The Spawn Chunks 384: Popcorn Chicken

Welcome to the Spawn Chunks, episode number 384, recorded on Monday, January 12th, 2026. This is a podcast all about Minecraft, and it is available on all of your favorite podcasting platforms, including video versions on YouTube and on Spotify. If you're enjoying the show, please consider subscribing wherever you're listening. My name is Joel Duggan and joining me as always is a clean Allergy free.

And DMing. Pixel Riss. Uh look for Dungeons and Dragons with some Minecrafters that you might know coming soon. Yes. Yeah, we are uh gonna be kicking off a Dungeons and Dragons adventure with the folks from Gigs at some point later in January. So stay tuned for that. More information about that has been Broadly circulated, but I talk about it a little bit more in the render distance this week. That's the extended version of our podcast.

Uh the render distance is the longer version of the spawn chunks that you can get if you support the show on Patreon. Uh become a patron at patreon.com slash the spawn chunks. And you'll get access to an extended chat. Uh this week Joel and I've been talking about all kinds of stuff from dining with family to my upcoming DD adventures. You also get access to monthly and quarterly hangouts. Monthly we talk to our patrons about what they've been up to in Minecraft.

over the last twenty-eight days or so and quarterly we go into the behind-the-scenes facts and figures of the podcast, talk about download numbers, YouTube metrics, and all of that fun behind-the-scenes stuff. So if you're interested in any of that, once again patreon.com slash thesport. Coming up this week on the show, Minecraft mobs have gotten a whole lot cuter in the new snapshot in twenty twenty six.

So we'll be looking at that. That's actually gonna be our main discussion uh later on in the show, as well as email on the topic. People were on top of it this week, so we've got lots to talk about when it comes to baby animals. Yes, yeah, there's uh plenty of people interested in what Mojang has coming up next, including ourselves, but I'm also interested in what you've been up to on the Citadel.

I feel like I've been stuck in the same room for about a week. Uh but it's turned out Tell me about it. It's turned out okay. Uh so I was working on just the start of the second floor last week. And I decided to bite the bullet and uh make it a villager trading hall because the decision to use quartz in a lot of the inside of the command center, for those of you that know how big it is.

Was a good decision question mark. Uh so I need a lot of quartz. And so I took the villager breeder that I had made and took six toolsmiths and six masons, and now have a dozen villagers in a small trading hall that I can go up one side and down the other and use iron to get emeralds and then use emeralds to get quartz blocks and In one round, I can get a little over a stack of quartz blocks. It's about a stack and sixteen, I think. Now that

Just one go. If I was really on top of it and I did it at the at the time of day that the villagers reset their trades, I could probably get three or maybe even four times that much. But it's pretty boring and it's not the best thing to do on stream. So I just remembered. once a day or once in a while on stream to like, I should go check on the villagers and get some more get some more iron. Uh I've not gone through and changed them into zombified villagers and then brought them back to drop the

Uh the rates. I don't need to. We have a giant iron farm on the server. I've got four shulker boxes full of iron blocks ready to go. So like it's it's not the end of the world. Um, but I should probably do it only because it'll it'll make things a little bit faster, I think, for me. Uh and so it's not about value, it's about speed uh in terms of doing it. So that's something I will look into at a later date.

Once that was done, I really dug into designing the interior and making it look sci fi, making it look like the villagers maybe held in place with force fields. That's just glass panes. uh using different variants of quartz. So I've got uh chiseled quartz near the force fields. I've got smooth quartz as the um the bulkheads and I've got quartz blocks as like the main wall with cyan terracotta and um

polished tough accents to kind of break up the the white everywhere. Uh simple roof of andesite, simple floor of polished andesite with some sunken lights. And of course I've got Frog lights and and rods absolutely everywhere because uh it's dark on the insides of these uh these wings and while I don't need to light it up for spawn proofing because I'm on a mushroom island which is fantastic. Uh I do want it to look at the same thing.

like a sci-fi area and most sci-fi buildings, if you're not like in the evil layer, they're pretty bright and pretty well lit. So I had some reference images that I was using on stream and I kind of meshed them both together and I came up with some cool ways to use the end rods. I do have a custom texture on my N-rods where there's no um eight end to them. They don't have a base. They don't have the little blocky base. They just look like a um a rod, uh like a halogen bulb.

So you can connect them end to end. And they become just a seamless long tube of light, which is really cool. And uh with the shader pack that I have. They also light up, they don't give off any light, but they illuminate as if they do when they're in shelves. So I've got some pale oak shelves along the base of the bulkheads, and each area had or each area. I guess section of the shelf has a single N rod in it. And of course that looks like little vertical lights at the bottom uh of of the uh

Of the bulkheads. You could do the same thing. without a um without a a shader pack with a sign and glow ink and some white you know, some white dye, you could ca get the same effect essentially.'Cause you could use a pale oak sign and it would kinda blend in pretty well.

with the quartz. Um pale oak doesn't work with quartz. It's too cool. Like pale oak has got more purple in it and quartz has got more red in it. Uh but the the signs, the trapdoors and the shelves are they have enough contrast in their texture that you don't really see as much of it as you do in like the stripped logs or the or the other blocks, the planks, etc.

So I put all that together and I felt like it was going pretty well. I'm really, really glad that I gave myself enough room on the inside because it doesn't feel like a giant room. It's maybe 11 blocks wide. But I needed five or six five blocks I think in total for the walls to get the depth.

To then get the villager in there. To then on top of the villager in there I wanted to put some cyan concrete inside the space where the villager sits, which is another block of depth. So like to do that and not have to change the exterior of of the

of the um the wing, I really needed a lot of space. So I'm really glad that these things are as big as they are because the inside rooms, once you start decorating them, are really not gonna be ginormous, which is great because it means I'm not walking for miles, you know, trying to get villagers and and trade with them and stuff like that.

There was a big empty space in the middle. And so what I did was uh and I don't remember where I saw this. I've absolutely stolen this from somebody, but I don't remember where. I've put my own spin on it, but essentially putting light blocks around glass panes that are kind of just floating in space.

that are different colors looks like a Minecraft version of like a holographic panel that you might see in like a Star Wars or a Star Trek show. Yeah. And so I've used the colors that I've I've uh had in the build, so cyan and light blue, and then I've also thrown in the odd orange. Pain. The blue is your base of of the hologram, but then the orange would be like pertinent information, you know, like maybe there's something happening in this air sector or whatever.

It's really low res because of course it's like a three by two, you know, pane of of glass, but it works. Uh it's it's lit from below with uh ochre frog lights, which I've exposed with some stairs and some um floating quartz blocks. And then the above them, because there wasn't enough light happening, I put like a strip of of that um Enrod

look where you've got like two or three end rods end to end and it just looks like one big holographic display. And it worked it works quite well. I'm quite happy with it. So that's kind of how the the whole room come together uh with those those consoles in the middle.

Yeah, it looks really slick. Like I think the the other great thing about this is that the shape language continues that octagon that you have in the central, like, power core area that you've been working. And that m like lending itself to this o octagonal corridor as well. Like it feels very sci fi automatically by virtue of it just not being like a boxy room. Like most houses in the real world have hallways that are

gonna be some variation of squared off, right? Like we don't build with this kind of octagonal architecture. But if you look at the way spaceships are designed for sci fi shows, a lot of the time If they're designing it with sort of more realistic architecture for space travel, there are some benefits to that, whether it's like the amount of pressure that can act on it from the

outside or the fact that you know with like lower gravity you can kind of like run up and down the walls in a slightly smoother way than having to turn a complete right angle. And like there's there's a lot of like neat little things to that. So if you imagine this being a spacefaring vessel, I think the

architecture of that like works for it exceptionally well. And yeah, like I think the hologram table thing immediately reminded me of Star Wars, how they'll have like uh when they're tracking like the trajec trajectory of something and like they're in the like rebel command center and you've got a glass screen that's got something projected onto it but then they're shooting it so that you can look at somebody on the other side of the panel looking up at the diagram.

