There's often a problem with balancing within the first days of WilderCraft. Players tend to get really good items fast if they've voted/paid for a high rank such as Elder or Ancient. Alongside this is WilderCoins, which have allowed players to obtain end game gear like elytra prior to the end's opening. To counter this, I'm proposing a slight change: Wilder Relics!

WilderRelics would be various material items that have no right-click function (think feathers, ingots, nautilus shells, anything that's merely a crafting material). With the incoming utility of smithing tables in 1.16, there's now an opportunity to add some new custom recipes. Why not make them a precursor to WilderTools?

For example, a WilderCopia is an insanely good way of procuring experience. Players can just drop a few bucks on WilderCoin packs and pick one up in the first few hours of a season reset. Some players tend to find this unbalanced, such that they can get to 30 levels before they even use buckets to make a pocket nether portal. It could have a respective WilderRelic obtainable through voting in place of the tool itself. Perhaps its relic may read:

Gem of the Harvest (Emerald)
"A crystal enhanced by nature's blessing. What would happen if it were to be placed on a gardening tool?"

Adding a diamond hoe and the WilderRelic to the smithing table could transform the diamond hoe into a WilderCopia. Considering the fact that WilderCopias have Fortune levels, the relic could hold that fortune level. Since items in the smithing table retain enchantments after smithing is done, the player can control the Mending and Unbreaking that goes on it.

For other WilderRelics, there's a number of possibilities. "Draconic Brew" (Dragon's Breath) may have Protection built into it; combined with an elytra, the vanilla survival method of flight would turn into WilderWings. WilderShears might take a "Shiny Powder" (Glowstone Dust) with Fortune and a pair of shears for that easy dye and experience. There's even potential for a "Warding Shell" (Scute) with Thorns to be added to a shield and create a WilderShield, allowing protection from damage at the front and mirroring damage taken while in the player's main/off-hand.

If the WilderRelics are instead a single item (perhaps a "ruby" red dye in my opinion), they could be given different properties in order to keep players from making WilderWings from a WilderCopia's relic.

From a balance standpoint, this is 100% supposed to hold the intent of balancing WilderTool obtainability. With WilderRelics, players can get their WilderTool materials prepared for a certain time threshold. After that threshold, they can put those materials together to create the WilderTools they've been waiting on. With the ability to choose your tool's enchants, players would be encouraged to grind their way to highly enchanted gear and get the best utility of their WilderTool when the threshold arrives. No longer will experience be unfairly easy to get at the start of the season, nor flying around with elytra and fireworks be possible before the end is open.

This sounds like a challenge to implement, but surely it sounds like a viable change? I'm guessing 7/10 difficulty, but potentially lower depending on how many relics get added. I'd be stoked to see this get added!

I think you miss the fund-raising aspect of these items.  These items help support the server and keep it operating for all players. They have more power, and that is precisely the point.  Yes, they do seem overpowered during the first few weeks of the server, but once non-paying players get their operations going, it really shouldn't matter all that much.

All players have the option to win these through weekly and monthly voting rewards. That's part of the balance.

 

Donations should have a selfless benevolence -- benefiting others by doing good. I just don't want players looking into a pay-to-win mindset. WilderCoins allow the server's strongest items to be procured by dropping real money.

I bought Ancient because I'd been on the server plenty long, but my votes were slacking. I wanted to a) get to a rank that was about equal to the votes I could have made for this server and b) show others that I value Wilder deeply. I don't want that 90% chance for getting a weekly WilderTool; I just want to be helpful and passionate.

How would you acquire one of these 'relics'?

I love the idea of balancing out things further and feedback from our players expressing their concerns on unbalanced items or functions is one of my top priorities. You explained this very well in this post and were very thorough, I appreciate that!

There are a couple functions that WilderTools follow. One is to add a late game item, as it was felt that late game beyond max enchanted gear was a bit of a drag. I believe they serve their purpose well in this regard, though, it can be argued that the ability to acquire them through donation using WilderCoins is slightly unbalanced. 

The other function, that only applies to a small number of the WilderTools, is to decrease the amount of large farms you'd have to make. For example, the copia and shears work well at removing the need for you to create mob based XP farms. 

It just so happens that both of these functions combined make them feel absurdly busted early on in a Wildercraft season.

Not a bad idea! Only missing that one detail on how to acquire them. Perhaps the whole point of WilderTools should be a progression system as you're proposing. 

I do like this idea, and I also agree with swoven.
to add to the idea, and to provide one possible answer to swovens question; it would be nice if the relics were obtainable as the vote rewards/ in the place of the wildercrate. And the more of these relics that you add, the stronger the tool becomes. This would make them more into a late game item, and might even encourage more people to buy the items from the crate for example if you need 3 relics for an upgrade to the tool and you have one of two, theres an incentive to get those other two via donating..

i agree with Nyvex on this one, i'm a little bit concerned about the current system being too pay-to-win. and if you think changing that would be detrimental to the server, well, just look at what SalC1 did to TreeMC. completely destroyed the server because it used a system that was rather similar to wilder's . i don't want wilder to die!

I agree, It's also very expensive, Like $40ish for an elytra is absurd, and just because it has Protection 4. SalC1 Completely destroyed TreeMC and I'd hate to see that to happen to WilderCraft.

(Might I add $57 for an Elytra for Canadian players, Like me. I'm not Paying half of one hundred dollars for an Elytra with Prot4)

Edit: You can Buy 2 Minecraft Accounts with the Same Amount of Money :/

To Swoven:

Worzyy captured my thoughts exactly. I would hope that the relics could replace the WilderTools in the vote pool, WilderCrate, WilderCoin shop, etc. so it's not so easily attainable. If it's supposed to be endgame, it should most definitely have a few thresholds to meet.