Smol Blocks

Cut basic solid blocks into slabs, vertical slabs, quarters and eighths with a saw, then place them and mix them together. Each piece keeps the textures of the block it was cut from, including modded blocks.

An eighth is 1/8 of a full block: half the width, depth and height. One block space can hold up to 8 eighths, and each one can come from a different block. Use that to build detailed walls, rooftops, fish tanks and decorations without a huge set of extra blocks.

How cutting works

Craft an Iron Saw (a stick, an iron ingot and an iron ingot in a row) or a Diamond Saw (a stick, a diamond and a diamond in a row). Put the saw in the crafting grid with one block, or with a piece you have already cut. Each cut gives 2 pieces. The saw's position sets the cut:

• Saw directly above or below: horizontal cut
• Saw beside or diagonal: vertical cut

What you get:

• Full block: 2 slabs, or 2 vertical slabs
• Slab: 2 quarters
• Vertical slab: 2 quarters, or 2 vertical quarters
• Quarter or vertical quarter: 2 eighths

The Iron Saw lasts 250 cuts. The Diamond Saw lasts 1561 cuts. Obsidian, ancient debris and other blocks that need a diamond tool need the Diamond Saw, and so do pieces cut from them.

Placing and mixing

A piece goes into the half or quarter of the space nearest where you click. Vertical slabs sit flat against the face you click, or face you when placed on a top or bottom face. You can keep adding pieces to a space as long as those cells are free.

Every cell remembers its own source block, so one space can mix stone, glass, wood and anything else that can be cut. Each piece keeps its source's colour (grass, leaves and other tinted blocks follow the biome), light and look. Faces between two opaque pieces are hidden. Glass next to the same glass hides the shared face, including across neighbouring spaces. A grass block cut into lower pieces still shows its green side strip.

Glowing blocks still give off light when cut. Opaque pieces block light on their faces the way the full block would.

You cannot craft pieces back into a full block.

Precision pickaxes

A normal tool breaks the whole space at once and drops every piece you could harvest with the tool in hand, so stone pieces mined by hand drop nothing. A precision pickaxe breaks only the piece you are looking at, and drops it as an eighth.

• Iron Precision Pickaxe: iron ingot, iron ingot, iron nugget across the top row, with 2 sticks down the middle column. 250 uses.
• Diamond Precision Pickaxe: diamond, diamond, iron nugget across the top row, with 2 sticks down the middle column. 1561 uses.

Drops follow the source block's own rules. Glass needs Silk Touch, stone needs a pickaxe, and a diamond-tier block needs the Diamond Precision Pickaxe. Mining speed also comes from that piece's source block. Each piece costs 1 durability. When the last piece goes, the space turns into air, or water if it was waterlogged. On any other block, a precision pickaxe works like the vanilla pickaxe of its tier and can take the same enchantments.

Waterlogging and fish tanks

A space with any empty cell can hold water, like a vanilla slab. Placing a piece into water keeps the water, and buckets work as usual. A face only holds water back when all 4 cells touching it are filled, so a bottom slab keeps water above it, and glass vertical slabs make a fish tank wall. A completely filled space holds no water. Water only shows in the empty cells, never through opaque pieces. Behind glass and other see-through pieces it looks the way it does behind a glass block, whether the glass is in the same space as the water or in the next one.