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I tihnk TNT would be much more practical if sand was reasonably renewable and mob spawning wasn't so rare. In my experience modding the game, you have to almost triple the mob cap (70 to 200) to get decent spawns for creepers similarly to back in Beta.

That said, I think an ore makes little sense: gunpowder is a fairly precise mix of substances, including charcoal. I can imagine an analogous compound being formed by plants (at least, that's my headcanon on what Minecraft gunpowder actually is), considering nitrocellulose is a major component of modern smokeless powder. Moreover, that'd make it a non-renewable source of gunpowder and, as such, would only delay the problem in a way that, say, making Creepers more common, ingreasing their gunpowder drops, or adding a new Villager profession centered around explosives wouldn't.

As for guns... I wrote a suggestion on a gun. IMO, there's a niche a gun can fill, but there shouldn't be more than one or two types at most, and NPCs definitely should also be able to get them.

This is another version of a suggestion I wrote on the Minecraft Abnormals server:

Introduction:

Having been since the Beta days in the Minecraft community, I've seen that, while not popular, gun suggestions have been always, to ever diminishing extent, a thing in the community (likely as a result of gunpowder existing). These have usually come in two versions:

• Some troll posting some variation on "pls add smg assult rifle and shotty".
• Actually thought-out suggestions involving muzzle-loading antiques, normally muskets.

The latter, though, tended to have major flaws that made them quite unappealing to use, such as using craft-to-reload mechanics. However, it did include a clear consensus: IF there's a niche to guns in Minecraft, it's as a weapon that deals high single-attack damage, often at longer ranges.

The main counterpoint, though, sometimes was that of a blunderbuss that'd deal high single-shot short-range damage.

This suggestion is, effectively, a synthesis of these two tendencies together with the Crossbow's lessons, which are that unique handling mechanics and different ammo types can make new ranged weaponry more unique. This suggestion is about a matchlock weapon that's capable of dealing brutally large amounts of damage at long and short ranges, which is balanced by it's unique handling mechanics.

Obtaining:

The Arquebus itself is crafted with 3 iron ingots, two Wooden Planks and a Tripwire Hook.

It's got two types of ammo. One is the familiar Bullet, which is crafted with an iron ingot, 1 gunpowder and a paper piece, yielding 6 shots. The other is Pellet Shot, which is crafted with 7 iron nuggets, 1 gunpowder and paper, yielding 4 shots.

Other ways to obtain the Arquebus are:

Arquebus-wielding mobs can drop the Arquebus.

Trade: Journeyman weaponsmiths can sell the Arquebus and either ammo type.
Buried treasure, strongholds, Pillager outposts and shipwrecks may contain arquebuses.

Mechanics:

First off, the stats must be described. The Arquebus has 250 durability. According to it's ammo type, it deals a different amount of damage: Bullets deal 16 damage each and ignore 10 points of armor. This makes them effective on armored mobs and instakills spiders. Bullets can even pierce through shields, dealing halved damage to the user.

Pellet shot, meanwhile, fires 7 pellets which ignore deal 3 damage each and ignore 2 armor points. These pellets ignore normal invincibility frames, which combined with the damage penetration means it can 1-hit baseline zombies if all pellets hit.

Ballistically, solid bullets exhibit a very flat trajectory, requiring almost no drop compensation even over 100 blocks. Pellets lose their momentum faster, with a range around 15 blocks parallel to the ground.
The rounds are also as fast as the engine allows.

However, this raw power is tampered by it's reloading and aiming mechanics, which are described as follows:

Loading, aiming, firing:

Arquebuses have an elaborate loading scheme, detailed as follows:

1: Add the match. This step requires a piece of string and takes 1.5 seconds. This step is skipped if the arquebus already has a match.
2: Load the gun. This is done by right-clicking, choosing the ammo like crossbows do. This takes 2.5 seconds.
3: Light the match. This step requires no items and takes 0.25 seconds. Now the gun is ready to fire.

