The Spawn Chunks 399: Here Lizard Lizard Lizard

Welcome to the Spawn Chunks, episode number 399 for Monday, April 27th, 2026. This is a podcast all about Minecraft available across all major podcast platforms, including a video version that goes out on YouTube. Spotify. If you're enjoying the show, consider subscribing wherever you're listening to this. My name is Johnny, but the internet knows me as Pixelriffs, and joining me from the Lego Corner is Joel Duggan. Hi Joel.

Hello, we spent the render distance, which is the pre-show, talking about my new Lego set, which is the Lord of the Rings Sauron's helmet set, which was sent into me for an early birthday gift. Uh so thanks again for that, Cosmic. And uh we then transitioned into talking about the Lord of the Rings, which I might be rereading this summer and

Johnny is steeped in Lord of the Rings, has come on the Siddle Cafe a number of times to talk about rings of power and Lord of the Rings. So that was most of our pre-show. And if that is something that would interest you, check out the render distance. It's the extended version of the program. You can get it at

the spawn chunks on Patreon, members get access to about twenty minutes of pre-show, about fifteen or twenty minutes of post-show. Sometimes we talk about Lord of the Rings, sometimes we talk about Star Wars, Lego, sometimes we talk about Minecraft. But you can get all of it. if you sign up on patreon dot com slash the spawn chunks and you get access to other things as well, like the Discord as well as the monthly Minecraft hangouts. We recorded our April hangout on Saturday.

that got published yesterday and that's where we hang out with members of our community and talk about what they've been doing in Minecraft. And coming up in the first weeks of May, we're gonna have a quarterly hangout. And that's where Johnny and I talk about behind the scenes, YouTube metrics, download numbers, plans for the future for the show. So if that's something that interests you, check out patreon.com slash the spot.

In this episode, we're going to be unpacking the latest snapshot from Mojang and circling back to our discussions about what future mob editions could look like with a discussion about lizards, which is long overdue after our insects and birds discussions that we had before mine.

Live. But we'll also give you a heads up once again that episode 400 is our next episode, and for these milestones, we like to do something a little bit different. So this one's going to be an all-email episode in which you can write in with a question about

Basically anything. It doesn't have to be about Minecraft, it can be basically just a big QA with me and Joel. So we'd love it if people wrote in. You can put the episode number four hundred in the subject line of the email to let us know that's what it is for. Keep emails short and to the point so we can include as many of them as possible. But consider it kind of like a QA or AMA kind of style episode. And we'll also be releasing the full episode

next week for everybody. That includes the render distance all recorded on video and audio. So that should be going out on everybody's feeds. Exactly the same. So you can see behind the scenes a little bit about what our patrons get as supporters of the show. So what have you been up to in Minecraft this week?

Well this week I finally have something to show you from the surface for once, uh, because I have I have still been working on the beacon mine, it is down to the last two layers, and I hope everyone's ready for me to talk about something else. Um and by something else I mean building the same redstone contraption for at least a month.

But uh on the surface, uh back over by my spawn area, as I mentioned last week, I finally have screenshots of the somewhat more finished little uh animal pens and pastures that I was working on as part of a bit of a dive into tiny takeover.

I've tried to include screenshots that had the baby mobs in where I could. Some of them have had the golden dandelion fed to them, so they'll be staying that way permanently. Others not so much, and I was just breeding a couple to get some extra little piggies and and chicks in the shot. Um, but I'm planning on including um rabbits, goats and probably the sniffers that I have as well in that same area, plus warm and cold variants of the mobs that have them, like the chickens

uh the cows and the pigs. I keep thinking sheep have them but sheep it's just the different colours are more likely in different colours, so I've made sure to include at least the natural colours of sheep. Since I already have a wool farm that's got all sixteen colours covered, I figured those could at least look like the ones that you find natively in the wild.

Um but yeah, the sheep pen has more of like a little lean to shelter kind of thing and like a water trough for them, but is a lot more open uh of a field and just has like wildflowers growing and a little bit of terrain texturing. The chicken coop is more enclosed. It's just a big kind of coop up on stilt.

Uh I've got a little bit of like interior detail in there with like hay blocks and scaffolds so it looks like the chickens at least have some sort of structure in there, but it's only like a block-high entrance, so the chickens can come in and out, but the player isn't really supposed to be going in and poking around necessarily.

But around that I've just got a few hay bales and dry grass and things like that. I'm trying to use a bit more of the spring to life uh foliage that we got added last year along with the tiny takeover stuff from the Um the pig sty I'm actually really happy with. There's another little lean to and more of like a barn type shelter there with nice rounded mangrove roof, and I wanted to make the pig pen look the muddiest out of all of them.

Podsole and grass path and and uh other bits and pieces of dirt sort of mixed in there, along with a few beets and carrots and stuff growing around the yard, as if the pigs have like buried some of the root vegetables when they've been kind of

scraping around in the mud and like a few crops have started growing plus gives me a little bit of food that if I want to go in there and breed the pigs I can very easily feed them. And then last of all, I'm still working on the actual field for them, but the cows have a field that was

Sort of modelled after the same style of wheat fields that I've done, just with rows of wheat, but I decided to make it look like a disused one of those. So there's a few hay bales still knocking around, there's a few planted wheat crops that are just growing slowly. And then the rest of it is just a big kind of rhombus shape enclosure with a barn on one side made of mangrove with a roof made out of pale oak.

Um kind of a typical barn sort of material structure, but with more of a steep pitched roof instead of the typical barrel shape that you find on uh some kind of typical cartoon looking barn Uh and yeah, overall this area is still kind of expanding, but it's all in the in the lee of that giant airship island that I built a while ago. So this is all just adding to that overall picture as you look down over that landscape now.

It's cool to see it expand beyond just the wheat field underneath the ship. It starts to have more of a of a history and multi use case and then you've got opportunities to have paths between the different fields and connect everything with roads and

And stuff like that. I uh I really like the look of the the pig sty field and the um and the chicken coop. It's funny how context matters so much when you have a versatile block like the shortgrass because next to a wheat field it looks like short wheat. But next to um as your blue A, it just looks like a plant. Like it just looks like a flower or a flower in grass, right? It doesn't it doesn't look like wheat out of place. Uh which is really, really cool. And it's nice to see

that diversity, like'cause I think a lot of people would see the short grass and immediately think to put it next to wheat always. But like when you break the rules a little bit with the right context, it it really does It really does work, which is which is awesome. Again, it's one of those things where we've had emails about this in the past. It's too bad that you can't use the golden dandelions on some crops because

the half-grown nature of the crops in the cow field. It would be nice if you could keep them that way, you know, and not and not have it be eventually just all be full grown wheat.

Yeah. I guess you could just harvest it from time to time and replant it and then would just kind of slowly grow up. But I like the variety of having the different textures and different heights and stuff like that. And the the muddiness of the pig pen is is working really well too. I um I'm sorry to say this to folks at home, but I cannot unsee That the baby sheep. I know it's their nose. I know it's supposed to be their nose, the little pink nose, but it looks like a mouth to me.