Yeah, exactly. A smart piece of production design, but then obviously with this, a lot of like the star trek. console tables have that kind of like cyan and orange kind of like aesthetic to them, with all of the panels that like a Wharf will be staring at when they're on the bridge.

Or whatever. And like I think that's great. I think it's a really great marriage of those two ideas in uh the context of something that's already using that as like a color story for the whole thing. So yeah, I think you've done a a phenomenal job of this. I think it looks really great. Thanks very much, man. And at some point I do want to go back and and do some

uh maybe some um custom maps. I think I have to do them in the end if I want them to have like a transparent background. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it would be fun to have some buttons, as you mentioned, like the kind of things that Worf would be looking down at. So in front of um the um the the hologram consoles I could have

a couple of custom maps there that would have like buttons or things. I I don't know how it would look. They might look like they're hovering, but the cool thing about them is that it would still be vanilla Minecraft. Like it wouldn't be a mod. It would just be like some some old fashioned legwork in a in a 128 by 128 pixel grid. And I would probably pop into a pixel editor and like design something first and then copy it in my in Minecraft to get the right the right look to it.

Um, but that's something I wanna do and I really I wanted to dedicate I wanted to b look finished for screenshots and I'll come back with details later because I think what I'm more than likely gonna end up doing is make one or two of the kind of design I wanna have everywhere. Thinking of the kind of like oblong grates that you see in a lot of imperial um structures in Star Wars. Yeah. Uh

you make one or two of those as a custom map and then you just clone it and then you can put it everywhere. And then your your designs are all gonna kind of work together. So that's the plan long term. Uh but speaking of the octag octagonal design

That's something else I started on because I needed a break from doing the wings. I didn't want to just jump into another one. And so um d taking a page from your book, I started to dig. And uh immediately I'm feeling much better about the central core. That octagon shape is being dug down. I think I'm maybe down twenty or thirty blocks now. Uh, and I am gonna have to go a lot further for it to have the vibe that I'm looking for.

So there's a lot of digging happening. The good news is uh I a was running low on some andesite. Well, I seem to be picking up quite a bit of it in this process. So I may not be saying so nice things about the process when I hit deep slate, but

For now, uh I've got that. I'm also using Deep Slate in the build. So again, like it's it's uh they are useful blocks that I'm going to be going through. Uh and uh the stone I could also trade to some of the stonemasons for emeralds if I really just don't feel like storing shulker boxes upon shulker boxes of stone. So that's the plan so far. And uh I'm liking the way that it feels.

Unfortunately, I think quartz is also going to be what this thing needs. I need to try it as a darker color. It may also be entirely copper because I was looking at the effects that I want. And uh I did a proof of concept outside the the command center just in the mushroom field somewhere. And I can do it with pistons. The original idea was to either move frog lights in and out of view in kind of like a succession.

or use observers to then like light a bunch of lights. I don't like the look of um What are they called? Redstone lamps. Because they just feel so old in terms of their design. They don't match the color that I'm going for. And unlike copper bulbs, they light up things next to them. So if you light up one redstone lamp, it'll light up things next to it, which is not what I want. But if you do the copper bulbs, then they go in secret

And they do make a noise, but I'm far enough away from it I'm not gonna hear it anyway. Yeah. Unfortunately, copper bulbs don't really match the colors I'm going for. They're either really orange, they're kind of odd, muddy looking, or they're very green, like very turquoisey. So I haven't decided how I'm gonna do it. I could put glass around them, like kind of tint them a little bit by putting some purple glass or black glass or something on top on top of them. I don't know if I like that.

But I did some animations. I'll put a link to my YouTube video in the in the show notes that'll be queued up to like the last part of the stream where I'm just kind of going back and forth with these. And they're both viable, but I I really l preferred the animation of the copper bulbs. So I'm probably gonna go that way.

and then adjust the colors of the core to match. I I need to have some sort of purple in there because the idea was to have something to do with amethyst in there and have like a crystal on the top of it showing how it's working. but I don't I don't quite know how to do that yet. So I we'll have to see what that will be. Maybe the thing to do would be abandon

the purple crystal core for this build and just use it in a use like use that idea, but use it in a different building where I don't have to worry about blinking lights. I just want to make it like a floating crystal. Like I could do that too. So I'm just I'm in that point of like

perhaps letting go of some original ideas, which is hard I find, as a designer and and a Minecraft player. Like sometimes when you have an idea in your head and you're like, well, I might have to abandon this in order for this to work the way that I want. So um we're restricted there. I do wish we had more ways to control the color of light emitting blocks.

Like I I I know we're n we're not getting colored light per se, but it it would be really cool if there was a copper bulb or a redstone lamp or something that you could dye to the color so that even if the light doesn't change, even just changing the frame, the pixels around the light emitting pixels. Changing those to the color that you want would be great. Be really, really fun to try and and do that. Um yeah. So that's that's kind of where I'm at with with the power.

Yeah, I mean I think that's looking great as well. Like uh even if you don't end up doing the amethyst thing here, I think it's a cool idea to take elsewhere. You can always kind of add that to the the library of ideas, as it were, and bring it back in a place where maybe you don't have enough room to do

all of the redstone that goes into having like the copper bulbs flash and change. But uh yeah, I think either way I'm excited to see what you do with it'cause this is this is really coming together very well. Thanks, man. It's it's nice to have everything connected to. We've got elevators to the third floor that's tucked into the the frame of the door.

Uh they're very simple. We I talked about the elevators before, so it's the same idea, it's just a it's just a different location and it's a little bit shorter trip to the third floor, but It's nice to have that in there and nice to not have to use my rockets every time I wanna go from one floor to the next because they overshoot by a country mile. So it's nice to just have like a more

Um I wouldn't say traditional'cause it's very sci-fi, it's very floaty, but it's it's it's a a more intentional way of moving from from floor to floor. But speaking of intentions, like what have you been doing in in Minecraft this week? Well, for once I've not been trapped in the same room all

Uh I have been doing the fair amount of beacon mining as per usual, but I decided it's probably time for me to actually get out and see what the Nautilus is about. So I went looking for Nautiluses in the survival guide world. Uh I found the regular one very easily. Uh it's in every ocean biome pretty much. You just gotta go and find one and they're about as common as l the little patches of squid are, maybe slightly less.

So I went to the ocean nearest my spawn town, immediately found a couple of Nautili, tamed one, rode it around a little bit, thought, yep, this is pretty much the experience that I saw in the snapshots, there's nothing

spectacular about it, but I think it's still a fun thing to have in the game for people who want to do more stuff underwater. I didn't find a zombie Nautilus at all during that time, regardless of, you know, searching the ocean a little bit more, waiting for drown to spawn. A few of them did, none of them were riding the Nautilus. Then I went to a coral reef.

And I was able to spawn a coral zombie Nautilus quite quickly there. Uh so I was surprised that the one that's supposed to be the rarest ended up being the first zombie Nautilus that I saw. Although in retrospect I think it's maybe called the rarest one just because of the rarity of the biome that it's in, rather than it being

Something to do with the spawn rate or anything like that. It's not like Deep Slate Emerald where, you know, you can only ever find it in very like small portions in very specific areas. It seems like, you know, it's gonna show up about as much as the regular zombie nautilus stuff.

