Like half of the rods are underpowered and need some serious buff, so let's just go through all of them, because I'd like to stop going "rod of the molten core is absolutely useless" every time it comes up on discord.

Post opinions and balancing suggestions here, brainstorming ideas on Discord will be appreciated.

• Bifrost
• Depths
• Hells
• Highlands
• Lands
• Molten Core
• Plentiful Mantle
• Seas
• Shaded Mesa
• Shifting Crust
• Skies
• Terra Firma
• Unstable Reservoir

The visual of the ring should also match the hitbox, as visually it's a circle but hits in a square.

Funny thing about the Rod of the Hells: It actually affects a cylindrical area. The caveat – that cylinder is sideways, facing in the Z axis, because in EntityFlameRing it uses pointDistancePlane with the X and Y coordinates instead of the X and Z coordinates. And as far as I can tell it was always like that since the entity class was initially committed.

A couple of things from Discord for the Rod of the Molten Core:

• make it instant use instead of having to hold it, since holding use is weird with double-smeltable blocks like cobblestone
• turn it into a block provider for items like Rod of the Shifting Crust or Worldshaper's Astrolabe (generalization of the Depths + Molten Core suggestion from further up) – it would look up smelting recipes for the requested block and check items in the players inventory for matching input or other block providers that have corresponding input items for a matching smelting recipe (should cache eligible input items per requested output block for lookup performance)
• potentially allow it to smelt items in the player's inventory (though that was a bit of a divisive suggestion)

rod of the molten core is absolutely useless

Probably very niche use, but turning bricks into cracked variants to make floors and walls less samey, cobblestone to stone for walls and floors, is somewhat useful, but it would be nice if it could do more blocks like Shifting Crust as long as it's togglable, then it's diet shifting crust for certain blocks that smelt into other blocks.

bifrost: overhaul it to work like frost walker, but in midair. right click with the rod to activate it, and it will make a 3x3 (5x5?) platform of bifrost blocks under your feet to replace any air blocks, blocks despawn once you leave the area and each block conjured costs mana.

depths: dont really see much needing to be changed but perhaps the ability to enchant it with silk touch to produce stone instead of cobblestone

hells: reduce cooldown, maybe larger aoe + self-immunity

lands + highlands: maybe the same as depths, enchant with silk touch to produce grass blocks

molten core: allow block > item smelting instead of just block > block smelting

plentiful mantle: perhaps an upgrade for it to make it ignore common ores like coal/redstone/quartz, so that way itll only detect iron/gold/diamond/lapis/emerald/debris

seas: should be able to remove water source blocks as well when right-clicking one

shaded mesa: make it act faster, increase throwing distance so it can be more effectively used as a weapon, ignore all non-mob entities that aren't items (it tries to pull things like arrows for some reason)

shifting crust: be able to craft it with an elementium pickaxe like the terra shatterer

skies: give it some end-game utility by allowing it to boost elytra or partially refill the flugel tiara flight bar

terra firma: control its aoe better, it often tends to be much larger than i need it to be

unstable reservoir: make it shoot missiles only every half-second to scale with mob damage cooldown so you dont potentially waste mana for nothing. missiles could be stronger as well. perhaps allow it to be enchanted with looting?

Enchantments of rods aren't on the roadmap, sorry

Rod of the Hells suggestion: more damage dealt while in the ring (so it at least hurts more than a flint and steel) and the ability to place it remotely, so it's more usable without burning yourself

The visual of the ring should also match the hitbox, as visually it's a circle but hits in a square.

I also think it'd be interesting if the Rod could be charged to reduce the area of effect while also increasing the damage dealt, to combo well with either fishing rods or the Rod of the Shaded Mesa

More offhand interactions with certain rods;

• Depths + Molten Core automatically places Stone, and having both in your inventory lets Shifting Crust/Astrolabe place stone at the appropriate cost
• Land + Pasture Seeds lets you place grass directly, at ~1/16th the cost of a Pasture seed (since I think that's about how many grass blocks they make to begin with?)
• Shifting Crust assigned to Grass or various pastures could also place the associated grass by spending a pasture seed and the associated dirt (or rod of the lands)
• Terrafirma + ???, holding specific items to adjust what the rod will target and do to make it more precise, ie holding a Rune of Water to make it specifically fill in water with dirt, Rune of Air to let it build sideways and downwards, Rune of Fire to make it specifically destroy in an area where you're looking instead, etc, currently it's very unwieldy

Dunno if you had these in your notes somewhere but,
Rod of the Plentiful Mantle in a Livingwood Avatar should consume less mana the longer it's up, so it can more reasonably be used for decoration

Mesa: make it toggleable, rclick to grab, rclick to release, lclick to throw; holding the mouse button is not pleasant :P
maybe give it an AOE effect if not looking at anything or sneaking (this would be really neat as alternative to the magnets :pldng:)
Hells: give it less cooldown at least
Depths: make it work with avatars (maybe?)

also adding to the off hand thing:
depths + seas = moss cobble

change the flavor text to pew pew

🤔

To start:

• Bifröst has the issue described in #3715
• Hells is underpowered; several proposals were to reduce cooldown, make player immune, increase DPS, raytrace before summoning
• Plentiful Mantle needs a rebalance in cost (sugg: larger startup in exchange for a slower long-term burn?)
• Shaded Mesa needs to be able to remember the grabbed entity

• Placing rods should be added to quark:reacharound_able tag for obvious reasons

Also, "smelt rod should be able to melt obsidian/ice" is a hill I'll die on

Extremely important update should be made to Rod of the Hells: The fire should be blue when placed on Soul Sand/Soil

Rod of the Unstable Reservoir: make it so that if it's held by a livingwood avatar, mobs killed by it count as player drops. I managed to hack this feature in using CraftTweaker back on 1.12.2, for the drops I cared about anyway, but it would be cool for that to be real functionality.

Plentiful Mantle: Give it a few toggle modes

• Show everything (current behavior)
• Show only ores present in hotbar
• Show only ores not present in hotbar

Plentiful mantle when held by a Livingwood Avatar: If there's an ore block directly below the avatar, only highlight that ore

Bifrost + Seas (offhand): If you take in lordbowser's "like frost walker, but in midair" idea for Bifrost, make it generate ice (that doesn't decay). I was originally going to suggest similar for Lands, Depths, and Black Hole Talisman, but not sure that's aesthetic enough.

Allow the rod of Bifrost supply Bifrost blocks to the Shifting Crust

Allow rod of the seas to fill cauldrons :]