Yeah, the block placing staves are something else.
I don't really know about dirt rod, I don't think I ever really used it XD
Don't know if it matters if it could move dirt with grass or not, when you just regrow it with one click.
But how I imagine this is like
Have an interface with buttons, and sub-buttons, in possible
- Cental button: place/destroy. it will place or destroy the selected thing, similar to the grand design's center button.
- Button "dirt" (places grass variants that can grow on dirt) - sub-buttons: grass, corrupt grass, crimson grass, hallowed grass.
- Button "mud". sub-buttons: jungle grass, glowing mushroom grass
- Button "stone" sub-buttons: green, yellow, red, blue, purple, brown moss, lava moss, argon, krypton, xenon moss (or whatever their name is, again)
select what you want, and click on a block that meets the requirements (e.g. if you want to grow grass, you need a dirt block) and it plants that. if you click on another block, it will keep doing the selected thing, so you can just regrow grass (or anything) in a large area.
it also retains its feature to increase herb (AKA alchemy plant) harvest, if used to harvest them. since those are growing in an empty block space, it shouldn't interfere with growing or destroying any type of grass or moss on that block, because there's not block right there, to begin with.
The recipe could be 1 of each component - or if you want to make it a bit more challenging to make, make the required amount 5 for each thing.
However, gathering all moss variants could be difficult, and outright impossible in a single world, so that would be good to be solved somehow.
- solution idea 1: mossy crate. a crate you can catch in the cavern layer or something. always contains 3-5 pieces of one type of moss of any color, including glowing moss variants, in addition to normal wooden crate loot.
- solution idea 2: all moss variants are sold by the dryad, if she lives in the cavern layer.
Alt. version. demolitionist sells them from some point onwards (e.g. post-skeletron, or in hardmode or something. or just simply from the start.) while they're not explosives, he has only a few things in his shop, and as a dwarf, he's one of the most associated with the caverns, so, where the mosses normally grow.
Dunno if I forgot something. is there anything else that grows on blocks like grass?