That said, I did end up flying up into the air during the night and despawning everything that was like in cave layers and then sort of slowly drifting back down towards the ocean to give hostile mobs like the drowned more chance to spawn. And that's how

I found one eventually with the hitboxes turned on using the Java debug overlays and stuff. Right. And so if you see like a drowned hitbox with a little like square underneath it, you're like, Okay, that drowned is clearly riding a Nautilus. So Maybe I was using a little bit of uh, you know, extra you know, signposting of it just to to drag it down quicker rather than stumbling upon one organic But in the end, I...

was able to defeat the rider, tied up this uh coral zombie nautilus to a fence post so it didn't wander off, made sure I had some puffer fish to tame it, and uh now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with it, because said coral reef is about four thousand blocks away from anything I've built.

The problem is like You pretty much exclusively find warm ocean next to warm biomes, so like deserts, uh badlands, that kind of thing. Uh I rarely find them next to jungles where they would actually turn into coral reefs. You get a lot of lukewarm oceans next to jungles. I think it's to do with the heat mapping and the humidity. and that kind of thing. Um but the uh b the desert and badlands that I have gone to in the past.

Uh which are also about four thousand blocks away from spawn, but I had an easy nether portal to them. Turns out those are completely landlocked. There's no ocean anywhere around them, and it transitions into other biomes before I ever get to an ocean.

So with this one I had to go out to the Windy City, which is already six thousand blocks away from Spawn, and then travel four thousand blocks south to find the coral reef. Right. And I was using chunk base to look it up because I was like, where is there a coral reef in this world? Turns out, yeah, it it's it's pretty far away. So Uh

with it being that far away I thought I want to have this thing around because it's pretty, it's colourful. I really like the design of it, especially, you know, since it's a a departure from the Other zombie Nautilus looking a little bit more drab, this one kind of looks like it goes in the opposite direction in terms of being bright and colourful. So I wanted to get it back to the Windy City some way, and I have not done this yet, but the plan is to airlift it back using a happy gun.

Uh some folks in the Spawn Chunks Discord when I posted about this reminded me that The zombie nautili don't need to breathe because they're undead. So when they're out of water, they don't suffocate in the same way that other, like, waterborne mobs do, including the regular nautiles. Um the the problem though is that they will burn in the sunlight if they aren't equipped with armor, the same way the new zombie horse.

Right. And so uh what I'm planning on doing is airlifting it back using a happy gas. with the Nautilus armored up, but not having to worry about like dipping into rivers and oceans and swamps and whatever water sources I can find on the way back. And then I'm just gonna drop it into an aquarium or something where it'll live out the rest of its life or unlife. fairly happily. Um

Uh to get the happy ghost over there though, as you well know, would be a bit of a slow process if I was flying it. And I was can I was prepared to sit there for ninety minutes on stream holding down W Uh but i instead what I did was something that I I had speculated about being possible but hadn't actually tried up until now, which is leashing a happy ghost to an elect.

Because what that does is the allay catches up to the player. As long as they're holding an item, they assume that you're they're supposed to follow the player around And so the allay is now dragging the happy ghast behind it with these sudden bursts of speed and leashes are now robust enough that it doesn't break at any point unless the happy ghast gets caught on the scenery.

Which happened maybe five times over the course of like a four thousand block trip, so maybe every, you know, eight hundred blocks or so, every thousand blocks I would have to like check behind me and go, oh wait, no, the LA's become detached and, you know, craft another lead. Leads are less expensive now, so not the end of the world. And yeah, I was I was dragging this happy ghast using an LA the entire time. Almost like a tugboat. carrying like a cruise liner into into port, you know?

Um and so yeah, aside from occasionally getting snagged on some trees, that worked pretty well. So my hope is that what I'll what I'll probably end up doing is either sit on the happy ghost to fly it up to something resembling build. Still leashed to the LA. Or I will fly up to something resembling build height, maybe make a platform up there, wait for the LA to catch up to.

And o back on the the the sort of ocean floor, I will try and leash the Coral Zombie Nautilus to the happy ghost so that the happy ghost like airlifts it and we have this sort of like caravan of mobs going. Except, you know, the allay is gonna be the thing that pulls them following me in the air as I try and glide as slowly as possible back in the direction that I want to go.

And uh yeah, i if the LA can keep up with me, if it kind of does that kind of rubber banding catch up behavior that they have. we should be able to glide all the way home from a high enough height that the ghast isn't gonna get snagged on anything and isn't gonna drop the Nautilus off somewhere somewhere else. So that's the plan. It's like a height

at this point. Like I am stealing the Coral Nautilus from the warm ocean. But um I'm hopeful that that will work and and if not I can always just, you know, bite the bullet and use the happy ghast on its own without the allay dragging it and then make sure I can control the elevation of the ghast and everything.

that way. But uh it should be fun to string all of these mobs together and see how uh how quickly we can get the Coral Nautilus back to somewhere resembling home because I want to have this thing around. I want to be able to look at it more frequently and I don't want to have to go out to a warm ocean every time just to check in with my Coral Nautilus and see how it's doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean one of the things that I would have done would have been to create a new happy gas.

at the location of the Nautilus and just bring the new happy ghast home. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess at that point you'd still have to find an awful close by. That was the consideration really was like I I wanna have the LA be part of this if it's going to make the the whole process faster. Yeah, of course. Honestly, I think I probably got there faster than it would have taken a happy ghast to like

rehydrate from a dried ghast and then grow up from a ghastling. So like all in all I think it i i I split the difference really. I think it was gonna be okay either way. And uh yeah, I I think it was it was a fun experiment at least. And it it may lead to me doing other bits and pieces in future. I had an idea a while ago for like a series of, I don't know, dispensers or something like that that would dispense items along a track.

that the allay would kind of kind of, you know, skim over to and pick up every so often and if it could drag a happy ghast with it then what you have there is some sort of like train mechanism almost, where the like the the the dispensed items are effectively the track, and if the LA, you know, runs along and picks up each of those, then it drags whatever is leashed to it with it.

Um it could be a neat way of moving some stuff around and getting more of that kind of buildstone style life into a base. I'm I'm curious whether that can be executed the way I imagine it in my head or whether I should be better off using like minecarts to move them around or something, but uh it remains to be seen how far we can take this. But I'm looking forward to experimenting a little.

I mean it sounds fun. I I will caution you uh something that I've experienced when flying a happy gast for the fine tuning of getting the Nautilus where you want it. Uh it is difficult at best, even in like F five, like third person mode, to see where the boat is. Because you just they don't give you that information. Uh so be very careful when you're moving that Nautilus around because I Quite frequently almost lost a couple of villagers just for

even when I thought I was giving myself a wide berth with the boat traveling to a point where the villager's head would get in a block. Yeah. And it would start to suffocate. Now the Nautilus is a lot shorter than the villager, so you might not have that problem. But the boat has a hitbox, the gas has a hitbox, but they don't overlap. And there's a space where there's just the leads.

So you can fly like you can accidentally fly with your ghast on one floor and your boat on another and then as you're moving around end up suffocating whatever's in the boat. Yeah. So just'cause I I'd hate for you to get all that way and then have some crazy thing like that happen. You know, like that's that would be terrible. It's something that I've already designed my ghost parking

station for because like I wanted chest boats underneath each of them and then a hopper is positioned underneath each of the chest boats so it can drain the resources out of them. So the ghast flies into like the upper level of the parking lot and the boat is dangling underneath. And so I I have that to fall back on if I wanna just like, you know Park the happy ghast in the usual place and then figure out what to do with the Nautilus after that.