Yeah, little shocked face. It just yeah, it just looks like the sh the little baby sheep are constantly walking around going Yeah, exactly. Strange thing. That's what it's like to be a baby sheep in general, I feel like. There's a lot of stuff out there that's kind of startles the Yeah.

One of the things I realized having done this is that there are actually slightly different mechanical ramifications to keeping some mobs young. And it really came through with the sheep, particularly, because baby sheep. eat grass almost constantly compared to the adults. Obviously the adults do it to regrow their wool. Mechanically speaking, that's what it's for. And I don't know if the baby sheep eating grass contributes to them growing up faster, but

The baby sheep, as they're running around, they are eating grass more often than they are not eating grass, as far as I've seen. And so if you wanted to have a smaller field for these, you would end up If you fed one of them a golden dandelion, probably losing it all to dirt. because of the amount that they just walk around reverting those grass blocks to dirt by by eating the grass. And so I realized that my landscaping here had to be fairly deliberate.

And while I think there's probably still a couple of gaps in the wall where grass could spread if the entire interior of it was dirt. I also ended up making the field really large so that if I have a bunch of baby sheep in there, they're not just gonna eat all of the grass blocks and leave it with nothing left. And I added some moss in and a couple of other textures just to make sure that it felt like there was still some greenery around or a little bit of textural variety.

But they are genuinely much faster at breaking down all of the grass into dirt nearby. And I as I saw that I realized That's not something that the regular sheep are gonna do, and that's something that this sheep is going to do forever now I've fed it to golden dandelion.

So that's actually something to consider. If you're expecting to have a lot of baby sheep in a certain area, you might want to be a little bit more deliberate about which ones you feed golden dandelions and which ones you let grow up. You might need to have like a water dispenser or a piston powered fence to like

physically rotate the sheep to different pastures just like you have to do in real life with uh with a a sheepdog, you know, you just move them around. Uh that's wild. I would have thought that it would have been a cute animation to have the sheep

Eat the grass and make the noise. I didn't as you were speaking, I didn't realize it was actually going to strip the block. I thought it would just happen, but then not really affect the environment. But if it works the same way that the adult sheep does, then that's that's odd. me it it it works that way and that's the kind of thing that like the mob griefing commands the the game rule you can toggle turns off.

But obviously that prevents natural like sheep farms and wo wool farms from working the way they do with the observer and everything. So yeah, like th there's there's clearly like a couple of pitfalls to this that I wasn't expecting to begin with. And it's very minor, but it's something that as builders we tend to think about quite a lot. So yeah, I I fortunately it seems like the sheep are the only ones that do it all that regularly.

You might also see that behavior from the horses as well, but I think even the foals tend to eat grass less regularly. uh than sheep seem to. So yeah, that's just somet just an observation. Just something that I I didn't expect to have to think about with the tiny takeover stuff. But once I fed that sheep the golden dandelion and it was just eating, eating, eating, I realized it's just gonna do that forever.

Yeah. And pigs don't do that at all. They just'cause you the player has to hand feed them, I guess,'cause I mean pigs generally I don't know if p I mean I imagine pigs ge eat everything, so I imagine they would eat hay and grass if you gave them an opportunity, but most of the time when I think about what pigs eat, it's usually not that. Like it's usually feed that's provided by the farmer or

scraps or something like that, um not a bale of hay. That that's I mean that could be just miser f misinformation from growing up with storybooks and thinking about what pigs eat and being a city boy and not really sp spending any time on a farm. Uh but yeah that's That's interesting that it's all the the farm animals that naturally eat hay and grass just kinda do that as part of their like their animation cycle. Um

What do pigs have anything like that? I know they don't eat the grass, but they do anything specific that I can that I think of? Like do the baby pigs do anything cute? Not really. I mean the baby pigs are quite cute. Like I I think having spent a bit more time with the textures, I think they're all pretty great. Like I I don't have the problem with the single pixel eyes that I think a lot of people who are more sort of Minecraft texture purists.

do. And I I think just watching them like run around and be cute is fun um for for a you know a short amount of time. And I I went looking for some of the other baby mobs that I wouldn't have been able to include in this, and I haven't found baby squid spawning anywhere.

I believe they do in Java edition now, but I'm having a hard time tracking one down. So that might be something that if I want to make like an aquarium at some stage, it'd be fun to bring one of those in. But since you can't breed squid, you can't make one kind of bespoke. So I'm I might go looking for those in future, but even just spending a little bit of time whizzing around a river with Elytra and sort of checking in on newly spawned squid, I didn't see any baby.

So I'm I'm curious if those are actually in the game or if there's something that only spawns when you use a a spawn egg on a squid in create. Um but yeah either way, uh exhibitions of tiny takeover stuff is now starting to pop up in the survival guide world and I will continue to tinker with that stuff in the background. Um in the meantime, I am really looking forward to actually building the giant version of David that's in the

the underground area now and like I said, this Tuesday, hopefully if I can get a stream together on Tuesday, um I'll be doing the last two layers of that and then all the digging, as far as I'm concerned, is done. And it's just onto building red So looking forward to turning that particular page and getting on with the next chapter of that that project.

Well I'm not on the next chapter, but I'm on another level. Uh I am now building level four. Even though the outside of levels two and three are not done, uh I just I need to figure out what's happening on the top before I I can work in what's happening in those midsections. And so I decided to work on something that I knew I wanted, which was bay doors on top of each wing leading into an octagonal landing bay.

Where you can basically take off and land in all four directions. Uh the tops of these things sort of look like an aircraft carrier. So I kind of wanted to lean into that and have one f it's basically for me. I need a way to get into this so I can get into it on the bottom floor, but I can also kind of fly into it with Elytra and have a nice big open space to land in and then take an elevator up or down depending on where I want to go.

And so I started working on uh what was just like rough scaffolding on level four. I knocked it down by two or three blocks because I wanted it to be a little bit squat. Things were starting to get a little bit too tall for me. And I took the shape. of the octagonal doors that I had done in the third level and kind of translated that up to the top. So

I it liked the layers of like smooth quartz and uh deep slate, polished deep slate as like layers of mechanics in the door. I also brought in some of the orange. So there's an orange stripe on the outside of the command center. And as I was trying to figure out what blocks to use, everything was just feeling black and white and gray. And I thought, wait a minute, one of these inner layers, like I could totally just put next to

the quartz could be a brighter color. So I'm still on the fence. I tried it with sandstone, which uh sandstone and orange terracotta is the color that I used in the other parts of the color outside the command center. And so it matches quite well with that. But the other thing that matches really well and works with the quartz and deep slate is copper, waxed copper blocks. There's a little bit of a difference in texture because

A full block of copper, I like that better than the cut copper, but there's no stairs in the full block of copper. It's only the cut copper stairs. So I've used both. And I feel like they do work. It's just a matter of like, is it close enough to the orange on the outside? It's not directly next to it. I don't know that it matters. It does look a little bit more technical, so I like it for like a landing bay door.

