Oh my goodness, I found one hell of an exploit.
Wood, coal, and torches have been rendered worthless if you're lucky enough to have collected a decent amount of bone meal.
Simply:
-Kill Skellies or wait for them to get incinerated by the sun.
-Grind the bones.
-Collect saplings and chop wood.
-Replant trees and feed them bone meal.
-Repeat 1-4 as much as you want.
-Burn wood (2 sticks can burn 1 log into 1 charcoal; 1 charcoal acts like coal, and can cook 8 items. More charcoal and logs, more charcoal.)
-Make torches and etc.
-Spelunk, build like a madman, whatever. You have the material, and all this can be obtained within 1-2 game day(s) easy.
It shoots arrows or snowballs or blocks so it can despens bacon and shit.
Sadly tnt just comes out in block form and lava comes in its bucket.
I couldn't resist.
EDIT:
I hope there's a way to make a florist of sorts so we can farm flowers for dyes. That can assist in making monuments and such out of color fibers. Plus, dying sheep and shearing them is a neat trick to use, and more efficient. However, oddly, you can recolor black sheep into other colors, at the expense of the uncommon/rare black wool.
Speaking to colors and materials, I think I have more use with multiple chests. One for dyes, another for cloths, or as of right now, one with both. There has to be a way to farm flowers now to make dyes more plentiful; especially seeing as dandelions are super-common, but roses aren't as common. Lapis, I understand is rare.
Anyway, it's nice to have colored fabrics in this game again. I can color-tag mining spots and such now, and my many homes can have some more personality to them (red carpet to the home?).
EDIT EDIT:
I wonder, can black ink be produced with charcoal? You know, something like 1 water bucket + some charcoal = black ink (only with charcoal, not regular coal).
Something else I noticed: Creepers are still silent, but they make a noise when hurt/killed now.