Matches last 2 minutes before burning away, and are turned off by firing or being submerged in water. This limits the Arquebus' readiness, as it can't be left ready to fire forever. Holding an Arquebus with a lit match causes the user to "glow" a bit, making it easier to tell them apart in the dark.

Arquebuses behave differently according to wether it has bullets or shot loaded: The latter can be inmediately fired once the gun is loaded and the match is lit, but the former has to be charged like a bow to improve it's accuracy. Fully charging the gun gives it near-pinpoint accuracy.

Firing an arquebus produces a loud sound that startles passive mobs and WILL enrage wardens BUT can briefly dazzle them it fired close enough.

Enchantments:

Arquebuses can be enchanted like any other weapon. Just like the Crossbow, it has it's own unique enchantments on top of the universals:

1: Slow Fuse (I-III): Makes the match last 30 seconds more per level.
2: Gangrene (I-II): Inflicts Wither for 5 seconds upon hitting depending on level (mostly serves to finish off stuff that'd be almost dead otherwise).
3: Buck (I-V): Adds one pellet per level that acts as normal. With solid rounds, this is, effectively, the effect of buck and ball. With Pellet Shot, this effectively increases damage output. Incompatible with Marksman.
4: Marksman (I-II): Does extra damage to targets further away, up to 25/50% bonus from 24 blocks and further away. Incompatible with Buck.
5: Jamming: Can hit Endermen.

Mobs:

As mentioned before, some mobs can spawn with an Arquebus. These are:

• Pillager Raid captains can sometimes spawn with an Arquebus instead of a crossbow. If they do, they always use Bullets.
• Piglin Brutes can sometimes spawn with an unique variant: the Gilded Arquebus. They always use pellet shot. The Gilded Arquebus itself is stadistically identical to it's normal counterpart but, like Elytra, it can't truly break.
• Arquebus-wielding Wither Skeletons replace the normal skeletons that normally spawn in Nether Fortresses. They can use and drop both ammo types.

The underground as it is tends to cause inventory clutter, and this wouldn't exactly help unless you expect people to set up mini-bases to periodically smelt all their ores to compact it all into ingots, which is effectively the only way I can see this being manageable.

While agree nuggets, specially iron ones, should have more relevance as metal sources, I think adding them to the drops of existing ores wouldn't be good and, in the case of iron, wouldn't make sense: IRL, iron ores are oxides, so why are you finding surprisingly common bits of metallic iron? With gold at least it'd be understandable since it DOES normally occur as native metal.

As for nuggets as alternative sources or metals, some I can inmediately think of are:
Mobs with weapons and armor could drop nuggets in a directly proportional amount to the amount of gear they carried.

Lower-grade ores that drop nuggets. These have the advantage of making nuggets come from mining (thus staying pretty close to this suggestion) without forcing themselves upon you. Furthermore, they could be made to spawn at higher altitudes than normal, thus making progression a tad faster if you're unlucky to get a tall biome.
Similarly to the above, decorations like pebble specks or scrap (say, remnants of broken or destroyed gear like bent swords) found in certain biomes. One could even think to have the latter appear as fishing items, thus providing more sources of renewable metal.

For iron, a source of iron in the Nether (say, a new mob or even just an ore) that produces iron nuggets. This would both explain where do Piglins get it AND why do they give you nuggets.

Thanks for reminding me to get rid of those links.

As for changing the name, I think "Rapid Crossbow" would be better, as that is also the name of a pretty similar item from Minecraft: Dungeons.

Just like my last two suggestions, this one was originally written in the Minecraft Abnormals Discord server.

Introduction:

Back in the ancient days of Beta, the bow was a pretty different weapon. It quickly fired weak arrows without any need for recharging, much more like a machine gun than any reasonable depiction of a bow. While the current mechanics are actually a major upgrade, that doesn't mean there's no niche for a ranged rapid-fire weapon in the game.

This suggestion, obviously, does just that: it consists of a repeating crossbow (henceforth referred to as just "Repeater") inspired by historical Chinese repeating crossbows that combines the old Beta Bow's mechanics with a brand new one revolving it's integral magazine in order to more adequately balance it for the modern game.

