Today Microsoft and Mojang announced the official release date of the upcoming "Trails & Tales" update for the massively popular sandbox game Minecraft.
Originally announced only as version 1.20 before it got its official title a few months ago, it'll launch on all platforms on June 7, 2023. We also get the final details of what the update will come with.
- Archeology: Archeology adds an increased history to worlds—allowing for more storytelling possibilities. Players will discover suspicious sand in new desert temple rooms and the newly introduced suspicious gravel in ocean ruins or trail ruins, a new structure found in cold biomes. Players can carefully uncover hidden tools, bones, sniffer eggs, and pottery sherds. Craft four of these sherds together to make a pot with patterns telling a unique story.
- Sniffer: The winner of the 2022 Minecraft Live mob vote has been brought back from extinction! Players will find the sniffer eggs in archeology sites. A baby snifflet will hatch from these eggs and grow into the huge sniffer, one of the largest friendly mobs ever in Minecraft! The sniffer will “sniff” out ancient seeds you can grow into the new torchflower and pitcher plant.
- Camels: Another huge mob with a mind of its own, players can saddle it and raise it – but when a camel without a rider wants to sit, it sits. With its tall legs, the camel keeps players out of reach of zombies on the ground allowing you to sprint or dash to safety. Just be careful of skeletons’ ranged attacks! The camel can hold two riders, making it the perfect mob to go on an adventure with a friend.
- Cherry Grooves: These beautiful new trees fill the horizon with a stunning shade of pink. These new trees can be crafted into a full pink wood-set, including the newly introduced hanging signs, and cherry tree saplings to grow more of the lovely pink trees. Players will also be delighted to find a unique petal falling particle effect only in the cherry groves, as well as a new pink petals ground cover decoration.
- Armor Trims: Using the new smithing templates found across biomes and structures, players can express themselves through their armor by combining different materials and smithing template patterns for a wide variety of customization options. In total, there are 16 armor trims, including new trims found in ancient cities and trail ruins, and numerous unique combinations.
- Bamboo Wood, Chiseled Bookshelves & More: Bamboo can now be crafted into a full set of bamboo wood blocks—including signs and fences! Bamboo rafts function as boats but have a unique look. Players can now add Piglin heads to their worlds, dropped when a Piglin is killed by a charged creeper. Chiseled bookshelves take Minecraft storytelling to the next level, allowing players to record the stories and lore of their world in their own custom bookshelves—alongside their most valuable enchanted books. Hanging signs add new ways to decorate. That’s not all – signs can now have writing on both sides and be edited without destroying them (waxing the signs with honeycomb prevents them from being edited).
We're also getting a couple of relevant quality-of-life changes.
- Calibrated Sculk Sensors: Opening up a plethora of possibilities for redstoners, this new variant of Sculk Sensors which allows you to filter vibrations based on their frequency level. They are not found naturally and can only be crafted.
- Vibration Resonance: Blocks of Amethyst have a new behavior when placed adjacent to Sculk Sensors. If that Sculk Sensor receives a vibration, the Block of Amethyst will re-emit its frequency as a separate vibration at its location.
The soundtrack of the update is available on multiple streaming services.
We also hear that the Bedrock version of the game is getting an official dedicated release for Chromebook on June 7. It'll include cross-device play. access to Minecraft Marketplace, and the ability to play on Realms.
If you're not familiar with Minecraft, it's a massively popular sandbox game currently published by Microsoft following its acquisition of Mojang on pretty literally every platform with a chip inside. I'd list them for you, but I've honestly lost count.
