I've been playing with my girlfriend on the new snapshot/the most recent version for a long while now. We finally found an Ocean Monument, not really knowing what it is, and decided to just return to our home because the difficulty slope was ridiculous. Just to enchant one piece of armor with Aqua Affinity II took 40-60xp levels with the use of books and luck.

Is the loot in Ocean Monuments worth it? As far as I know, you get sponge (if you're lucky) and a few blocks of gold. For something that seems so 'end-game' I'd think the loot would be way better. For all of the weeks that we've been playing, we still haven't even gotten a single Wither-Skeleton Head, but that's a different story. At what point does it make sense to go to an Ocean Monument?

I guess this really goes deeper into issues with Minecraft and grinding. Without building a mob spawner/grinder, it's literally impossible to gather the required experience for these types of journeys within a reasonable amount of time. Over a 3 hour journey through a complex cave system, killing hundreds of mobs, we return with 20-22 experience levels which get used in one or two major enchantments.

I also have to mention that we have a huge village with 20+ villagers and it spawns 2 iron golems. We're finally about to mine down to our first stronghold and attempt to clear it out as well. Basically I'd just like to see the game progress to a point where players aren't forced to create these time-consuming mob grinders/XP farms. Unless that was the end game of automating more and more processes, but I was under the impression that the developers want to avoid making everything automatic.

But back to the main point, Ocean Monuments, are they worth it? Or is it just more of a bragging badge to conquer one?