Obtaining:

The Repeater's crafting recipe is simple: it's essentially the Crossbow's recipe, but the iron ingot is replaced by a Wooden Plank. This, in effect, drives the weapon's overall cheap character.

It doesn't use Arrows, but it's own unique ammo. This ammo is the Bunch of Bolts. These bunches are each crafted with two sticks and a flint piece similarly to a "flint shovel". This produces four Bunches. They stack to 64.

Moreover, Fletchers can sell both the Repeater and Bunches of Bolts.

Finally, it's worth noting that Bunches of Bolts can be tipped just like Arrows, though both harming and healing effects are nerfed. Otherwise, this makes the Repeater a much more efficient weapon at inflicting potion effects.

Mechanics:

The Repeater's stats are very similar to those of a Beta Bow: It fires 4 times per second (ideally playing a firing animation), dealing 4 damage per shot, and it has a range of 15 blocks fired parallel to a flat plane. The only change is that it's somewhat less accurate and inflicts less knockback

The Repeater has a durability of 400 shots. Just like the original Beta Bow, it is automatically fired by holding down the right mouse button, but, unlike the original, quickly tapping the mouse button does NOT increase firing speed.

What sets it apart from being a reskinned Beta Bow, however, is the need to actually feed a fixed magazine: Before firing, the Repeating Crossbow must be loaded with a Bunch of Bolts. This takes 2 seconds to do. Each Bunch is worth 8 shots.

Bolts are fragile and break upon hitting a block, so they cannot be reused. Loading a Bunch of Bolts into a Dispenser causes it to quickly fire them in a burst.

Enchantments:

The Repeater has both the universal enchantments, and the following unique ones:

1. Capacity (I-V): Adds 1 extra bolt to the magazine capacity per level. Bunches still top up the magazine.

2. Burst(I): Enemies killed with bolts stuck to them have them shoot out in a radius. Not compatible with Pincushion.

3. Pincusion(I-III): Mobs that have 4 bolts stuck to them in quick sucession take extra damage (1 per level each) as the bolts dig further into them and break (think the Halo needler except it's not an explosion). Bolts deal their damage as separate ticks affected separately by armor. Incompatible with Burst.

Mobs:

The Player isn't the sole user of Repeaters, as mobs can also use them. They're affected by the same mechanics as the player but have infinite Bunches.

The mobs that may wield Repeaters are:

Skeletons have a chance to use them instead of bows. This increases with regional difficulty and are more common in the Deepslate layer.

Piglins sometimes wield them instead of Crossbows.

Pillagers have a chance to spawn with Repeaters instead of crossbows in outposts and patrols, but not raids.

I think that, rather than fixing villagers into a profession, it'd be more interesting and versatile if they could only have a maximum set of mastery levels across all professions, and leveling up beyond that removed levels from older ones so, for instance, a farmer who you made into a librarian, fully leveled up, and then turned back into a farmer would go back to being a Novice. That way, it'd still be possible to modify villager professions to the player's needs, but no longer would it be possible to just reroll trades above Novice by making them switch.

Quote from erictom333»

Support. I am a supporter of theme-accurate guns in Minecraft, and I've even added one to a mod I'm working on (it still needs balancing). I've even made my own textures for the arquebus and the bullet (I'm not implementing pellets). However, I'm not a fan of the idea of item-exclusive enchants in general, so five enchantments exclusively for the arquebus and no others (trivially excluding Unbreaking, Mending, and curses) seems stupid when Sharpness, Efficiency, or Looting would work perfectly fine.

You see. The Arquebus is a ranged weapon, and it's intended to follow on the Crossbow's example, which similarly has it's own unique set of enchantments that help set it apart from the bow. I'd even say that taking on the generic bow ones would quickly make the gun become exactly the sort of overpowered as hell nonsense that makes guns unappealing to suggest. Just consider: A Power V bow can do up to 25 damage. Applying the same formula to the Arquebus would mean that it'd deal 40 damage with bullets (and 52.5 with pellet shot). Damage that also would partly ignore armor, resulting in more than the 8 damage it'd already do to Prot IV Netherite armor as per this simulator.

