The Spawn Chunks 395: Cutting Edge Colour Palette

Welcome to the Spawn Chunks, episode number 395 for Monday, March 30th, 2026. This is a podcast all about Minecraft. Available across all major podcast platforms, including a video version on YouTube and Spotify. If you enjoy the show, consider subscribing wherever you're listening to this. My name is Johnny, but the Instant knows me as Pixel Riffs, and joining me, not science fiction, but real life. It's Joel Duggan. Hi Joel.

Hello, and if you would like to hear a little bit more about science fiction, uh Pix went to go see Project Hail Mary over the weekend, as did a couple of friends of mine. I plan to seeing it soon.

Uh I also spent the weekend making pizza dough, which is not at all sci-fi related. So you get a little bit of a mixed bag if you're gonna check out the render distance, which is the extended version of the podcast. We record that every single week, and our patrons get access to that. You can go to patreon.com slash the spawn chunks. Support the show at any level, get access to the Discord, get access to the bonus shows.

uh the extended podcast. And speaking of bonus shows, we recorded the Minecraft hangout this weekend that was Published on Sunday, recorded on Saturday, and that's where we hang out with our patrons and talk about what they've been doing in Minecraft with screenshots and cool little conversations with everybody live in a little Discord chat. So you can always have access to that when you're a patron as well. You can go back and listen to the archives.

We also do a patron hangout every quarter where we talk about the podcast and the YouTube channel and how things are going and plans for the future. That's coming up in May. And so again, if you want to support the Spon Chunks, it's patreon.com slash the Spon Chunks and you get all kinds of cool goodies behind the scene.

On this episode, we've got a chunk mail dispenser for you. We're gonna be responding to a couple of emails listeners have sent into the show, including a couple of responses to previous discussions we've had in recent episodes, and also a reaction to the block sets that were shown off at Minecraft Live recently. So if you haven't caught up on Minecraft Live, you'll be getting a little sneak peek into what's been announced and what we should hopefully be getting hold of in snapshots very soon.

Speaking of listener email though, episode four hundred is coming up on the calendar and we are planning to do an all email episode, in a similar fashion to what we did for episode three hundred, which was kind of a QA about anything and everything. Doesn't have to be Minecraft related, but We can answer a bit about Minecraft and a bit about just what else we're into, that kind of thing. The type of stuff that we typically talk about on the rendered.

and that sort of stuff. So if you would like to email into the show and potentially get your email read for episode four hundred, we're gonna try and get through as many of them as we can really. So send a message, a question on anything that you would like over to spawn chunkmail at gmail.com.

Please put four hundred in the subject line and indicate if you're a patron of the show because we'd like to prioritize some patron email as well. And if you can keep your messages short, just a sentence or two ideally, so that way we can include as many of them as possible into the extra.

So what have you been up to in the Survival Guide this week, man? In the survival guide I've honestly not been doing very much. The beacon mine continues, but that certainly wasn't the most important landmark of my week. Instead, uh yesterday, as of this recording, I went on a tour of Hermitcraft season eleven. In tandem with the announcement that I'm going to be participating in the MCC Hermitcraft Takeover that is happening during their annual gamers outreach charity fundraising.

Uh so over the weekend of April eleventh and twelfth, uh they're gonna be doing a bunch of different events online, streamed to various channels and uh raising money for Gamers Outreach, a charity that they've supported multiple years at this stage.

And it's a charity that helps to provide gaming experiences to kids who are stuck in hospital and recovering and uh usually just need something to occupy their time a little bit because I imagine a lot of people out there know that hospital stays are sometimes just a little bit dull in between all of the stuff going on, just making sure you

get well. And so yeah, that's the charity they've been supporting. Uh Good Times with Scar is really active in that whole field and so yeah he's been been helping to organize a lot of this stuff. And so him and Joe Hills were kind of guiding us around bits of the the Hermitcraft server with the different members giving us a little background on what their bases are this season. Previously they've done tours of a much more complete world, whereas this is like only

I say only. It's about five months into uh Hermitcraft season eleven. So it was really fun to see some of that stuff. uh like in progress, even though I've seen a lot of it in the Hermitcraft recap, um just kind of covering the uh the videos that they release each week. It was really fun to explore and and see a little bit behind the scenes of what everyone's got going.

Um so yeah, during the event during the uh the gamers outreach event they're going to be doing a special MCC with every member of the current Hermitcraft cast participating. And to fill out the teams, some of their friends and collaborators were invited to join, which is where I come in.

Um and in celebration of that, uh they were announcing the schedule for the event and uh you know everybody who was participating in this MCC event got invited to just hang out on the server, tour a little bit, play some mini games and just chat. So that was that was what happened to me last night and it was a very, very good It's gonna be surreal being on the Hermocraft server where you cover it for the the recap, right?

Yes, it really is. Like seeing everything from the ground up when a lot of the time people will show time lapse footage of them building something or they'll be flying around with a Lytra and that kind of thing. We of course

you know, didn't get handed Elytra and a ton of equipment and stuff because we were really just there to do a walking tour. And so seeing everything from ground level a lot of the time was really fun. Although I did hitch a ride with Rendog, who'd brought a happy ghast, and so while we were moving at a slower pace than everybody else, We could kind of float over the sections where like winding paths were

taking people to and from different builds and so I actually got a really nice aerial view. I hit the cinematic camera button and was kind of doing slow pans of everything as we were traveling. So I was trying to give the audience a bit of a different experience to what they were seeing on other streams and a bit more of like a cinematic

angle on stuff. But of course at certain points we had to go through the nether, so we had to go on foot for those and to go inside people's bases we couldn't exactly fly through their front door all of the time. So

While we didn't see everybody's bases, a couple of the hermits weren't uh available for this tour, so they were sort of left out of the proceedings because they weren't there to explain what they were building. I think it was really fun to just see uh the ins and outs of the server and also see how connected it is this season.

And I think this is something that has been a neat reaction to see to how commonplace Elytra are in the um the current sort of meta, I guess, of vanilla Minecraft servers where people don't often bother building roads and connections between bases because the majority of the way they fly around is very, very quick and they don't need to use the roads to get anywhere. Whereas with this they've

come into it with the concept of bridging between people's builds because the landscape is fairly extreme. There's a lot of river valleys with taller terrain around them. And so it's naturally occurred to them in the early game to build bridges and connections between their bases. Which has evolved into a style that you can actually walk around throughout most of the server uninterrupted.

And so I think it was quite neat to do that and I'm sure by the finale of Hermitcraft season eleven, whenever that happens, it's going to be even more connected than it already is, with different builds bridging the gaps between the bases. But all in all it's Still a fascination of mine just to see how everybody gets work done on that server. So really cool to be part of the first.

Yeah, we don't have very many connections on the Citadel. A lot of it is nether. I mean you can still walk to people's bases and there is a connected path in the nether. The experience in the nether is like enclosed and intentional and decorated. Yeah. But

Like I don't know that you could really walk to A Avalon in a way that would be curated, uh, which would be like Alistair's section on the server from Dartmouth Meadows or I think the only one that is connected is Cosmic. Um Yeah, Somerville is connected to Dartmouth Meadows, but that's just probably out of just luck slash convenience that they built it close enough that the paths connected, and I had built the paths far enough south with my project.