So I've just I've done a couple in copper and I've done a couple in sandstone. I'm just kind of like leaving them there and flying around and working in the area and deciding what I like what I like better. Um I have more access to to copper, although I think it still works. I think I have a data pack on the server where I can dye sand so I don't have to worry about like collecting red sand from Badlands. Like I can just collect sand in general and dye it. Um which is which is nice.

And then I've got uh another layer of uh lights. There was lights above the door and as I was trying to fill in the ceiling I thought, you know what, I could expose these lights to not just light the door, but also have like a little strip of you know, uh landing light or some sort of light indicator on the exterior. And when I take my breaks on stream I fly far away, stand on a mushroom and just kinda like let the day pass as I'm out getting a cup of coffee or whatever.

uh in the kitchen and I noticed that it looks really cool at night now. Like the more lights on the outside on this level four looks really, really interesting. As well as the level three observation decks are all lit up now. So those long, thin windows are lit up at night.

But then there's a uh there's a lack of light at the bottom. So I'm noticing like as I'm working on level four, there's things about the other parts of the command center. It's like, oh, I'm gonna have to bring that up so it doesn't feel like a a light bulb floating on a big black shadow. Like I need to kind of like make it lit from uh below somehow. But I haven't finished the roads yet or even thought about them. So that could be how that all comes together.

Uh and then finally wrapping around the walls of this thing. I'm realizing I'm missing some screenshots, but I've decided on diorite. Uh polished diorite is going to be the section between the doors, the the last octagonal design is stone and then it wraps in like a flat uh polished diorite surface, which matches the the main kind of like housing of of the other wing s uh section.

And so I I I will need to add stuff on top of it. Like there needs to be details and grebling and I tried adding a window and it didn't really work. So we're just gonna go with something solid. Maybe I'll put like vents or some other sort of like technical looking thing on the side that I haven't really figured it out. But that's kind of where I am with it. I I've noodled it around a little bit on the inside with a a an attempt at

doing a landing pad, kind of taking some inspiration from No Man's Sky. I'm not sure if you remember or if you've watched anybody, but when you land in any kind of space station in No Man's Sky, you land coming in on the landing pad, and then the landing pad itself rotates so that when you get in your ship to leave, you're pointed in the right direction. You don't have to turn around in the air. You can just like shoot straight back out. And I was thinking like

Obviously, well, I can't do that in Minecraft, but I making it look like it could could be kind of fun. So I'm trying to think about how the floor pattern is gonna work out, but I can't. do what I normally do, which is iterate all four landing bay designs and then pick one I like because I still want to add some depth and design to the ceiling of the main chamber. And as soon as I add the floor in the

uh landing bay, my access to the ceiling becomes very, very narrow. Like you have to squat to move around. And so I'm thinking like, man, I should probably sort out the ceiling before I build on top of it and really make myself have to go through the like the amount of pain of like scooting around underneath here or having to use a happy ghast inside and like

like Michelangelo paint the ceiling. So I I need to figure out what I'm gonna do with that ceiling at some point too. So I'm kind of like bouncing back and forth between what's happening in my head and what I know I like. And right now what I know I like is the exterior. So I'm kind of working on that. And then I'll figure out the rest as as I go. But it's fun to have the top on it. It's starting to feel uh it's starting to feel like

putting the cap on something or or putting like the f the the last kind of not last layer. There's gonna be something on top of this that's like a radar dish or some sort of sensor array, which I have not designed yet. But uh it's not going to get mu any taller as far as like rooms and chambers and expansion. It's really just kind of like coming down to the last little bits now. But I'm happy with it. It's it's it's come together quite nicely.

Yeah, given the size of the rest of the structure, this probably feels like a lot smaller of a project to work on as like the individual module of it and you're like, I don't have to rebuild this entire thing three additional times once it's done. Uh even if it's like yeah, rotational inside of there. I do get no man's sky vibes from it and it's funny that that hasn't come up sooner'cause I know you've played a decent amount of the game, but like yeah, the um

Something about like the white and orange combo with the red sandstone really says No Man's Sky to me. And it's the slightly kind of heightened cartoony version of it. because I actually like the red sandstone more than I like the copper. Controversial for me, I know, as Copper's number one fan in this game. But um yeah, like I I can see the merit to it having that sort of more constructed like um, you know

faceted look to it and and the the the border on those copper blocks looking a bit more kind of technological. But I think for the aesthetic of this so far and how clean a lot of the other material is, I feel like really the red sandstone feels better next to the quartz. F for my money at least. I'm not gonna influence your decision too much, but like, yeah, I I think the red sandstone to me

stands out more and obviously looks more unified with the other material you've got elsewhere on the design. So that's that's the direction I would go. And and also that feels like the most no man's sky look to me, is those very clean kind of like high saturated colour on sort of pearly white look, I think it it it works really well.

Thanks man. Yeah, I I'm leaning sandstone as well. I I might try to use copper somewhere inside, so like to echo the orange or someplace where I really need it to look technical. I could maybe use the copper copper there, but But yeah, I for me, I it would have been a harder decision to make if the stairs in copper were

regular stairs, not cut copper. If there wasn't a difference between those, it might be a little bit better. Cause I've used that kind of polished block with a with an edge, with a beveled edge to it everywhere. Like tough, polish tough, polished diorite, polished Uh Deep slate. Those are the three main blocks in the palette. And so it feels pretty natural to add copper, but then when you start getting into cut copper, it breaks that pattern and it starts to get

It starts to feel different. Like I can sell those three polished blocks as metal plating, but with cut copper, it somehow reads differently in my imagination. And that's just a personal'cause subjective thing. Um but yeah, we'll have to see. I also have done this a number of times where I've done something in the command center where I say that really looks good, but not here.

And so I'm trying to categorize this like this copper really works as a door. It really works as a technical support beam. Maybe I can use it in a different building. Just not here. You know, like if I did something with like prismarine and copper, that could look really well, you know, together in a different build for a different function. You know, so I'm I'm trying to keep those in mind. So it's not bad. It's just not the best for this particular build.

Yeah, for sure. Like something that you can store away for later, like, you know, the the the sort of draft ideas that are probably gonna see the light of day in other projects, it makes a lot of sense.

Um let's move on into the news for this week. We have Minecraft Java Edition twenty six dot two snapshot four to talk about. To quote the release article, with this release we have added in language support for two new languages and made some changes to the sulfur cube and the sulfur cave biome. Also in this release, peaceful players can now spawn hoglins, piglins, and sulfur cubes.

So the new features in Snapshot 4, they've added Swiss French language support to the game, along with Chuvash language support. The sulfur cube has had a couple of changes, naturally spawned small sulfur cubes now have the correct size, and the outer texture of the sulfur cube has been updated. Sulphur Caves have also had a couple of changes. Granite and tough blocks are now dispersed between sulfur and cinnabar blocks, and the sulfur spike clusters have been made slightly shorter on average.

