DRIPSTONE BLOCK

The Mason sells 4 at journeyman for 1 emerald, and nobody buys it back off you at any tier.

A crafting grid packs 4 pointed dripstone together to build one, itself a landscape block the Wandering Trader is the only place to buy on its own. Unlike raw stone or glowstone, breaking a placed dripstone block needs no special tool: it drops itself for anyone who mines it.

Buying the finished block from the Mason skips gathering four separate pointed dripstone first, whether that means a trip into a dripstone cave or a visit to a Wandering Trader who happens to be carrying it.

Bring 1 emerald to a Mason who has reached Journeyman, and he hands over 4 dripstone blocks. No other villager profession touches dripstone block at any tier, and the Wandering Trader does not carry the block form either, only the raw pointed dripstone it is built from.

Dripstone Block sells for as little as 1 emerald for 4 at a time, from the Mason at the Journeyman tier, and 3 of the other 9 cost less. The price is fixed rather than rolled, so a second Mason will quote you exactly the same.

The Mason at its journeyman tier asks 1 emerald for 4 dripstone blocks. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

an oak boat against 24 paper for the same 1 emerald, 24 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Leatherworker at 37.5 real seconds of shelf, gathering not counted.

A freshly employed Mason does not open with this row. He needs 70 trade experience banked before journeyman unlocks, level 3 of five, a couple of rounds of earlier trades first.

Once open, the slot sells 4 at a time, 16 times before it locks, and a villager restocks at most twice a Minecraft day. Nothing about it being a landscape block rather than an ordinary cut stone changes that schedule.

16 purchases close the slot, and the wait after that runs 2 real minutes flat no matter how fast the trades themselves go through. Two of those refills fit inside one Minecraft day, itself 20 real minutes long.

Worked that hard, one Mason hands over 128 dripstone blocks for 32 emeralds across a single day, the ceiling for a single villager no matter how much longer someone waits around.

Clearing the shelf costs 16 emeralds for 64 blocks before the slot locks for a restock, faster than mining or buying pointed dripstone four at a time to craft it instead.

Where the emeralds come from: the same Mason pays an emerald per 10 clay balls, his cheapest raw material.

Also on the Mason's list: nether quartz, colored terracotta, glazed terracotta, quartz pillar, quartz block and brick.

A dripstone block is not just decoration for a cave wall. Water sitting on top of one drips through a pointed dripstone hanging underneath, and a cauldron placed below slowly fills. Lava behaves the same way, which makes this the one arrangement in survival that produces lava out of nothing but patience.

The block also feeds itself. Pointed dripstone grows longer under a dripstone block with water above it, so a farm built once keeps producing tips without further mining. Mining the block needs a pickaxe like any stone, and it drops itself rather than a lesser block.

Dripstone blocks generate in dripstone caves, one of the cave types that replaced plain stone corridors, and they are also what four pointed dripstones make on a crafting grid. That second route matters: it means a cauldron farm producing tips is also producing blocks.

The block itself mines like stone and takes a pickaxe, and it has none of the fragility of the pointed version: it does not fall, does not break under itself, and does not damage anything.

As a building material it is the warm grey nothing else quite provides, close to deepslate in tone but rougher, which is why it turns up in cave builds long after the water farm is finished.