But I think what I'm gonna do is build like a tank of water somewhere that I can just airdrop it into a nice big area and then from there I can move the Nautilus wherever I want it. But yeah, it's it's gonna be fun just m seeing if I can get there with a a reasonable amount of pace. Uh and that's something that will probably uh be in a video later on this week. Nice.

Moving on to the news this week, we've got a new snapshot. Minecraft Java Edition twenty six dot one Snapshot two was published on Wednesday, january seventh. Quote, in this very first snapshot of the new year, we're bringing you the first features from our cutest game drop yet befriend floofier wolf pups, kittens, piglets, calves, lambs, baby chickens, baby oscelots, and rabbits. Craft name tags, and hear heart melting mob sounds.

Some changes in twenty six dot one snapshot two updated the models and textures of the following baby animals. Cows, sheep, pigs, cats, oslots, mushrooms, wolf, chickens, and rabbits. The baby chicken's bounding box has been tweaked to align with the new model. Both adults and baby rabbits received new animations and tweaks to their bounding boxes reflecting this change. Armor on baby wolves and saddles on baby pigs will no longer render.

New baby sounds have been added to wolves, cats, and pigs. The programmer art rabbit textures have been removed following the remodeling of the rabbit. Name tags are now craftable and can be crafted with one paper and one nugget of any metal. Zombie horses are no longer panicking when they are hurt. Tweaked the default JVM options, the game now allocates four gigabytes of RAM by default up from two gigabytes. Garbage collection has been changed from G one G C to ZGC for compatible devices.

Technical changes in Snapshot two, the data pack version is now ninety six, the resource pack version is now seventy seven. Both have updated to support the changes to the baby mobs. And the resource pack updates have also renamed and moved some entity textures for improved clarity and consistency. Some bugs in Snapshot 2. Zombie horses constantly move in and out of water during their burn death. Not a lie bred by players can despawn. Some expert level masons trades no longer generate.

That's good news for me. Uh farmers sell suspicious stews with twenty times the intended duration. Master level fletchers can now sell tipped arrows of thick, mundane, and awkward potions. A handful of other bugs along with the full details of technical changes in this snapshot can be found in the Minecraft dot net article that's going to be linked in our show notes at the Spawn Chunk stock.

How are we feeling about calling it snapshot two? It feels like uh a few people in our live chat were saying as much like it feels strange not hearing the Uh you know, twenty six W two A or whatever, like as the snapshot name. Does that does that feel strange in in the in the mouth at this point, Joel?

It's still something I'm wrapping my podcaster brain around after three hundred and eighty plus episodes of doing it the other way. Um and probably only learning what the twenty six W two A meant like Two couple of weeks before they changed it. Yeah. Like literally. I think there are some people who like that when they when they uh decided to make that change were like, Wait, that's what it means? Yeah. Yeah.

I d and I don't know whether it's a European thing or whether it's a business thing, but I don't think about the year in weeks. I think about it in months. Like I I d or dates. I don't think about it in in in weeks. Like if you ask me in the middle of September what week of the year we're in, I don't know. Like it's September third. Like like I it's not something I keep in the back of my head. Um and I'm not complaining because I think it is easier to understand.

26.1 snapshot two. Very straightforward. 26.1 is the first drop of the year. Uh it is the second snapshot for that drop. Straightforward. When you type it out or say it though, it's long. Mm-hmm. So it's clearer, but it's more to say. It's less of a tongue twister, but it's longer to actually get, you know, type out or or enunciate on on a podcast. So I do find it a little bit strange in that way. And I think it also might be um

a symptom of of the internet where so many things these days are being abbreviated when they don't need to be. Sometimes it's just slang from a certain generation where they're just taking a word that's got two syllables and making it one.

Uh which I always the old man in me is just like, Do you really need to? Like I don't know if you're making things clearer or cooler. You're just being short for the sake of being short. Um but with this it's It's something where I do think about like, well, once we've said it's twenty six dot one snapshot two, calling it snapshot two the rest of the episode, like with context, you know what we're talking about.

Um I wonder if these things might get shortened to twenty six dot one snap two. You know, like I just there's there's some it's snappier if you're paw pardon the the poor the poor pun there. I like it's it's one of those things where You kind of have to see what the community does with it, right? Like it's not something you can force. I think just naturally people are just gonna call it.

Whatever, you know. Um, I could very easily see things being abbreviated in like a Discord as twenty six dot one S two, you know, just to kind of rather than typing out snapshot every time. Like I I can see some natural abbreviation coming in. Um we did that all the time when I worked in animation. Backgrounds were referred to as BGs in text, like if you're texting or emailing back and forth. Yeah. Um there's always in any kind of environment or

um, we'll say not a cultural group, like, but any kind of community that's got some very deep knowledge, there's usually some sort of abbreviation that happens. Yeah. Um, especially in Minecraft where there's a lot of things that They like the Minecraft names, like the proper name for things in game is not how people refer to them. I the thing that pops to my mind is Hopper Minecarts. That's not what they're called.

They're called like a mine cart with hopper, which is a huge it's a huge mouthful, right? The boat with chest problem. No. Yeah, so so I don't know. I I feel like just naturally we'll we'll start to see that, but I I don't mind referring to it as snapshot two, you know, um for the duration of the episode. I mean I think

At the beginning of the next snapshot, we'll call it twenty six dot one snapshot three, you know, to at the top of the news and then probably ended up shorting it, you know, uh making it shorter throughout the the conversation. But we'll see. Like I just I think it's an interesting idea. I'm not complaining though, I want to be very clear. I prefer this to

the the 26W2A, whatever that would be. Like I I think that that's it's a lot clearer, especially for new listeners or new players to the game. It if you if you get into Minecraft and you're like, I want to know more about Let me deep dive, let me look at the wiki, let me get into community, whatever. And if there's a lot of what I like to, you know, refer to as in speak, it becomes less inviting. And so calling it snapshot two, I think, is a lot more strict.

Yeah, and I think maybe they they mentioned this when they were explaining the changes, but like calling it snapshot two right now, we know which version it's snapshot two for. So it it'll be very easy for us to recognise that we're talking about the current in development version of the game.

whenever we're talking about snapshot three, snapshot five, whatever, that kind of stuff. And so it's gonna be interesting to see how that progresses throughout the year if we're saying snapshot two about the next drop that arrives, so twenty six dot two. Snapshot two. Is it gonna feel weird saying that after referring back to Snapshot Two from a previous update? I think it'll be fine. I think it'll be fine uh like as long as we provide some sort of context to begin with.

Everything falls into place after that. So yeah, it it feels good. Personally, I'm just really happy we're getting back to fresh updates from the development team. Everything always feels a little bit quieter over the holidays for obvious reasons, but

It's really nice to see that after the last snapshot was purely a technical side of things, this one is getting back into okay, features, what are we looking at for the next drop? And that's why we're gonna dedicate our discussion and I believe both of the emails this week to uh talk

Yeah, I thought it would be kind of fun to weave the emails into the main discussion as they as they come up topically. So uh if you'd like to email the show, if you'd like to get your emails into either the chunk mail section or the main discussion.

uh send an email to spawnchunkmail at gmail.com. That's the one email address that we use to check email for this segment. So if you're listening to older episodes, just know that spawnchunkmail at gmail.com is the proper one to send to. We have some help there.

