Minecraft has completely revamped how it handles updates, and at Minecraft Live this past weekend the devs at Mojang unveiled the first batch of content for this new era. It is, as promised, smaller than the big annual updates that have come before, but with a whole new biome and a rad-looking new mob it's also a lot more substantial than I was expecting.
The new biome is the Pale Garden, which is a creepy forest filled with hanging moss to limit your visibility. Here you'll be able to harvest pale wood, a new material type you'll be able to craft into white planks, fences, gates, and the like. Mojang puts a big emphasis on how "eerie" it all feels, with an "unnaturally quiet" vibe in contrast to other Minecraft biomes.
The actual threat here is called the Creaking. This new mob is a treelike creature that takes no damage from your attacks, and it freezes in place while you're looking at it. It's effectively a take on Doctor Who's Weeping Angels - a deadly creature that's invincible but can't move while you're looking at it. Senior Java game developer Gnembon even evokes David Tennant in the breakdown below, warning players: "don't blink."
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You defeat the Creaking by hunting down a living block called the Creaking Heart, which controls the puppet creature in the area. You can harvest a Creaking Heart using a silk touch-enchanted tool. "Then you can place it anywhere you want in the Minecraft world," game director Agnes Larsson explains, "so if you want to be as evil as the creaking heart itself you can place it and make your friends really terrified." I imagine I'll get over being creeped out by the Pale Garden itself, but if a so-called friend hid a Creaking Heart in my base I'm not sure I'd ever recover.
This update is "coming soon" to snapshots, previews, and betas, and it's typically not too long after testing begins before updates reach the live game.
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