Major changes in this snapshot, the hoglins, piglins, and sulfur cubes now spawn on peaceful difficulties, and they've added sounds for when using a bucket on a sulfur cube. In technical changes, the datapack version is now 103.0, some additions to the attributes of nameplate. allowing players to control how far away a nameplate is visible. And the resource pack version is now 86.1, which among other things adds telemetry to log issues with the Vulcan renderer that was added in recent snapshot.

Fixed bugs of note in Snapshot four include the fixes for piglins and hoglins not spawning naturally on peaceful difficulty, along with sulfur cubes not spawning naturally on peaceful difficulty. A fix for lava buckets now remaining filled server side when emptied into flowing water, and wet sponges no longer being removed from the inventory server side when placed in the nether,

And games crashing upon startup on some Mac systems has also been fixed. So hopefully Mac users will see a few fewer crashes to see the rest of the changelog, including additional fixed bugs and whatnot. Head over to Minecraft.net or check out the changelog article, we'll link that in our show notes at thespawnshunks.com.

I'm on board with the changes to the sulfur cube text. I um I didn't know that I needed it. I kind of just accepted that the big black eyes were probably gonna be there to stay. But the fact that they've changed the eyes to be a warmer, kinda like deep dark brown with some lighting

texture to them I think works really well and it kind of takes that older look to the pixel art that was existing and brings it a little bit closer to what Minecraft has been doing with like the new animals and some of the new things that they've they've textured in recent years. So I quite like it. I think it looks

It almost makes the if you know that it had black eyes, it now looks like it still has black eyes, but they're translucent black eyes, and so they read as kind of like a brownie, like transparent um texture as opposed to like a solid black and I think that works really well.

Yeah, agreed. I think it works better for the overall hue that the rest of the texture has. That kind of like we'll call it like sickly yellow white. It's like a little bit like darker than the sort of bone colour that you get from bone blocks. But yeah, I agree. I think the eyes look l like a a a decent change and have a little bit more of that modern shaded style to them. What did you think of the new cave generation for sulfur cave?

I I think it's good. I think it's nice to have some more transitional blocks in there. I think granite is a good choice for working with both sulphur and cinnabar as sort of a transition between those two materials. I have still still seen a few people giving mostly constructive feedback on the overall design of sulfur caves and the sort of visual direction that they have. And I think the difficulty is that The most iconic images people share of real life sulphur pools are

aesthetically very striking. They're the ones that sort of have concentric rings of colour, the kind of Yellowstone Geyser sort of look to them, or there's sort of very deep sort of cyan water with that kind of yellow ring around the outside. and lots of colour and the sort of concentric ring design feels so strong in those that players I think have based their imagined ideal of sulfur caves on that and not what actual sulphur caves look like.

the sulfur pools are very kind of distinct, but if you look at the way sulfur affects cave environments and sort of um you know forms naturally in the walls of those kind of caves. the caves themselves are a lot more dull and they're a lot more varied in terms of the texture and the the the scope of what the cave sort of forms as. And If you do a quick sort of Google search for sulphur cave as opposed to sulphur pool, you'll start to see the differences and those really sort of

seem to be met in the middle by what Mojang is going for, with there being still all this fairly colourful material and it kind of spreading to the ceiling and everything. But it's um it's a bit more subtle, I think, than the sort heavily saturated, very, very bright version that we see in sulfur pool. Um so I think things are headed in a good direction overall. Um the beauty of the in-game cave environments is still very heavily dependent on how terrain generation suits the buyer.

And so there might be some areas in which you find a really aesthetically pleasing sulfur pool cave that's in a larger cavern and has a bit more of like the sulfur spikes around it and the terrain has been able to form up in such a way that the granite helps blend between the sulphur and the cinnabar. And then you're probably gonna find a narrower cave where it looks a little bit more jumbled and random and there's not as much space for the aesthetic of it to really shine through.

And so it really depends quite heavily on what your seed provides the first impression they're going to make. And so I think it's worth if you're assessing this and sort of giving feedback to the team on how the sulphur caves look. Fly around in a world for a little bit and don't just settle on the first sulfur cave that you find. Try and find a few different examples of how they look in caves, and I think you'll get a much broader overall picture of what sulfur cave generation looks like.

I think that's true of all the caves, right? I mean like I if you run into a lush cave that is like a spaghetti tunnel, it's cool. But it's nothing like the football field of Lush Cave that I have underneath the Mushroom Island. Like it's it's mind blowing how big and crazy it looks. Um and in that light I like the changes that they made to the sulfur spikes where they don't grow past five or six blocks. And so it addresses something I think that you talked about last episode, which is like the

ever growing sulfur spike. Like if you're in a a loaded area, is this sulfur cave just gonna be overgrown with this stuff eventually? And the answer is no, not anymore. Uh it's gonna have some shorter spikes, which is which is nice. Um, I agree. I think granted is a nice addition and transition to Cinnabar. I wasn't reading it as a transition from sulfur to cinnabar though. I was reading it as a transition from whatever the cave is made of to cinnabar. So like rock or like stone or

or or andesite to cinnabar. I thought that the granite really worked well in that way. I don't mind that cinnabar and sulfur don't have anything that blends the two. I think they're fine butting up against each other in this cave. I think it's just like a mineral deposit. I don't really look at it like, oh oh that's too hard. I do think that tough is maybe

like the best choice that we have to go from stone to sulphur'cause of the green that's in tough, but like it still doesn't feel like as natural a transition as granite does between stone and cinnabar. Going from stone to sulphur. I there's nothing in the overworld that I think really works. Enstone maybe, but like that's not you're not gonna put that in a cave.

Um, maybe sandstone, but again that would feel strange. So I I'm not really sure what they could could do in this particular context. But tough I think is kinda like the the best that we have at the moment. Uh and there is like I said green and tough and that works with the the gross green that they've got in in the sulfur.

Um I thought that that the cave generation looks pretty cool and and I would agree that you know like the the cooler terrain that you get the cooler the cave generation is is going to be in general. To a point that you made a couple of episodes ago, I it's I think it's important that some of these sulfur caves are also inspirational. So like if it looks good but not as good as you want it to be, make it as good as you want it to be. Like go get some nether rack and put that between the granite

and the Cinnabar and add another layer of of transition. You know, like what other blocks could you go to the end and get some end stone? Could you go to s to get some sandstone? What other things could you put in with the sulfur that would make it look more interesting? And like yellow concrete powder, like maybe amp it up, push it more yellow. Like I don't know. There's things that you could do, I think, if you decided to live in a sulfur cave outside of dealing with the spiders.

um than that you could do to like spruce it up a bit. Yeah, I agree. And I think the same is true of sulphur springs. I don't think we've seen any changes to those since they were initially implemented, and I'm curious now that the team has included tuff and granite in the composition of sulphur caves, if they might introduce that into sulphur springs to add a bit more variety, because those are still elements that I've seen a lot of players

Again, constructively talk about like these could be better looking from a surface perspective, both in terms of their visibility and in terms of the variety that they add to surface terrain and the way you would want some of those features to look naturally. Those I think are also prime candidates for, like we said. overhauling from a player perspective to look how you want them to look, but also yeah I think there's maybe a bit of room for them to improve before the full release of this drop.