To help to file them and get them ready for the show. So that's the best way to do it. Uh keep your emails short and to the point if you can. It does help us include them in the show. Uh it's also easier for us to read through and parse what

on topic or what we might want to say for a main discussion later. So we'd appreciate it if you if you keep them brief. But also let us know if you're a patron because that also helps us organize into where we might read an email. If you're a patron, but the email is maybe not

uh something we're gonna make into the main show, we can put it into render distance sometimes and you'll still get an access you know point to listen to it. Whereas if we know that you're not a patron, we're more inclined to put that in a main show because of course, you know, you won't have access to the render distance. So just let us know if you're a patron in the subject line. We'd really appreciate it.

Yeah, so rolling right into first impressions for this snapshot, uh my Uh my my impression was not immediately all that positive. Like I I think the baby mobs are really cute. I wanna say that up front. I think it's a really cool thing to them to focus on Older features getting a bit of a refresh. They've talked about that recently. It's nice to see the gameplay drops used for that. But my first thought w thought for this was

I hope that's not all. I j I I hope that this wasn't like the entire like bread and butter of this. this drop. And I'm not wild about having back-to-back drops where the major changes that some mobs are added or in the case of like the zombie horse for example, refresh Um, I had to kind of remind myself though that the spring to life drop last year happened on March twenty-fifth. So we still have like

a couple of months in which they can roll out new features for this drop before they even get to okay, refinements, bug fixes, testing, testing, release. Right. So so I do think it early days, hopefully, for twenty six dot one and that they might have some other stuff going on behind the scenes when it comes to functionality, blocks, you know, technical mechanics, any of that stuff.

Then again, baby animals also feel very thematically linked to spring as a season. I mean, th they already had the spring to life update last year, but I do think that was also focused on, you know, new flowers, new foliage, all of this stuff that's sort of returning after winter. And obviously in the northern hemisphere at least, lots of animals breeds, give birth, or or hatch

uh once the cold weather starts to clear up. So I think it makes sense for them to focus on baby mobs almost thematically for culturally what we expect from spring. So I I don't hate it. Like I I'm absolutely not hating on it. I just I'm I'm hoping that we get more than just like a refresh of the art style for some of the baby mobs and a couple of remodels in the case of like the rabbit and the chip. Yeah, I would agree. And I and I

I was receiving it positively'cause I looked at it on stream. Like I heard about it when I was streaming and I popped over to the j to the notes on Minecraft.net to take a look and see what was going on and see some of the the models briefly. And um I've since looked at more and I I like it.

But it does sort of feel like an odd thing to lead the charge with. It's the kind of thing where you'd almost expect it to be one of the last features that they would add, like right before they go live with a with a drop. Oh, by the way, we're changing the baby animals, which is

You know, I can't say was really high on my Minecraft list in terms of both my personal wishes but also those of the community that I talked to. Like I dn people were not complaining about baby animals the last time I checked. Um it's kind of just it always has been what it is. And Once we've shone a light on it though, I think it did need some attention. Like I the chicks stand out immediately because there's such a dramatic change from from the the previous

Baby chickens, which is weird we've never called them chicks. Probably'cause they look like ducks. Right. We've always just called them baby chickens. Same thing with baby pigs and baby cows. We don't call them piglets or calves, but I guess it's probably because like that's how they're named. in the game. Yeah. Um, so'cause I don't know. I I I don't know if they've changed them to piglets or if they have the intention of doing that, but like we'll we'll have to see.

Uh but the the chicks for me was an immediate positive. It's like, okay, well that makes more sense. It's also very cute, very Minecrafty. Like they're they're boxes, they're little cubes. Like that's that's fun. Uh so it d like you said, like I don't hate it.

uh needed and I think it refreshes some old mobs. We've asked about that all the time. Uh as someone that's an artist and has some an animation experience. Like I think that the refreshes look good. So I I think it's um adding that kind of immersion is is super, super helpful. Um but yeah, it does sort of see like seemed like the kind of thing that would be

uh one more thing add on as opposed to like deleting the charge. But then again, if they know it's gonna get a lot of attention from the community, then starting off the year with it also makes sense. Right, like it's a simple thing. We can put it in a snapshot. We can put it into it into snapshot almost in its entirety, like it's not something that's

necessarily gonna be I don't I don't see additional development of baby animals over several snapshots. I kind of feel like we'll get the reveal, maybe some refinements, and then probably just that's how it's gonna land. Um because I don't see it needing a lot of of depth. Um So yeah, I I think it's good.

Yeah, uh Wormbo and Gundar in our live chat both have really good points where they say like Showing new models and textures now means that there is more chance for them to be refined based on community wishes.

As well. Oh, yeah. We've seen that in the past with the Armadillo, for example, where they released the texture for it, they had the eyes front facing because they thought that would create a better connection to the player if the the thing's head looks directly at you and it's got the eyes on the front and then everyone gave feedback on that and said we'd prefer if the eyes were on the side'cause that feels more natural for the realistic representation of the animal.

And I feel like I've seen a bit of feedback from the community about some of these textures already. Like people didn't really like the single pixel eyes on some of these'cause the little black dot eyes really sort of seem to disturb some people. Um and I know as an artist you probably have your own opinions on that. For me, I I I

I see them as like buttons sewn onto like a doll, which I know some people also find kind of disturbing, but it seems pretty harmless to me. Like it's a kind of cutesy cartoon aesthetic, and they do seem to be working with lower resolution tech. Like because the models are smaller, the amount of pixel density and the texture is also smaller rather than them just shrinking the area on which that texture is displayed. So I know the art team can do a lot with minimal texture resolution, but

Um, we'll see if that feedback is heard the w same way it is it was with the the armadillo. We saw that as well with um like the spawn egg redesign recently to go back to like other stuff that's related to a broad range of animals. Like you you've seen

a few like little tweaks to that here and there when they were originally announced and that's something the art team put a lot of, you know, time and effort into recently. So uh how do you feel about some of the textures that we've got for some of these baby animals? I think for the most part they look great. You know, like the puppies are super cute. Uh the kittens feel a little bit strange, but I don't you know what I don't spend a lot of time around kittens. Like I see more adult cats.

Yeah. And even on social media, I see cute cat videos, but not a lot of kitten videos and lots of puppy videos. But like I'm a dog person, so that's that's probably just kind of the algorithm leading my way. Uh

I I mean the pigs look cute, the cows are fine, like I just I like the dot eyes as someone that spent years as an artist and cartoonist. um professionally. Like that that's a tool. Like the dot eyes is cuter than than having um big eyes when you're in a limited size. So like if you're drawing for me it was a comic strip. If I wanted something small and cute in a comic strip, it's really difficult to add like the whites of the eyes. They immediately start to look more like adults.

unless you have enough room to make the eyes really big. And in this situation you don't. Um and in Minecraft, when you're dealing with the white pixels of the eyes, you're either dealing with a cross-eyed animal or a wall-eyed animal.

And I don't think the derpy look would necessarily be as cute in the baby animals. Uh and on top of that, if you want to go into the realism talking about the armadillo with the eyes on the side of its head and center of the front, You can't really see the whites of the eyes of most animals unless you're right right up to on top of them.