Um, I know that Steven's stair monument is close to spawn. You can see it, but like there's no path to it necessarily. So yeah, that's cool. I and that's a lot of work too. Like it's c the kind of work that doesn't necessarily

make for it like it's one of those things that would feel like a Minecraft chore, like building roads between things, especially if it's like your build and somebody else's build and you're building a road. Like how much effort do you put into that and trying to make it work with both builds? Like it just there's a lot of consideration that has to go there. But it looks really cool. I remember when I was spending time on the

Uh, I think it's called Minecraft Middle Earth, the Lord of the Rings server. Yes. And once you get through the initial kind of onboarding um Terms of service stuff. walking from like bag end to brie, like it's all connected. There's a road the whole way. Uh even throughout Hobbiton, there's like different areas that are all connected. just so cool that that level of detail is is in there. And it's not like the roads are like

beautiful paintings. I mean it's a Minecraft road and it's it's similar to what you'd expect a dirt road to look like, but there's just something really tangible about connecting your builds in Minecraft and it I think it speaks to

you know, a community is organized as Hermitcraft where they have behind the scenes plans. There's a lot of I'd be very curious to have a conversation with, you know, some of the hermits about more of the behind the scenes stuff. Like we've interviewed some hermits on the show. and talk to them about what they've been doing in Minecraft and how they are planning stuff. But like I'd be really curious to hear, you know, the administration side in terms of like

How do you all plan where you're gonna be? Like how far in advance do you decide what you're gonna do and who your neighbors are? And like do you decide to build together and do things? Or is it just like uh who am I gonna be next to this year? I mean, they're all friends, so like it's it doesn't really matter, but I I would imagine that there could be some things that would influence your ideas, but then also other things would be just like

if you're a technical player but the you're next to Pearl, then I feel like there'd be some pressure, like, well, I guess my stuff is gonna look really good. If Pearl's my neighbor, like I feel like there'd be some same with Scar. Like there's all kinds of stuff like that. But but then again, like you could also have some collapse. You know, it's like, hey, I'm gonna build these cool farms like

someone like Pearl or Scar, like, do you want to come over and decorate them or help me decorate them? Like there's lots of cool options for collaboration. That's one of the things that uh our server, the Citadel, is it's more like It's more like Hermitcraft of yesteryear. Hermitcraft now I find that there's a lot of cross pollination. They be they do a lot of stuff together. And For on the Citadel, it's a lot of us kind of doing things in our own silo.

You know? And I think part of that is because like sometimes the projects that I take on are just so large. that it feels like I've kind of taken over the whole area or the whole island and then people are like, All right, well, Joel's doing his thing. I don't necessarily want to build next to him or or encroach on whatever his plans might be. So it's it's hard sometimes to kind of find

projects that we can do together. I'm hoping with things like an end project or another nether project or something that I could find some like collab stuff to do on on the server'cause It some of the stuff that they're doing on Hermocraft is is really cool. And especially that that gamers outreach thing. Like that's a really fun and really cool charity.

Yeah, it is. And I'm looking forward to tuning into most of the stream myself, even when I'm not participating,'cause it's always just a good time to see them all just hang out. Um yeah, that's more or less it from my side of gameplay this week though. Uh how about you? What's new with the mushroom eye? So I have been spending a good chunk of the week working on the midsection of the command center, and that was the thing that I mentioned last week where I decided to try out a window.

So I went full uh multi level window, I finished it up, I took out uh the third level wall. and put it in the window. It looks really good from the inside. I I think that it's from an inside perspective, I would think I want to do it on all four midsections to kind of have this circulate around. It does not feel Like it.

negates the structure. It still feels like a sturdy build. Uh having the windows look out uh over the landscape is great. As you mentioned, that landscape is going to change and this could inform where I put certain builds and frame certain builds. And I really like the simplicity of it. I decided not to go with a double pane window. I just went with a single.

I think it is a lot nicer that way. I also forgot that with shaders on, depending on which window you're looking at, as the sun goes over the command center, there's shafts of light that now come in. and I'm no longer just dealing with ceiling light. So it it does a couple of things really, really well. It's a lot more difficult to make it work from the outside. I'm not having a lot of luck.

incorporating the window into the outside. It doesn't look any less structural. Like it doesn't feel like it weakens. the design, but the design, the concept art that I use, but also my original vision just didn't have a window there. So I wasn't considering that when I was designing the rest of

the um I guess bulkheads and support structure of the wings. And so now I'm kind of trying to figure out how can I do all this and make it look like it works and like how do I create the foundation for this window to be on.

on a forty five degree angle because this is all on uh on an angle in this uh octagonal design for the main kind of like fuselage area. I'm not sure what to call these sections because it's not a spaceship, like it doesn't actually take off, but it has all the same sort of like spaceship features, you know. Anyway, uh I took a stab at it. It needs a couple of passes. I did add the light feature that I was talking about before, and I've used orange terracotta instead of yellow.

which uh reflects the stripe on the outside of the wings as opposed to the same color as the elevator. So it's inspired by the elevator lights, but it's a different color and I think it does match better outside. I'm still working on how that's going to be encased and highlighted and I'm trying to figure out how to frame everything. I'm leaning on deep slate, but there's white concrete inside the building and

I it kinda clashes and it also doesn't work very well with white diorite. Now white diorite, polished diorite is on the outside of the building and that's great, but white concrete looks really weird next to it. So I'm trying to figure out what the best material is. I might end up going with polished tough. I've used that a lot in like

inside structures and it looks good lining the windows from the inside. So I might be able to pull that outside and make it feel more unified. But that's the plan. Uh and because it was something that was a little bit frustrating, uh later on in the week I decided: hey, I still have lots of work to do on these other two wings. So I took the time to start to copy over some of the designs from the north and east wing observation deck to the west wing.

Uh the south wing is still empty. So I've got lots of things to do if I'm creatively stuck trying to design something. I can just like look, I've got floors and and and windows and skylights that I need to work on. And they need some some testing. So I've got two more sections that I can do.

And I'm changing things ever so slightly. The main roof and main bulkheads are all staying the same. The main doors are staying the same. But the pattern on the floor, I'm testing out some different patterns. I'm also gonna be testing out some different shapes for skylights in the main area because I really think I like the skylights. During the day it's a much more pleasant experience, but they don't really work well with

the shape of the wing. I need to kind of either do horizontal skylights or maybe one big one or I need to figure out a different way to do it. Right now they're a little bit um They fight with the design. They kind of go in the wrong direction. So we'll have to see what I can come up with. I um I have one section that has lights in it, but even then you kind of have to cover them over. So

I I'd like to try and avoid having to redo all kinds of stuff. So I'll test it a couple more times and then I'll adjust the other ones once I get to it. But right now it is nice to just kind of log in. Not necessarily trim my brain off, but like spend a good amount of time making progress and know really all I have to do is like pop back together wings, count blocks, figure out like how wide is this floor, where are the details, where are the doors, where are the stairs.

rinse and repeat, you know, for the other sections. And I think at that point, the difficult thing, which is already starting to happen, as I'm walking around inside. I I I have to look at my compass. I have to look at the map to figure out which wing I'm in because they're all starting to look the same now. As opposed to like the unfinished one and the one that was, you know, just finished, like the very easy to tell apart, but as they start to all become finished.

