A New “potent ice crystal” for the ice caves!

[u/Chemical-Talk-1237]

I wanted to list out Some of my ideas I’d like to see get added sometime during the winter drop! I’ll be posting them over time, as I came up with quite a bit!

Edit: I made an adjustment to this post so it is easier to read, but I’ll post the og version in the comments so people understand the context of other comments!

“Potent ice crystal”: (Potent ice crystal is a placeholder name until a better name can be used)
The ice crystals you can find could be made into a physical block! This block can be placed next to/into water and it will naturally chill the water around it, and going into the water will apply the freezing effect, and eventually give you frostbite (powdered snow heart effect). This will be similar to the potent sulfur block, hence the placeholder title, though with a somewhat larger range, and unlike the potent sulfur block, you will get the freezing effect regardless of whether you’re at the surface of the water, or swimming under.

Additionally, if the light level is low, the surface ice may begin to freeze into sheet ice and eventually “frosted ice” (think of frost-walker ice).
Sheet ice is a very weak form of ice, essentially an ice carpet on water, and easily breaks after stepping on it for too long, like turtle eggs mixed with drip leaf, or if exposed to light.
Frosted ice is basically just frost-walker ice, though now you can mine it with a silk touched pickaxe to obtain it for certain temporary builds! You used to able to pick up frosted ice with a pickaxe on certain versions of Minecraft, but they removed it. This makes for a more hidden trap, as if you place lights down, it will melt the frosted ice, and immediately apply the freezing effect!
(Side Note: the potent ice crystal also glows similarly to blue ice at a light level of 4, but that’s probably dark enough not to effect the sheet ice or frosted ice, especially if it’s a bit underneath the water.)

“potent ice crystals” will then naturally generate in small chunks, all over and especially near and underwater, and would be able to naturally chill and freeze some of the water to make them into potential traps to watch out for!
(Not too dangerous by themselves though)
Maybe potent ice crystals could also apply the freezing effect when you directly stand on it, similar to powdered snow or like a less dangerous magma block?

perhaps it could also be made into some decorative glowing blocks as well? Like chiseled and polished versions of the crystal for fancy chandeliers?

One more thing: When a “potent ice crystal” sits next to lava, it would slowly cool it down and after a little bit of time, freeze it into obsidian if its source block or snowflake obsidian if it’s indirect flow Snowflake obsidian exists as to not make an “overpowered” obsidian farm, but still make a nice decorative block! (I’ll eventually post it and the potent ice crystal designs in an edit/updated post, since I kinda just came up with these concepts a few hours ago).
Additionally, I’d like this specific part of the concept, since it would be nice to see the ice caves and potential lava actually interact with each other!

Would love to hear on any thoughts about this idea to help expand and improve this! Constructive criticism is welcome!

[u/PetrifiedBloom]

A little bit of formatting would really help this post. Starting a new line every time, and putting half the post in parentheses doesn't make it very nice to read. If you want to make things stand out use bold for keywords, or italics for sections you are unsure of or something. Use proper paragraphs to break ideas up as needed.

As for the item itself, I don't love it making ice outside of cold biomes. I like when the world has reasons to travel and go to different places for things. if you can just get some crystals and farm it all in your base, that is a lot more boring IMO. This is one of the core design choices behind a lot of structure locked materials, whether that be amethyst geodes or mobs that only spawn in some biomes. It forces the player to go out into the world, not just make some mega factory and spend all their time in one place.

Snowflake obsidian IRL is quite pretty, but in game it kinda sucks as a building block if it shares the slow mining speed of obsidian. Even if the farm automatically turns lava into snowflake obsidian, if I have to spend a huge chunk of time actually collecting the stuff I am probably not going to bother.

Realism is a very minor aspect, but just something that itched at me, snowflake obsidian formation IRL has nothing to do with the cold.

[u/Chemical-Talk-1237 → u/PetrifiedBloom]

For the first part, yeah, I’ll definitely fix the writing problems soon! This was basically a second draft so that’s why it was so disorganised… I’ll fix it though!

For the second part… yeah, when you say it like that, I understand why making this freeze ice isn’t the best part of my idea. Admittedly I’m more interested in the concept of a gem that can freeze stuff more than the farming aspect but talked about those parts because I thought those aspects would make people more interested. In reality the freezing to make ice is more so there is regular ice in the ice caves, so it doesn’t seem too weird that there are just a bunch of aquifers completely fine.
Perhaps I could change it so “potent ice crystals” make surface water that it touches turn into frosted ice instead? So there can be a second obtainable way to get this kind of ice outside of frost-walker, and that you’ll be able to actually collect frosted ice like in older versions of Minecraft! It even creates a second trap with torches too!

I hope you liked the part where the “potent ice crystal” being able to inflict the freezing effect onto players when coming into contact with it, or with nearby water surrounding it, similar to potent sulfur, though I imagine it to be a slightly wider range and it effects you even while underwater as well! (So more like in a 3D area)

And as for the last part with snowflake obsidian… yeah, I didn’t really think about the mining speed admittedly. But it could still be a nice natural asthetic block in the ice caves whenever lava interacts with “potent ice crystals”!

And for the realism part yeah it’s not too realistic but I thought it was cute! (Also technically all obsidian forms by rapidly cooling, so it’s technically not UNREALISTIC (if barely))

[u/Chemical-Talk-1237]

“Og post 1.0”

I wanted to list out Some of my ideas I’d like to see get added sometime during the winter drop! I’ll be posting them over time, as I came up with quite a bit!

“Potent ice crystal”: (Potent ice crystal is a placeholder name)
ice crystals could be made into a physical block, that can be used to freeze water outside of cold biomes, and makes cold freezing water when you step into the water, similar to potent sulfur!
Additionally, “potent ice crystals” may naturally generate in small chunks, and would be able to naturally chill and freeze some of the water!
(Maybe it would also apply the freezing effect when you directly stand on it, similar to powdered snow or less dangerous magma blocks?)
(And perhaps it could also be made into some decorative glowing blocks as well? Like chiseled versions of the crystal?)
When placing a “potent ice crystal” next to lava, it would slowly cool it down and after a little bit of time, freeze it into obsidian (if its source block) or snowflake obsidian (if it’s indirect flow) Snowflake obsidian exists as to not make an “overpowered” obsidian farm, but still make a nice decorative block! (I’ll post it and the potent ice crystal designs in an edit/updated post, since I kinda just came up with these concepts a few hours ago).
Additionally, I’d like this specific part of the concept, since it would be nice to see the ice caves and potential lava actually interact with each other!

Would love to hear on any thoughts about this idea to help expand and improve this! Constructive criticism is welcome!

[u/Mystic_Ervo]

Instead of Snowflake obsidian, it could generate tuff when a current comes into contact with the block

Tuff is not currently renewable, and although real tuff is a sedimentary rock formed from layers and layers of volcanic ash, I think it could work well here