u/cs386148

As of right now, masons at the master level only sell blocks of quartz and quartz pillars. This always felt underwhelming to me, considering how effortless it is to get quartz for yourself once you get a fortune pickaxe. I figured that since masons already have some pottery-adjacent trades (buying clay balls and selling bricks), why not allow them to sell their own exclusive pottery sherds?

Master masons will keep their current quartz trades, but there will be an additional two trade slots filled by pottery sherds. There will be four potential sherds sold by master level masons, but since each individual mason only sells two, you must max out multiple masons to collect them all. They are sold for a base price of 32 emeralds apiece and are subject to discounts and price increases just as other trades are.

The sherds will be named tome, flock, scratch, and roast, and represent a book, three sheep, a cat, and cooked chicken respectively. I tried to make them all at least tangentially related to villages in some way, either by relating them to villager professions that don’t currently have a related sherd (librarians, shepherds, and butchers) or to the village itself (cats).

Since desert wells got an actual function with the archaeology update, I don’t think anyone would mind if a unique well variant were to be added to the badlands as well. Just like the desert well is home to the exclusive arms up and brewer pottery sherds, mesa wells would provide players with the exclusive shine and quench pottery sherds!

While mesa wells are obviously heavily based on the existing desert well, they do have some key differences. Unlike desert wells, which always generate with two suspicious sand inside, mesa wells will generate with one suspicious gravel in the well and a decorated pot on the red sand surrounding the well. The decorated pot generates with a random combination of bricks, shine pottery sherds, and quench pottery sherds, allowing collectors to get their hands on enough of these sherds without having to find many of these rare structures. It also holds some potentially valuable items inside (see below), as a bonus reward.

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Suspicious gravel loot table:

• 25% Shine Pottery Sherd.
• 25% Quench Pottery Sherd.
• 12.5% Bucket.
• 12.5% Emerald.
• 12.5% Gold Ingot.
• 12.5% Stick.

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Potential decorated pot contents (equally weighted odds):

• 1-5 Clay Balls.
• 1 Water Bucket.
• 1-3 iron ingots.
• 1-2 Gold Ingots.
• 1 Diamond.

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It's not a huge change by any means, but it would be a nice way to make mesa biomes feel less outdated, especially considering their main use for extra gold got overshadowed by the addition of nether gold many years ago. Besides, who could say no to more pottery sherds?