Highlights

  • Minecraft's 1.21 update introduces the crafter block, allowing players to automate crafting recipes with the necessary resources. This block has great potential for creating complex crafting chains and efficiently preparing raw materials for armor or tools.
  • The addition of a redstone-powered furnace could revolutionize smelting in Minecraft. By using redstone as fuel, players could have endless smelting without the need for traditional fuel sources.
  • A redstone master furnace that combines the functionality of regular furnaces, blast furnaces, and smokers could greatly enhance smelting efficiency. It should be expensive to obtain but compatible with existing redstone systems for seamless integration.

Minecraft's 1.21 update looks to revolutionize redstone with the crafter block, a component block that can automatically craft the recipes set into it so long as it has the needed resources. However, this upcoming block points to the natural next step for radical redstone shifts in Minecraft.

1.21's crafter block may not seem overly impressive on its face. It lets the player input a recipe and then have the crafter spit it out when hit with a redstone charge. That said, a closer look reveals just how versatile Minecraft's crafter block will be. A chain of them can be used to automatically craft iron or gold gained from a farm into more compact block forms. A larger system could turn raw materials into a variety of different end products. It could even serve as a reliable way to prepare raw materials to be turned into armor or tools at a moment's notice. Players have already achieved great things in the snapshots that have the block accessible, and the full update is likely to bring even bigger discoveries.

Minecraft 1.21 Trailer Village
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Minecraft 1.21's Overarching Themes May Risk Stretching It Too Thin

Minecraft 1.21 looks to be casting a wide net with its range of features, something that could work to the update's detriment.

A Redstone-Powered Smelter Is An Obvious Next Step

The crafter is an incredibly nifty component that opens up the opportunity for more Minecraft automation. An obvious jump in association would be to the furnace and its adjacent blocks. The furnace always comes close behind the crafting table, allowing players to cook food and turn minerals into their usable ingot form. On the other hand, automation already exists within smelting; the finished product of a furnace can be fed out via a hopper system. Despite this, there are still many ways that a new block can innovate on this design.

A Furnace Fueled By Redstone

Redstone is perhaps Minecraft's most complex system, allowing for all manner of contraptions to be constructed, including those that Mojang could never have fathomed. It's not unreasonable, then, to think that redstone could act as fuel. Not in the sense of redstone dust acting as coal, but a furnace with no fuel resource—one that smelts so long as it's fed a redstone charge. Given that this could be achieved by the flick of a lever stuck to the block's side, this would essentially mean endless smelting with the need for fuel ever again.

This would be a very powerful block, one that shouldn't be achievable by a quick trip to Y=15. It should require expensive resources, potentially multiple components that each involve materials as valued as diamond or netherite. Alternatively, adding a new boss to Minecraft would provide a great challenge to guard the item. This hypothetical block would be at least as powerful as a beacon, so hiding it behind a boss fight (just as a beacon necessitates slaying the Wither) only makes sense.

A Redstone Master Furnace

1.14 added blast furnaces and smokers to Minecraft, furnace variants that specialize in smelting certain materials (ore and food respectively). They're more limited than furnaces, but faster at smelting what they can. A solid route for a redstone furnace would be a furnace that combines all three. This would work like a regular furnace but could smelt ores and cook food faster. Alternatively, this master furnace could just smelt anything a furnace can with increased speed.

Just as with the latter idea, this would have to require expensive materials. Not to the same degree, but it should take more than merely combining a furnace, blast furnace, and smoker. However, given that it would still require fuel, it shouldn't be too expensive. It should still be possible to create these master furnaces en masse, allowing them to be a part of the crazy furnace complexes Minecraft players create. This way, it would not only make smelting more efficient but also easily slide into existing machines that involve furnaces, allowing it to neatly interact with the wider redstone ecosystem.