Why is gold so useless? [closed]

My house is in a Mesa biome so all I ever find is gold but I run out of it so fast because I have to keep repairing my op tools with my awesome enchants

Solution 1:

This could be an opinion-based question... but I think by useless, you mean that they have a low durability. The reason why is that gold tools are pretty fast at mining. According to the Minecraft Gamepedia on Tools, "Materials from worst to best in terms of mining speed are wooden, stone, iron, diamond, gold.". Thus as a downside, they have low durability points.

Solution 2:

Gold is quite useful, except not where you think it should be. Iron is the 'workhorse' for all common, mundane uses like tools or armor. Gold is a poor substitute in these roles, efficient but very low durability - because otherwise it would be totally overpowered with its other purposes:

• Powered rails, not just for transport but an essential component in compact modern redstone, transmitting signals through block updates
• Golden carrots, the best food for 'adventure style' gameplay (cooked porkchops and steaks are better for peaceful building work, carrots are better for caving, exploring, end raiding etc). Also component of potion of night vision and potion of invisibility.
• Glistering Melon Slices - instant healing potion.
• Golden apples, essential in PvP, can save your skin when adventuring and allow bringing villager trades to ludicrously low prices.
• Light Weighted Pressure Plate - a little used but important component - can be used e.g. to detect if a mob got caught in a boat, or if enough animals have been bred and a farm can switch to 'culling' mode.
• Decorative uses. Gold accents really make a build opulent.
• Golden horse armor is weaker than diamond, but doesn't lose durability.
• Gold has lower hardness than iron, diamond and emerald (and upcoming Netherite), making gold blocks the best choice for beacon base pyramid - breaking a block of gold with a diamond pick takes 0.5s while the others take 0.85s (except for Netherite, which takes as long as obsidian), making removing or moving the beacon much easier and faster.

Even still, gold is seriously less useful than iron currently, and recognizing this imbalance Mojang Studios increased its importance in the upcoming 1.16 Nether Update:

• Piglins, the new and to-be very common mobs of the Nether, will attack on sight anyone who doesn't wear at least one piece of golden armor.
• You can trade with the Piglins, throwing them gold ingots and getting valuable (or less valuable) items in return. In particular, Nether Quartz, Obsidian, Leather etc.
• When attacked by Piglins (e.g. after stealing from their bastion chests) you can distract them by throwing golden items (e.g. nuggets) for them to pick.
• Making Netherite: Combining four pieces of Netherite Scrap with four gold ingots you obtain a Netherite ingot. Netherite is in several respects better than diamonds and in none (except for its rarity) worse.

You made a mistake by starting your game in a Mesa biome, where all iron is replaced by gold. It's a rare and rather hostile biome, which makes for a very challenging early gameplay. At this point I'd recommend moving your base of operations to a neighboring regular biome and focusing on building an iron farm. With unlimited supply of iron you can move back into the mesa.

Solution 3:

Gold armor is more useful starting with the Nether Update, version 1.16. There are new mobs called Piglins that won't attack you if you're wearing gold armor.