Crafting Refinements: Recipe Rebalance

This pack is part of a series meant to refine the various recipes found in Minecraft to be balanced, consistent, and convenient.

This pack should work on the latest version of Minecraft, even if I haven't updated the metadata yet. Please report an issue if it doesn't function in the latest update.

Why Does This Exist?

While there are many data packs that tweak recipes, none provided a cohesive set of changes that prioritized balance, convenience, and consistency at the time Crafting Refinements was created. This pack has been split off to allow for greater modularity.

Design Philosophy

There are some general rules that Minecraft recipes generally follow (and which this datapack seeks to remove exceptions to)

1. Recipes should resemble the final product
2. Similar outputs should have similar recipes (minor differences are allowed for different material types)
3. Crafting results should be proportional to their input (some loss is acceptable, and often expected)
4. Specialized stations (stonecutter, blast furnace, etc.) should have equal or better rates
5. Crafting results should not grant an overabundance of materials
6. A block created with a 3x3 of the same material should be unpackable
7. A block created with a 2x2 of the same material should not be unpackable
8. Brewing recipes should not use full blocks, tools, or armor as ingredients
9. Time is an important resource and should be spent on fun gameplay
10. Impact on inventory clutter should be kept in mind
11. Recipes with the same output should be grouped in the recipe book

What Are the Changes?

Craftable Ice

Ice can be a headache to gather and so it can now be crafted from four snow blocks.

Unpackable Ice

Since blue ice and packed ice are 3x3, they should also be unpackable. Now they are! Blue ice will upack into nine packed ice, and packed ice upacks into nine ice. The recipes are also properly grouped with their corresponding outputs in the recipe book.

Unpackable Sulfur

Likewise, potent sulfur is crafted from a 3x3, so it should be reversible. I would've prefered to make sulfur a 2x2 instead, but that recipe is already used for polished sulfur.

Cheaper Netherwart Block

Of all the recipe changes, this one makes the most sense. Netherwart blocks should never have required nine netherwart to craft. Not only are they a waste of netherwart, you can't break them down. And since they can be grown from crimson fungi, they can't be unpackable for gameplay reasons. Thus, they are now a 2x2.

More Redstone Torches

Redstone torches should match other torch recipes. If anything, it makes getting into redstone easier as torches, comparators, repeaters, and activator rails are all cheaper.

Packable Honeycomb

Honeycomb has always frustrated me because my bee farms produce so much of it that I don't have enough storage. Now, honeycomb blocks can be used as storage to aleviate this issue. While this does make them harder to make, most people don't need tons of them anyway, and if they do, a slightly larger honeycomb farm will be sufficient.

Unpackable Bamboo

Bamboo has a similar problem to honeycomb. However, bamboo blocks are already a 3x3, they just aren't unpackable. Adding a recipe to make them unpackable conflicts with the bamboo planks recipe. So I changed that recipe to require two bamboo blocks (which has the happy accident of yeilding four planks like all the other plank recipes).

These recipe changes seek to follow rules 2, 6, 7, and 11.

Related

For copper and iron recipe balance and consistency changes: Crafting Refinements: Copper Consistency
For better rates for wooden fence gates, wood, and trapdoors: Crafting Refinements: Wasteless Wood
For better rates for stairs: Crafting Refinements: Six Stairs
For more recipe changes, check out the original pack: Crafting Refinements
Some recipes were inspired by Vanilla Tweaks. They are a great resource for data and resource packs. Check them out: https://vanillatweaks.net/