Minecraft's annual April Fools gag is upon us once again, and this time it's a celebration of the game's most useless item that offers so many new features it might as well be a proper new update.
Normally, poisonous potatoes have a very small chance of dropping when harvesting potato plants, and you can eat them to restore slightly more hunger than a normal potato while running the risk of getting poisoned. That's it. The poisonous potato is certainly in the running as the most pointless object in Minecraft, and that's the sentiment Mojang is playing with with the official introduction to the Poisonous Potato update.
The centerpiece of the update is the Poisonous Potato Dimension, which is a wild new collection of biomes filled with potatoes, potato-skinned mobs, and potato-based items. I won't run down every little detail here, but the item worth taking note of is the lashing potato. This is basically the grappling hook Minecraft has always needed, and the swinging and momentum mechanics are robust enough that you can pretty much become Spider-Man here - and it certainly helps that the potato dimension is full of floating islands that let you test the limits of your swinging skills.
As with previous April Fools updates for Minecraft, this is a Java Edition snapshot that you can install through the launcher. There's still a bit of fun to be had if you're a Bedrock player, though. You can grab the Poisonous Potato add-on for free from the marketplace to get a big selection of potato-based items - though you will be missing out on the biggest additions to the Java Edition update.
Old Minecraft snapshots remain available in perpetuity, so you should be able to go back and play a little potato mode whenever the fancy strikes you. The question is whether any of these items will end up becoming part of Minecraft proper. As much fun as the lashing potato has already turned out to be, I can't help but hope this is more than a one-and-done April Fools gag.
