In Minecraft, gunpowder is an item that is useful for crafting but isn't craftable; you can only get it by hunting creepers, ghasts, and witches, finding it in chests, or buying it from a Wandering Trader. This is in contrast to real life, where gunpowder (black powder) can be made by mixing the powdered forms of potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur. So why don't we make it possible to craft gunpowder like this in Minecraft?
The three items gunpowder would be crafted from would be charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter (that's what we'll call potassium nitrate). Charcoal is already in the game; it can be made by smelting logs/wood in a furnace or breaking a campfire without Silk Touch. Here's how you'd obtain the other two ingredients:
- Saltpeter/Saltpetre: Found as niter, a new mineral block that generates regularly in deserts and badlands; in other Overworld biomes, it only occurs in cave walls. When niter is mined without Silk Touch, it drops multiple saltpeter powder items.
- Sulfur/Sulphur: Found as ore that generates in the Nether, as well as in the Overworld around lava lakes and the bottoms of ravines. When mined without Silk Touch, it drops one yellow sulfur crystal item, or maybe multiple when mined with Fortune.
The crafting recipe for gunpowder would be a shapeless recipe: 6 saltpeter, 2 charcoal, and 1 sulfur, giving 9 gunpowder. This recipe is meant to replicate the real-life one as closely as possible. It's both another way to make gunpowder and a form of edutainment!
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