Budding Amethyst

Budding amethyst is a fragile block found in amethyst geodes that grows amethyst clusters over time. It cannot be obtained as an item or moved by a piston, necessitating that it be returned to in order to harvest more clusters from it.

Obtaining
Budding amethysts can currently be obtained via the Creative inventory or with commands, as they are unobtainable by Survival means, even using a tool enchanted with Silk Touch.

Breaking
Budding amethyst cannot be obtained when mined, even using a tool enchanted with Silk Touch. It breaks immediately if pushed by a piston or sticky piston, and cannot be pulled by sticky pistons.

Natural generation
Budding amethyst generates naturally as part of amethyst geodes replacing some blocks of amethyst in the innermost layer of the geode.

Growing into amethyst clusters
An amethyst bud placed on a budding amethyst (rather than any other block) regardless whether it was placed by the player or spawned by the budding amethyst itself grows over time, going through three growth stages – small, medium, and large – before reaching its 4th and final growth stage as an amethyst cluster, which drops amethyst shards when mined.

In Java Edition, the below logic can be applied: As such, the math can be applied if a player is within random tick range as:
 * 1) Per Random Tick, updates will occur to any given block in the loaded chunk every 68.27 seconds on average if the chunk center is within 128 blocks of a player's location.
 * 2) Each random tick assigned to the Budding Amethyst block has a 20% chance of creating a new amethyst bud or incrementing the growth stage on one randomly-selected side of the six-sided block.
 * 3) There are 4 growth stages.

(68.27 seconds average for random ticks) x (20% chance of growth for any given single side) x (6 sides) x (4 growth stages) = 68.27 x 5 x 6 x 4 = 8192.4 seconds average, also 2 hours 16 minutes 32.4 seconds, also 6.827 in-game days.

Sound
Uniquely among other blocks a budding amethyst makes a quiet overlay sound when generally interacted with as well as its block breaking sound when hit with a projectile.

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Trivia

 * JAPPA has said the reasoning for the 'x' pattern on the block is because "the plane-crystals grow out of it".
 * According to Agnes Larsson, budding amethyst cannot be obtained without commands in Survival mode because the developers wanted to encourage players to return to the same amethyst geode repeatedly, rather than mining away the budding amethyst and farming it at their home similar to the spawner.
 * According to Cory Scheviak, budding amethysts were inspired by atium from the fantasy novel series Mistborn.