#mojang create The Creaking for me and me only. thank you.

[homiu-l]

MINECRAFT SAVE ME........... SAVE ME.......... MINECRAFT.................... .......... .......... .......... ..........

[chillincreative]

Minecraft Live 2024

When I was on Twitter, I would live-tweet my thoughts on Minecraft Live, but for today's Minecraft Live event, I slept in. The following blogpost will contain spoilers for Minecraft Live, so, if you want to avoid being spoiled for the next two minor updates coming to Minecraft—called "Drops"—now would be a good time to stop reading.

What leaked?

Sometimes, big Minecraft Live news leaks. In 2020, the name of the Caves and Cliffs update was accidentally leaked by streamer ConnorEatsPants, giving away that the upcoming update would be a cave update, something people didn't yet know.

This year was no different from then, except the leakers in question were Mojang themselves!

A few days ago, the website page for Minecraft Live had updated, revealing what the contents of the upcoming Drops would be, giving away the name of the Bundles drop, "Bundles of Bravery," and also giving away the features of the second drop, naming the Creaking and the Pale Garden.

On the Minecraft social media accounts, they were already teasing the Creaking, but I imagine they didn't intend on its name being public.

I really wanted to avoid spoilers for this update. I'd done it with Caves and Cliffs, and I intended to do it for this update.

But, uh, thanks xisumavoid.

What was shown off at Minecraft Live?

The... Trailer?

Minecraft Live opened with a speech about the game's development, delivered by two people. (Not delivered at the same time, but now I wish it was.) Lydia Winters, who has hosted Minecraft Live since it was Minecon, talked about how community creativity inspires the Minecraft team to create, where the original trailer was played to exemplify how important fan-created works are to Minecraft.

Jens Bergensten (jeb_) reminisced about how he'd been working on Minecraft since Mojang was an apartment, talking about how Minecraft and its world have always been community driven.

"Every player has their own story to tell." He relates this to Minecraft Dungeons' story, Minecraft Legends' story, and the story of A Minecraft Movie, where we see footage showing that he has a shirt with a picture of the Wither on it with text that says "BOSS" in all caps.

The Drops

The first drop, Bundles of Bravery, will add Bundles to Minecraft. This was something that was promised in 2020's Minecraft Live event with the Caves and Cliffs, but it was delegated to an "experimental feature" until last Wednesday's snapshot. However, they'd been working on it for a few weeks, updating its UI and functionality, so that snapshot didn't come out of nowhere. I wish they alluded to the wait for Bundles during the live event to somewhat lampshade its recently shed state of purgatory, but nonetheless, it's good to see Bundles coming to the game finally.

The "Bravery" part of the update name refers to Bedrock finally receiving Hardcore Mode, which, as a Java player, just means this is a Bundles update for me, but I'm glad my Bedrock brethren are finally getting Hardcore.

The second drop, which is currently unnamed, includes a new biome and a new mob, called the Pale Garden and the Creaking respectively. This was introduced with a Villager News segment by Element Animation where the Villager News crew gets lost in the Pale Garden, being killed off one-by-one by a hidden mob.

The Pale Garden is really cool. Walk into these desaturated woods, and the sky turns grey above you. Pale moss hangs above you and nests below your feet. The new Pale Oak trees are bunched together, similar to a Dark Forest (Rooftop Forest), but the new Hanging Pale Moss coupled with the Pale Moss Carpet's ability to creep up the sides of trees (something I'd like to see back-ported to regular Moss Carpet) makes this forest difficult to see through.

The Creaking, a mob that only spawns in the Pale Forest, is a tall, asymmetrically-shaped mob, textured like a Pale Oak log, which is great. The mob camouflages well against the trees, similar to how the Creeper once did with leaves, with the only way to see it against a pale, wooden backdrop being its three glowing, orange eyes. Turn away from it, and it runs towards you like a Weeping Angel (which, I should note, was referenced by one of the developers during the presentation with a "don't blink" comment) or just one of the SCPs that I don't know the names of. Try to strike it with your sword, and it doesn't take damage. It doesn't even flash red. Upon attacking the Creaking, particles fly off from it, leading into a nearby tree. Hacking away at the tree with your axe of choice, you'll find the Creaking Heart, a block linked to that Creaking. Break it to kill that Creaking for good, or take it with Silk Touch to hold the power to summon a Creaking any time you'd like. However, remember there's more than one Creaking per Pale Garden, so watch out. In the Developer After-Show demonstration of the Pale Garden, there were three Creakings attacking Jens.

Speaking of the Developer After-Show, they showed off several different ways to use the new Pale Oak, an almost desaturated wood type with its planks and stripped variant being white. They showed off different buildings you could make with the new wood type, one of the houses being colour-picked from the Lesbian flag, it would appear. Its Door and Trapdoor are particularly nice, offering a desaturated white door without needing to craft and power an Iron Door. On the topic of using Pale Oak in place of existent blocks, the new Stripped Pale Oak Wood looks extremely similar to Smooth Quartz Blocks, and I imagine—with trees being renewable—it will find itself being used in place of Quartz once the Drop releases in a few months.

