Minecraft - Plugin Concept (Armor Types)

After some monkeying around in Minecraft, I've been toeing around with a few ideas. Waiting for an official plugin API could be very slow. Heck they are barely into the inception stage of things, hopefully things will get sped up.

Going back over my list, I've decided a 'Stronghold' like plugin which could be absolutely sweet... its a very big scope and for this time is way beyond anything I would even want to tackle myself. Additionally, I'm not sure how Minecraft would work with it as I certainly would need to limit what could be built and not, which really takes away creativity from the game. While I could potentially work on some of this stuff right now by modding the client, which I have strongly considered for prototyping. I would rather spend some time doing game design instead of hacking in ideas.

Instead, I would rather focus on core game-play aspects of the current game and enhancing the depth of it. Mojang said the API will initially be for adding features to the game and not removing. This means my initial plugins need to add to the current game and not focus on changing it or overhauling it.

Here is what I have come up with so far, and yes I realize the possibility of people 'stealing' my ideas and I could even be doing things which have already been done. But in either case, life goes on.

Armor Types - I like how we currently have leather, iron, gold, diamond and chain. They each have 3 properties: Durability, Armor, Enchantability. So going off of that, what can I do to add something without changing what currently exists? Easy.

Gold-plated Armor - This would be a new type of armor, it would look like iron armor but the edges would be gold. This armor would have the same durability and armor value as iron. However it offers an Enchantability slightly higher than diamond (11), since chain is special with a value of 12 I wouldn't want to equal that.

This armor is crafted by taking an iron piece and placing it in the middle of a crafting table, then putting gold bars around it as such:

Chest - 4
Legs - 3
Helm - 2
Boots - 2

Hardened Iron Armor - This would be another new type of armor, it would look like a darkened version of iron armor. This armor would have the same durability as diamond armor. The armor value would be 19, instead of 15 from regular iron or 20 from diamond armor. (+1 to each piece above iron). However, it would have a low Enchantability of 7. Which is essentially the lowest in the game, this would make sense since it is hardened and thus not easily enchanted.

This armor is crafted in a similar way to Gold-plated Armor except using iron bars instead and with different values:

Chest - 8
Legs - 7
Helm - 5
Boots - 4

These changes provide a number of benefits with minimal costs:
- The gap between iron and diamond is smaller, with two options for intermediate armor before diamond.
- These items would be more available but there power also requires an increased cost.
- They keep diamond armor as the best in the game, which is critical given the current state of things.
- They keep the special bonus of using chain armor by having it more enchantable than Gold-plated.

Additionally, it provides an addition to the game without changing the current features or removing features.

Now since you would be crafting a new item using a previous item with the potential of lost durability, what should happen to the durability? Well, it would be bad to fully repair the item, but I feel there isn't much depth by leaving the amount of durability the same. Instead I suggest, taking the amount of durability which has been lost, and adding back half of it to the new Hardened or Gold-plated item.