First Nerf Experience

I had seen a build on /r/Minecraft that put a portal-based gold farm above an iron farm and decided to try it out. I got it implemented (including some redstone upgrades for sorting items and removing zombie pigmen chicken jockeys) on an SMP server I share with some co-workers. Then I decided that it would be good material for a tutorial video.

I planned out the video structure and set up a demo in a tutorial world. The recording took a couple of hours and more than one take. Then came post-processing which wasn't so bad if you don't count the compressing and rendering time. Finally, it was ready so I posted the video for a scheduled publishing later in the week.

The next day I was monitoring Twitter for more news about the snapshots that had been coming out for 1.8 and then I saw some terrible news (in light of the work from the previous few days). Automatic iron and gold farms nerfed! Iron golems drop iron ingots only on player kill. The same with zombie pigmen and gold nuggets.

Such disappointment.

Oh well. We're going to be posted AFK almost 24/7 until we're ready to roll out 1.8. Hopefully by then, we'll come up with something to reduce potential lag problems and still get the resources. It'll just be a little more time spent doing maintenance.

Have you experienced a nerf to your play style before? What did you do about it?