The goal for the biome and the mob for the second drop, which they explained, is to make the experience eerie, not just scary, which reminds me of From The Fog, a Herobrine mod. If I was live-tweeting the event, I imagine you'd see a "OH MY GOD FROM THE FOG #MinecraftLive" from me. I do personally think that mod likely is the reason why Mojang added something like the Creaking to the game, which makes sense to me if the community's creativity is what inspires the development of the game. (Which, I know they didn't mean like that in the intro, but still, I think it's very likely Minecraft horror like From the Fog inspired this upcoming game drop.)

A Minecraft Movie

I will avoid diving into what I consider spoiler territory for the movie. In this section I will describe two characters briefly, and an extended preview of a scene where the characters use a Crafting Table from the teaser trailer.

If you follow me on any of my active social media platforms, you'll know I'm really not excited for this movie. When we learned the film would be live action, I knew it wasn't for me. When the teaser trailer dropped, I knew it wasn't for me even more. During Minecraft Live, they had a segment where they had the director of the film and the creative director of entertainment at Mojang talk about the movie.

Real talk: still not excited about the movie. We learned more about the story. For instance, Jason Momoa's character, Garrett, peaked in the 80s, being a former video game champion. That weird bucket thing he did in the teaser trailer was him trying to craft a sword to one-up Jack Black's Steve.

I'm still not the biggest fan of the film as a Minecraft adaptation. I think there are so many aspects that feel weird. With the bucket thing being a gag—unless it comes back later—why not just craft one bucket? Or a glitched item like the CS-Source-type checkerboard? Or just nothing at all? Steve seemingly has a Quiver on his shelf. Why?

However, I will say this to the movie's credit: I really do like the title, and I have since its teaser trailer. Calling the movie "A Minecraft Movie" and not "The Minecraft Movie" was smart. Because, yeah, it is a story that they're telling using Minecraft. It doesn't place it as the definitive Minecraft movie, but instead as one of them. It's just as much of a Minecraft film as Slimecicle's feature-length YouTube upload, "We Spent 100 Days in a Hardcore Minecraft Apocalypse," Skyminer's live action short film about Minecraft, "Dawn," or that one Aspestose video with a very awesome character played by someone whose name is evading me, but she's very funny, I hear. The Warner Bros. film is one of many stories to be told using Minecraft, and it won't be the last, and I'm glad they're framing it this way. I was saying this thought out loud while I had the VOD paused in my recorded viewing, and then they explicitly referenced this same idea right after I unpaused. So, like, I guess this isn't as nuanced a take as I thought it was, but whatever.

There were more things shown off in behind-the-scenes footage for the movie (sets and props), but I feel like those are very spoiler-y for the movie itself, so I'm not gonna talk about them since I don't even think they should've been shown off.

Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue

Villager Rescue, happening in Texas, is an in-person experience that takes you through a Minecraft adventure. It opens October, but I'm not from the US, so I don't really care.

Really, I don't have any thoughts about this one, but it was shown off, so I've gotta include it.

And that was Minecraft Live!

As I usually do, even when they did the mob vote, I enjoyed Minecraft Live. After I finish writing this blogpost, I'll probably go watch Philza react to the event like I also usually do. However, there is one thing I normally do during Minecraft Live: offer my suggestions for upcoming content.

Suggestions

I love the Creaking and the Creaking Heart. It adds a challenge to killing the mob that cannot be made easier with Sharpness V or even 1.21's Mace. However, the solution, if the Creaking Heart isn't blast resistant, is just going to be TNT. (Another solution is mining through the entire biome during the day, since the Creaking only spawns at night, but that one's just a buzzkill move.) There's a danger to TNT, similar to killing Piglin Brutes with Lava Buckets, and I think while blasting through the Pale Oak wood is fine, blasting through the Creaking Heart with that same TNT? I think it makes it not as interesting of a challenge.

If Pale Oak Trees grown from saplings can't form Creaking Hearts, I think there should be a way for them to do so. Perhaps growing a tree in the Pale Garden should give it a chance to form a Creaking Heart like any tree with a Beehive.

I think the Creaking's animations need to be improved from the current development build. They're somewhat intimidating stood still, but when they're walking, something the Player could see in third person, they look goofy. All eeriness of the mob is lost in that animation.

And finally, my classic sentiment: something I would like to see as a drop is Jens' Experimental Combat Snapshot, last updated in 2020. It didn't feel like a big update to me, so I always hoped it'd be bundled in with a combat-heavy update (like Tricky Trials), but with game drops, I feel like they could release it on its own, and I would love to see it, bringing parity between Java and Bedrock's combat while reinventing it in a way that feels good against both enemies and players, something I think the proposed changes already do.