Meanwhile, with these enchantments, the most damage it can feasibly do with bullets is 24 damage at Marksman 2, or 35 if using Buck V with pellets at close range. Both are very much strong, but not to the point of outright trivializing stronger mobs.

This is essentially a repost from the Minecraft Abnormals Discord server, with some modifications to refine the suggestion.

Introduction.

One thing that I never really liked about Minecraft is the ladck of unconventional metals: Except for Copper, all metals are used to make tools. This is understandable, though: what metals could there be that the Player could refine without equipment just for that purpose that aren't even good materials for that?

Out of two possibilities, one I sought out was lead, for which I already wrote a suggestion long ago. The other logical metal to pick is mercury: Not only is it a liquid, so it's not easy to even consider shoving tools into it, but this also means it can be a peculiar liquid. Moreover, some of it's chemical compounds, folklore and role in alchemy can all potentially provide unique uses for this liquid metal.

Cinnabar: A somewhat peculiar ore.

Cinnabar is the ore where mercury is extracted. It is found in Basalt Deltas, at a rate similar to Redstone. It can also be generated post-generation at a low chance if mercury is next to basalt as it forms in your typical basalt generator (rarer than the usual spawn chance, so you're actually mining MORE that way).

When mined, the ore drops 1-3 Cinnabar lumps. These can also be obtained via bartering with Piglins.

Cinnabar is unique as an ore in that it is used as a material without further refinement. It has two crafting uses:

• Vermillion blocks. These are crafted with 9 Cinnabar lumps, and are just a storage block that looks pretty.
• Vermillion boxes. These are crafted with a chest and 4 Cinnabar lumps. They act similarly to chests, but are Ghast-proof, and are affected by gravity. They CANNOT couple together like normal chests.

Refinement.

Cinnabar is refined in an unusual way: Instead of the Furnace, it's refined through the Brewing Stand. This is achieved in a simple way: Just place 3 Empty Bottles in the Brewing Stand where potions would go, and a Cinnabar lump on top. This yields 3 bottled of Mercury.

These can be further processed or used as crafting materials. They can also be placed into cauldrons. Filling a cauldron with liquid mercury makes it possible to pick it up with a bucket, thus yielding placeable Liquid Mercury.

Liquid Mercury.

Mercury is a very dense liquid: Not only is it only able to flow a single block (3 in the Nether), but Pistons can even move source blocks as if they were solid. Entities always inherently float on top of mercury, even if they'd otherwise sink (such as Iron Golems).

Liquid mercury can transmit Redstone signals, but mercury lowers their intensity twice as much as redstone (in other words, a single mercury block is like 2 Redstone dust specks next to each other). Source and flowing mercury act identical in this respect.

Crafting and brewing recipes.

1: Mercury lamp.

They're crafted from 6 Glass Blocks, a Mercury Bottle and 2 Glowstone Dust, yielding 3 Mercury Lamps. These resemble fluorescent lamps, and can be placed both horizontally (under ceilings, on floors) and vertically (on walls). The lamp's attitude depends on your position upon placing it.
They have to be powered to provide light, but, unlike Redstone Lamps, the emitted light depends on the intensity of the Redstone signal, so that placing a Redstone Torch on top of the block a Mercury Lamp is attached to will produce 15 Light level, but connecting it from afar so that the signal is at Strength 1 only produces 1 Light level (like a Brown Mushroom). Mercury Lamps placed next to each other connect into a single one, causing their signal strength to be the highest out of all signals applied, making it easier to set up uniform faint light sources.

2: Blazing Mercury.