And that's something where granite might be cool surrounding a sulfur spring in a bad lands or a desert. Yeah. Uh or I guess even in in a grassy plain situation,'cause it would look pretty good next to dirt as well, between sulfur and dirt. Um, but then tough might be better in a taiga or, you know, another greener biome.

Uh, that would make sense. Has there I don't know if I don't think they have done this. Has has there been anybody that has found a sulfur spring underwater? If there's a sulfur cave underwater And the next the closest surface is the ocean floor, do you still get a sulfur spring?'Cause that would look really cool.

Maybe you do. I haven't looked for any specific examples of that. So yeah, it it might be possible. I think the caves themselves are supposed to generate more frequently in mountainous terrain, though, so that might be part of the. fewer of them in ocean biomes, but I don't think it's impossible for it to happen. I'm just curious if yeah if the the feature itself will generate

I think it makes sense that the sulfur cube is now spawning for peaceful players. I mean I th it's very very much a fun let's see what the players can come up with and mess with uh kind of mob and to not allow that you know, four peaceful players is kind of a loss. So

I I think that that makes a lot of sense. I guess the piglins and hoglins just kinda came along for the ride because technically they're neutral mobs. Yeah. Uh although I'm slightly jealous of peaceful players because they can now go to the nether and open up any chest they want and not have piglins get mad at them. Yeah. For opening up your own stuff. Uh so'cause I have to wear a gold helmet in the nether to make to make ha uh piglins leave me alone.

Um and I thought hoglins were aggressive. Like I thought hoglins were not neutral. Like I thought they were actually going to attack you no matter what. Yeah, it's interesting'cause they have borderline neutral behaviors. They they attack you unless there's a warped mushroom around, and I think that might be part of what makes them neutral is that they have behaviors other than just being aggressive to the player.

And so I think if there is code that supports that, if their primary objective is not attack the player at any cost, then maybe there's an opportunity to make them at all neutral. Um, piglins obviously make a lot more sense because of the bartering mechanics being present in the game and th that being the uh the the conduit to a lot of renewable material.

So if that can be made available for peaceful players makes perfect sense to me. Um and the sulfur cube is, yeah, obviously a shoe in, it doesn't even attack the player, like it doesn't deal damage to the player at all. So the fact that it's available to peaceful players means that a lot of people with

Family Minecraft servers who don't like to have hostile mobs turned on will be able to make all of the football fields and things that they want to so that they can play ball games with the kids and everything. So I think it'll be uh a a a lot more fun for peaceful players getting some of the self-acube action as well. And because there's piglins now available, because they piglins were just not spawning before, right? Like that just wasn't a thing in terms of. Yeah.

So so now they've got access to bartering. So they've got access to a bunch of new renewable resources from the piglands that they didn't have access to before. I mean, so that's a big upgrade. Yeah. Yeah, that's renewable obsidian and uh, you know, quartz and everything else. Like, yeah, super handy to have. Yeah, gravel especially, yeah. So

Um yeah, from that we'll move on into chunk mail for the week. Once again, reminder that this is your last chance to get in questions for episode four hundred. As we said at the top of the show, we're trying to include as many little questions as possible. Doesn't have to be about Minecraft.

Just keep them short and sweet, send them on in and we'll try and get to as many of them as we can in the show. The email address to email the show is spawnchunkmail at gmail.com. And if you'd like to have a question about Minecraft included in future episodes, of course we welcome that.

Keep your emails short and on point where you can. It really does help us include them in the show more easily. And if you're a patron of the show, if you support us on Patreon, let us know in the subject line. Cause sometimes we even sneak a little bonus email into the render distance, the extended sort of post show. we do afterwards so there's always the opportunity to get another one in if it's from a patron.

Our first email comes in from MS, a sandstorm of renewability. Hi, Pix and Joel. In episode 390, you guys talked about wind and weather and a potential sandstorm in Minecraft. This got me wondering about how sand gathers everywhere in an actual sandstorm. Could this be a mechanic in Minecraft similar to powdered snow? It would solve the need for devastating deserts or duping sand. What do you think? Thanks and regards. MS got buried in sand while admiring the sandstorm.

I think there's potential for this in that it's introducing sand via effectively a new mechanic or an expansion of something like weather, which has fairly been unexplored as far as Minecraft goes. Like we have a couple of different weather patterns. it. And I think whenever you're introducing the idea of renewable sand, it should be through a new feature instead of something we've had for ages. I think the most popular idea is just to have husks or even parched drop sand.

And I feel like that's a change that if we're going to make it, should have been implemented when those mobs were originally introduced. Um and so yeah, Husk's Dropping Sand feels like

low hanging fruit to me. It doesn't really feel interesting. It doesn't make that mob much more desirable. And so this at least has a new weather pattern and new sort of interesting mechanics added along with that going However, the the thought of it gathering in cauldrons the way powder snow does kind of gave me pause for thought because powder snow always needs buckets to interact with it. Mm.

For sand, that mechanic of it gathering in cauldrons leads to two different options. You either scoop the sand out with a bucket, which adds in a middle step with an unstackable item and possibly even leads to bucket sand being its own block. Like if you wanted to model it like powder snow and give us access to something like quicksand, That could be fun, could be an interesting possibility for the game, but wouldn't necessarily solve the renewable sand issue in that sense.

Um the alternative to that is you simply right-click a cauldron to pop out a regular sand block. But either way... It involves a lot of interaction from the player, and so it doesn't really solve the problem of sand being renewable in as much as players need it in really large quantities to make lots of TNT, lots of concrete powder, potentially still smelt glass or make sandstone.

And that just feels like a very grindy way to do it, where I think your time would honestly be better spent destroying a desert. even if it wasn't renewable, you know, you have enough abundant sand in a desert, you're likely to get a lot more faster by you know, going out and shoveling sand than you are by right-clicking a bunch of cauldrons. Because right now cauldrons can't be emptied automatically.

You don't have dispenser interactions with cauldrons, except in as much as you can, I think, move water in and out of them with bottles if you're bottling stuff for potion brewing, but even then, like I don't think it's like full interactin with a a cauldron. I don't think you can bucket powder, snow, or lava from them automatically.