It's more and more difficult. So I think I might have to like maybe color code them. I'm not sure what to do. Like I need to figure out some solutions there. Yeah, I think it's it's again good that you've got some kind of task you can do that feels like, Oh, I know how to do this now, like you perfected the design of it or, you know, got as close as you want to to perfection and then kind of carry on from there. It's good to have that stuff when you're creatively stuck. Like it was when I was

working on the Windy City and survival guide and I got the townhouse design figured out. I was like, Well now I just need to build like fifteen of these all in a row, more or less, and that was kind of the uh the the the thing I could do to to get some building done and feel like I was making progress but not have to worry about like I don't have to have to think of another house design for

until I'm done with the rest of this. So yeah, good to give your brain a little bit of space from the things that are proving to be a creative block and Yeah, I I think all in all it's gonna start to fill everything out and feel like a much more finished build, even if you're still working on the details of those little corners, right?

That's the idea. When I'm walking around going to like the uh the trader hall to get some quartz or uh to get some golden carrots or to uh you know check out a view or to go to my storage room as I'm traveling from one point to another. I don't want to walk through like this empty construction zone or in the case of these windows, giant holes in the wall. They're convenient now for me to fly out of, but like I need to eventually close them all up somehow.

And I I'm gonna try and get everything to that level and then I'll be able to especially now that I know what's coming with twenty six point two with uh sulfur and uh cinnabar. I can either plan to incorporate that, I can plan to just do it in a different building. I can pro proceed with like that knowledge and either leave room for it or not. And that way I can just kind of polish things up and and move forward. So uh we'll have to see. Like I I feel like

It's something that I do want to get to. Like you said, a finished state, but like at some point I want to take a break and go make some map art. And that's going to take some time. Like that's going to be some time consuming designs. But then once I have those things and they look like, you know, control panels or sci-fi things that I can come back with the maps and put them into the places that I want to have the details. Um I think that'll be a fun kind of like

Not to toot my own horn, but like a chef's kiss, like at the end. Uh but I want to get it to the point where I also want to try to get it to a point where I I w want it to feel as sci-fi as I can with like just the Minecraft blocks and then use maps and things like that as

accents as opposed to relying too heavily on something like that or a custom texture. I'd rather try to get as close as I can with as close to we are as vanilla. It's not a vanilla server, but it's like vanilla plus. It's we don't really deviate too too much, so we'll see. Yeah, good to uh see it's progressing though, looking forward to future updates. Thanks.

In the meantime, we should move on into the news for this week, because it is, of course, Minecraft Java Edition 26.1, which was released about the time we were recording the podcast last week on Tuesday, March 24th. The new features in twenty six dot one, which is of course subtitled Tiny Takeover, they've added new baby sounds for the wolf, cat, pig, horse, and chicken, along with adult sound variants for cat.

Chickens and cows, which have one new sound variant, and pigs have two new sound variants. The original sounds of each animal are used for a variant called classic, and every one of these animals will have a random sound variant assigned to it from the new variants and the original one. They've added a trumpet instrument when using a noteblock that is placed on a copper block. The sound is different based on the oxidation level of the copper block.

They've added the golden dandelion, a new type of flower that can be used to stop baby mobs from aging or start the aging process again. It's crafted from a dandelion and gold nuggets, and cannot be used on undead baby mobs or baby villagers. But the chief reason for that is that the changes in 26.1 include revamping the visuals of most baby mobs. This includes updates to both models and textures.

Some baby mobs hitboxes have changed to better suit the new models, and baby and adult rabbits have been remodeled and given new animations. Along with that, name tags are now craftable and can be crafted with one paper and one of any metal nugget.

They've removed name tags from loot chests in ancient cities and woodland mansions. Deep slate can now be directly crafted into its cobbled, polished, brick, and tile variants in the stone cutter. Stone can be crafted into cobbled variants directly using the stone cutter as well.

Along with that, some of the usual things have changed including the main menu background, panorama, they've tweaked some of the default JVM options, the algorithm that maps block and skylight levels to how bright things appear on screen has now been fully rewritten. And as a little joke addition they have removed baby Herobrian.

Uh in the trading changes that we've seen implemented recently, trades unlocked by villager professions are now generated using deterministic random sequences in the same way loot drops and bartering loot are. So re rolling a villager's trade still produces a randomized sequence of trades, but that sequence is now determined by the world sea. Along with that, master librarians no longer offer name tags, instead offering red candles and yellow candles for the price of three emeralds.

But when you're using the Villager Trading Rebalance experiment, Master Librarians will now have three trades available to ensure that an enchanted book trade is always offered, and you don't just get the candles. The Wandering Trader is now also offering name tags for the price of one emerald. Some technical changes in 26.1. The data pack version is now 101.1, the resource back version is now 84.

Game executables are no longer obfuscated, and the changelog links to another Minecraft.net article for more details on that. If a server's disk spacer space is low, a toast will now be shown to server operators. The game does now require Java version 25, and the included Java distribution is now the Microsoft build of OpenJDK 25. The report generator for item components has been renamed to default components and now outputs one file per any element that has default components.

The file structure of how worlds and their data are stored has been changed. The internals of how chunk geometry data is stored in GPU memory and how they are rendered has been changed, and the game will now save all data once. After the world has finished loading and the server has started up. There's a lot more detail in a lot of that, so for a full list of technical changes and a list of fixed bugs, too numerous to name here, although we have covered them on previous occasions.

In the snapshot newsreads for the show. You can check out the Minecraft.net changelog for Tiny Takeover, linked in our show notes at thespawnchunks.com.

So we haven't updated to Tiny Takeover yet, but I'm sure that's coming because uh it's been a week now. So usually mods that we use on the Citadel, which are just quality of life mods for the most part, are ready fairly quickly. I know that sodium was was ready the day of, I believe, that Tiny Takeover came out, but I'm just waiting for a few others to trickle in. My patron server is ready though, because they only use datapacks.

Uh it is mod ready, but I think it's only client mods that people might use. Again, quality of life stuff, camera mods, that kind of thing. Uh but vanilla tweaks, the data packs that I use both on the sigital and on my patron server have been updated.

So if anybody out there is is wondering or waiting, vanilla tweaks is ready to go. Uh and you can use those on the tiny takeover without having to worry about mods for uh texture packs and and different things. Uh although Uh one of the things that I'm looking forward to, uh which I know we've mentioned on the show before, which was

a vanilla tweak data pack and now is just built into Minecraft, which is the stone cutter recipes for deep slate and cobbled deep slate can now be made into all the deep slate variants. But that's also true of other stones as well, right? Like they made some other changes. Yeah, it's it's just um natural like silk touch. Stone can now be turned into cobblestone. So the Deep Slate one is the big change just because I think a lot of people

silk touch deep slate and then find that it can't be crafted into anything and they're confused because it's sort of the inverse of what stone is, where once it's cobble, you have to smelt it to make it usable as stone brick or anything like that. But that was one of the first things I did when I updated. I updated on Tuesday or, you know, a around that time, but obviously I was streaming on Thursday and back in my

beacon mine where I'm not really doing a whole lot with the baby animal side of Tiny Takeover. Um, I will probably try out the trumpet noteblock sound since I have a decent amount of copper lying around in various stages of aging.