This is the main purpose of re-brewing mercury. It is obtained by brewing mercury bottles with Blaze Powder and then right-clicking the resultant Bottle of Blazing mercury to retrieve this nasty, unstable compound. Blazing Mercury has the following uses:

1. It can be placed similarly to Glow Lichen. As Blazing Mercury is unstable as hell and hates it's own miserable existence, it's easy to detonate. This can be done by punching it, hitting it with a projectile, nearby explosions, being next to fire, or if something falls on it. Safely removing it is done either by using a shovel or by flushing it with water.
2. Block of Blazing Mercury: It's crafted from 9 pieces of Blazing Mercury, and it's behavior is simple: it's a block affected by gravity that explodes just as easily as before. On top of this, it also explodes if it falls more than 3 blocks. It has no fuse, and it's explosion power is similar to that of a Creeper's.
3. Bombs. These devices are crafted similarly to TNT, using 4 Blazing Mercury and 4 Iron Ingots, with the center being taken by a TNT block, yielding 4 Bombs.
They're stackable up to 16, must be charged before throwing like a bow. They detonate upon impact and their explosion is as powerful as a Ghast fireball. Bombs cannot break blocks, but the explosion produces shrapnel which deals about as much damage as an arrow. They can also be shot out of dispensers.

3. Shell Potion

It is brewed on Thick Potions using a Mercury Bottle. It's a simple potion on the vein of that of the Turtle Master: It inflicts Resistance II, but also inflicts Poison. This, essentially, means that you're taking DoT in exchange of receiving less damage from outside sources.

While I can see the point, one issue it'd bring up is that, as it is, TNT already has little place in mining due to it's expense (Specially considering Sand isn't renewable barring Wandering Traders), limited power (It hardly breaks more than adyacent stone blocks) and general hassle.

That said, that's not a problem of this suggestion, but one of TNT itself for being so impractical.

My opinions are rather mixed. While I'm in favor of a reliable renewable source of iron beyond bartering (Which is only reliable if you have a gold farm, and can also be automated), I consider the current ones to be excessively powerful and counterintuitive to build (Unlike, say, mob grinders which either use a spawner or just use darkness and fool mobs into water channels).
Personally, I'm in favor of a new source being added to the Nether, such as a plant that somehow can produce iron, or a mob that drops iron (Why the Nether? Because it has no natural sources apart from structures, yet Piglins not only have enough that they prefer using it to make crossbows over just bows, and happily give iron nuggets for gold, which can imply they have plenty of it), while also making Village-spawned Iron Golems not drop iron at all (Softening them so you can 1-hit them is still possible in solutions involving making them drop iron only if killed by players), or, to make things more awkward, only if killed by mobs (Not players or the environment).
That way, there's a "saner and more balanced" iron source (One that could involve the underused Iron Nuggets, too) while also closing down the traditional infamously unbalanced ones for good (Then again, they can still be useful at making free golems).

Cinnabar ore in the Nether would be nice and mercury is a good reason for it given the applications mercury could be given.

Mercury is highly toxic, but that doesn't mean it is useless, in real life it is indeed useful and has many applications ranging from use in fluorescent lamps to batteries.

I would like to see a similar principle for the substance being applied in this game, power sources and lights, as fluorescent lamps which can be turned on or off with a redstone signal would be great for industrial builds.

Shell potions may have their application as well, they do not have the same problem as potion of turtle master, as they do not slow you down, but you have poison status. Their best application may not be on a player, but instead as a splash potion to buff a tamed mob who may be immune to the poison effect, this means the shell potion is not a bad potion to use, but it is a situational one that needs to be used wisely.

Full support. Would like to add that bolts and repeaters should require fletching tables to produce.
I would prefer to name the new bow type 'quickbow' to not confuse it with redstone repeaters.

Also, the discords in your profile are invalid invites. Jsyk

Seems well-thought out, support.

Personally, I think the trading system prior to 1.8 was the most balanced and interesting; not only were villagers born into a set profession, their offers were entirely random, even the default costs - a blacksmith MIGHT offer a diamond tool as their first offer but it could also be an emerald for diamonds (4-5, not just 1, though IMO 1 is a more fair trade) and they sold unenchanted items; you had to get a priest if you wanted to enchant them:

https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Trading/Before_Java_Edition_1.8#Blacksmith

Enchanted books were also much harder to get as they had a quite low probability of being offered, per final offer traded - a mere 1.75%, or an average of 57 trades, and they only offered a single enchantment per villager:

https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Trading/Before_Java_Edition_1.8#Librarian

