Saltpeter Gunpowder

About

Ever wish there was an immersive & well researched, vanilla friendly way to craft Gunpowder that doesn’t alter world generation, use weird items in the recipe, or have janky crafting steps?

Saltpeter Gunpowder is here to help, offering 2 very simple features: A recipe to turn basalt into saltpeter, and a recipe using that saltpeter to craft gunpowder!

Explanation

Real life gunpowder consists of roughly 75% potassium nitrate (aka saltpeter), sulfur, and 10% charcoal (yes, charcoal specifically – not just carbon). Originally, I was going to add a sulfur ore to the nether, but then I had a realization: Blaze powder IS sulfur!

So, with the sulfur problem solved, I decided to see if any vanilla items could substitute potassium nitrate while remaining believable. Unfortunately, saltpeter is a very strange material largely only found in caves, specifically where bats are concerned (often immersing bat guano in water, then filtering it after a while to get the potassium nitrate powder). I decided to simplify my search: what in minecraft could potentially contain Potassium in great enough quantity to be able to be extracted?

I looked into a lot of things, eventually landing on the different rocks in Minecraft, and learned that Basalt is consists mostly of oxides of silicon, iron, magnesium, aluminum, titanium, calcium, and… potassium!. And while potassium oxide is not potassium nitrate, I decided that it wouldn’t be too big of a suspension of belief to say that you could extract saltpeter from basalt; fitting that basalt even has “salt” in its name!

Recipes

Saltpeter

Gunpowder

Both recipes are shapeless, meaning you can put them in the crafting grid any way you want.