The Expi is a very literate little cousin of the Allay that loves to learn. Said learning fills up their little Bottle O' Enchanting hats, which you can collect! Summoned from a Carved Pumpkin plopped on top of an Enchantment Table, the Expi will populate any space with bookshelves and begin to read in cycles ending with a modest XP gain. A full hat will give 100 experience points - enough to go from level 0 to 7 and really mend a damaged netherite tool! Sounds so great you wanna make a big group of them, eh? Just know they don't like reading next to each other.
Technical Stuff:
! AI WAS USED IN THE CODING OF THIS ADDON. TEXTURES, ANIMATIONS, MODELS, DOCUMENTATION/VALUE-SETTING, AND THE CURSEFORGE PAGE WERE ALL MADE BY ME !
The Expi has a pretty steep upfront cost in the requirement of an Enchantment Table, Carved Pumpkins, and a few bookshelves. In return, you get a straightforward, fire-and-forget renewing source of experience points. I designed reading to happen in cycles of eight seconds, with each of the four reading animations lasting the same eight seconds. However, an Expi will stay at the same bookshelf for either 16, 32, 48, or 64 seconds with all time spans having an equal chance being selected. So, a single cycle will fill the hat by two experience always, but a single Bookshelf can end up being the place 8 experience points are collected. Fill value is represented by four different hat fills states handled by four different textures. If hat experience is anywhere between 0-27, the Expi uses the base texture - you could also call it the "empty" texture. Reaching 28 experience points swaps to the "low" texture; 52, "half"; 76, "fullish"; 100, "full."
Reading can be interupted by a few things, such as the breaking of a Bookshelf, seperation from a bookshelf, or harming. On top of this, I threw in a "crowding" mechanic to prevent micro-farms with one or two Bookshelves. Normally, an Expi will try to find a Bookshelf at least 4 blocks in a spherical range away from another Expi; but, if it absolutely can not find an empty spot, it will still try to read. This will cause the Expi originally there to get annoyed and play a 14-second animation one their reading cycle ends before leaving. Should more Expies come over, they will just fly around and wait their turn.
The Expi has no natural predators, but can still be hurt by you. They have 40 health points, making them as durable as Endermen while also dropping 1-2 Obsidian plus whatever experience points they had stored. Lapis Lazuli heals Expies for four health points.
Expies are far from perfect creatures. They're very dorky with their pathfinding, running into each other or bookshelves when things get crowded. Taming-by-infrastructure (building farms in a way to minimize wasted time in pathfinding and maximize predictability) is very difficult - maybe even impossible. Whether or not this makes them annoying to work with or feel more natural, please let me know!
This is my first mod and completed mob!
Closing notes:
I want to try to make all of my Addons both parity-friendly for older worlds AND Vibrant Visuals compatible.
Reading Expies! Team
