Death
| Type | Mechanic |
|---|
Death in Matcha Flavoured costs the player a heart of maximum health instead of their items. The pack turns on keepInventory, so everything in the inventory is kept, and in exchange each death permanently lowers the player's maximum health, down to a floor that depends on the difficulty and on how far the player has progressed.
Lost hearts are regained with crystal hearts, which raise maximum health up to 30 hearts.
Mechanics
Keeping items
When a player joins a world for the first time, the pack sets the game rules keep_inventory to true and ender_pearls_vanish_on_death to false.[1] The rules are set by the reward of the root advancement, so they can be changed afterwards and stay changed until another new player joins.[2] Players keep their items and experience, and thrown 
stable voids don't vanish when the thrower dies.
Heart loss
The pack checks every tick for players whose death count has gone up. For each one it lowers the player's stored heart count and sets their maximum health to match, usually while they are still on the death screen.[3]
| Difficulty | Maximum health lost per death[4] |
|---|---|
| Peaceful, Easy, Normal | 2 ( × 1)
|
| Hard | 4 ( × 2)
|
Maximum health can't fall below a floor:[5]
- On Easy, the floor is always 10 hearts (20 ( × 10)), the vanilla starting health.
- On Normal and Hard, the floor is the player's own minimum hearts (see below).
- On Peaceful, the code applies no floor.
Maximum health can never be higher than 30 hearts (60 ( × 30)).[6]
Because the minimum starts at 10 hearts, a new player who has not used any crystal hearts loses nothing by dying. Deaths only start to cost health once the player has gained hearts above their minimum, or once progression has lowered the minimum.
The same heart loss is triggered by the Wither effect: a player who stays withered for 8 seconds loses hearts exactly as if they had died.[7]
Minimum hearts
Every player has their own minimum, which starts at 10 hearts.[8] Seven milestones in the tutorial advancement tab each lower it by 1 heart, whatever order they are earned in:[9]
| Advancement | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Brazier | Obtain a  Copper Ingot
|
| The Stalwart Metal | Obtain an  Iron Ingot
|
| The Resilient Mineral | Obtain a  Diamond
|
| Orpheus | Enter Hell |
| The End of Dreams | Enter a stronghold |
| A Zealous Alloy | Obtain an  Electrum Alloy
|
| A Divine Alloy | Obtain an  Adamant Alloy
|
Each time the minimum drops, the player receives a red flavor message. On every difficulty except Easy, a gray message follows: "Minimum Hearts is now set to N", where N is the new minimum in hearts. On Easy only the flavor message appears, since the floor there stays at 10 hearts.[9]
| Milestones earned | Minimum hearts | Flavor message |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 10 | – |
| 1 | 9 | A terrible chill runs up your spine... |
| 2 | 8 | The Dead grow restless... |
| 3 | 7 | The Underworld screams... |
| 4 | 6 | Chthonic Gods swear fealty to a terrible Force... |
| 5 | 5 | Armies gather beneath the Earth... (sent to every player) |
| 6 | 4 | The Dead fear your Power... |
| 7 | 3 | The Dead God fears its undoing... |
The minimum never goes below 3 hearts (6 ( × 3)).[9]
On Normal, when a player's minimum drops below 6 hearts (their fifth milestone), the world's difficulty is raised to Hard and every player is told "Game is now set to Hard". This affects the whole world, not just that player, and it can be set back in the world settings.[10]
The minimum is tracked per player, so one player's progress doesn't lower anyone else's floor. When a player first joins on a newer version of the pack, their minimum is reset to 10 hearts. Orpheus, The End of Dreams, A Zealous Alloy and A Divine Alloy are revoked at the same time so they can be earned again, but Brazier, The Stalwart Metal and The Resilient Mineral are not, so a player who had already earned those three can only bring their minimum down to 6 hearts after updating. The code marks the reset as temporary, meant for players coming from 1.12.1-alpha.[11]
Regaining hearts
Using a crystal heart raises maximum health by 1 heart, up to 30. Crystal hearts are crafted from diamonds and a 
Divine Fragment, found in chests, fished up, and given by four advancements: Canto I, II and III give one each, and Canto IV gives two.[12]
Difficulty
| Peaceful | Easy | Normal | Hard | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hearts lost per death | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Lowest maximum health | no floor | 10 hearts | minimum hearts (10 to 3) | minimum hearts (10 to 3) |
| "Minimum Hearts" message | yes | no | yes | yes |
| Hearts lost to the Wither effect | 1 | none | 1 | 2 |
The difficulty the pack uses is read when the world loads, so after changing difficulty the world has to be reloaded (for example with /reload or by rejoining).[13]
History
| 0.3-alpha | Heart containers renamed to crystal hearts and the health system refined. Crystal hearts can be crafted, no longer drop from zombies, and are found in chests. |
|---|---|
| 1.10 | Crystal hearts work in multiplayer. Killing the Ender Dragon raises the difficulty. |
| 1.12 | Fixed a typo that stopped crystal hearts being removed properly. |
| 1.12.1-alpha | New experimental death system. Maximum health can go below 10 hearts, with the floor set by the player's progress through advancements; Easy is exempt. Killing the dragon no longer changes the difficulty on Normal; progress does instead. Hardcore-style hearts added to the resource pack. |
| 1.12.2 | The new death system is kept. Minimum hearts are tracked per player instead of per world. The Wither effect now takes hearts. |
Trivia
- The developer turned on keep inventory because losing items "can be really demoralizing", but found that with no penalty at all they were tempted to "jump off a cliff so I can teleport back home". Crystal hearts were the compromise.[14]
- The flavor messages describe a "Dead God" growing afraid of the player. The Ender Dragon advancement is called "Iconoclast", described as "Defile the Dead God's Dream".
- The 1.12.2 release notes still say "difficulty is still set at 5 hearts", meaning the Normal-to-Hard switch at a minimum of 5 hearts.[15]
- Some players criticized the heart system for making the game too easy, since items are kept. The developer has said they are not interested in changing this: "I like it being easy. I don't want to be stressed out." Being sent back to spawn is meant to be the punishment.[16]
See also
References
- ↑
setup/gamerules.mcfunction - ↑
setup/first load.mcfunction - ↑
heart container/detect death.mcfunction - ↑
heart container/hpdown.mcfunction - ↑
heart container/set max hp.mcfunction - ↑
scoreboard/create scoreboards.mcfunction - ↑
wither effect/check wither timer.mcfunction - ↑
scoreboard/player setup.mcfunction - ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2
heart container/decrease minimum hearts.mcfunction - ↑
difficulty scaling/increase difficulty.mcfunction - ↑
setup/update this player.mcfunction - ↑
tutorial/obtain topaz.json - ↑
setup/load.mcfunction - ↑ Klei Wright, "Minecraft punishes casual players. I made a datapack to fix it." (YouTube)
- "If death has no punishment at all, if there are no stakes, no reason to stop from dying, I'll find myself just tempted to jump off a cliff so I can teleport back home."
- ↑ Matcha Flavoured 1.12.2 release notes
- "Heart Decrementing is now only local not global (Per player not per world ...), difficulty is still set at 5 hearts"
- ↑ Klei Wright, "How Criticism changed Matcha Flavoured" (YouTube)
- "I like it that way. I like it being easy. I don't want to be stressed out. If I die, I don't want to have to travel all the way back to where I died."
| Health | |
|---|---|
| World |
|
| Items | |
| Undead |
|
| Other hostile mobs |
|
| Bosses | |