Uh dogs and cats are an exception. Um, but in terms of like livestock and birds especially, like if you're looking at a bird from a couple of feet away, you can't see the whites of its eyes, nor can you do nor pig. cow, like it's all unless it's like wide eyed and right next to you, you really can't see the whites of its eyes. And I think with a limited pixel um

I guess map for the texture. I think that the the button eyes, as you put it, is a is a much smarter way to go. And it really suits, especially there's one I think it's the woolly pig, uh the the wintry pig. Uh and it has like

these two little pixels underneath the eyes that are lighter, so it almost like it's like the light hitting the cheekbone of of the little or the chubby cheeks probably of of the little piglet. And it looks great'cause it's a great high contrast with the dark eye and I I think they you know, they did a really good job with a lot of the the face textures. I do find I do find the lambs odd, but adult sheeps in Minecraft are weird and they've established it as

Very weird as part of the branding. It was in the movie as a big gag. So I feel like you're not gonna see the change to the lambs that that you'd want in order to have it not look weird. I think the big difference that I noticed in the video on Minecraft on YouTube was that the baby lambs don't have that extra pixel face. Part pronounced. Like it's just it's really just a flat box.

And they look okay from the front. It's when they turn sideways that it's really weird. Yes. Uh whereas whereas the adult sheep sideways, even though they're still very flat faced and walleyeed and odd looking, at least you can tell where the face is. And I think that that's what the the lambs are missing, is that they don't have that little um extra pixel protrusion of the

Snout. Uh and I can't see Minecraft um changing the sheep to be more realistic at this stage in the game. I think it's kind of like like the creeper, like the previous chicken. Uh I think it's kind of iconic at this point that it's a little bit wonky.

Yeah. I I'm actually curious to hear from anybody who might be listening who is a texture artist and would have to accommodate the change to the canvas of these mobs. in any texture packs they're working on. It would be really interesting to hear from from the resource pack community whether this is a change that they're gonna have to adapt to as well? Like if there is a smaller canvas on which to texture some of these mobs, or if that's something that they can

have enough, you know, opportunity to manipulate themselves that they can still fit the same sort of texture that you'd get from like a a thirty two X resource pack, for example. Like would be really great to uh to hear from you. Because like

uh how many more ways could there be to design chicks now that they are basically like a tiny cube? There's like not a lot of room there at all. Um but I think those are the highlight for me. I think they're really cute and They feel closer to real life compared to the sort of top heavy, like awkward chicken that we had before.

And I think it's even funnier now that this more realistic look uh quote unquote realistic looking, obviously there's still a cube, but um it it still grows up into this weird looking chicken duck hybrid th that we have that we're all used to from the from Minecraft chickens and I I really don't think, much like the sheep you mentioned the Minecraft movie, I think that's a great example. I don't think that the Minecraft chicken is ever gonna change now it's been used in so much branding.

and you know, Jack Black sings a song about a chicken in the Minecraft movie, they're not gonna be like, Well, we're changing the look of the chicken in this update right after the movie has come out. So I I really doubt they would consider redesigning it from like those core models, but Obviously, the baby mobs are still kind of fair game. Especially after last year with Spring to Life, they added in all of the warm and cold variants.

It's really cool to see like warm and cold variants of the chicks and and some of the baby mobs looking a little different as well. And yeah, I think it's it's a really interesting, like you said. uh an avenue for them to take that nobody had previously considered. It was one of those things that like we didn't know we wanted this and then once they've started doing it, you're like, Yeah, this is actually quite ripe for a refresh. So I I think it's

Yeah, so something I'm gonna be keeping an eye on, especially when it comes to community feedback and whether those textures change. We'll talk about that in future episodes, I'm sure, but for now I think it's uh it's looking like a positive start to this draft.

And there's a lot of really cool uh animations that have been added too, like little idol animations, the little puppies like tilt their heads and I mean the rabbits get completely reworked. They're a a much chunkier looking looking rabbit, which I mean I mean makes them friends of this pot.

Uh I I do think and I saw this feedback in our chat room in our Discord as well, but when I first watched uh the rabbits, I I think they need to revisit the hopping animation, like the the part where it actually travels because the level of hop versus the horizontal distance travel doesn't really line up. The the rabbit's feet sort of glide along the ground like it's skating on ice a little bit, so it looks a little bit

Two thousand five for a video game. Yeah. Um but it's um it's still a much improved uh model, I think, over the previous. And I I didn't know this just from reading the snapshot article, but when watching the Minecraft V uh video. Uh on YouTube.

the rabbits have this like sit up on their hind legs animation. Yeah. They do this little thing with their heads. Like that's it's really cool and it really sells it. Like it's it's for a blocky, you know, Minecraft rabbit, it's it that little thing is a nice touch. Like little animation like that. And

I'm curious to see more of the other baby animals and adult animals to see if there's any animation that's updated because the animation on on these mobs without doing complete model overhauls and have them have an entire new life. You know, rather than the weird treadmill walk that they all do. You could have them have a little bit more weight and sway. You can see it right now i in the um the sniffer, right? And the frogs. They have way more detailed animations than previous mobs.

And uh I'm hoping that that's something that they they address, you know, uh for for some of these. And uh the baby chicks are just so cute. I I think it's uh I you talk about, you know, it being not so realistic. I think it's um Stylized for sure, but it's almost like an icon. Like if you put a little a little yellow ball with two orange sticks and two dots.

in front of anybody. They're going to think baby chick. Like that's what they're going to think, right? Very Easter. So between the new chicks and the and the bunny rabbits, uh people that have any Easter theme builds are gonna have a heyday. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Uh I think it's interesting going back to what you were saying about like them changing the rabbit model, um

The rabbit, as far as like additions to the game, is the most recent one. Obviously, cats got split off from Ocelots at a certain point. Um and so maybe that's like slightly newer as far as like That was Village and Pillage update, I think, when they started changing villager mechanics around. I think so. And then Wolves obviously got a bunch of different like new skins for them and new sounds and everything. So they've had an overhaul as recently as one point twenty. Um but

Rabbits were like the last of these animals to really be a new addition. And that was back in one point eight. That was when I first started playing Minecraft was when rabbits had just been a

And so I think it's really interesting that a lot of these are legacy mobs, more or less. They're mobs that have come from a much earlier version, even pre like Microsoft acquisition. And now the art team is so used to producing higher quality stuff when it comes to like the models and animations and kind of even though they've simplified some of the designs, you saw the horse redesign like a little while ago, they have managed to

Make everything more consistent across the board. There's like a style guide for how some of these mobs should work now, and they're working within those boundaries to create things that still have a lot more personality.

And so I think that's what we're seeing with this update is allowing some of the baby mobs that maybe are slightly less iconic compared to their adult counterparts from the imagery that Minecraft shares publicly. Um, I think it It's neat to see them all taking on their own personality and those idol animations really go a long way to

to to improve that. I think whoever did the sit up animation for the rabbit was probably also really disappointed that mere cats didn't get voted in on one of the biome votes that we had before. And so they're like, Look, look what we can do. We can make this animal kind of sit up and look kind of perky and yeah, I think that That's a a neat way of getting a little bit more animated variety into the baby mobs.

So what do you think about the fact that baby mobs are probably going to be a new favorite, but they're always temporary? Yeah, that's the thing. Like uh I was wondering we we were thinking about sort of where is all of this going, uh, and I'm wondering if In twenty six dot one, along with the fact that name tags are now craftable, we might actually get some functionality that allows baby mobs to be frozen in time to to not age because

Um I've seen a lot of players ask for that recently. Um there are data packs with this functionality now as well. Um one of those got implemented on Hermitcraft, I think, so that people could keep ghastlings around without them growing up into full-size happy ghast. And so I think it would be neat if name tag functionality was on the way because

name tags are now craftable and very cheap. It turns out. Like it's a a single nugget of metal and like all of the metals are basically infinitely farmable more or less. Um and so yeah it's really cheap just to get that and some paper and and make a name tag. Um and so I'm wondering if Some of our recent listener emails have been right about some of the the feedback they've had about farming animals and like, you know, controlling a bit more of of of animals

progress. And uh Cyan wrote in with this email uh with the subject of babies forever. Hi Johnny and Joel. Since before the announcement of this new baby mob drop, I've seen a lot of people asking for ways to keep mobs from turning into their less cute adult forms. Sidestepping the ethics of keeping them babies forever, I believe this niche request will turn into an a more common one now the baby mobs are getting more attention.