Um but the first thing I did was check out the stone cutter recipes and just go yes and then go back to what I was doing, which was acquiring a lot more stone. But yeah, having carved through a decent amount of deep slate, even with the moss mining techniques I've been using in the lower levels just to speed up the process of getting all of this space cleared out.

I still have a ton of silk touch deep slate from that because I just prefer to use a silk touch pickaxe in general. I don't need all of the products of ores, so uh harvesting the ore blocks is more interesting to me and I have the option of fortuning them later. But yeah, like I I think it

It's a really good change just for builders' quality of life. I carry a stone cutter with me basically everywhere when I'm on a build project. I've got it in my bundle the rest of the time, so um while I haven't interacted with many of the changes of Tiny Takeover yet, I think I'm most happy with that.

Yeah, I have polished deep slate as one of the accent palettes in the command center. And just the other day I had to lay down four stacks of deep slate and then use my fortune pickaxe to mine it up and add it to

the stonecutter to then turn it into polished deep slate for buildings. So I will be very happy when that change comes in for sure. I haven't really given much time to wrangling new villagers and setting up new trades. I I mean we've got an old Trading hall and Dartmouth Medals that I could always go back to for librarians and a few other things and like enchanted armor.

Uh I only really want to add like a lapis trade and maybe some golden carrots where I'm at right now. So I I don't know if it's gonna be really worth it.

to rush to do that before I upgrade. It could also just be an interesting thing to just do the upgrade and then experience the trades as as they come, but I I'm not really too worried about it. I'm not sure if it's like a a deal breaker for me in terms of like I have to do something with an old version of Minecraft before permanently updating to the new one.

Yeah. The the funny thing was having gone back to trade with my villagers at my trading hall, I was confirming for folks in my Twitch chat as well that The master trades for pre existing librarians have not been altered. So if your librarian has a name tag trade for like twenty emeralds or whatever the prices used to be.

that's going to be there permanently unless that villager dies or, you know, has to you have to start from scratch with a new librarian. The other thing was I was not sure because some of my librarians are expert level but not traded all the way up to master yet, usually because they don't have a glass trade, and so that's like the higher tier trade that I typically go for in larger quantities.

Um so some of them are expert level and I wasn't certain if the new changes leading to them having like deterministic sequences of trades will now also overrule the fact that they could have candles because they've been updated follow this new deterministic sequence of trades, if they've already started down that path as a trader, does that mean their next their master trade could still be a name tag? Or is does is it definitely going to be candles? But either way

my trading hall will probably have both. And so I think it's quite nice to have the variety of that and be able to illustrate that on camera when I get the chance to show that, hey, once I finish trading with these librarians They're gonna have different trades from now on, without me having to dig up another you know, breed another couple of villagers and or or cure another zombie villager just so I can get the candle trade that I doubt I'll probably be using all that much.

Even the name tag trade, like considering how cheap name tags are, like I even for one emerald, I'd rather just make Yeah. I mean the crafting recipe now is is much more convenient, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm on a server where we've got a uh you know, now that I have uh six um I think it's Toolsmith.

that I trade iron with. Like I have unlimited emeralds with an iron farm and and toolsmiths. So like emeralds are really not that expensive. It's just the inconvenience of it. Like it would be way easier to just craft a name tag probably from things in my ender chest that I already have, than going all the way to somewhere to trade with a villager to get one. So yeah, I'll just I'll keep on keeping on. Although I that said, that would be a data pack that I probably have to remove from my

repertoire when we do update because then there'll be several different ways to do a name tag. And I'm pretty sure the new vanilla recipe is cheaper than the I think it's a vanilla tweaks recipe for craftable name tags. I think it's like string Uh and an iron ingot and a piece of paper.

So like it's more expensive than just the nuggets I think that you use to make the name tags now. Yeah, you'd be able to get nine name tags out of a single ingot. So you know, se seven ingots and a stack of paper and you're good for like a full stack of name tags. I think it's it's good. I think it's

Something that I I have not really had to rename too much stuff in uh in this world and I've done so Typically just for the sake of keeping that mob persistent, whether it's like a zombie in the iron farm or something like that, right?

Um and so th there's there's some things that I've name tagged just for the purposes of showcasing Easter eggs and things like that, but Overall I've not really done a whole lot with name tags, but I can see it happening for the mobs that you can also keep like a certain age with golden dandelions, if nothing else just for the purposes of

reminding yourself that that mob isn't going to grow up. Like I can see that being a really useful thing of like name tagging a little baby pig or something so that you're not waiting around going, Why is this one baby pig not growing up?

Because yeah, like that that at least indicates outwardly that something has happened to it when there are no other effects of the golden dandelion besides seeing some particles when you feed it to it. So that's uh probably a good idea to have name tags on deck when Yeah, that makes a lot of sense actually for keeping track of what what you've got growing and what you don't. Yeah, yeah. So that that

A couple of things I'm thinking about going into Tiny Takeover, but not rushing to do that stuff. We've both got big projects that we're working on, so I feel like this one is going to uh take shape slowly in in both of our worlds.

Um in the meantime, the other thing that's taking shape is the chunk mail dispenser for this week. If you'd like to email the show, the email address is spawnchunkmail at gmail.com. We're also using the same email address to track all of the email that we're getting sent for episode four hundred. So Send them to the same place and then you can see

But in the meantime, if you'd like to email the show, keep your emails short and on point if you can. It really does help us include them in the show more easily. And as always, let us know if you're a patron in the subject line, because we'd love to read some email from patrons as well. This week, Joel is going to read this first one.

First email comes in from Inc. Or it's about butterfly. Since butterflies were mentioned recently on the podcast, I'm going to share my idea for them with you. Butterflies would be passive mobs, slightly larger than bees, and they would come in all sixteen color variants. Brushing a butterfly would give you a dye of the same color as the butterfly. Breeding two butterflies with flowers would produce a caterpillar, the growth of which would be accelerated with leaves.

A quote unquote grown up caterpillar would climb onto a tree and turn into a cocoon block. The first stage would be similar to a lantern in shape, and the second would be a full block. Cocoons could only grow when positions under a leaf block and next to an upright oak log, allowing players to use them decoratively. Cocoons would also be dyable into any color for creative building, and if the butterfly hatches it would be the same color as the cocoon.

What do you think of this implementation? Incor the second has made the advancement, isn't it, skew? Yeah, I th it's a it's a fun one with the brushing uh element to it as well. Yeah. Um I was really struck by the cocoon idea, to be honest. Like I I I have my my reservations about the size of the butterflies, like the scale of them is something that might be kind of difficult to uh to to get across, but I think the cocoon idea is really cool.