So either we get a change to that or we end up with a situation where players are interacting with cauldrons a lot and it feels like just as much of a chore to gather sand that way as it does. Yeah, I agreed with the manual tedium of

Buckets. Like when peel players talk about renewable sand, they want something that they can build, even if it takes some time, and then walk away from and come back and get sand whenever they want. And depending on the sc the scale of that situation, they either have an awful lot of sand or they'll have just enough for their needs. Uh and that's where I I think that, you know, we can have

varying degrees of of sand renewability. Um I like the idea of a sandstorm in Minecraft, depending on the frequency, because that could get quite annoying. I did experience a sandstorm in Hightail when I was experienced. uh adventuring around in the desert. And it was really cool. Like it was a really cool atmospheric effect. It it kind of added to the danger and the experience of being in a desert. Nothing like that happened anywhere else in the world, so it was pretty unique to that biome.

But I wasn't building anything. I was traveling through and I was looking for stuff. And it essentially kind of kept me from doing what I was doing because it was, you know, an experience. It didn't last too long. But as we mentioned, you know, earlier in the show Rain in Minecraft is happening a lot for me and causing me to stop building and can't wait to sleep and get rid of this rain so I can see what I'm doing. A sandstorm.

happening often enough in a desert would really annoy people trying to build their desert temple or pyramid, whatever it is. And that's happening every so often, even if it's infrequent, it's still gonna be like, well, I don't want this. And so that doesn't feel good to the player, which is one of the reasons I think Mojang has said they don't lean on weather events that much because they often kind of get in the way what players want to do.

That said, if you added some sort of magic element to it, maybe the players could summon a sandstorm or create the conditions for a sandstorm on purpose, like having so many blocks together or uh I mean the magic thing is a little bit easier to like Whatever you would happen to do, and similar to like making a conduit or some something. Like if you had one of these things designed and built, then a sandstorm would happen like once every so often. And then you could collect sand that way.

Um that would make sense if it was a voluntary thing that the player actually had to do. Which is kind of fun if you think about that, applied to other weather events, you know, like a thunderstorm or or something like that. Rather than waiting for it to happen, if you had a way to summon it magically as a player, that could be kind of fun. Uh, especially if you wanted to do something

unique, like it might not last very long, but having a snowstorm in a desert to make like a funny gag on a friend, it's not gonna be something that stays'cause it's gonna melt eventually. It just bec would be kind of like a fun thing to be able to do in Minecraft. Just lit leaning into the magic idea.

Um, albeit unrealistically, I think that the better way to get renewable sand is probably from, like you mentioned, a drop from a mob or crafting recipe. I do like the idea of a new game mechanic like grinding something uh down, so something like um

cobblestone being ground into gravel or gravel being ground into silt, like that kind of thing. I don't know what you would necessarily grind into sand. They might have to maybe maybe they could do a new block or something, but It feels like it might be adding an unnecessary step because you also do a lot of that kind of thing naturally in the crafting recipes for other things like dye, for example.

you're making dyes from flowers, I'm kind of imagining that you're beating them up or grinding them up, you know, to m to get the dyes for them. So you don't need an additional table to do that. And so a grind

I mean there is a grindstone in the game already, but a grinder or something like that that could take blocks and transition them into something else could be cool, but that might be just adding another step that people don't want to do. Like I don't know For example, smelting something in a furnace requires fuel. So there's like some additional mechanics that are involved there. Putting something in a grinder, like what like what do you do to make that not just like an additional clip?

How does how do you make it matter? Like how do you make it different? And so I hadn't really gotten that far with it. But I I like the idea of dropping it from a mob or, you know, bartering for it or um trading for it with a a villager. Again, the villager trades are not the most

fun way of getting additional blocks when you need a lot of them. So I can understand why that hasn't been a thing either. So it's tough when you think about like where and how to get a lot of sand uh in in Minecraft because Everywhere that I think about it, there the immediate solution or the open solution that makes sense in Minecraft.

comes with that level of tedium that you mentioned with like interacting with a cauldron with a bucket. Like the player has to be involved somehow. And I can't think of one outside of just having a mob drop it be a way to farm it. Frequently. Yeah. The I think the renewable surface blocks, like the the abundant stuff like dirt,

And I mean even stuff like I don't think netherrack is renewable. You can obviously get nether bricks from piglins, but I don't think netherrack as a block is renewable. But like the other surface blocks like that, they all have a certain element of grind to like To to get dirt I think you have to combine gravel and dirt to get coarse dirt and then you hoe it, or sometimes you can do a thing where you get rooted dirt out of moss blocks by growing acacia or azalea on it rather.

And th so there's like little elements like that that it's possible to farm that stuff. But because it's so abundant in the landscape, why would you want to? And I think sand has so many more uses than the average surface block like dirt or grass that you end up wanting a lot more of it for mass crafting other things and basically every crafting recipe it has, you need a lot of it in order to get a lot back out. So th there's

A lot of reasons sand should be renewable, but there's also a handful of reasons why it shouldn't. As I was looking up some stuff on Wikipedia earlier, I was looking at the Wikipedia article for real world sand because of just thinking about how it's made and you know thinking that with the sandstorm idea

from a geological standpoint is not even the most realistic because sand isn't created by sandstorms, it's just moved around. Um, and so it really feels like sand should be disappearing from elsewhere in the desert if it's collecting in a vessel that you're then able to gather the sand from. But To create sand, the most common natural process is just erosion of rock over really long periods of time.

And the Wikipedia article says in its opening paragraphs sand is a non renewable resource over human timescales, and sand suitable for making concrete is in high demand. And just reading that one sentence made me think maybe that's why Mojang continues to hold out on making sand renewable at all, is because it's an actual concern facing real world construction processes, is that we don't have enough sand long term to continue making stuff out of concrete if

we don't find like better sources of it and we can't create it because it's created geologically over such a long period of time. And desert sand isn't viable for creating concrete in the way that other types of sand are. So there's like there's actually quite a lot of reasoning behind why we don't have renewable sand, even though from a gameplay perspective, and that's really where the video game part takes over, it can be kind of frustrating not having access.

Anyway, we'll move on to email number two. Uh this one comes in from Donor Raf, who is a landscape artist, member of our Patreon community. The subject is end updates with an S in parentheses. Mojang has had a few years of refining their process for these smaller content drops. As such, I believe we will be looking at multiple end updates instead of one big end update.

I'm guessing this would look like adding a new biome, a mob or two, and several cool new building blocks for three to five drops in a row. Since Mojang are doing two Minecraft live events a year, they could announce the updates and explain how and why they believe this will be a better process overall to bring us as players all along for the ride.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts, and I always enjoy the content and all the love and hard work you both pour into this show and our favorite blocky game. Donorath died of old age, waiting for an official Big Bang end update. Thanks very much for the kind words. Really appreciate that. I uh

It when you come up on a big anniversary show like four hundred, it's uh it's really cool to get emails from people that you recognize their name, you know they've been a part of the community for a really long time. Uh I see Donoraph in my stream sometimes as well, and just it's it's

Great to remind yourself that there's people out there that have been listening for as long as we've been doing it. Uh so that's pardon me, that's really, really fun. Uh I think for me, when I think about the end update. Uh by the way.