I think the best way and most storybook way of doing this is to have a potion of youth drop from a witch, or brewable from the plethora of non-awkward potion branches available. Hope you both had a nice Christmas and New Year. Cyan was turned into a baby by a witch using a splash potion of you.

And uh yeah, I th I thought this was a really creative solution to this. Um also because I wonder if a non name tag option would make more sense in the end because you wouldn't want all of your baby animals to be named the same thing. Let's say obviously all of the other name tag Easter eggs are based on like developers' names like Dinnabone and Grum and Jeb, and so you wouldn't want all your baby animals to be named Lady Agnes or whatever, meaning absolutely no disrespect to to Agnes.

Um but I I do think it would be silly to have an entire like pen of baby pigs and it's like, Good morning, Lady Agnes and Lady Agnes and Lady Agnes, you know, you just end up naming the them all the same thing. There are some data packs that allow you to like

silence mobs by name tagging them, after which you can name tag them again and it removes the silenced tag but make sure they still don't make any sound. But I feel like that feels too convoluted for vanilla Minecraft gameplay especially, so

I think it it's a a fun concept to to link it to name tags, but I think Cyan solution is equally elegant in a way. I think it's a a neat idea to have something that feels like it immersive within the world of Minecraft and also linked magically to some systems that we have in the game already. Yeah, I think magically is a good way to do it. The other way that I was thinking would be to feed them something specific, you know, like if you fed them mushrooms or something, then maybe that would be.

stop them from growing and not have to worry about having a name tag. No. I mean using a name tag to keep them babies, like do you have to name it something? Do I want to have a name of any kind above all the baby animals. Because if you if you are doing it for immersion, you walk over to your little chicken coop. And it it kind of feels weird to have all these little mobs that are probably gonna be very close together having overlapping

Yeah. As you're looking at them. Yeah. Yeah. So I I feel like the potion is a is a better idea. A splash potion of of um youth is is fun. Also Side note, I didn't think about this until just now. with the death message, but if a witch hit me with a youth potion, do I then get faster? Can I run around like a baby zombie if I'm back hurt a little bit less? Yeah, like if I'm if I'm a if I'm a a block tall instead of of one point eight

blocks in Minecraft. Can I run around like a bat out of hell? Like that would be fantastically fun. I hope it's short. Like I don't want that to be ha something that happens all the time. Uh and akin to like your mouse Settings changing and your mouse cursor being too fast for you. Like I feel like it would be a little bit wacky in Minecraft, but it could be kind of fun. Um, especially in like

I don't know, PV PvP or like even like a trap for somebody. Like you're not really harming anybody, but it's like congratulations for the next three minutes. You're like you're just we. So like you get you get that perspective. Uh so that could be kind of fun. But Yeah, I like the idea of a of a potion. I think there will be some requests either via data pack or uh in the game, you know, proper to have baby animals stick around and

I don't I I feel like a uh magic or some sort of food would be the way to do it. I I'm leaning on magic because I think that There might be some precedent for food. You wouldn't want young people feeding animals something they're not really supposed to have. Yeah, you wouldn't want in the same way that you don't have you can't feed um cookies to parrots in in the game, like that kind of a thing.

So uh yeah, I like the idea of of uh either a potion that you would feed them or a a splash potion that you would hit them all with. So you'd have an option. Like you know, you could if you just want one to stay and the rest to grow, you could have that. targeted potion. But if you want to have like all six of them stay babies then you can

Uh just use the the splash potion. Which which could be automated too. Like you could have some a crafter, you could have a chicken breeder, you could have splash potions automatically shot out shot out every now and again and just create all kinds of little popcorn chicken everywhere. Yeah. Popcorn chicken is actually a great way of talking about those baby chicks. That's that's that's ki kind of kind of harsh but kind of funny at the same time.

Um so speaking of baby mobs actually our second email is probably worth getting into right now because uh Eddie Eddie had some really interesting ideas about other types of baby mobs. So Eddie Warbo wrote in with a email about baby mob overhauls. Uh hello, Joel and Johnny. We've just gotten a peek at some of the cutest additions to the first game drop of 2026.

Some domesticated animals are getting reworked, and I hope Mojang gives the same treatment to all baby animals and mobs, even the hostile ones. This could set up new mob variants and features unique to those babies, maybe baby skeletons with slingshots, or perhaps a fast-moving baby creeper too weak to destroy terrain, but still deal explosive damage, bringing a new challenge to PvE combat.

What do you guys think? I would love to hear some of your ideas for baby mob editions and how they differ from their adult counterparts. Thank you both for keeping the community active. Your creativity and imagination has inspired many of us. It's given us all motivation we need to thrive in our infinite sandboxes. Eddie Warbaugh was asphyxiated and doomed to fall by another gas.

Well, this has taken me down a bit of a weird path immediately because I was thinking about some of the mobs that have Like they are breeding mechanics in the game and they have counterparts that don't have breeding mechanics. And I was like, what about baby illogic?

Like what if we had baby vindicators running around with tiny little axes? Or what if we had a baby pillager? I love the slingshot idea for skeletons. I like I I imagine more a baby pillager Uh like with a his father's hand on one shoulder, crossbow in the other hand, but a baby pillager with a slingshot is an adorable image. Um, I imagine it's probably so we don't end up killing like babies that are the analogue of like humanoid characters in the game, but still, fun idea.

I do think it's really neat to consider baby versions of hostile mobs as well. I've seen a few mods that do little bits and pieces like this. But yeah, the creeper that's like like you know, a a block tall and a only able to destroy a single block with its explosion, but like moves really fast. It's a it's a silly idea but a fun one. So uh yeah, how do you feel about there being baby hostile mobs in the game as well? On the surface I feel like it's a fun idea.

But then skeletons in general can be pretty hard to deal with if you're ill prepared, especially if there's more than one. And if there was a fast moving baby skeleton that shot more frequently, even if it wasn't doing enough damage, you could end up getting stun locked. So like I don't know

how fun it would be in a practical application, unless they were just mischievous. Like if they weren't really doing any damage to you, they were just like meant there to distract and startle and and cause kind of like additional mayhem, but you don't really take any damage from them. Like that could be an interesting way to do it. But I like the way that um Eddie

pitched it in that the smaller they got, knowing that there would be some like speed advantages and and some other stuff, they were weaker, you know, like slingshots instead of bow and arrow. Yeah. The the creeper not blowing up stuff. Um I was thinking about other aggressive mobs and like a baby Enderman would be really strange. It's it's only one and a half blocks tall instead of three. Yeah.

