The Elytra – Minecrafts Most PROBLEMATIC Item…

If you told minecraft players back in 2012 or earlier that there would be a time when they could fly in survival mode they would have told you to stop abusing single player commands little did they know however that in a few years time the elytra would be added to

Minecraft allowing players to fly at speeds faster than creative but that brings us to the present issue is the elytra too strong did it completely ruin other forms of transport like rails and horses think about it when was the last time you used rails or horses for

Transportation or is the elytra simply a product of a bigger issue with minecraft as a whole late game being too easy to get to first let’s go back to a time when elytra’s horses iceboat roads and more did not exist back in alpha beta and even early full releases of the game

From roughly 2010 to mid 2013. during this time rails are one of the fastest if not the fastest method of transport around the world they were expensive but with the only other option being walking in beta and alpha versions of the game they were a nice change of pace

Literally it was much more common to find railways on servers and older beta maps and worlds if you look at the most downloaded minecart maps on planet minecraft many of them are from 8 or more years ago with very few recent ones being present when grien did his

Evolution smp one of the first major projects he built was a railway this is something you just don’t see anymore when was the last time you built a railway in minecraft i know for a fact that it was back in 2019 when i was moving villages around my base and if it

Wasn’t for moving entities primarily villages i would likely never use them simply because it takes a decent resource investment to set up especially including powered rails it takes a lot of time as unlike other methods of transport you actually have to lay out build and plan infrastructure and with

All that increased time planning and resources you don’t even get a fast method of transport a mine cart on rails has a top speed of 8 blocks per second jumping while sprinting allows you to move at a speed of 7.1 blocks per second therefore rails only give you a marginal

Increase in speed for a significantly greater amount of effort and resources these days they are rare sights with their only real use being for transporting mobs such as villagers a shame as old rail networks had so much charm to them so much charm just like all of you who are subbed we recently

Hit 400k so thank you all and i reckon we can hit 500k by the end of the year so make sure to sub if you haven’t already no pressure anyways in a similar although more unintended vein boats were also used for transportation in the early days of minecraft boats were like

Rails except cheaper as you only needed water and random blocks instead of dubious amounts of iron they were uglier and took up more space though as well as not really being able to move upwards nonetheless players began using them to travel around their world an early pioneer of advanced boat transport was

Etho who uploaded videos dating all the way back to 2010 of his advanced boat transportation system or eats as he named it in the video’s description he even mentions that all complex transportation systems in minecraft so far use minecarts and he feels his boat system may have more potential as it can

Handle two-way traffic four-way intersections road mergers and more lots of players would begin building these types of boat transport systems in their world as another method of getting around once again it’s likely that most of you watching this video have never built or seen anything like this only

Ever using boats to traverse oceans prior to getting an elytra or using them in ice nether highways horses would eventually be added to minecraft in mid-2013 the first real transportation mob pigs don’t count the unique element of horses which made it differ from all other prior forms of transport was their

Varying speeds while the fastest horses could reach 14.57 blocks per second the slowest were even slower than plane sprinting at 4.86 blocks per second so the average horse had a speed of about 10 blocks per second which was pretty good yet issues were abundant you couldn’t really fit into some narrow

Spaces due to the increased height navigating through forest was also quite annoying and don’t even get me started on water or rivers the slight increase in speed didn’t really justify the loss of maneuverability from being on foot so as you can imagine when elijah’s were finally added to the game in early 2016

Boasting speeds of up to 78.4 blocks per second when at specific angles it completely blew all other forms of transport out the water it didn’t require any complex resource intensive and time-consuming infrastructure it had incredible maneuverability even allowing players to fit into one block high gaps something which wasn’t possible without

The elytra at the time and it was extremely fast even faster than flying in creative mode no other method of transport could compete with the elytra which only had the downside of requiring either a punch bow or firework rockets to use items which are quite easy to obtain even without automatic farms you

Could use it anywhere and anytime just by jumping having the highest accessibility of any transport in the game with none other able to be used with such haste and with the addition of mending and unbreaking a player’s electro would almost never break and once they had an elytra flying around to

Raid other end cities got even easier to save the ally rays one of the game’s most powerful useful and essential items is no understatement it’s the main reason players go to the end and kill the dragon after all elytras allow you to traverse massive areas of land in

Mere seconds quite literally a server owner’s nightmare but is it too powerful yes it is but that’s okay the elytra’s power isn’t the problem you see the issue with the elytra is that it’s considered a late game item you have to go through every dimension in the game

