Instead of despawning, dropped items should turn into "Junk Pile" when their life runs out

[Omega Haxors]

Basically when an item runs out of life, instead of deleting the item outright, it sends a signal to the current coordinate and flags it to turn into a Junk Pile block entity.
Junk Pile blocks will exist on its own layer so it won't be affected by other blocks in the main blockmap nor fluids.

The purpose of a Junk Pile is to suck up items nearby and grow in size. If the player throws an item into a Junk Pile it instantly enters the pile, causing it to grow. The player is also capable of creating a pile on their own through some sort of process.

There are three types of junk pile depending on the context of how it was created:
1) Strewn Junk: This applies to any pile created within air. It renders as items strewn across the ground. Items thrown onto it get added, increase its size, and you can right click to pick out items.
2) Buried Junk: If a Junk Pile exists within a block that is not air, it becomes buried. You cannot meaningfully interact with it, except breaking the block to release all the items. Also, if Strewn Junk sits on a soft block such as dirt and it either rains or entities walk over it, items may eventually become buried into the block below. Junk sitting on a loose block like sand or gravel causes it to become buried on its own, and may lodge itself much deeper than it would in dirt. You might be able to use a mattock to extract items out of the dirt using a chisel-like system. Maybe you're not the only one; try using it around ruins. Maybe you'll find some buried treasure and piece together the story of whoever lived there last.
3) Floating/Sunken Junk: If a Junk Pile is not buried and becomes waterlogged, items will split to either either float to the surface or sink to the bottom. It becomes Strewn again if the water is removed, or buried if a block is placed or sits at the bottom. Water may become polluted if certain types of junk are allowed to fester in a waterlogged pile.

So what's to stop the player from just abusing this system for unlimited storage. My first answer: who cares? It's immersive and leads to interesting gameplay. Well a more serious answer to this is that junk piles have a lot of disadvantages that the player has to deal with. Junk is essentially unaccounted for, so animals may take it, drifters may steal them, it might find itself buried and you need to go looking for them, and of course nothing is sorted so good luck picking out what is what. It's also not a very good environment so you might find that certain items may become decayed over time due to being left in the elements. You might have to take your iron tools to a whetstone to make it useable again, for example. You might kick around stuff you leave on the ground making it even harder to find and maybe even trip over it causing damage to the item. And finally the biggest downside: Junk takes up space and you might find that you're living in a house from Hoarders if you become careless.

As with most things I make suggestions for, this is probably going to eventually become a mod, but i've been pretty inactive in the scene so I won't complain if it makes it into vanilla.

Edited October 7, 2024 by Omega Haxors

[-Glue-]

Its an interesting idea. Making a gameplay feature out of something every gamer does, tossing random crap out of their inventory to make room!
Taking it further, the material of the pile could be contextual. So like, if you toss a bunch of sticks, logs, or planks, it would look like discarded pieces of wood. If it was food that rotted, it could look moldy and have flies buzzing around it. It has a lot of potential for immersive value.

However, I could see it being more of a hassle than its worth. Both in gameplay, and implementation. I would need to see it in action before deciding if I would want it in base game.