This plugin aims to slow down the survival gameplay experience by making progression a bit harder. The goal is to increase the longevity of survival worlds and keep the game going longer without necessarily adding new content.

Please note that this is only tested for 1.20.4
I made this for myself to use but figured I would post it on here for others. This is the only plugin I have made.

This plugin is heavily inspired by: https://github.com/NicEastvillage/TheMissingGatekeepers

What this plugin does:

• Makes Raw Iron and Raw Gold smelt into nuggets
  • Each raw ore smelts into 3 nuggets of the respective metal. This value can be adjusted in the config.
  • Nether Gold Ore in unaffected
  • Copper is unaffected
• Makes Diamond Ore drop "Rough Diamond", a new item
  • Rough Diamond cannot be used as normal diamond recipes and must be polished first.
  • Rough Diamonds can be polished by combining with Magma Cream
  • Plugin will automatically enable resource pack downloading on use in order to give Rough Diamonds a unique texture. This can be disabled in config.
• Cows now guarantee at least one leather on death
• Gives Saddles a crafting recipe of 3 leather and 2 iron nuggets
• Adjusts recipes in game to accommodate for the now rarer iron (listed below).

It is worth noting that to get Magma Cream, you must go to the nether, which would typically require a diamond pickaxe. This plugin does NOT allow iron to mine obsidian. Instead, a diamond pick can be obtained finding diamonds in the wild (shipwreck), or obsidian can be obtained through other means (ruined portals, lava buckets, villages, etc.). This helps encourage exploration.

To add to the idea of encouraging exploration, saddles can now be crafted. Since the goal is increasing progression time, horses should be prioritized as modes of transport over Elytras. This goes along with the increased leather drop rates:

As iron will now take much longer to gather, the upped leather drop rates will encourage the use of Leather Armor early game.

Rough Diamond:


Saddle Crafting:


Changed Recipes:
Chain

Compass

Anvil

Lantern (also applies to Soul Lantern)

Rails

Iron Bars

Blast Furnace