The Exciting New Blocks & Features in the Minecraft 1.19 Wild Update

On June 7th, the new Minecraft 1.19 update will go live. Titled 'The Wild Update', players will find a new biome with unique blocks and entities waiting for them. However, not everyone in the Minecraft community is happy with the update because of a few expected features being left out. It’s a bit of an overreaction to an update that will provide new and exciting features that will only serve to further elevate this already popular game.

What's Not Included?

Before looking at the new additions, let’s explore what’s not included in the update.

When Mojang first introduced the idea of The Wild Update on Minecraft Live, they presented it with beautiful concept art that showed a birch forest biome with lightning bugs. However, this will be absent in the update. The birch forest biome will remain unchanged and this move has garnered dislike by many players. They originally pitched the lightning bugs to act as food for the frogs. However, when pointed out that lightning bugs are poisonous to frogs in real life, the concept didn’t make the last cut. This has led to a good deal of questions from the community, wondering why the lightning bugs themselves were scrapped and not simply removed from the frogs’ menu.

Another long-awaited feature that did not make it in this update is the bundles, which are an early game improvement for the inventory issues faced in the game. Limited inventory space is one of the biggest issues in modern Minecraft. This earned strong feedback from the community, the negative sentiment arising from Mojang teasing features they would end up not implementing. I’m sure the team will have a closer look at the concept art for the next update.

The Wild Update

Let's explore the new features in the 1.19 Wild Update. I'm only going to talk about the major changes and won't mention every detail, but you can find the complete list of changes here.

Biomes and Structures

• The primary star of The Wild Update is the mangrove swamp, which is a completely new biome. Much like real mangrove forests, it occurs next to other warm biomes like jungles and deserts in the game. The ground comprises a lot of water with some land patches made up of mud, dirt, and grass. It’s also where you can find the new mangrove trees, which are unique trees with intricate root structures.
• The deep, dark biome with its massive ancient city structure was supposed to be included in the last update, but Mojang didn’t feel it was ready, so they moved it into this one. In the deepest areas of the world, there is a cave biome. It’s covered in sculk patches, which is a new block type in this update. It also contains sculk shriekers, which are very sensitive to sound and will trigger the Warden boss. The ancient city is an extensive structure that can only generate in the deep dark caves and contains chests with items that can only be found here.

Mobs

• Frogs are a new passive animal in this update. They come in different variants depending on their biome. They can swim, jump very high, and eat slimes and magma cubes. When bred with slime balls, they lay eggs that will eventually spawn tadpoles, which are the aquatic only early stages of frogs and will grow up to become mature frogs after some time.

• The Allay is an interesting new mob that will be featured in the update. It won the Minecraft Live community vote to be added to the game. It has the unique ability to pick up items and deliver them to the player or a note block. This is going to be very helpful when building automated farms. However, Allays are quite rare and are found only in cages next to Pillager outposts or woodland mansions. This means you have to explore a lot to find a decent number of them.

• I already mentioned the Warden when talking about the deep, dark biome. The Warden is a boss mob that’s spawned when a sculk shrieker is triggered by the sound-sensitive sculk sensors. The Warden emerges from the ground and poses a significant threat to the player as the strongest boss mob in the game. It is intended to be avoided and fled from, but I’m sure many players are going to try to take it down.

Blocks

• Froglights are a new lighting block that comes in three different variants. However, they are quite difficult to acquire because they only drop when a frog kills a magma cube, which, given that frogs and magma cubes don’t even live in the same dimension, is tricky to set up.
• The mangrove trees come with a reddish-colored mangrove wood block. Wood is one of the most versatile block types in the game because we can craft it into slabs, stairs, and many other variants. This will be very beneficial for builders.
• The mangrove tree also comes with mangrove leaves that have a unique leaf texture and mangrove roots, which make up the root structures of the tree and can be waterlogged and mudlogged. Both will be very helpful for creating natural environments.

• My favorite block in the new update is mud, mostly because it can transform into packed mud by combining it with wheat, which can then craft into mud bricks. Brick textures are very useful for building and the game has always been missing a brownish-colored brick block.
• Most of the sculk blocks aren't very useful because they cannot be easily obtained in survival mode. However, the sculk sensor will be very interesting for Redstone contraptions because of its unique ability to create a Redstone signal when sensing sounds.

Items

• The recovery compass is a precious item. It points to the location of the player’s last death, which will be extremely helpful in retrieving your items before they despawn. Unfortunately, they require echo shards to craft, which are non-farmable and can only be found in ancient cities, which makes them very rare.
• Goat horns hold the potential to be one of the most annoying items introduced in this update. This item drops when a goat rams a solid block and can emit a loud sound when played. Just imagine a multiplayer server with a bunch of ten-year-olds with goat's horns during the first week of the new update. Luckily, there is an option to turn down the audio.
• Boats with chests are a logical addition to the game because minecarts with chests already exist. They might be useful for transporting items in the early game, but as soon as the player has access to shulker boxes, they aren’t that useful anymore. We can also use them in some Redstone contraptions to distribute items between hoppers.

Miscellaneous Features

• We cannot trigger the Warden boss when sneaking. Therefore Mojang added the new enchantment, Swift Sneak, which goes on the leggings and increases the movement speed while sneaking.
• The update also changes the spawning rules of endermen, skeletons, and wither skeletons in the nether. They can now spawn up to a light level of 11, which is higher than before. This is going to interfere with nether-based mob farms and areas that players assume to be sufficiently lit may no longer be safe.

Despite some unhappy community members, The Wild Update is another amazing update to the already most popular and, in my opinion, best video game.

It introduces new features for all player types: Builders get a lot of new blocks with interesting textures and colors, Redstoners get the sculk sensor, explorers can explore the new mangrove swamps and deep dark caves with the ancient cities, and everyone who is looking for a challenge can take on the warden boss. I am very excited about the update and cannot wait to play with the fresh additions!

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