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).

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Pottery as a useful branch of the early game tech tree (stone age)

The Wild Update is gonna make clay renewable. More easily accessible clay should go with more uses for clay, and I think the most obvious way to accomplish that is by making pottery a worthwhile branch of the Minecraft tech tree.

Pottery is one of the most significant technologies on the human tech tree. It enabled us to store food and cook water, revolutionizing food production in conjunction with the development of agriculture, and was crucial to the formation of the first urban civilizations long before we did any metallurgy. I think Minecraft should reflect this.

I like the idea of clay pots as shown in the archeology segment of the original Caves&Cliffs announcement as far as creating them goes (assuming that it'll be possible to create simple, undecorated clay pots without having to dig up shards, too) - But only conditional on them being actually useful items, able to be used in a variety of ways, just like actual clay pots are in real life, instead of just decorative blocks! If something requires a very involved way of obtaining it, it should be very useful.

Along with that, flower pots should also be expanded upon, both for usefulness and consistency with large clay pots.

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    Clay pots as cooking pots: They should be able to contain water and stews in much the same way cauldrons can contain water or potions: Three small containers (bowls, glass bottles, or cups) to fill it up. When you only fill it with water, you'll end up with a pot full of water, obviously. When you place a fire under the pot, the water starts boiling, and you can start throwing in more ingredients. If you add (right-click) ingredients such as potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, beet root, fish, rabbit, chicken, etc. the contents change to a stew, which you can then fill bowls with. As soon as you put in at least one brown mushroom, one red mushroom, and one or more flowers, the entire contents of the pot turn into suspicious stew until the pot has been emptied. This should be a way to combine stew effects by adding multiple flowers, for example a stew that grants fire resistance, regeneration and saturation, making it a worthwhile game mechanic. The current crafting recipes for stews should be removed, this should be the only way to make them, except getting mushroom stews from mooshrooms. 

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    Clay pots as buckets: Fired pots should be useable as a water container when held in the hand. Right clicking normally should scoop up or place water, just like a bucket. Actually placing the clay pot as a block should be done by crouching while right-clicking. This would facilitate stone-age water management, enabling players to irrigate their farms without having to mess with metallurgy (finding iron and making a bucket) first, but wouldn't devalue the bucket because clay pots are harder to craft (requiring an extra firing step), will presumably be unstackable, and could be unable to contain lava. 

    Clay pots as plant pots: Another popular use for pots in real life. Adding dirt to a clay pot, either through a crafting recipe, or by right-clicking with dirt in hand, should result in a plant pot. Like the flower pot, you should be able to place any flower or other small plant in clay pots, but it should display a bigger version of the plant than the flower pot, or multiple, like candles. Unlike the flower pot, this should enable the growing of some food crops: potatoes, carrots, beetroot, berries, maybe mushrooms. Would be a fun, visually pleasing way to realize indoor farms. Could have the benefit of being usable as fully productive farmland without having to place a water source nearby. Could even be made more productive than irrigated farmland, rewarding clay and effort invested with faster growing crops, adding a bit of sorely needed dimension to farming as a game mechanic.

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    This combines the two things I won’t in Minecraft cooking and archeology, I love it!

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    Unfired pots should be dyeable, same as terracotta. Firing a pot once should produce a fired, unglazed pot of the corresponding terracotta color. Firing an unglazed pot again should produce a glazed pot, with a texture derived from the glazed terracotta blocks.

    If the archaeology update ever happens, you should still be able to place dug up shards on unfired pots. The color of the shards should be independent of the color of the new clay, allowing the player to choose whether they want their reconstructed ancient pot to look as close to its original state as possible, or to clearly display what parts are original vs. reconstructed.

    Of course, you should always be able to create pots without dug up shards.

    Currently, common survival minecraft wisdom is to always have a bucket in your hotbar. The clay pot as outlined here would be a great upgrade to that hotbar slot, by introducing both more functionality, and more personalization and storytelling options to the player's toolkit. Unlike a bucket, a personalized pot would be something players could grow attached to.