About

Its core purpose is to lessen the pressure to rush for diamond tools. Amethyst tools have enough durability to act as long-term tools, unlike iron. It also rewards exploration in the early game by giving a solid tool upgrade for finding a geode.

Its stats fit between iron and diamond, with some careful tuning to give it a unique identity as a material. Less impactful additions, such as armor, are purposely left out to avoid unnecessary bloat to the game.

Mechanics

Crafted using amethyst clusters
Breaking a budding amethyst block with any pickaxe now drops 1 amethyst cluster
Amethyst tools have the mining level of iron, so they can't mine obsidian
Increased enchantability compared to most other tool materials

Recipes:

Stats

Material Durability Speed Level Damage Enchantability Wood 59 2 0 0 15 Stone 131 4 1 1 5 Copper 191 5 1 1 13 Iron 250 6 2 2 14 Amethyst 1061 7 2 2.5 19 Diamond 1561 8 3 3 10 Netherite 2031 9 4 4 15 --- --- --- --- --- --- Gold 32 12 0 0 22

Q&A

Why craft using Amethyst Clusters instead of Amethyst Shards?

I like the gameplay loop with it. It feels like there are some hoops to jump through that justify the highly enchantible, near-diamond performance. Either sacrifice budding amethyst blocks or getting lucky with some way to get silk touch early.

Other amethyst equipment mods I saw used shards or their own custom amethyst material, but I felt these were each imbalanced approaches in their own ways.

Why limit it to only tools?

I still prefer vanilla-like gameplay, so I only want to add things that have a clear positive impact on the vanilla gameplay loop to me. Imo, tools were all that were necessary to fill the progression gap.