Soul Sand

Slow sand (aka "mud", "hell mud" or "soul sand") is a brown-grey dirt-type block, found in The Nether.

Properties

This material has an appearance similar to a dirt block, but has several unique features:
 * It slows the movement of any player or mob.
 * Players sink slightly into the block while walking on it.
 * It reduces fall damage.
 * Blocks cannot be placed directly to the side of it.

Harvesting

It has some unusual properties when it is harvested. Because harvesting it makes the same sound as dirt, gravel and sand you would assume that the best tool for harvesting it would be a shovels. However, shovels, even diamond shovels, take several hits to harvest it. Swords can harvest it slightly faster, but this costs two uses of the sword instead of one. The best way to harvest it is bare-handed, which takes the same time as most tools.

Uses

There are currently no recipes involving slow sand. It is an effective building material when creating a dock, because boats are not destroyed when colliding with a slow sand block at high speeds. It can also be used to prevent taking damage from long falls. Also, slow sand will slow things down more when water is flowing atop of it. This could be useful for making drowning traps more effective against pigs. The slowing effect can also be used to fight large amounts of mobs at once, especially using your bow.

Trivia

 * The texture resembles a collage of faces. These faces are said to look like those of Creepers.
 * After falling off this block directly into lava or water you will move slower in said lava/water until you are back on normal land. (Bug?)
 * This block stopped generating in the v1.2.0_01 update; in its place, gravel was generated. This was fixed in the v1.2.0_02 update.
 * The first appearance of this block was on Notch's blog.
 * When placed on the ground in front of a two-block high ceiling, slow sand prevents players from moving under the ceiling. Mobs don't seem to be affected, which limits usefulness.
 * When first released, Sneaking on a slow sand block would not prevent the player from falling from the block. This bug was fixed in the 1.2.1 patch.