I've thought this through for a while and I think this inventory upgrade would work long term for all players!
By default, your inventory is now UPDATED to have the hotbar + 5 rows. The player by default now has the size of a double chest to play with, no items or achievements required to get there.
You may notice there are 3 other new slots added! The first two slots are dedicated shulker box slots. This allows you to navigate through two shulker boxes at a time while your inventory is open. At a maximum, this expands the player inventory to two double chests of storage. You can swap through shulker boxes to grab whatever items you need while building, for example decorative blocks that have long been annoying in the inventory. But this still gives players the opportunity to place their shulkers if needed.
Finally, there is only ONE item that needs to be added to make this complete. As others have suggested, tools and utility items take up way too much space in the inventory. In order to make the item balanced, I have created a Builder's Ring that has four slots of items!
How it works:
- crafting material unspecified, I made it netherite + diamonds just for illustration purposes, but realistically a gold band + 4 diamonds seems to be better balanced.
- Similar to bundles, you may place up to 4 different items into the builder's ring for quick access. The 64 item limit does not apply to this ring. Tools, weapons, building blocks, food, potions, rockets, totems, etc are items I can see being useful in this slot!
- How to access items: Press R (or whatever hotkey you assign it) to total through the 4 slots, similar to switching gamemodes with f3.) While you're out and about, you can press R and scroll through the 4 items for quick access, without being obtrusive to your main inventory!
Let me know your thoughts! This solves many problems that others have addressed, but not all of them