As many of you will know, Mojang held their Minecraft Live 2022 live stream this weekend. I was glued to my screen, and since then, I have been doing more Minecraft research and immersing myself in the game than ever before. The live stream was absolutely incredible and packed with information, and we’re going to break everything down for you below.
Before we start, we have to be conscious of the fact that Minecraft is far more than just the mainstream sandbox experience. The live stream also covered Mojang’s dungeon crawler, Minecraft Dungeons, as well as a new game called Minecraft Legends. We’ll break the article up into the three games and all the info that we have for each after the event.
Minecraft 1.20
Minecraft 1.20 is the highly anticipated next main-line update to the sandbox game. Essentially, this update formed the largest portion of the live stream and Mojang dropped a lot of information about the features that 1.20 will contain. We’ll cover most of the content here, but some bits and pieces will be in the FAQ section under the article.
Camels
Camels are a brand new mob being added to the game in update 1.20. The Camel will be the only mob in the game that can transport two players at once. In the live stream, we actually even saw that the person on the back of the camel should be able to shoot at other mobs. Another cool aspect of camels is that it doesn’t seem like husks or other villager-sized mobs will be able to hurt you on camelback. You’ll be able to breed camels with cacti.
Bamboo wood
Bamboo is nothing new to Minecraft. We already farm it and use it for breeding pandas. However, within the next few days, we’ll be able to play with a new wood type when the 1.20 snapshots drop. From what we can tell, though, we’re getting an entire set of new wood blocks to play with made out of bamboo.
This will include bamboo planks, stairs, slabs, doors, trap doors, and even a new wood block called chiseled bamboo. We hope that the chiseled wood block will make it to the other types of wood, too, because it looks amazing and has plenty of uses in the building.
Bamboo raft
This is basically a brand-new type of boat. Bamboo rafts are flat and don’t have the side, front, and back bits that traditional boats have, and they’ll be able to transport chests. We fully expect the raft to remain exclusive to bamboo wood, though.
Functional bookshelves in Minecraft
We haven’t got a ton of information about these yet, but we know that they’ll look better than standard bookshelves. These will also have Redstone capabilities and will likely make it into many Redstone farms, and efficiency builds. From what we can tell, you’ll be able to see what books are in this bookshelf, and actually use this bookshelf to store books.
You’ll be able to store both standard books and books of enchanting, meaning you won’t have to store them in your chests, ender chests, barrels, or shulker boxes as of update 1.20.
Hanging signs
Agnes, one of the main members of the Mojang team, stated that this is the item she is most excited about. Hanging signs are like normal signs, except you’ll be able to hang them from different blocks. Each block that you hang a sign from will change the configuration of the chains from which the sign is hung, creating even more possibilities for really creative builds and uses.
These will come in all the shades of wood we have in the game, including the recently added mangrove wood and the soon-to-be-added bamboo.
2022 Minecraft mob vote winner
The mob vote was particularly exciting. The world that the Mojang team created was incredibly beautiful and featured tons of signs giving you information about the mobs you could vote for. I voted for the Tuff Golem because I thought the idea of having a mob that turns into a statue and carries blocks around would be an interesting addition. In the end, the Sniffer won the mob vote. The Sniffer is a brand-new mob that loves seeds.
According to the in-game information from the mob vote world, the Sniffer will be able to find seeds for the player. There were hints that these seeds would be new seeds from the canonical history of the Minecraft overworld, but we haven’t got any indication as to what these are yet.
New skins
In an effort to make new players feel right at home in the game, Minecraft is introducing a host of new skins. These skins were created to try and spread diversity. Up til now, the only canon skins we’ve had are Steve and Alex. However, it’s important to remember that Minecraft has never been secretive about the fact that Alex and Steve aren’t entities themselves – merely placeholders.
These two individuals are nothing but skins for the Minecraft player. You can create your own skins in-game to represent yourself, and ultimately, the only skin that matters is the one you choose to create. Alex and Steve are not characters, they have no backstories, and the same will be the case for the new skins that Minecraft is adding.
Minecraft Dungeons
Another exciting part of Minecraft Live 2022 was the reveal of Minecraft Dungeons Season 3. This is basically a Minecraft-themed dungeon crawler that feels authentic to both the Minecraft ecosystem and the dungeon crawler genre. We also saw a new game mode of sorts for the dungeon crawler, the Minecraft Dungeons Tower Multiplayer demo. This is basically all the mayhem you’ve come to expect from Dungeons but enjoyed with a friend.
Minecraft Legends
This is the newest Minecraft-themed game and possibly one of the most exciting parts of the 2022 Minecraft Live show. First off, we saw the cinematic trailer reveal for the new game, which looks absolutely incredible. The game seems to have a similar animation style to Minecraft Dungeons. That is to say, it’s blocky enough to tell that it belongs in the Minecraft universe, but still unique enough to be its own game.
According to Agnes, Minecraft Legends won’t necessarily fit into the canon of the main game, and instead exists as a series of legends that the villagers have passed down through the generations. This is Minecraft’s history but basically told through the ages by villagers. There’s no telling how much they will have embellished or forgotten as the ages rolled by.
The next chapter of Minecraft
Minecraft is one of the few games that doesn’t seem to age. I say this because it’s one of the very few games that was created in a completely different time that hasn’t had to get the sequel treatment. Every update delivered to the game has added so much more variation and so many more possibilities.
Whether you’re a builder, Redstone boffin, or PvP master, Mojang keeps on giving us more features than Notch likely anticipated when he first created Cave Game. The best thing about Minecraft’s updates is that they don’t just introduce new content, they build off of previous game mechanics and updates to truly bring the entire overworld, nether, and end together in absolute harmony. We’re super excited to see what Minecraft has in store for the future.
FAQs
What happened to Archaeology?
Basically, Mojang has said that the archaeology feature that was teased is not in a state to be released. The feature isn’t dead, it’s merely back on the ideas pile at Mojang HQ.
What’s the name of the new update?
For the moment, Mojang has elected not to give update 1.20 a name. This is because Mojang hopes to develop the update fully along with the community and the studio doesn’t know exactly what form that’s going to take yet.
Why does update 1.20 feel so small?
Minecraft update 1.20 is not complete yet. Mojang has laid the groundwork with the new features that we covered in this article, but the update is not yet finished. As the studio releases snapshots, I assume that the community will be given a chance to make suggestions and comments as they have been able to do through all the betas. This will give Mojang a better idea of what the community of players wants Minecraft’s future to look like which will likely shape the game.
Is this going to be the Wild update that we never received?
I understand the criticism of the Wild update. Mojang has said that they didn’t anticipate how much work the Deep Dark biome and the Warden would take, and so some features of the Wild update were placed on the back burner. The theme of 1.20 will become clearer as time goes by, but this will likely not be the Wild part 2 update that players have theorized it is.
