Here's a collection of thoughts for crafting stations or crafting station improvements I've had, mostly since the biomes update
- A spindle for turning wool into yarn which would then be used in the loom
- A wheel for creating clay pots
- A smelting furnace or oven variation made of sandstone (to make use of all the sandstone found in the desert which can't be used yet)
- Removable trays in the smelting furnace which can be swapped. There should be a tray for smelting sand into glass and possibly extracting silicon from the sand to create solar panels for powering lights and such. Another tray could be used for making bricks out of clay
- The appearance of the Tier II workstation should look more like a machining station (unless that's planned as a Tier III )
- A wood burning stove or something similar for cooking and heating
- A mortar and pestle for grinding herbs (if they are ever implemented) for use in cooking or potions. It looks like goldenrod and lavender was already added with the biomes update. Additional plants, and wheat would be nice. mortar could be used to get flour from wheat.
- Some kind of tool to collect rubber from trees, or possibly the ability to collect rubber from goldenrod (assuming that is goldenrod and not wheat added recently). Rubber could be used for industrial needs in the game, such as tires for cars.
Also, some other suggestions:
- it would be nice to turn logs into lumber on the sawbench instead of just in personal crafting or on the standard workbench
- Not all blocks can be rotated sideways. Only one of the stair variations has this option.
- Sandstone, rather than normal stone, found in the desert should be usable to craft sandstone blocks on the blockbench
- Cutting a tree down should yield a trunk (e.g. a long log) instead of small pieces that you have to chase down a hill. The trunk can be broken down into pieces and saplings (perhaps the tree can have inventory where you remove saplings seperately) if needed but I figured the trunk could be useful for making a log cabin
- I noticed in the winter biome that the temperature is the same regardless of depth. If this could vary, perhaps it could determine the appearance of plants. For example, the plants in my underground garden still have the snow-frosted appearance of those on the surface.
- Adding gravel in places other than close to hell. I guess this might change with static water since gravel is typically found around rivers in real life.
- if electrical wire is going to be available at some point then it would be cool to be able to craft nails in order to hang wire along corridors
- There should be an old style lamp post.
- A light similar to the ones made of iron made on the tier 1 work bench but can sit ontop of a block rather than being hung from a ceiling. Also a wall mounted variation would be nice.
- An oil lamp that can be worn (similar to the mining hat idea) or placed on a surface and not go out.
- wooden torches if dropped should be lit, if you do not pick it up, the object will de-spawn at end of game like anything else. This would be great for spelunking when encountering a deep dark pit.