If they did something really funky, that might be one way to get renewable sand into the game is to have some sort of like crystals happen in an end update. So it's not part of the natural world generation. Renewable sand might be something that happens in a different dimension. Which might be a way to get around that idea that you had at the end of that last discussion. Um but I think for me, they would have to announce everything at once. on a roadmap and then have the multiple drops.

laid out, which I think is a tough thing to do because if they want to have it open to player feedback, then along that roadmap, feedback might mean they remove a feature that they had previously announced. for the betterment of the game for most people, but that ultimately you can't please everyone. So there's gonna be some people out there that are gonna be vocal about that thing that they liked not being in, despite Mojang said that that was part of the plan. And in general

players are likely to be less disappointed by not getting a feature that they didn't know about than one that they were. So I can understand why Mojang would Not want to announce a roadmap. Something that I've requested uh I think a couple of times on the show. So I can see both sides. Like I I can see it as a PR night. Mojang hasn't really been hinting much lately at to the contents of the drops before they're announced. We just kinda like I mean, I did not see the sulfur cube coming from

It was not a Mon Bingo card. You know? Uh same thing with the happy ghast. Complete shock. I mean, cool, but like just did not see it coming. There was nothing about the themes leading up to these drops. Where you go, I think this might be where they're headed. Every drop seems to be just taking a different direction.

Um, I think the only thing that's a little bit similar would be I think you've mentioned like the spring to life and the tiny takeover, the time of year and the type of drop they are are a little bit similar, but they're there's still several drops in between them that don't really line up in that in that way.

Uh if they announce multiple drops related to the end, um I s I think players would get frustrated for me, uh looking at that. I know that Not all early drops will have all the updates.

players might look at that and think, Well, well, I'll just wait until the end. So then you're not going to get feedback from some people'cause they're just going to wait until the very end of those drops to try it out and see what's going to happen. Like, why get in and get excited about something that you think might get cut? So like I can I can see the

the push and pull. Um for me I think a better approach Where I do think there would be multiple drops, but I think what would probably be the likely success uh would be a big end update. Like plan it out, do it, say this is what we envision for the end.

And while you'll get some player feedback on like the nitty-gritties of the mechanics, I think the overall thing being sorted out ahead of time is the way to go. But then the smaller drops that come sequentially after that, could still be end update related, but they could be ways to update the overworld and the nether or other older game mechanics to then jive or harmonize with the new version of the end.

So taking an old block or an old recipe from the overworld and say, Oh well, now you can make sand with this new end update. So that that makes glass and a bunch of other things more accessible or like different things like that could be

a way to to do it. You know, like maybe you don't announce the sand recipe with all of the end update stuff. Maybe you say, oh, by the way, we've decided that later on down the line in in this drop number three, that the crystals that you get from the imaginary end update uh will actually be something you can craft into sand. And people go like, oh, okay, cool. So that's tying everything into previous Minecraft blocks and previous Minecraft worlds, but it's not part of a

It wasn't held back necessarily from from the original announcement of like what's happening in the end. I hope that's clear, if if that makes sense. Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. Like I I I kind of agree with a lot of what you were saying with

there being frustration from a player perspective. Like I th the the way I see the downsides of something like this is that Players, if they want to get involved with the drops day one, potentially have to reset their end dimension multiple times as these new layers of features would get added to that dimension specifically.

Which is why I think it's really smart to think of what about the end could then have knock-on effects for the overworld and the nether that could then make their way into other drops, right? Um, I also see people being kind of dissatisfied with handing over like an incomplete version of what would otherwise be a major update, if not for the release strategy of the game, right?

Like I I think People have a hard time looking back at the last few drops that we've had and thinking together, those would have made a complete major update back in the day in terms of the depth of some of the features, the variety of features that we got.

Um like if you look at stuff like you know, the spring to life, the pale garden biome, and a couple of the other things and then ending with like the happy ghost or the copper age, you've got like a lot of different features in that and the one thing that they're missing is this sort of unifying theme, but in terms of the breadth of content that we get, that feels like it adds up to a major update.

But people don't necessarily think about it that way. They don't look at the last year of development and go, Yeah, that feels like a big enough update. They look back at the last year of development and go, Well, where's the nether update equivalent? Where's the big thematic thing that we all want? So I think people would be unable or unwilling to look back at the complete version later and really consider like how far we've come to get like a full end update over the course of maybe a year.

Um so yeah, I think there are definitely pros and cons to using the drop approach to roll out something that feels like a big cohesive thematic expansion to the game.

Um the pro obviously being what drops already provide for us, which is allowing Mojang to focus on individual elements, refine them with player feedback, and then get them into players' hands sooner so that people who are impatient for new things to be added to the game when something larger needs to be worked on actually get their hands on that stuff basically day one.

But yeah, like I think an update could be developed easily this way. I think it could just as easily be developed the other way. I would honestly not be surprised if they had a couple of

slightly smaller drops and then said we're not gonna do drop three this year, let's call it, you know, twenty twenty seven. Like twenty seven dot three does not exist because twenty seven dot four is going to be basically an update that's taken us six months to Test in snapshots for something big like an N. Like I can see that working as a strategy if they just wanna skip a couple of the drops.

mid-year in order to deliver something massive by the end of the year and then go back to doing regular three-month drops. I don't think anybody would really complain. Or th I mean people would complain, but th those people we can ignore because th they're the they're the ones who will just complain no matter what. I I think there's room for there to be flexibility in the way they're presenting these updates, even after having committed to gameplay drops for a while. Yeah.

I but and even if they did that with the way that they've been presenting the content lately, it wouldn't be like we have an end update coming, so we're gonna not do a drop every three months. We're gonna wait and do one at the end of the year. They would just say, We have something big planned and you'd have no idea Exactly. And everybody would think end update. And if it wasn't an end update, then everybody gets disappointed.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I d it's it's a double edged sword that you gotta balance for sure, especially with a game with this many players with this many varying styles of gameplay and interests and Like there's some people that just don't care for the end at all. Like just they're just they're not P V E people. They don't want to fight the dragon. Like they're just happy to build on the surface and not really some people don't even go to the nether, right?

So I it's yeah, it's definitely something to consider. I one thing that I'm curious about uh with the the idea of an end update or updates in general. if there's gonna be anything that happens with Minecraft dungeons in the fall that might hint towards what some of the future drops might be. Um, I mean I know the end is kind of sticking out like a sore thumb as something that hasn't been updated in Minecraft in a long time. That portal in the um

the cities under the ground. Like that that like that's also a giant like what is that for? You know? Yeah. Uh and they've certainly hinted at that in the trailer for um from Minecraft Dungeons too. So we'll see. I mean I'm I'm I don't know what it was the other day, but I just I was thinking about Minecraft Dungeons and Dungeons Two and I'm excited for that. I know it's uh I'm sad it's still six months away.