Um not least because you get to dye the cocoon in the same way that you would dye like a sheep's wool or whatever to guarantee that the butterfly turns out a certain colour. But that also gives you so many more decorative options. And I was thinking about it and we don't have that many blocks that attach to trees in the way that stuff like cocoa beans do.

And depending on the design of this cocoon block, with them being available in sixteen colours, you can imagine players hanging them up as like a string of f fairy lights or something like that, right? So

if they're not going to grow from every surface that they're attached to in a similar way to how turtle eggs only hatch on sand, I think that opens them up for decorative possibilities. And also makes for a fun educational thing about the life cycle of butterflies, which is I know not something that is at the forefront of Mojang's development philosophy, but something that has certainly touched on some of the ideas they've added to Minecraft recently.

Yeah, I like the idea of the cocoon as well, especially if it can be removed and decorated with in two different versions. You know, like if you've got the smaller version, like they mentioned a lantern size or maybe like a cocoa bean size, and then you could also use it as like a full block. If you could use it as a full block and it was also directional, because like I think about how a beehive has like striations on.

And it would be cool if I mean imagine when I think about what a cocoon looks like. They're either like a spiral shape or they have like a horizontal kind of like banding to them. Yeah. And it would be cool if that could be changed depending on how you placed it. Like if like a log, if you wanted to have those bandings go vertical, you could place the the cocoon sideways and then or vertical depending on how you want to do it.

Uh but uh yeah I can see those being used as lanterns. I could see them being used as just like Even in in in a in a house where you want like a different texture that's not wool, it could be used as like a couch or a carpet or uh the back of a bed if you're making like an extra large bed, you know, design. There's lots of really cool implementations, especially with all the different colors. That would be a lot of fun too.

Um I I'm curious as to what like some of the darker colors would be. Like would do you get like a moth with a grey cocoon? Uh what does a black cocoon give you? Is it going to be Primarily the color of the butterfly, or is it gonna be like an accent color? You know, like think I'm thinking of like a monarch butterfly, which most people think of as like orange, but they're orange and black.

So like that might be a good butterfly to put in the black cocoon and then have a different one for the orange cocoon, something more tropical maybe. Um yeah, it's it's a really interesting idea. I do question the size of a butterfly larger than a bee. Like You you're you're going to hear those wings when they go by. You know, that's gonna be like a flapping butterfly, like a bird.

Uh I've whenever I've thought about butterflies in Minecraft, I usually think of them similar to fireflies, but a lot larger. Uh more like the scale of uh wildflowers. You know, when you're putting four wildflowers in a in a block, each wildflower is like what, six pixels? Something like that. I sort of envision Butterflies as particles as opposed to like an actual entity that's like got its own AI. And I kind of thought of them as more decorative ambient.

uh particles as opposed to a mob that has behavior. But that's interesting that that you know Incor went down that road. And if the butterfly is bigger than the bee, how big is the caterpillar? Like what are we talking about here? Like is it gonna be like small that turns into a cocoon or is it gonna be something the size of the bee? Like like how does that work?

Um, again, that could go both ways. Like that could be too creepy for people, or it could be super cute. Like if it looks like a Pokemon, then people are gonna be all over that, you know. But

If that's the case, can you then hit it with a golden dandelion to keep it as a caterpillar? Like if you want to have the caterpillar around specifically for like your garden or whatever, like do caterpillars have a a benefit or are they a pest? Because caterpillars usually in the garden is not a good thing. They usually eat everything. So I I don't know. I I I mean, we've talked about birds in Minecraft recently.

Maybe caterpillars are how you feed birds. Like if you want to breed birds, maybe you have to like get a butterfly and get a caterpillar and then use that to feed your birds. I don't know. Like I there's lots of crossover ecosystem stuff that could happen when you start to add these things into Minecraft, which I I really like. I also thought that the idea of m having the cocoon grow only in a very specific location was a neat way to

uh allow it to be decorative. Like it just it's has a very specific growth situation. Cause I read the email once and I was like, well, wait a minute, how do you keep it from growing, but then I realized that it's it has to be like not only just under a leaf block, but also attached to a log. So it's a very specific situation that most of the time in Minecraft you're gonna find it in the natural world, unless you're custom building trees. But that's

that's about it, which I thought was was cool. Uh it's funny that this was brought up because uh without knowing it, I watched a y little YouTube clip, a little PBS special. Over the weekend about Singapore and how they have a hospital that has been designed to have a lot of wild

growth around it. Like there's parks and green spaces that encourages like otters and birds and butterflies. And there's something like ninety-two species of butterflies that frequent this hospital garden and they have all these cool pictures of them. And so like when you think about

adding just 16 butterflies to Minecraft, there is way more than enough inspiration out there to figure out like what they might look like. So uh it'd be a lot of work for the art department, but it would look really cool.

Yeah, and I've wondered if um any modders who've modelled butterflies before have thought about reusing the glazed terracotta texture for their wings,'cause I imagine some of those patterns just mirrored on a butterfly's wings would make for pretty good design. I think the problem now is that w especially with the new additions of the baby mob Textures changing, they have really gone for a pixel consistent art style.

And so the butterfly's d wing detail is going to vary dramatically by size, and so you wouldn't really be able to use the glazed terracotta textures unless the wings were, you know, that large. And I don't necessarily feel like the size is quite right. I think the

the issue really is one of whether they have player interactivity or not, which um the email suggested it would because then they could provide dyes. Unfortunately I don't think brushing a butterfly once it's a certain colour for infinitely renewable dye is going to necessarily make sense because that feels like such a brute force replacement for the flower dye system.

that I I think even with the expenditure on brushes, assuming that it's going to take sixteen durability off of a brush the same way it does when you brush an armadillo for a skewte, it's still

Like the equation isn't quite balanced there. I feel like something is a little bit off with making dyes so immediately accessible that way. Although when you look at it a certain way, that is also how we get the different colours of wool, but then you're not really going to get the wool colours any other way than shearing them from a died sheep. So it it's it's it's an interesting discussion. I I think if player interaction is required, then they need to be a certain size.

Because you think about silverfish, like those in the real world are tiny, but we need to be able to attack them in Minecraft because they attack you, so you need to make them a certain size. Likewise bees, if you're interacting with them to breed them, you need to be able to click on them and I find that while bees hover, which works fine for that mob, I think butterflies in real life would probably be moving a lot more erratically, kind of more similar to how a bat moves.

And if you've ever tried to hit a bat with a sword, if you you know, w we're not the experts at at PVE, you and I, but like they are very difficult to catch if you're not sort of predicting where they're moving accurately, and they move so random. And so while butterflies could maybe come to rest on a block the way they do in real life, when they'll kind of settle on a plant, unfold their wings a little bit. Um it might be very tricky to interact with them while they're in the air.

And I don't know if that feels like an adequate way of balancing the die extraction mechanic, or if that would just feel frustrating as a player once you know that infinite die is basically right there, but you have to get it to come down and land on the ground first. I think I much prefer the idea that we've talked about in the past and the one you just brought up of having them be more like firefly particles.

