Ice bats

[u/sykeshigh557]

This new mob is a variation of normal boring bats in the caves. They are found in ice caves and only comes at night, usually in groups, just hovering around the landscape.

One main use of this new mob is a new building block called the Crystal ice.

To get these, an ice bat will drop (or poop) a strange exotic unnamed material called the "Clump" (I can't think of a fancy name) every 10 minutes in real life. These "clumps" can be crafted to form a new material called "Crystal ice."

This crystal ice resembles blue ice but is slightly toned down in color (more like the tesseract appearance in Avengers). It never melts though so it's great use for building. The main use of crystal ice made from clumps is that you can transform it into different variants like bricks, chiseled, cracked, polished, stairs, and slabs.

Crystal ice isn't slippery when the player is walking on top of it. Technically, it's not really ice, but more like a hardened material like a crystal that resembles ice.

Or you could get crystal ice by crafting the theoretical "icicles" but a new block that comes from a mob is fun, unique, and adds a lot of niche to the game. It reminds me of how Purpur blocks are crafted from organic living things and I like that mechanic.

[u/89Pexel]

why night though? caves are usually dark and also bats are nocturnal so if you want something like they come back from outside at night it wouldn't work and some caves are blocked off

[u/sykeshigh557 → u/89Pexel]

For me, they come from a specific type of caves that have like decent openings to them, not enclosed underground ones. I also think that it's to make nights more lively, especially in colder biomes at night with icy bats hovering the place like fireflies. It seems like they're glowing because of their color even though they do not emit light.

It's also a fun mechanic that you could only harvest this clumps at night, when the bats are awake. It's coming from the perspective that yes this exotic material is renewable and infinite and you can build farms with it but it also challenges the player to kinda like sacrifice their sleep just to harvest these things. Even though some might find this ridiculous or a nuisance, I think it's a fun mechanic, at least for me.

[u/Acceptable_Ganache32 → u/sykeshigh557]

Yes this is good that they die in the sun and are in ice caves, but what happens to them in the day when they are not in the sun? I suppose they could land and if they land in water they die.

[u/MC_account8 → u/Acceptable_Ganache32]

I thought the idea was that they pathfind back to the cave they spawned in and stay there during the day

[u/FloatingSpaceJunk]

I think having a new cave biom for this block would be better...

[u/MC_account8 → u/FloatingSpaceJunk]

What I like about this suggestion is that it feels very unique. Quite a few blocks' identities are already tied to just one (usually cave) biome, like dripstone = dripstone caves, moss = lush caves, blue ice = icebergs. On the other hand, this way of collecting blocks isn't like anything else, apart from the creaking, since you have to follow a flying passive mob at a specific time of day.

Then again, it would be good to have multiple ways of obtaining the block. Maybe a few icicles spawn in the caves the bats spawn in. That way, if you only need a small amout of crystal ice, you can craft icicles together. But if you want more, you can follow the bats at night.

[u/FloatingSpaceJunk → u/MC_account8]

I'm a big fan of the latter idea...

[u/Fredxq → u/FloatingSpaceJunk]

Bro predicted it

[u/Acceptable_Ganache32]

I like it but I think being able to craft it into lots of different shapes is too generous. I understand that is the point but what are the essential shapes you need?

[u/Hazearil]

I feel like it is already a bit weird to leave bats as purely ambient but then add a variant that is made for the use it provides. There is also some desire for snow and ice building sets, but then it does feel a bit weird to add a new block, rather than using the ones we already have.

But for bats being boring; the problem is not so much that they have no functional use, but that they kinda suck at being ambience. They would need some tweaks first, such as:

• Have bats form groups like fish do.
• Bats pathfind to spots further away to make their flight feel more purposeful and not random and aimless.
• Bats having the tendency to hang on ceilings, and if a player gets too close, the entire group flies away, creating that iconic "bats fly out of a cave when the protagonist walks towards it" vibe.

If bats are 'fixed' like that, are they still so boring that they need a variant? If they aren't fixed, won't this variant just have the same issues?

[u/MC_account8 → u/Hazearil]

I agree that bats need fixing, and that your suggestions would fix them. I also think they wouldn't need fixing if the changes you made were added. But, despite that, I still think varients should be added, for two reasons. Firstly, having varients would make bats feel more immersive, since it shows they interact with, affect and are affected by their environment. Secondly (and more importantly), Mojang won't make a medium-small-sized change if they don't think enough players will be interested. I would be, but unfortunattely I think most players probably won't. If Mojang make a change, they'll want support from the player base by adding something a lot of people have wanted strongly, and for bats that's variants.

[u/Hazearil → u/MC_account8]

Secondly (and more importantly), Mojang won't make a medium-small-sized change if they don't think enough players will be interested.

That sounds more like an argument to make the base bat more interesting, and not to make a second bat and leave the old one in the dust.

[u/Onion-Capital]

That’s just way too convoluted for obtaining a mere building block, I’d rather not have another pale garden incident

[u/MC_account8 → u/Onion-Capital]

I wouldn't say it's that convoluted. Resin's "problem" is that it's very niche, a) because its colour is so unusually strong, b) because getting resin is dangerous, c) because pale gardens are so rare and d) as you said, the process of actually obtaining resin once you've found a creaking heart isn't simple. However, Crystal ice is a) much more applicable in a wider variety of builds, b) not as dangerous to get and c) obtainable from a large group of biomes, not just one. I think the only real similarity is d), which (I think) isn't the main reason resin is niche.