DRIED KELP BLOCK

Every other item on this page only ever came off an animal. This one is the exception: it is built, not dropped, packed down out of 9 × dried kelp in a crafting grid. Kelp itself grows fast and stacks small, so the block exists mainly to compress a farm's output into something that does not eat half a chest.

The craft runs both ways. Break a block back down and it hands you 9 dried kelp again, the exact amount that went in, so nothing is lost packing it up and nothing is lost undoing it. A Butcher only wants the packed form, 10 blocks for an emerald once he reaches expert, which is itself a reason to compress a kelp farm rather than sell it loose.

To sell dried kelp block for emeralds, bring it to a Butcher at the Expert tier, 10 units per emerald.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald per 10 dried kelp blocks, from the Butcher, and 3 of the other 7 pay out faster. No villager sells dried kelp block back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Butcher takes 10 dried kelp blocks a trade, 12 trades, 12 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

12 acacia boats against 312 potatoes for the same 12 emeralds, 26 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Fisherman at 7.5 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted. Dried Kelp Block itself pays 10 an emerald, so 31 of the 72 ask less and 36 ask more.

Every dried kelp block offer here locks after 12 uses, and a villager restocks up to twice a Minecraft day, no more.

The earliest dried kelp block shows up is the Butcher's Expert tier, level 4 of five. A freshly employed Butcher is still several promotions away from offering it, unlike the raw meats he sells from day one.

12 trades empty the slot, and 2 real minutes later it refills, the same clock every Butcher shares. A Minecraft day holds two of those refills across 20 real minutes.

One Butcher worked through both moves 240 dried kelp block for 24 emeralds, and the crafting step to pack them there is not part of that clock at all, only the trading is.

One villager, one restock: the Butcher pays an emerald per 10 dried kelp block and that slot runs 12 trades, so 120 dried kelp block is all one will take before it locks.

Where they go back: rabbit stew is that Butcher's cheapest offer.

Also on the Butcher's list: sweet berries, raw chicken, raw porkchop, raw rabbit, coal and cooked porkchop.

Nine dried kelp press into one block, and the block burns in a furnace for far longer than the loose kelp does. Since kelp regrows on its own in water, a small farm turns into an endless fuel supply without a single coal mine.

Compared with coal it burns a little longer per block, which makes it the standard fuel for anyone smelting in bulk near a coast. Eating the dried kelp instead is quick but restores very little, so the block is worth more in the furnace than in the food chest.

Kelp grows upward on its own in any deep enough water, and breaking the bottom block takes the whole column. That is why a kelp farm is a wall of water and a piston rather than a field: the plant does the work.

Drying it needs a furnace, which is the awkward part of the loop, since you spend fuel to make fuel. The point is that the fuel you make back is renewable and the coal you spent is not.

Loose dried kelp is also food, poor food, and it eats faster than anything else in the game, which makes a stack of it a surprisingly good thing to carry into a fight.

Every Dried Kelp Block is 9 dried kelp, and every dried kelp is one Kelp through a furnace. The Butcher wants 10 Dried Kelp Blocks per emerald at Expert level, which makes it 90 Kelp smelted for each emerald. How to Build a Kelp Farm with Auto Smelter grows the Kelp and feeds it through the furnaces in one build.