And that really feels like the scale at which I think butterflies work, but obviously limits the amount to which they can be player and Um and also potentially limits how effective the cocoon idea is considering that you'd want these cocoons to be quite large if they're really going to be used decoratively and stand out from the environment.

in game. So I think there are a lot of really good ideas here. And I think if Mojang is looking to add insects in future, butterflies give them a lot of different possibilities. Like you said, moths could be involved as well and the amount of colour, the amount of, you know, different species, there's a lot to pull from there. So that seems like a a a good idea for the

From an education standpoint, uh one of the things that was in this Singapore video that I watched was uh the butterflies were attracted. They weren't like implanted into this environment. They just made the environment welcoming. So that could be a really interesting way to get a butterfly in Minecraft. Like rather than going to go out and catch one or see one in the wild and hope you find the right one.

If you build the right flower garden, you could have them spawn. Like the spawning conditions for the butterflies could be like, well, first you have to make a garden that would attract butterflies in the first place and then they will show up. And I think that could be a really fun way to to bring them in. Yeah, would certainly make flower forests a good place for them to spawn as well, and even more colourful as a result. Yeah.

Our second email this week comes in from Enoch with the subject of sniffer utility. Hi Joel and Johnny, been listening for a few months and the show has really leveled up my survival play. In episode 387, you mentioned the golden dandelion was a missed opportunity for the sniffer. I totally agree. If the sniffer becomes the source for these seeds, it needs a utility glow-up to match its importance.

Taking inspiration from the Happy Ghast, I think the sniffer should be able to be equipped with a harness. Because of its size, it should carry two double chests, acting as a heavy tank version of a donkey. To make them even more minecrafty, we should be able to use carpets on that harness to give them unique patterns just like llamas. Imagine a sniffer with a mossy or ancient themed blanket draped over its back.

Seeing a wandering trader occasionally arrive on a decked out sniffer would be the ultimate ancient travel advice. Would this extra utility make the sniffer worth the effort of a large scale farm, or is it destined to stay a decorative mob? Keep up the great work. Enoch died of sadness because he couldn't saddle his sniffer that never grew up due to the ancient dandelion. I really like this idea of having the um the sniffer

with baggage. Like I think it I get visually I think it would look cool. It reminds me of uh I'm trying to remember the name of the movie. It tuk tuk is the name of the character. Uh Rhea and the Last Dragon, maybe from Disney is the film that I'm thinking of, but Uh Tuck Tuck is a is a giant armadillo the size of a horse or larger, and so that sort of moves in the same way that maybe uh a sniffer would, and it just it's just an appealing, lumbering, friendly beast.

And I think that that's something that I like about the sniffer. I feel like whenever I've seen something like this domesticated in pop culture or animation, it usually has some sort of utility attached to it, whether it's a

a work animal on a on a farm where it's like hoeing ground and plowing the ground, or whether it's got, you know, chests and it's a traveling salesman. Think about the kind of stuff that you might see in the Avatar the Last Airbender, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Um but The Snifford suffers from the same major problem that a happy gas does. It's speed. I cannot imagine trying to get a sniffer across the landscape where you're gonna have trees and hills.

forests where the sniffer doesn't fit between trees. Like I just it's not going to be a pleasant ride or drag or literally a drag to get the sniffer from point A to point B. So I think there might be some limitations there of And then the carpet idea I do like. So again, like if you're going to have some control over the sniffer as some sort of rideable or

um pack animal, then I like the idea of putting the carpets on the harnesses, which actually isn't a bad idea for the happy ghasts as well, right? Like we I we've got the the dyable harness, it's a color, but there's no patterns to it. So you could use carpets to then add

a diamond pattern or a heart pattern or like whatever you want to do. The gass are certainly large enough that you could do that, as are the sniffers. I feel like a a a saddle or a harness on a sniffer would have enough pixels that you could make something look pretty good on the back of it. Um, I guess the only thing is that it's a lot of effort from the art team for two mobs that I don't see a lot of people using. Even as new as the happy gast is.

I have one floating around, but I can't tell you the last time that I was on top of it on purpose. uh other than moving it out of the way from what I'm currently doing. So I don't see it a lot in in Minecraft, uh I mean you were just on one for the tour, but like d does do you know if r does Ren use one a lot or that was just like a convenient thing because you don't have an elytra to fly around on the server?

I I think he maybe brought it for the tour because they can carry multiple people, and once you see that happening in a multiplayer context, it makes a little bit more sense, but I I totally agree. Speed is definitely the downside to both the Happy Ghast and the Sniff. And like they they are a little slow to be pack animals. I personally rarely end up using donkeys or llamas for items.

Like I I've not really done the llama caravan technique where you have like a whole sort of train of them following each other all that much. And and even donkeys In the survival guide world I barely use at all, because most of the time if I'm taking a couple of trips back and forth anyway, it's gonna take less time than wrangling a bulky mob the whole way to whatever my destination.

And that even goes for now that um, you know, you can bring horses across oceans without them sinking or and throwing you off and that kind of thing. Um I I think maybe it's that I I don't necessarily trust myself to bring all my items in one go anyway, so I'm probably gonna be going back for something, regardless.

Um, but also because once you get there, if you don't have an adequate place to like leash the donkey to a fence post or dig a hole for it, your inventory wanders off when you're not riding it. And I feel like that would be a concern, right? If you put all your valuable equipment or, you know, uh

shulker box full of sand blocks that you need to turn into glass or whatever, and your donkey just kind of wanders off into the tree line with it, you could be searching for it for a while. And so there's a certain level of convenience that they provide which isn't necessarily balanced by the hassle of taking

This is of course going to apply to many different gameplay styles and not everybody is like me zipping around on Elytra to go back and forth and creating nether portals for fast travel everywhere that I go, but I can see there being a couple of issues with it and

While I think the utility of the double chest idea for the sniffer is nice, I'm not certain that outweighs the difficulty of bringing the mob with you. The other consideration I had when reading this email is when you say two double chests, Do you mean that? Because when you equip a donkey or a llama with a chest, it looks like it has two chests as like the saddlebags, but not only are those not separate

in inventories, they are the same inventory. They become part of the mob. So you're opening the mob interface. rather than a chest interface. And you also only get fifteen slots max, because you've also got the rest of the horses interface there and your own inventory to all be packaged into a single UI element.

And beyond that I get the sense that it would probably be A little difficult to fit everything on the screen for people who are using smaller displays, which might be one of the reasons that they haven't incorporated something with a larger inventory as a like a pack animal. before. Um but you know, donkeys and llamas have fifteen inventory slots max Whereas if you're giving a mob a double chest, you're expecting fifty four slots of inventory.

You're probably not gonna get that out of the sniffer having a couple of saddlebag chests if you're using the same sort of logic that you're using when you apply a chest to a donkey, and you get about half the storage space.

as a as what you put if a a a chest was placed in the world. So I I'm curious how that would ultimately look and whether the sniffer would be a a really big, like, double chest sized backpack or whether some concessions would have to be made to Screen real estate and inventory space in that sense.