Beat the ender dragon and traverse the dangerous and treacherous end islands to finally find one it’s not meant to be easy to get and it’s certainly not an item you can just get within your first few hours of starting a new minecraft world oh wait it is you see the problem

With the elytra is that minecraft’s late game is hardly late at all the elytra is intentionally designed to be powerful and hard to obtain but when you can get one only a few hours after beginning a new world something’s clearly wrong players get to minecraft’s late game far

Too quickly and easily think about it like this any average player that’s right not just speedrunners can start a new world spend 30 minutes or so getting iron gear and maybe a few diamonds if they are lucky then they can spend one night getting resources to make a bow

And some arrows maybe even some ender pearls they can head to the nether get ender pearls with no trouble utilizing various strategies similar for blazes and then boom they can go to the end let’s be generous and say that the entire process of gathering basic but

Decent gear and getting to the end takes the average player about 3-4 hours and that’s just with the basics most players have acquired some diamond gear or applied some basic enchants to their armor in this time as well beating the dragon isn’t easy but it’s not exactly difficult either in fact ironically the

Endermen which you may accidentally look at actually pose a bigger threat than the slow and predictable boss that is the dragon and if a player sleeps at the stronghold even if they do die they can quickly get back into action so beating the dragon and getting to an end city

Would probably only take another one to two hours max that’s about five to six hours to get an elytra from starting a new world now of course not all players will do this most tend to build small bases or shelters and invest more time into obtaining better loot before going

To the end but the fact still stands that if they wanted to the average player could obtain an elytra within only a few hours of beginning a minecraft world that’s not late game at all now before i hear the argument that while you can beat the game and get an

Elytra in a few hours you don’t have to elijah’s are almost a must-have for players now due to their one-of-a-kind power just try playing on your survival world without one for a few days and you’ll see what i mean they are far too important and useful to not get as soon

As possible alright enough complaining now though how could we balance or fix the elytra well instead of nerfing elijah’s as nobody really wants that let’s try two things first we could buff or improve other methods of transport you see i don’t think elijah’s ruined other forms of transport they merely

Displayed how old and outdated they were mine carts and boats haven’t seen a speed increase since the day they were added and rapidly became outdated considering the amount of time and resources that is required for rails why don’t we buff minecarts let’s double no triple the speed of minecarts to about

24 blocks per second and can we please make it so rails can turn corners and guard blocks at the same time this is so frustrating while we’re at it let’s add a version of powered rails which can also turn furthermore why not give minecarts the ability to connect to

Other minecarts behind them like so then players could mass transport lots of entities at once without having to play dodge cards maybe even give them a small storage as well rails are still somewhat expensive to craft especially if you’re going to be building a long distance railway so maybe increase the amount of

Rails a player gets per craft and then horses let’s give horses some storage like donkeys and up their average speed a bit maybe to about 12 or 13 blocks per second then allow the horse to be upgraded or buffed over time instead of being locked at a specific speed and

Jump height for example feeding them golden apples or other rare foods can increase their speed by 10 percent maybe even giving them an enchanted golden apple will give them a big buff like doubling the horse’s speed horses would still be capped at a certain speed to keep horse breeding useful though for

Example a horse which spawns with a speed of 10 blocks per second can only go up to 25 blocks per second whereas a horse with a speed of 14 blocks per second can go over 30 with upgrades let’s also make other types of horse armor craftable and maybe even

Enchantable allowing players to give their horses thorns or feather falling making them more useful for combat and traversing terrain how about deathstrider horse armor so they can finally swim let’s also make horses work like dogs teleporting to the players when they get too far away unless in set

Mode or lease to a fence this would make horses much more maneuverable useful and accessible the second method of making elijah’s more balanced is to make minecraft’s late game actually late game this is much harder to do however simple changes include making the dragon harder

To kill such as making it do more damage move faster or have more health furthermore i think the ender dragon should be able to control endermen and occasionally make them attack the player this would mean that players would have to spend more time gearing up and can’t

Just beat the dragon with plane iron armor thus making the end game harder to get to other than that it’s quite hard to make minecraft’s late game later without making significant changes that would likely upset a majority of the player base so i think it’s best to focus on buffing other methods of

Transport first let me know what your thoughts are in the comments i’ll run a poll on twitter about it if you think the elytra is op as well be sure to subscribe thank you all so much for watching