Right. Like I mean maybe you go super small with them and I I was trying to think about what they might look like. Make like maybe they don't look like they have arms and legs anyway. Like maybe they're more of a floating thing or a tadpole looking thing. Like you could get some really strange things with some of the mobs that are just

weird looking in general. Uh striders are another weird one. I don't know what that would look like. You know, is it gonna be like a little head on long legs or or is it the whole thing going to be really tiny? Um Obviously they're they mentioned ghasts in their deathline, but we already have kind of baby gass in like the dried gas and the gas link, so they're sort of already in the game, but they're not aggressive, like so they're they're a happy gas instead of a a regular gas, but

Um, even something like um baby blazes would be weird. Like I I don't know how you'd do that without'cause they don't have like you mentioned, like breeding and creating a baby animal is one thing, but then having some of these more ethereal bad guys have offspring is odd. Like the blaze are kind of magical to begin with. So like there's some that I don't think would really warrant it, even though there's some neat ideas there. Uh I think that it it's more of a along the lines of

Like what would what would make sense and the the idea of baby skeletons is just that. To me it reminds me of um like minions, you know, from the Despicable Me movies. Like more mischievous and hilario hilarious and I could see them happening in a Minecraft. Right? Like even though they're not in the game, I could see them happening in the Minecraft movie for a gag, right? Like yeah, you've got

The skeletons are trying to to get you, but the baby skeletons are too busy fighting amongst themselves, shooting, you know, slingshots off each other's heads, then actually attacking the people in the movie. Like that I could see that being a fun gag. Um but it's an interesting idea uh to take other other mobs, specifically aggressive mobs and bring them into the into the baby animal world. You already get that with um baby hoglet.

Do that, right? Like they'll they'll kind of run in, they'll tag you, and then as soon as you turn on them with a sword, they like squeal and run away. And then they'll come back and they'll do it again. It's like they're more playful but also just kind of like a little bit irritating. And so yeah, I I'm I'm curious if it would end up the same way. I think

This feels m a little bit closer to like April Fool's update territory to me in terms of like some of the babies that you could get, but I feel like occasionally sort of introducing them. We already know that people have a love-hate relationship with baby zombies.

So I'm I'm curious to see how any other baby mobs might like disrupt the ecosystem of player activity a little bit too much for some people, but You're also gonna deal with those in the same situations you'd be dealing with other hostile mobs anyway, so it would be easy enough once you know the game well to avoid situations like that if you did not want

Um I was thinking a little bit more about where all of this was going with with twenty-six dot one and I was wondering if it is gonna focus on farming a little bit more, with the introduction of baby animals, obviously encouraging players to breed animals. bit more. And I was wondering if maybe even some of the listener email we've had recently about like

mobs having points of interest and like farm animals kind of clustering around certain things. I think we read one even last week about like having some sort of trough that the animals could feed from and that kind of thing. So I wonder if an overhaul to farming, maybe some other crops and things like that could be on the way. Um and I I feel like there's

Even a possibility if we end up getting something that limits the ability for baby mobs to grow up into full adults. I wonder if we also get functionality that lets be prevented from growing. Because that's another frequently suggested thing that we we've covered on the show in the past. And I think the main argument against it is the kind of like soft griefing, the equivalent of like waxing somebody's copper when they're waiting for it to age and that kind of thing. But

I really doubt that that would strongly upset anyone. It feels like there are much more destructive ways to affect your crop field, right? So I think there's potential for it to head in the direction that this snapshot has set the precedent for, which is a bit more of a focus on existing mechanics in the game, an expansion of the character that those things have, and maybe a little bit more of the uh the domestic kind of farming side of things bringing everything into spring.

I mean I think that's really possible. I I think leaning into farming is is definitely something that could use a little bit of an of an update. And I mean the fact that I just finished a five year project of football fields uh full of farms and crops I wouldn't be bitter at all if they updated that'cause I'm now building in a sci fi zone that's got no crops and no dirt anywhere.

Um but that that beside the point would would be something cool because that's something I definitely asked for a lot. Uh and in a way sort of used some of the last updates from last spring with the dried grass as uh different heights for wheat, uh and different growth stages for for wheat in Minecraft. So, uh, if they were able to do something like that, um

with a like actually practically controlling the the the crops. I think that would be that would be cool. I'm not really champing at the bit for like additional crops. Like there feel there feels like there's a decent variety and Again, it's that weird thing of like, well, you're adding something to the game that is going to have a nice aesthetic value for a different field of crops, but like what's the function? Like what if you added something like corn, for example, um, or something else.

What do you do you just use it to grow and eat?'Cause we already have enough food. And when you're at endgame in Minecraft like we are on the Citadel, we're all eating golden carrots. Like no one's eating other things like jacket potatoes or stuff like that. So it's it's hard to say like what they might do.

um functionally with that. Now on the and if they did add a function, the good news there is that it adds like, oh well now we have to figure out like how does this crop work? How's how do you farm it? Like what's the best way to do it? What's the best way to replant it? So there would be some like farming uh and auto farming potential projects, which adds gameplay to the game if depending on how things go. Um, I would rather see them add something

like um bamboo or sugarcane that like adds some automation or something like that. I think that could be fun, like a cotton plant or something. Um but again like how do you do that and not make it redundant? Because like we've got sheep and we can shear sheep and get wool that way. So I don't know, but I I I can see that being something they might look into. Um I'm I hope that they also lean into the animations. goes against what I wished for last week, which was

You know, more blocks, more building options, like a little bit more gameplay focused on the drops. But if they are going to revisit the animals, if that is the main theme, I hope that they don't overlook the idea of changing the animations on things like cows and pigs. and and wolves that already exist. Um because I think that that updating the models while keeping the really old animations for some of these it doesn't help. Like you're not Um you're not doing the n lovely new textures just.

and the lovely new models justice if they still walk around kinda like um

models from the early twenty tens, right? Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, uh we're gonna wrap up here, but I'll leave you with one other thought uh from Wombo in our live chat who says, What if you had a five percent chance that you had a baby and a dragon five?

Uh that's a a fun thing to leave things on. Uh that's gonna wrap up this episode of The Spawn Chunks, though. You're gonna find more information about our show and links to some of the stuff that we talked about if you head over to thespawnchunks.com. The music for the show is composed by me, and the Spawn Chunks is proud as ever to be a listener-supported podcast. Moving into twenty twenty six.

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Email the show at spawn chunkmail at gmail dot com. The RSS feed is linked directly on the spawnchunks dot com and the patron only RSS feed is on the Patreon page. That's where you get the render distance, the extended version of the podcast. My name is Johnny, but another guy by Pixoriffs you can find most of what I do at youtube dot com slash Pixoriffs where the Minecraft survival guide is currently in its third season.

I also stream three days a week on Twitch doing behind-the-scenes work for my YouTube series. I'm the voice of the unofficial Hermit Craft recap, which you can find through a quick YouTube search, and aside from that, I'm at PixarFs on both Blue Sky and Instagram. Joel, where can people find you online? I will point everyone to the five hundredth episode of The Citadel Cafe. It was released on Christmas Eve. It's a good two and a half hours long and I'm really proud of that show.

uh the episode and the podcast. And I had a meeting with Steven last night planning what's happening for the Citadel Cafe for twenty twenty six. And we're gonna be looking ahead on our next episode about the movies we're looking forward to, some of the trailers and teasers that we've seen for Avengers Doomsday. So that's coming up. on the Citadel Cafe. I'm at Joel Duggan on social media, very easy to find, and I stream on Twitch

Tuesdays through Fridays at nine o'clock in the morning and on Saturdays at one. Most of the time I focus. on Minecraft right now working on the command center in the Mushroom Island. I'm going to be checking out Hightail tomorrow. So if you're curious about that game, then come over there and check that out.

And I'm actually celebrating 12 years on Patreon myself this month. And so I have a little promo going on. If you're interested in checking it out, swing by a stream this week and get the details. It's a great way to support your favorite craters. I think a lot of craters right now have got some promotions on, so check it out. It's all happening at twitch.tv slash joelducen. Thanks for visiting the Spawn Chunks. The world outside is infinite, but it just got infinitely cuter.