I wonder if there could be a way to have a shulker box on the sniffer. So like chest don't work. They have to be a shulker box. Make it more of an end game thing. Uh I'm just thinking that that could be interesting if it was then something that could be accessed by other players, right? Like if it just takes that shulker box and puts it on the back and moves it around. And then if that was the case.

You could then, depending on how you made it, have a track where the sniffer would be like if you wanted to do some sort of base that had like storage that was moving around, uh, or a mini game that had storage moving around, then that could be interesting. Like and imagine like a P V P arena where there's sniffers on the outside that have shulker boxes full of power ups or buffs.

But they're always moving. They're within a restricted area, but they're always moving. So you could have to r like, where's the yellow shulker box? Where is it run to? I need a I need a carrot so I don't die. Like I there could be some interesting stuff there if Um... If it was accessible to other players. Like if it wasn't just

Just for you. Can like can you do that? Like if you had a donkey and we were in a multiplayer situation, could I then access the donkey and grab stuff off of it as well? Yeah. Yeah. Like same same with llamas, like the inventory access isn't limited, but I feel like what you've got there is basically a two by three hopper mine cart at that stage. Like there are there are obviously like

The sniffers have a lot of character to them and there are a lot of ways that you can use them in in fun sort of applications like that. But um yeah, I I feel like there are some things that just feel almost like tacked on as ideas rather than feeling like, you know, they feel integral to the sniffer. Like I would want it to be something that felt like it it sort of respected the sniffer rather than just giving utility for the sake of it.

Yeah, of course. And and it's one of those things where you might want to do it in a way that has some sacrifice but then has some benefit. So maybe it's a different mob. that is slow on land, but it's really fast in water. So if you did want to move your items, like yeah, it's not gonna be convenient to walk across the meadow with it. But if you're trying to get from an island to the mainland or if you're trying to move to a new base that covers, you know, uh goes across an ocean,

It could be interesting to see like all right, well this is really slow on land, but it goes like a boat in water, but then again, like you already have the chessboat. So I guess the only advantage there is that you don't have to break the chessboat or empty it when you get to the other side. You could just kinda get out and keep on going. But

I like you'd have the balance for the gameplay there would be would be challenging for sure. You need a Nautilus with saddlebags at that stage, which is uh a different concept entirely, but like maybe the storage room inside that shell, who knows? Yeah, that would be soggy.

Our third email comes in from CJS and it's about color palettes and the woes around color palettes. Hi Pixin Joel. While I am looking forward to many of the sulphurous additions in the next drop, the most notable thing to me was that we would be getting yet another series of red blocks. From Cinnabar. As someone who just finished building a series of rainbow townhouses, I find that we are not lacking in this department.

A color that I did find lacking and I'm dreading getting into my personal project is green. I recall that mangrove was a similar color to jungle wood when it was first announced, and then the community floated green wood as a possible alternative. This was an exciting prospect, but unfortunately not executed on.

Since realism can factor into some of Mojang's decisions, I've been researching what trees have greenish wood and verwood piqued my interest, as it thrives in rocky soils on coastlines. Minecraft's Sony Shore biome jumped to mind. With its sprawling foliage and gorgeous yellow flowers, I believe this could be made into an interesting visual addition. Maybe a variant on flowering azalea leaves could also be in order. What do you think? Are there any other colors you feel like need more love?

I'd love to hear your thoughts. TJ agonized over what flooring to put in the orange bathroom for too long and decided to log off for the night. Yeah, fair, I think. We've all had that woes when we're redecorating the bathroom. Um, yeah, like I I definitely agree as far as green and blue are concerned. Like I I don't know about the the wood type specifically. I find that a lot of wood are either not necessarily the colour we think of them as

when they are harvested at the source. Like, you know, th there can be a lot of variety in the tones that you get in wood types, which are then emphasized by staining the wood different colours. And while wood stain I think would make a huge difference in Minecraft, I feel like it's a huge addition because then you'd want to stain every type of wood to get yet another colour out of it.

Um, I do wonder if Vera Woods just because of the way it is treated after it's been harvested is sort of look looks this green colour, but then if they were talking about getting logs out of the tree or or or harvesting it for plank,

Mojang would decide to make it a completely separate colour because, you know, that that was maybe a a bit better of a natural representation. I think we had this discussion when mangrove was originally implemented and people went, well, can mangrove actually get this red? And I think on the warmer side of the scale it could, but it really felt a little bit more like just the blocks that the game was asking for, like a redwood type, I think was a fairly popular decision.

I think a green wood type would be an equally popular decision if they decided to go with it, but I'm I'm curious if they decide that it strays too far away from the warmer selection of colours that they've already made available for the wood palette. It would be tricky. Uh looking up Vera Wood was interesting and I I do find that Mojang can be hit or miss with their greens. It depends on how you want to use them, but they seem to be pretty extreme. They're either neon or

or putrid, uh snot colored. And I would be worried that the Verawood or Greenwood might end up looking a little bit too much like dog poop if they try to make it look more natural. You know, like a little bit too much too m too brown green. It w it would kinda look sickly. Uh not to say that you can't add something that's green wood if you take it to somewhere's more imaginary, like maybe even though there's nothing else green

in the nether, I guess the turquoise of the warped wood is pretty close. But like if you added another mushroom or something in the the nether. Or maybe you added a mushroom to the mushroom island. Like, you know, maybe may that's where you get the green material. Maybe it's green hyphae. Maybe it's not green wood at all. Uh and that could alleviate the the need to be realistic in terms of where it comes from, but also realistic in terms of its color.

Um I'm not champing at a bit for green wood. Like I it would be nice, but like I at the same time you'd want to work with it with other woods. And I feel like at the moment, like you said, with them all being so warm, it would kind of clash. So you'd have to come up with a a way to to work with it in in a more unique way. And they could do that if they come up with a good trapdoor design, a good fence design.

Um, well I guess fences remain pretty much the same. I guess the door would be one. Um green shelving could be interesting'cause like having something that's green, especially if it's like a bright or a full green, maybe not something bright like neon, but something that's kinda like a proper

you know, emerald green from like the crayons of the colored pencil sets when you were a kid as a shelf could be really fun to decorate with in terms of trim, adding things to it, putting lights on it, that kind of stuff could be could be fun. Um

I know we mentioned briefly recently, uh, when we recapped Minecraft Live, that blue is also a color that I think is lacking from the Minecraft palette, and I think there could be more building options for that. Uh I don't know about blue wood though for the all the same reasons. Like I don't know if we need blue plank. uh to work into the existing wood palette because of how warm it is. Uh and this would I guess go back to the green thing as well. I was thinking that maybe terracotta or tile

Uh or some sort of stone could be blue. Uh, and then you could refine that into like, you know, your slabs and your stairs, your polished versions, that kind of stuff. But then also It would be really useful if it wasn't just like a regular blue. Perhaps maybe even if they went with like a lapis color that might be too dark for what people want to use it for. So they have two, like a cobalt blue, but also like a light blue.

