Filling holes, gathering sand and dirt, removing water

These are the three things I miss A LOT from the game:

• Filling holes.
  • As digging tends to result in unintended craters, it would be nice if there was a way to fill those up without having to put blocks into them one by one to cover them.
  • A shovel, as a tool, would be a nice way to do this. You could then use sand, dirt, or maybe even rocks from your inventory together with the shovel to fill any unintended craters.
• Gathering sand and dirt.
  • Currently, this seems to be possible only via mining. But what if I don't want to mine/break up the rock beneath the sand/dirt, but just gather said sand/dirt from the surface, leaving behind the exposed but intact rock?
  • Again, the aforementioned shovel, as a tool, would be a nice way to do this too.
• Removing water.
  • If water flows into a hole in the ground, currently, it seems to be impossible to remove. Sure, I can put blocks into it, even "blocking" its entire volume, but if I ever remove said blocks, the water will be there again.
  • It would be nice to either:
    • Combined with the above idea of filling holes, to be able to remove water from a hole by filling it with sand/dirt/rock, whatever, and/or...
    • Using perhaps a bucket to gradually ladle the water out of the hole, pouring it wherever else or using it for something else (maybe to drink, fill a barrel, etc.).

I think these three things together could be quite a nice improvement to the game.

Quote from krazmuze

I thought this was possible in the old version, that dropping dirt with your hands did fill but I guess it now only changes terrain not adds to terrain. It is creative that has that feature of dirt dropping fills but that is infinite dirt source. But this is survival you have to keep the balance - if you dig one by one you should only be able to fill one by one using the same tool

Certainly a shovel could be the mechanic for distinguishing those changing and filling. And a wheelbarrow as a portable inventory would be a good way for doing bulk fills by doing inventory shuffling, but how would you indicate you want to just drop the inventory items on the ground vs. fill the terrain?

IN creative mode you can absolutely fill water holes this way. terrain not only blocks water it displaces water. Though it can be tricky if not using drop fill instead of area fill you tend to leave voids of water.

That may well be, I don't know, I play only survival mode, not creative. I'd just like a bit more terrain shaping there too. Filling a hole, and removing water, I would think, isn't anything special, you can do that in real life too with an actual shovel and a bucket, so why not in survival mode too?

Also, you don't dig one by one either: with the pickaxe, but even with the primitive stone axe, you remove quite a big portion of dirt or rock all at once - vacating a much larger area than just a single voxel. But currently you can only fill it back up block by block - I wouldn't think of that as balance.

Yeah, wheelbarrow is a good idea too, nice. As for your question, I don't think you'd even need to distinguish that, just go by the contents: if there's ground material in it - rocks, dirt or sand - you will do terrain filling. If any regular items, then dropping them on the ground. And yes, this does mean that if you are transporting ground material with it, then you'll have to "dig" it again to pick it back up... but that's just how it is in real life too, isn't it?

Ah, thanks for that, Groovaholic and SmileyNS, I wasn't aware of these options. So far, the rake only seemed to flatten bumps for me, but now that I tried it with a hole, yeah, that works too. And same goes for levelling or increasing the ground with stone/mud/gravel too.

Okay, this then took care of all but one of my points:

Gathering sand, snow, gravel or dirt only, without needing to mine/deforming the rock under it. That would still be nice to have.

But now that I know that the ground actually can be repaired afterwards, having to mine isn't that bad, either.