet.

Minecraft itself really should push you to experiment and experience it. People don't want the game to be hard, they just want a reason to, for example, farm bees, make a base in the nether, or get netherite beyond it just being possible. Challenges imposed by the game would 100% make me focus on food, or shelter, or armor collection, but right now it's just... do it because you can. Newer players can inspire themselves to do things for the sake of doing them through discovery and mastery, but experienced players can't do that.

I think every bastion should have ONE chest with a guaranteed template. And then like a 5% chance for other chests.

The netherite armor update is definitely not a problem on single player but I think that in a reasonably sized server it could be a huge pain to find these templates because people would monopolize them. In a previous server I had with around 20 people; two of them went into the end and collected every elytra within a 10,000 block radius making it extremely hard to get an elytra.

Idea: Make it a drop from Piglin Brutes similar to how evokers drop totems. That'll be cool right especially since it requires the player to find the structure exclusive for the item

My big problem is that it’s only attainable one way. For just about every other “necessary” time in the game, there are multiple ways to get it, usually by mining, exploring, or trading. For this, though, it’s only one method. Before, netherite had those options; you could mine for it or raid bastions, but now this severely limits our options

That's a really simple solution I'm surprised Mojang didn't think about. Not only does it fix the issues you pointed out, it also adds another use to bartering, because you basically don't need to late-game. Woo, gravel and the occasional ender pearls. Honestly, you're better off spending gold at that point on golden apples and.. y'know, making netherite.

while I do disagree with netherite becoming harder to obtain, i do think that the templates are a good idea especially with you being able to duplicate them. However, the fact that they are ONLY in Bastions is going to be a nightmare. They should be in nether fortresses and nether ruined portals.

THERE IS A "TOO LONG, DIDN'T READ" AT THE END. I like the idea of netherite armor being gated by a tough place like the Bastion. With that said, I don't think Pigling trade would be my go to option to gate netherite, but I do think bartering need improvement. So, I came up with my own solution. Main ideas: - Through bartering, you would had a high chance to earn a Brute Horn. Upon use, the horn would play a sound that would later be replied by a different horn sound, coming from the direction of a Bastion. Keep blowing the horn and following the sound that soon you will encounter a Bastion. NOTE: This would help on the "locating a bastion" problem. - Additionally with the Brute Horn, I would make an 100% guarantee of finding a Netherite Upgrade inside a Bastion, but it would generate in a random chest. Supplementary Details: - The Brute Horn could have a durability of some sort, forcing to barter multiple times for new Bation locations. - An issue I encountered while thinking through the Brute Horn was accessibility. Because not everyone has 3D audio, to complement it, I was thinking maybe a visual effect of where the reply is coming from. ( Similar to sculk sensing, shreiker warning, or Warden's sonic boom ) - The random spawn of the Netherite Upgrade in chests would be excluded from Treasure Room bastions, only being generated in the treasure room itself. TLDR: - A compass ( or End Eye ) like feature that points to a bastion, the compass would be optained by bartering. On top of that the Netherite Upgrade would be garanteed in at least one random chest inside the bastion. Personal survival world problems ( nothing to do with last things mentioned ): - If you read this till the end, please tell me if its normal for Bridge type bastions generate without the "shoulder" part. For context: The first bastion I encountered in my 1.20 world was a Bridge bastion, and something felt odd on its shape, till I discovered it had no shoulders. ( this lost me 3 or 4 chests ) NOTE: This is not a Bridge bastion bug because I found another Bridge bastion completely normal in the same world. Personaly, I think its probably a seed thing but let me know what you guys think. THANKS FOR READING TILL THE END!

Even if the upgrade template is rare bartering loot, you can duplicate it anyway. So yeah, this sounds like a great way to do it.

Exploring and finding new structures is my favorite thing to do in Minecraft, but in my 3 year old survival world, I had to travel thousands of blocks in the nether to find a bastion with a smithing template and it was ROUGH :')

The game hasn't got easier... The players got better and more experienced. It's like real life: At first you struggle driving but you get better and better over time. Another point is, that there are automatic farms for many items. This makes the game much easier

I seem to remember a common complaint about netherite being added in the first place was that it made the iconic diamonds not the best thing anymore. I think it'd be cool if there were a tiny chance (~1%) for naturally generated diamond ore to also drop a smithing template; adding some more excitement back into finding a diamond vein, as well as making the netherite smithing process clearer for players that aren't reading wikis/tutorials.

In my opinion, it’s not about making it harder, they are just making things much more tedious to get so you don’t have that extra time to do the fun things

Hear me out: Stronghold libraries. Recently, Knowledge Books have been given the ability to be placed in Chiseled Bookshelves, so here's my proposal: Make an alternative crafting recipe for Netherite Upgrade Templates that can only be found in the Stronghold Libraries. There could also be recipes for other items that can't normally be crafted, like Name Tags and Saddles. It could give the player incentive to seek out Libraries so they can make those items more easily accessible.

I think they should add more random items with different uses that are similar to the turtle shell helmet. Collector items like the music disks and goat horns are fun to work towards too

The only problem I have with it is that my world decided that it didn’t want to give me diamonds so it makes it difficult for me to attain these upgrades as for some reason there are little to none where my mining set ups are. I will go on 2 hour stripmine trips after researching the best y level and stripmine techniques, and walk away completely empty handed. Aside from that though I feel like they did a good job with the update.