Compare to the current mechanics - up to 4 enchantments per villager, with one unlocked off the bat, with no difference in quality between novice and expert level (hence the common practice of simply replacing a lectern):

https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Trading#Librarian

IMO, 1.75% is too low and I increased the probability in my own mod (from 0.07 to 0.2, which is around 3 times higher, but still only about 5%); even then, I still had to to trade more than a thousand emeralds, with thousands of crops grown (I planted 7,000 seeds alone) and go through a dozen librarians over several hours before I got a Mending book (added by my own mod as a functionally identical replacement for the mechanic of renaming an item so it can be repaired forever, which IMO was also far more balanced than the official implementation, which lets you maintain any item for a flat rate of +2 durability per XP):

https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/survival-mode/3137150-themastercavers-world-version-5-tmcwv5?comment=5

Also, another change I made was to increase the cost of diamond gear to be 3 times that of iron (e.g. a diamond pickaxe cost 10-11 emeralds, compared to 7-8 for iron, so diamond now costs 21-24), including the cost of enchanting via priests (6-12 emeralds for diamond instead of 2-4; in 1.8 these costs were merged as items are now enchanted by default). Given that you need resources/items to maintain your gear this is a continuing cost, not just one-time as it is in current versions (i.e. using Mending to repair them with only XP), and due to the repair costs more highly enchanted items, especially diamond, may only be repairable with individual resources, or damaged sacrifices, making trading to maintain them not worthwhile (example: a diamond pickaxe with Efficiency V and Unbreaking III costs 33 levels to repair with a new pickaxe; with Fortune III added it is now too expensive to repair unless you use a single diamond (37 levels for +25% durability) or a sacrifice worn to about half-durability, which is much cheaper per use but requires damaging it in some way).

In addition, 22 carrots, 26 potatoes, or 32 rotten flesh for an emerald (ignoring discounts) are way too cheap - while I added these trades I made them more expensive, requiring 32-48 of each, which makes sense considering that you need 18-21 wheat (pre-1.8) and they drop multiple items per crop, especially when Fortune is used (which is what I balanced it around; also, while these crops are harder to obtain I've always gotten them from zombies within the first few nights; the abundance of zombies, especially with mob farms, is why rotten flesh should cost more*).

*Interestingly, the source code for 1.6.4 includes an (unused) entry for rotten flesh - with a cost of 36-64 for an emerald:

villagerStockList.put(Integer.valueOf(Item.rottenFlesh.itemID), new Tuple(Integer.valueOf(36), Integer.valueOf(64)));

Quote from Krispytaco59»

Imagine if your bow just broke whilst fighting a ghast and you desperately need to kill it or run; Your pride gets the best of you and you have to kill it. you quickly craft a spear with 4 cobblestone and two sticks and craft a spear and throw it at the ghast.. devastating damage.. you quickly grab the spear and direct hit the ghast once more.. you defeat the beast. anyways same thing, but also have arrows that you can throw because that would be cool.

Bow does only modest damage and requires some specific materials to construct and operate.
Cobblestone spear that does "devastating damage" would completely overshadow it and every other weapon in early-mid game.
Also, throwable items are either unstackable or stackable up to 16, I'd not want arrows to get into that category because it would make them take much more space, or be inconsistent; besides, arrows are built not to be thrown but shot, this is why they are so aerodynamic and lightweight, to allow bows and crossbows propel them at much higher velocity than human arm ever could.

Also, if I somehow ended up in the Nether without a ranged weapon and got shot at by ghast I'd just run or punch the fireballs back to sender, deflecting fireballs is the intended method of fighting ghasts without having ranged weapons on your own.
But the best way is just to keep track of your gear durability and if something is about to break, replace it or combine with another.

Quote from Agtrigormortis»

and TNT tends to make a mess, is risky to use because it can damage players and armour, worst of all it deletes items, making it impractical to use for mining. I never even bother with TNT while mining especially not at diamond level because it wastes materials.