'Cause w I mean, I know you and I immediately think like tile roofs. We can finally do those blue fantasy tile roofs with the blue color. Uh but Also if with a light blue, you could do like those nice Greek terracotta roofs. You could do uh a lot more stuff with with that. And I feel like that would be the way to go. I would I think maybe going into the cooler colors. for for this kind of kind of stuff. it might be better to go with stones as opposed to wood type.

Yeah, I think I agree, just because of how naturally occurring Stones can be that colour. And we already have a bit of that in the game. We have lapis and things like that. Um interestingly, this discussion came up around the same time that a Reddit user, I think a little while ago, maybe a week or so ago, asked if there was an updated version of the build palette graphic that somebody had made.

a few versions ago. I think maybe slightly before Tricky Trials came out. And uh I noticed this week that Reddit user nothing several eight nine two eight had posted So this is a build palette. I'll share the image uh on the video version and in our live chat. Um this is a build palette for basically versions twenty-six dot one onwards.

Um and it mostly just shows solid blocks and not their variants, like obviously slabs and stairs and things aren't included to show the volume of the different blocks available in each colour, but It's mostly solid blocks and a couple of things like trapdoors where the shading on them adds a little bit. And I think this shows that.

Deep blues, like cobalt blues and darker purples really feel like they are lacking in representation. Obviously like a closer look might show you that some colours do feel under represented, but they also have blocks with slabs and stairs in there, thinking about like Orange seems like a smaller patch, but you've got acacia wood in all of its variants.

And, you know, purple has purper stairs, but they're on the lighter side compared to the deeper range that you get out of something like a purple concrete. And I I think there's there's a bit of variety to be had in all of that, but blue really feels like it's got some of the fewest amount of blocks for that range, and also the fewest blocks that you can do anything with after you've just obtained the solid block version.

Um having looked at this though, I can see how sulfur and cinnabar provide a bit of representation in the form of materials with slabs and stairs. If you look at some of the the more gold range in the yellows. that strays quite dramatically from the slightly greener look that you get from bamboo planks, which are the ones that have all of the different variants and slabs and stairs and mosaic bamboo and everything.

And I can see there being a need for a stony looking block in the red palette as well. But that's absolutely why I think, going back to what you were saying, the blue stony range could use something that's got slab and stair variants, walls and things like that. And maybe it can look a little bit rougher in terms of a stone than the polished look you get from lapis blocks, but I do think it would really benefit builders to have something that could be worked with in

that kind of way, something that's got all of the variants that we're used to from the greys and whites and browns, because those are, as you can see from the palette image, very heavily represented in what we have in Minecraft's materials.

Something I'm pretty sure I mentioned in the render distance of that. Minecraft recap episode was a jade for green as like a mineral to to be used. And you could use that for all kinds of really cool stuff. Decorative trim, you could build green roofs, if you had all the stairs and the slabs, that kind of stuff. And Something else that I either mentioned then or just dawned on me now. I really like the tile texture for Deep Slate.

But it's too bad that it's not available in any other block in the game. I think it would look really cool with stone. I think stone tile would look cool. Terracotta tile would be amazing if you could do that in stairs and slabs of the different terracotta colors, like it would really open up a lot of possibilities. So I'd like to see them go

that road again with minerals or stone for these colors rather than wood because of that tile texture. Because I th a tile in the wood, I mean, while doable, it it wouldn't really be the most natural thing to add to the game. I think the tiles for stones would be a nice thing that Stones could have that woods don't, in the way that woods have got like trapdoors and things that that stone doesn't have.

Yeah. No, I I think I'm really looking for blocks that have a family of blocks rather than just individuals. And I think that's again what we're getting from sulfur and cinnabar by the sound of it and and I I'm

Never gonna complain about them adding new blocks in general because it always gives us something to play around with and something to sort of help merge the the palette and differ things and texture, but I yeah, I do think there are still some areas that feel dramatically underrepresented. really need a little bit of love in future updates.

With that, though, I think we're going to wrap up this week's episode there. You can find more information about our show and links to some of the stuff that we've talked about this week over at thespawnchunks.com. The music for the show was composed by me, and the Spawn Trunks is proud as ever to be a listener supported podcast.

If you're getting some value out of the show, consider putting some value back in. You can visit patreon.com slash the spawn chunks to join our community where pledging at any level gets you an invite to our patrons only Discord chat, any of the paid tiers. You can listen to the show live.

When we record it in Discord every Monday, we also have our monthly hangouts where you can share what you've been up to in Minecraft, and quarterly hangouts will be coming down the way where you can hear all the behind-the-scenes news about the podcast, the download numbers, the YouTube metrics, all of that. We currently have two hundred and sixty six patrons, which is down one from last week. There is always room for more.

Special thanks go out to our content engineer patrons Kinerbield, Hunter five, Jumbo Sale, Mindtrip Media, and that Penguin Dude for your support on this episode. And a shout out to Ginger Lily who just signed up for an annual membership at the Community Minor level. You can save 10% when you support the Spawn Chunks on Patreon for a full year with the annual membership option. So it's a really good one if you feel like supporting us for a full year. And trust me, we aren't going anywhere.

Sharing the podcast with your friends is the easiest way to support the show. It's free. Just tell someone about the Spawn Chunks and where they can go to listen to it. You can find us at the Spawn Chunks on social media. New episodes are available on Mondays on your favorite podcasting platforms. with video versions on YouTube and on Spotify.

Email the show at spawn chunkmail at gmail dot com. Once again we are looking for fun emails for episode four hundred. Include four hundred in the subject line, let us know if you're a patron. Keep the emails short and sweet. We would love to include as many as possible.

in that episode. It's gonna be a lot of fun. The RSS feed is linked on the spawnchunks.com. The patron only RSS feed is on the Patreon page, and that's where you can listen to the render distance, the extended version of the pod.

My name is Johnny, but online I go by Pixel Riffs. You can find most of what I do at youtube.com slash Pixelriffs where the Minecraft survival guide is currently in its third season. I also try to stream three days a week on Twitch when I can. I do behind the scenes work for my YouTube series there.

I'm also the voice of the unofficial Hermitcraft recap, which you can find through a quick YouTube search, and aside from that, I'm at Pixorifs on both Blue Sky and Instagram. Joel, where can people find you online?

Hi, we'll point everyone towards the Citadel Cafe, my other podcast about sci-fi and fantasy entertainment. Had a fantastic conversation with Steven this month about light and magic, a documentary about industrial light and magic, the effects house that's famous for Star Wars, Indian Jones, Jurassic Park.

It was a really fun combo. Uh that's available now. It's published on Saturday. And coming up on the show, we're going to be going and seeing Project Hell Mary. Steven has seen it. I will be seeing it. Johnny has seen it. So uh there's gonna be lots to talk about on the Siddle Cafe this month. You can also find me on Twitch and on social media at Joel Duggan. I'm very easy to find.

Currently spending some time in the sci-fi realm of things working on this command center that I talk about every time on the show. And uh it's making progress slowly if you want to come and hang out and see where I'm going, then it's twitch.tv slash chill.com. Thanks for visiting the Spawn Chunks. The world outside is infinite, but the palette has a long way to go.