I was noticing that the PHB states a divine spellcaster can make holy water by expending a spell slot and 25 gp-worth of powdered silver. I'm trying to understand why that would be useful. I mean, powdered silver sounds like it would be almost as hard to procure as holy water, and it costs just as much. Is the goal to give players a way to craft the item in just an hour if they can't find a place that sells it?
How do you make silver powder, anyway? I looked online a bit, and it seems like a pretty complicated process involving dissolving the silver into a variety of different acids to get first silver nitrate, then silver chloride, until eventually you're left with just pure silver powder.
[one hour of "looking up where all the different chemicals come from and how each of them are made" later]
...Oh. Or you can just grind up some silver, apparently. I wish I'd looked at that search result first.
But this raises an interesting question: can players make holy water by sacrificing silver coins or other possessions? It seems fitting, in a "give up your worldly possessions for the greater good" sense.