Changelog/2023/February 21

Hey Everyone!

We will be making some important changes to the Garden regarding the buildable height limit.

These changes are not live yet - we will be updating this sentence when it is with a patch notes thread link.

The Build Height Limit
The buildable height limit will be going from 50 to 10, starting at the bedrock layer.

One major thing that is becoming very obvious now that the Garden update is live is that it takes an incredible amount of space on our databases. As players keep unlocking more plots, the space taken by each player becomes exponential. To prevent issues in the near future, we are forced to make this change to limit how much space each player takes to ensure we don't start hitting saving issues and crashing problems.

While this sounds like a big nerf, we hope you'll understand why we're doing this. Originally, the Garden was designed as a way for a player to have farms in Minecraft that are not only useable and profitable but also useable without a Minecraft Farming degree. Layered farms are end-game farming - efficient but not intuitive and very ugly. New players shouldn't feel disadvantaged for making a pretty-looking farm versus a player with a cube of dirt.

As such, originally, the entirety of the Garden content was balanced around players not doing multi-layered farms, and we were hoping the enhancements from the garden would be enough to discourage players from doing them. During alpha testing, we didn't notice any players doing any kind of layered farming - we're sure there was, but we didn't see any ourselves while looking around. However, once the Garden went live, it became obvious that most players went right back to layered plots.

To recap, ultimately, this change is to ensure servers don't crash and burn and to make farming more approachable to new players and ultimately more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. It's a lot nicer when someone with a pretty farm gets the same output as anyone else, really.

While we're aware this is, from a first glance, a nerf, we'll be monitoring player progress and determining if we do need to change anything to the Garden's progress.

How is this going to happen?
To keep this short:
 * Blocks can no longer be placed above the new limit
 * Crops above the limit can be harvested still but will no longer grow
 * Preset Saving will ignore blocks above the limit
 * Preset Pasting will clean up blocks above the limit

That way, when this patch is live, if you need to recover building materials above the limit, you can do so before pasting any presets, but if you just want to clean up the extra blocks ASAP, just paste a preset to clear it up.

Crop growing speed
One of the reasons why multiple layers have been necessary for players is because of gathering loops - if you gather your crops, ideally, by the time you are done at the end of your plot, the beginning of your plot should be ready to be gathered again.

For that reason, having the build height limit shouldn't cause any changes in how quickly someone can gather their crops while ensuring there aren't any overkill destroying databases or making players' eyes bleed by having floating blocks everywhere. What will change really is the need to use more plots to complete the loop.

We are, however, aware of some issues with some crops - specifically nether warts - where they need to regrow faster for this to be feasible. We'll be looking into speeding up their growth rate with the height limit patch to ensure they are not negatively affected by it. We're aware that mushrooms runs into the same issue - however, changing their growth rate will require another patch later as we figure out how to implement it properly.

Finally, Garden levels will be changed to increase crop growth rate on your plots. Ultimately, these changes will ensure that the height limit nerf doesn't really feel like a nerf anymore.

Unlocking Plots
One big concern with this change is unlocking plots - since there is technically less space on each plot, it is now more important to unlock all plots, and there have been growing concerns that the last few plots seem too hard, or even impossible to unlock at all without spending an insane amount of money. While we won't be reducing the cost of plots, we'll look at options to allow players to improve their compost gain through composter upgrades soon.

Farming Armor
Not much to say, but we do want to mention that we'll be increasing the amount of farming fortune on farming armor across the board.

We apologize for making this change after release; we hope you will understand why they are necessary.

This is a long thread isn't it - here's a TLDR in case you have places to be.
 * Height limit above bedrock lowered from 50 to 10
 * Nether Warts growing speed increased to help gathering loops
 * Garden Levels will provide an increase in crop growing speed
 * A future update will allow players to improve compost production
 * Farming Armor (most pieces) will receive an increase in farming fortune