Minecraft has a lot of blocks, but what if they had more? Why do we need them? Please don't just add lists of things - these will be marked as spam and removed! Also, no furniture, guns, or vertical/"sideways"/"upright"/"standing" slabs (yes, we see you).

← Blocks, Tools, and Items
25
Follow

Renewable Dirt, Clay, Gravel, Sand, and Lava.

For several reasons, it is my opinion that these 5 basic and critical components should be made into renewable resources.

For dirt, we can use the composter. Instead of receiving bone meal, which isn't what you obtain by composting irl, the player would receive either dirt directly, or compost/fertilizer. The compost/fertilizer would act like bone meal in every way, except that it could be combined with gravel/sand to make dirt.

Clay could be combined with water, dirt, and sand in order to receive either the block or the individual clay component.

Gravel can be ground down from cobblestone (which can also be ground from stone) and sand can be ground from gravel, using a special grinding station (separate from the grindstone of course).

Lastly, lava can be created from stone/cobble using a special furnace (maybe call it a crucible) that would heat those items to extreme temperatures. The lava would either be directly placed in a bucket via the interface, or the player can click on the station with a bucket to obtain the lava.

Avatar
Registered User shared this idea

9 Comments

Please sign in to leave a comment.

Date Votes
Sorted by oldest
  • 3
    Registered User commented
    Comment actions Permalink

    With renewable gravel, you can get renewable dirt anyway by making coarse dirt and Hoeing it.

    Renewable lava is probably not going to happen, because it means easy infinite obsidian, unless the crucible is made with netherite and powered by end rods or something like that.

    Good idea with the sand and gravel though, I would really like to see that in the game, because then skyblock would get much easier, and dirt would be renewable.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
    Comment actions Permalink

    Why not have lava have the same renewability as water? Although I don't see why we can't use the grindstone block for this?

     

    In all honesty it be easier to just trade for the stuff with villagers. If there was a villager that specialized in selling such blocks than you wouldn't need the generators

  • 1
    Registered User commented
    Comment actions Permalink

    Technically, gravel and clay are renewable through some rather unorthodox methods... clay by Mason villagers after a raid, and gravel through piglin bartering.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
    Comment actions Permalink

    I agree with Tony1048576. With renewable gravel, you could have infinite dirt with the coarse dirt method. Another solution to having infinite dirt would be to craft clay and sand together to get dirt. This would be a much simpler process than getting dirt from the composter. Also, it doesn't delete the renewable bonemeal feature.

  • 2
    Registered User commented
    Comment actions Permalink

    While yes, much of these are technically renewable with villager/wandering trader trades and the upcoming piglin bartering, these systems are not practical for renewability on a large scale, nor does it make these resources truly renewable from a production sense.

    For example, the podzol and sand trades from the wandering trader are limited in how much you can obtain from the trader at any visit, and are not guaranteed to be options for trade when the trader visits. The clay trade that the mason has (only in Java), as well as the upcoming piglin gravel barter, are trades that are rather late-game and resource intensive to obtain compared to what you get from them. Unless you are swimming in gold and emeralds, they're not very good for what you get from them.

    Renewable lava does not in any way have to make obsidian easier to obtain, as obsidian being able to be made from the crucible interface is not a requirement. If Mojang wanted to do that, then they are free to do so, but they do not have to. Lava would still have to be placed, turned into obsidian and then mined. The lava production itself doesn't have to have a fast pace either, if that is also a concern.

  • 2
    Registered User commented
    Comment actions Permalink

    The historical real-life function of the grind stone is to sharpen weapons and tools, and is simply not equipped to crush materials. It would be like trying to use sandpaper on a rock to make sand.

    The whole purpose of offering the compost option is to not remove the renewable bonemeal function of the composter, while still being able to produce dirt from it. While yes, you wouldn't get white dye, you can make a mob grinder to get easy bones, and bonemeal is not a realistic product from composting.

    The available methods for obtaining these resources renewably are not practical for obtaining them in massive amounts, at least not until very late in the game for a few, but not all. These methods are also not intuitive to the average player, and with many real-life examples we can take inspiration from, there is no reason for these basic resources to be unrenewable in terms of actual crafting and production.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
    Comment actions Permalink

    With the 1.17 update, all of these have been made renewable, this post is now obsolete :)

  • 1
    Registered User commented
    Comment actions Permalink

    Congratulations! Now all we need is renewable sand.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
    Comment actions Permalink

    Dirt, Clay, Gravel, and Lava have all now been made renewable as of 1.19.  However, Sand (while technically renewable via wandering trader) is not practical for large quantities without digging up a desert (which not everyone wants to do).  I agree that Cobblestone and any stone crafted stairs/slabs/walls should be grindable into gravel (if it worked like a furnace where it could funnel stuff in and create gravel, that would be great)!  And similarly, then you could also grind gravel finer down into sand which would make sand very renewable (not sure how it is any more fun for sand NOT to be renewable nor does having a renewable source of sand seem OP other than being able to build more with Glass which again seems like it would add fun rather than the feel bad of accidentally breaking valuable Glass or losing valuable Sand).  It could require diamonds or some other rare material in order to make if it feels unbalanced but doesn't seem any more unbalanced than turning wood into charcoal...  TNT can already be duped so that also shouldn't detract and most players aren't crafting tons of TNT in their single player worlds...