Minecraft Rants

The phantom isn't such a bad mob. It's no worse than skeletons or zombies. The 1.9 combat mechanics aren't so bad, they add a lot of strategy and make combat more immersive than just spam-clicking. Certain enchantments are ridiculously overpowered and unbalanced. Enchanting in general needs a total rework. Beacons are in no way worth investing in, they're a complete joke, as is every part of the quest to obtain one. The Ender Dragon fight is harder than the Wither. At least, on Java. The Ender Dragon fight... kinda sucks. Most of the time is spent waiting. It's a very long and boring fight. It feels very half-baked. Creepers are way too overpowered - especially when they can drop on you from above. But Mojang will never change this as they're way too iconic. The Hoglin is one of my least favourite mobs in Minecraft. Using the Totem of Undying in Hardcore is kinda cheating. Glazed terracotta is actually really awesome. Hostile mobs spawn at far too high of a ligh...

It has been 17 days, or one Mediterranean cruise, since Mojang blew our socks off by doubling the depth of the underground. As I mentioned in a previous rant, it's perhaps one of the most fundamental changes to Minecraft there has ever been. It shook foundations that have been set in bedrock since PRE-ALPHA days. A decade of 64 blocks underground, all of a sudden doubled to 128 overnight. And some massive caves to go with it! At the time of writing, there have since been two more iterations and two rebalancings of ore distribution, as well as a new type of stone at the deeper levels. I am fully aware that the update is far from complete, and in the coming weeks there will be plenty more iterations to come. We've not even seen the new biomes yet. But I am going to look at the third iteration of the caves critically, and ask in early days: is this update headed in the right direction? At Minecon 2020, they stated they want to add more strategies to mining and make mining more fun...

With the release of the latest snapshot, 21w06a, providing one of the most fundamentally game-changing changes - namely doubling the cave depth - and much more in the pipeline - it's hard to imagine how 1.17 could be even better. However, there are a few additions that I feel could add even more to 1.17. These features (barring one on this list) are extensions and expansions to 1.17 features we've already seen that could bolster the update even more!  In no particular order... 1 - Scoped Crossbow This has been HEAVILY requested amongst the community since the release of the first 1.17 snapshot, where the spyglass was added. And I agree, this could be a really great feature to give both crossbows and spyglasses more use. By placing a crossbow and spyglass together, you get a crossbow that allows you to zoom in before and when you shoot. I don't even need to go into why this would be such a cool and useful tool in both PvP and PvE. 2 - Deeper Oceans With the increase of the w...

Gushing I always said that if they were to actually increase the world height in 1.17, it would change Minecraft fundamentally. I had an increase from 256 to 512 blocks in mind. Mojang managed to blow our collective socks off with 384, and I absolutely commend the team for this incredible change. I think back to some snapshots that were truly game-changing, such as 13w36a, the first snapshot of 1.7. Or the 1.4 snapshot that added command blocks. Or 20w06a which brought a tier better than diamond to Minecraft for the very first time in over 10 years. These were all absolute game-changers. 13w36a changed the biome system. Command blocks revolutionised maps. Netherite gave players a final late-game tier to aim towards. But this... this changes Minecraft at an even more fundamental level. This not only COMPLETELY shakes up a large area in the Minecraft world, it shakes up the core progression of the game, forever. Minecraft as we have known and loved, has, after more than 11 years, FINALLY...

  The updates are ranked by how much I personally liked the features, found them useful, found them new, fresh, not entirely useless, and updates I overall felt benefited the game and breathed life into it. And of course, this is only my opinion. 13 - Buzzy Bees (1.15) The update that was so unexpected, it became a meme. This update was primarily a bug-fix update, yet still managed to fix less bugs than the average update. Due to this being a "primary bug-fix" update, it was incredibly low on new features, adding bees and honey. Bees are useless, and honey is useless (unless you do redstone). But what absolutely cements this at bottom place (by a long shot) is the  EIGHT MONTHS  this update took! Seriously! Eight months for less bug fixes than most updates and... bees?! 12 - The Frostburn Update (1.10) This very small update really didn't have a whole lot going for it. I guess magma blocks were kinda cool? The "main feature" of this update was an unnecessary mob...

October 3rd 2020 was the one good day in the worst month of my life. It was the day we got the biggest infodump ever on new features coming to Minecraft 1.17. It's also the day Dream tarnished his drama-free reputation .  We all knew that 1.17 would be the cave update (like we all knew 1.16 would, and 1.15 would, and 1.14 would). Many of the features shown were exactly what you'd expect from a cave update - diversifying the caves, a scary new cave-dwelling mob, new types of stone, a new ore, more structures like amethyst geodes, and bigger and better caves in general. But there was one feature I don't think anyone was expecting. One feature that really seemed like a mod and really didn't feel very Minecrafty at all. When I first saw this feature announced, I did not think they were serious. It's the one feature I found myself really not on board with, and wondering how the hell they managed to pull this one out of their arse. I am of course talking about the archaeo...

Short answer: Yes. Time for the long answer. In a previous post where I discuss "Is Minecraft too easy?" I mentioned the totem of undying briefly. Specifically, how it has taken a lot of the fun and challenge out of hardcore. Since its addition in 2016, hardcore worlds have been able to run far longer than before, as the player can literally legitimately cheat death with it. Fell into lava in 2015? Unless you had a Fire Resistance potion that you drank in time, that was bye-bye to your hardcore world. Fell into lava in 2016 and onwards? Totem would save you and even buff you with 40 seconds of fire resistance. Got snuck up by a creeper in 2015? That was the end of your world. Snuck up in 2016 and onwards? TOTEM OF UNDYING TO THE RESCUE!!! As well as preventing deaths from fatal falls and giving you that critical extra second to get the upper hand or flee in a close fight, totems save you from just about every situation. There are a handful of times a totem won't save you....