TNT is probably the worst item in the game for mining. It works for setting traps to kill mobs so is an effective landmine with pressure plates, but as you said because sand isn't renewable barring trades it still wastes materials, and in the end you're going to end up ruining a biome unless you design the landmines with renewable or obsidian blocks around them.

It's reportedly useful to insert into semi-mobile slimeblock TNT duplicator as tunnel bore drills in Nether to explode your way towards blastproof Ancient Debris in Netherrack, although to do that you need some ancient debris as TNT attitude holder to build the duplicator in the first place.

If you collect the drops after each explosion you can even gather some items, because TNT may explode items but has 100% drop ratio from a single detonation.

In Overworld it's not worth it at all simply because Stone has too much blast resistance (and netherrack has utterly laughable one), and repetitive TNT explosions that would make a difference simply will explode whatever you wanted to mine.

And even if some maniac wanted to tunnel bore his way just to make a tunnel even through overworld, natural and cobbled deepslate can be made to be vulnerable while polished, brick and tile variants could resist the explosions.
Builders will just have not to use natural and cobbled variants, that's it, and from cobbled to polished there is only one 2x2 crafting sequence on the way, like with ADG.

Quote from Agtrigormortis»

This would be taking it to its logical conclusion. It shouldn't be easy to damage deepslate by an explosion or blunt force, and materials that have been heavily compressed tend to have the greater amount of density or hardness, this is why in real life diamonds are the hardest naturally found substance on the planet, they're compressed carbon, and are effective at cutting or grinding other materials.

The heavier or more massive the object is the harder it is to move or destroy it.

Diamond is durable not because it's particularly dense, it's actually quite lightweight - 3.51 grams per milimeter.
Diamond is durable because it has specific, orderly internal structure.
Lead and gold are incredibly dense (11.29 and 19.3 g/ml), yet they are very soft metals.

But regarding the initial proposal, I agree - a material nearly immune to creepers, but more abundant and simple to relocate would definitely come in handy.

As a modder I know how long it can take not just to implement features but implement them properly; for example, I spent about two weeks on adding a fish mob, including a texture, model, AI, bucket mechanics, and a new spawning system - and that's just a single generic "fish" based on the original "fish" item, not all the variants that 1.13 has (granted, adding even 2700 "variants" of tropical fish would be relatively easy since the game simply combines 2 shapes and 6 patterns in one of 15 different colors for each, and otherwise most of the code can be reused by additional fish mobs).

Likewise, even a relatively simple change as adding uncarved pumpkins as an obtainable block/item required a lot of code changes and testing to make sure that e.g. mobs only spawned with/could wear/be created with carved pumpkins, and crops and recipes used the appropriate variants, especially since I also merged pumpkins and jack o' lanterns into a single block (this brings up another point - a substantial amount of the work that I've been doing has been on refactoring code, not adding new features, which is also true of vanilla development).

Similar to Mojang, I've also put off releasing a major new update since it would completely break compatibility with older worlds due to all the changes I've made to block and item IDs and variants, and otherwise world generation is completely different, so much like 1.17 and 1.18 I released an intermediate update which added many of the new non-world generation features, but even when I do release it older worlds will not be compatible (I made it so the game can't even see worlds it didn't create), while Mojang will almost certainly go through the trouble to make sure that older worlds can be updated, just as they always have, including when 1.13 completely changed block IDs and the save format (I considered doing something similar at first but when you consider that all items in inventories/entities/tile entities need to be updated as well, not just blocks placed in the world, and everything requires adding a "data version" tag, it quickly becomes very complex. Indeed, Mojang's "datafixer" is a major source of performance and resource issues since 1.13 and it will only worsen as they keep trying to support worlds at least as far back as 1.2, covering hundreds of data versions - at some point they should just block off old worlds unless a standalone tool is used to update them; of course, they will still need to update and test it with each new update).

1. Notch worked on one version of the game for one OS on one platform. Now the game is written in two versions at once, on tons of OSs, and on nearly every platform. It's a lot harder work to make one thing work for everything. It takes time.
2. It takes time to find what would be a "good feature." Otherwise, the game ends up being ruined.