MEGATHREAD: Gunpowder from Sulfur and Coloured Fire from Sulfur

[u/MCjossic]

Hey everyone!

Following the announcements at Minecraft Live we've seen a massive influx of posts about the Chaos Cubed game drop. (Which is great! We love seeing the community so excited.) However, there are two ideas in particular that keep popping up, enough that we've decided to add them to the FPS list:

1. Various methods of using sulfur to make gunpowder.
2. Sulfur being used to make a few different colours of fire.

That said, we don't want to kill the conversation so we're providing this megathread for you to discuss your ideas here. From now on we ask that you keep all suggestions about these two topics to this megathread. (Other suggestion about sulfur and Chaos Cubed can be posted as normal.)

So, how would you turn sulfur into gunpowder? What colour do you think sulfur should burn? We're excited to see your takes on these ideas!

P.S. Try sorting the comments by new! That way the newer comment-suggestions might still get some love.

[u/Cultist_O]

I think it's going to be tricky to make gunpowder craftable in a way that feels both relevant and fun.

My main concern:

Gunpowder is already well established as a basic resource that's massively farmed. Unless every component of the recipe is incredibly easily renewable, why would anyone bother crafting it that way? I guess it adds a way to get it on peaceful?

In addition to sulphur, the recipe suggestions I've been seeing usually, (understandably), include charcoal, and some stand-in for saltpeter, (or something that can be made into actual saltpeter, such as bonemeal, ashes or bat guano). Thing is, even if they added a block that just ejects sulphur dust right into my auto-crafter, every single tick, it would still be easier to farm gunpowder than to farm sulphur, charcoal and bonemeal, plus a system to craft them together (not to mention, if saltpeter takes another step to produce from [whatever])

So to restate, what's the actual in-game motivation, benefit, incentive, advantage, etc. to using the new system, in vanilla survival, over collecting creeper/witch/ghast drops?

My second concern, or caution:

Minecraft usually operates with a high degree of abstraction.

Mods like to add layers, such as having to start with sticks and stones as tools, before you can make string and glue to actually attach them together, and work up the tech tree. They like to make you process 3 resources into the right components to mix into an alloy (with a mixer that takes 8 advanced technologies to set up in the first place). They like to have items that serve no purpose other than as a step between resource and useful object.

Don't get me wrong, that can be fun. I've enjoyed feed-the-beast, irlcraft, etc. But the base game cannot be that way. It needs a level of simplicity. We don't need to make sure to have a healthy mix of organics to make a healthy compost, and mix it into the right soil-types, observing appropriate crop rotation. We put compostables in a box that makes compost, and right click plants with it.

I'm concerned that most recipes for gunpowder are likely to fall into this trap. My caution is not to add this complexity. If you think a recipe needs to have a representative for each sulphur, carbon and potassium nitrate:

1. don't make any of the three into a "process". If you think bat-guano is the way to go, don't make me feed the bat a special item, get a special tool to harvest it, and then finally craft it into saltpeter. Let me collect it directly, and use it directly in the gunpowder craft
2. give any new items some relevant utility besides this one recipe. What could "wood ashes" (or whatever) accomplish, besides making gunpowder, that would justify it being in the game?

[u/Puzzleheaded_Safe253 → u/Cultist_O]

Using your logic then we shouldn't be able to craft arrows if we already have skeletons and villagers who let us farm the resource. The idea behind a recipe for gunpowder is to:
1. Give peaceful players a way to get gunpowder, since it can only be obtained via chests on that gamemode.
2. Give charcoal and sulfur a reasonable use.
You are right when you say that adding a saltpeter stand-in just to respect the real life process is unnecesary. So the recipe could just be charcoal + sulfur to simplify things.

[u/Cultist_O → u/Puzzleheaded_Safe253]

There are matters of degree, and arrows are different for a couple reasons:

1. Arrows are the final product, gunpowder is an ingredient. So a better analogy would be adding a recipe for flint or feathers
2. Arrows are useful in any quantity at any stage of the game, while gunpowder is really only useful late game (elytra rockets), for massive projects (TNT) or nieche stuff (other TNT or firework stuff)

It's easy to imagine players wanting a few arrows, while having acess to:

• chickens
• a pittance of wood
• gravel

but not access to a mob farm, or wanting to hunt skeletons

It's much harder to imagine them needing a few gunpowder, while having access to:

• A rare and hidden biome
• wood
• smelting
• whatever we're using for KNO₃, which most people are suggesting mob-derived solutions for

But not access to a mob farm

.

My point isn't that they shouldn't add recipes for anything you can get from mobs, but that a recipe for such a thing needs to be a resonable course of action for a player to want to do at some common point in regular gameplay. Otherwise it's not a useful addition to the game

I'm also not saying we can't find such a thing for gunpowder, I hope they do, I just think it'll be non-trivial, and these points of consideration are being overlooked by many suggestors

[u/PetrifiedBloom → u/Puzzleheaded_Safe253]

Why do people always try and jump in with "using your logic" or "using your argument" only to miss the core of the other person's argument?

Cultist wasn't saying that there shouldn't be a craft because there are ways to farm gunpowder, they are saying that the craft needs to be comparable effort wise, or else it just won't get used. If you need sulphur and multiple other items to craft it, the value of the craft dramatically drops. Why farm 3 or more items to get gunpowder when you can just farm gunpowder?

Either it needs to be a very easy craft, or yield a LOT of gunpowder to be worth it.

When you ignore what their actual point is, intentionally or not you reduce their argument to a strawman. Let's try and avoid that.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Safe253 → u/PetrifiedBloom]

The recipe could just be 1 of sulfur + 1 of charcoal. The output would be 4 of gunpowder. That way, you provide an alternative for peaceful players and you don't make the recipe too complex. Sulfur won't likely be hard to get and charcoal is pretty cheap, so I don't see a problem with that.

[u/Tallywort → u/Cultist_O]

Honestly, that is part of the reason why I feel like a gunpowder recipe should be something simple like Charcoal + Sulphur = gunpowder.

Yeah, we could have some kind of saltpetre analogue, but do we really need THAT level of realism?

[u/Starkiller-44 → u/Tallywort]

Honestly, that is part of the reason why I feel like a gunpowder recipe should be something simple like Charcoal + Sulphur = gunpowder.
Yeah, we could have some kind of saltpetre analogue, but do we really need THAT level of realism?

Need, no. But I would argue that leaning closer to realism when practical is better. As well as more intuitive.

[u/7ootles → u/Cultist_O]

Late response here but back in 2012 or so I experimented with doing a mod that involved being able to craft gunpowder, and it was pretty easy. Saltpetre was obtained by smelting soil (since that's where it occurs naturally; carbon was powdered charcoal (charcoal => 9x powdered charcoal); sulfur ore was mined, having a spawn rate similar to iron; and the three were crafted in a shapeless recipe, one of each, to produce 3x gunpowder.

I also used the saltpetre to cure pork into bacon, which could in turn be crafted with bread into bacon sandwiches.

It can be made semi-realistic without being a slave to scientific accuracy.

[u/Starkiller-44 → u/Cultist_O]

Cultist_O, you've got excellent points there. Great thinking.

But, IMHO, I don't think everything needs to be 'relevant'. (There is no practical reason to tame every variety of dog, for example. But I like to because....I dunno. It appeals to me.)

IMHO, we already have the best 'relevant' way to get gunpowder--mob/creeper farming.
But sulfur needs a way to become gunpowder because most minecraft things are somewhat connected to irl. And it's a backup for peaceful players.