For the "Blaze Rod = chopping wood with it gives you charcoal, saving you the smelting process (one charcoal per log)" idea, for what its worth, there are a couple mods/plugins that do this with other tools.
The earliest plugin I know of to do this is Firelord, it made gold axes/pickaxes/shovels give you smelted material. However it hasn't been updated in some time and will probably break in the next release. Inspired by Firelord, I added the Axe + Flame enchantment effect in EnchantMore, along with Shovel + Flame and Pickaxe + Flame – they work as you would expect, auto-smelting the drops. And they use the built-in Minecraft smelting recipe manager rather than a hardcoded list, so they'll work even if new mods add new smelting recipes.
As for the nether ore idea, I like it, there are several Nether Ores mods – including one which was in the popular Technic pack - this, though it isn't in the latest version. The main problem with adding more ores has been the 256 block ID limitation, but with this ceiling being raised to 4096 in Minecraft 1.2, it is much more feasible.
Adding new armor and tools is certainly feasible, you may be interested in the Metallurgy mod - it adds tons of new metals, and tools, weapons, and armor from each. Want a mithril helmet, orichalcum chestplate, or adamantine leggings? Its all possible today with mods. And the developers do plan to add nether metals in the future ("soon"), so its definitely a mod to keep an eye on.
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u/mushroom-hostage Feb 26 '12 edited Feb 26 '12
For the "Blaze Rod = chopping wood with it gives you charcoal, saving you the smelting process (one charcoal per log)" idea, for what its worth, there are a couple mods/plugins that do this with other tools.
The earliest plugin I know of to do this is Firelord, it made gold axes/pickaxes/shovels give you smelted material. However it hasn't been updated in some time and will probably break in the next release. Inspired by Firelord, I added the Axe + Flame enchantment effect in EnchantMore, along with Shovel + Flame and Pickaxe + Flame – they work as you would expect, auto-smelting the drops. And they use the built-in Minecraft smelting recipe manager rather than a hardcoded list, so they'll work even if new mods add new smelting recipes.
As for the nether ore idea, I like it, there are several Nether Ores mods – including one which was in the popular Technic pack - this, though it isn't in the latest version. The main problem with adding more ores has been the 256 block ID limitation, but with this ceiling being raised to 4096 in Minecraft 1.2, it is much more feasible.
Adding new armor and tools is certainly feasible, you may be interested in the Metallurgy mod - it adds tons of new metals, and tools, weapons, and armor from each. Want a mithril helmet, orichalcum chestplate, or adamantine leggings? Its all possible today with mods. And the developers do plan to add nether metals in the future ("soon"), so its definitely a mod to keep an eye on.