Yeah, yeah. But I I think with Dungeons One presenting such a vivid version of an end overhaul. To begin with, I'm kind of surprised that none of that has made it into the game, even if if Dungeons sort of feels like a bit of a testing ground for the aesthetics of some of those things. But yeah, either they've got something big planned or they're genuinely looking at

the amount of people who've th like the user generated s versions of the end, like the the mods that add like such variety and life to the end and going, how do we make something that feels uniquely ours but distinctly different from this? It's a tricky.

We're also gonna look at this week this week's main discussion being something that Mojang could add in future and like we said earlier, circling back to some of the discussions we've had previously about what birds could bring to the game, what insects could bring to the game if it added in greater quantities and with a bit more of a view of either natural

world mobs being brought into the game or uh fantastical versions of something that we know from the natural world. We're gonna continue that with reptiles. Um what could lizards bring to Minecraft is really the the broad idea here. And as far as what we already have, turtles are basically the only thing that qualifies as a lizard.

in the broadest sense. Um, they've got a variety of mechanics and features already. You know, they grow up uh providing turtle scoots which get crafted into a unique helmet. uh which can be used as a potion brewing ingredient. Turtle eggs are used for a variety of things. They're decorative. They only hatch on sand blocks so you can put them elsewhere without them hatching.

They kind of cluster together like candles do, so that you have a bit of aesthetic variety. The eggs are also used mechanically as bait for undead mobs. And turtles themselves provide, if nothing else, a bit more functional purpose for seagrass, because they eat and breed with seagrass. So

There's a bit of variety already in an otherwise fairly overlooked mob that still falls into the reptile category. Uh frogs are not technically reptiles, I discovered. They're more amphibians, and that's sort of a category unto itself, but they're they're kinda close.

I would also personally argue that the sniffer is a reptile. It hatches from an egg. It has that kind of beak like almost turtle style uh like face to it, but obviously with the moss and everything over the back of it it feels more mammalian. Uh it's more alien just in general'cause it has six legs and everything. But um yeah, the sniffer could either be a a reptile or a bird, and I'm leaning more reptile just because it doesn't seem like it ever had wings.

Um, things with wings though, the Ender Dragon I suppose could technically also be classed as a reptile, but dragons are the sort of category again unto themselves. Have I missed anything as far as that goes? Can you think of anything else in Minecraft that really feels like reptilian to you? I no, I'cause guardians are very fish like, even though they look like they're kinda scaly and and

r like in terms of the spikes on them, but I mean and some fish have got have got uh fins that look very spiky. Um I can't think of anything else in terms of enemies. There's nothing in I mean, striders don't strike me as reptilian at all. Uh everything else in in the nether is very

strange and and otherworldly. Like there's nothing about a gas that seems reptilian. Although they had a they they didn't have the the the texture I would imagine they would have in the Minecraft movie. Like they felt the skin felt very tough, almost like elephant skin in terms of when I saw them. I I've always thought of them as ghosts, like very wispy and light, and they had m much more of a meaty feel to them in the Minecraft movie.

I guess we have axolotals as well, which are amphibians sort of Yeah, frogs are. But yeah, I yeah. I I I wanna say like w we're we're broadly thinking in that category. So if we mention something that is actually an amphibian, don't at us if if we're describing it as a reptile here.

Yeah. But uh yeah, I th I think I think this is proof enough that there is room for expansion in that category in the same way I think there is for birds and insects. Yeah, for sure. And I think you and I both came up with the the like the first reptile that we thought of that would fit in Minecraft, uh, which might have been inspired by one of those mobs they had in a mob vote that was supposed to like remove

Enchantments or something. I can't remember whether what number it was, but it was it it was a giant head, like a trapdoor head. Yeah. Mob C twenty seventeen mob vote. It was called The Great Hunger when they sort of teased them without formal names too. Right. Yeah. So but a crocodile, w like it reminds you of a crocodile. And I think that a crocodile is big enough that you could do it fairly easily in Minecraft in terms of the d the model, the design.

swim through the water, walk really slow on land, just like a a s a sniffer does now. Uh I like I feel like you could probably get away with some some cool scale textures. Uh Frogs have fairly short legs. They've managed to animate those pretty well. Um, so I think a crocodile would be an interesting addition.

I would imagine it would be an aggressive addition. I can't imagine that it would be something you'd want to run into in the wild. Um, so that's something that's gonna be a a pain in the butt for for people, P V E, like you probably have to deal with the crocodiles. Um, I can't imagine they would be neutral. Especially in a video game. Like they're just traditionally they're usually an enemy, you know. Yeah. When I think about like g like as old as as Frogger, you know.

I was gonna say Frogger is the the one that immediately sprang to mind for me of like, you know, the the most neutral they get is they let you jump on them as logs and that's yeah you just don't get close to one end, you know? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Stay keep keep away from the pointy end. I so yeah, I like I think that could be that could be fun. Uh that could be like the natural predator of Slimes, maybe?'Cause I th I could imagine crocodiles would be in

rivers and swamps and mangrove or whatever. Uh so like a slime a slime would be a good thing.'Cause then maybe instead of just always being an enemy, if you wanted to capture some crocodiles and use them as like a natural way to farm slime, kind of in the same way that people

lure slimes towards iron golems now to make a slime farm. You could do something similar with, you know, having a crocodile run around and kill the slimes. Same way like a frog takes out the the magma cubes, right? And you get the magma cubes.

um cream and the and the not the micro cream, but the um the frog lights from that. Yeah. Like I think that that could be kind of a fun way to do with the the crocodiles and slimes. Or if they're in the mangrove swamp swamp, if they ever added another mob there like the crab, maybe the

crocodiles eat the crabs and so you can just you know uh not only would it be a cool way to farm crabs if you needed something from the crabs, but it could also communicate to the player that like, oh, there's a drop that the crab leaves.

And it's because I found one after it was attacked by a crocodile. Like that could be a k a fun way to kind of communicate that to a player. And you could also have some fun with it. Like, I mean, I also think about You know, the Captain Hook and the Crocodile and like if you fed a crocodile in Minecraft a clock

And then you could just hear it coming because it would tick. Like that would be just like a fun little Easter egg or an achievement. You know, like maybe like an uh an achievement to get on like a tick a box just to say feed a clock to a crocodile. I think that could be fun kind of fun too.

Yeah. I I wonder if alligators could also be added so that I could finally figure out what the difference is in a way that sticks in my brain instead of having to like Google it every time to find out what the difference is between a crocodile and an alligator. I imagine it's something to do with like habitat and

feeding habits and that kind of thing. But I think um mangrove swamps seem like the perfect fit for crocodiles. I don't know if I'd want them in rivers. Um they feel a little bit too frequent. And even swamps, I feel like Just because of the open nature of swamps, I feel like they would be perhaps too easy to avoid or too difficult to run into, or they would just be everywhere and you wouldn't want to land anywhere.

So I think at least with mangrove you have the opportunity to like duck behind a tree, sort of weave through the foliage a little bit and and escape a hostile encounter. The thing is I I think the reason we might not have crocodiles in the game already is partly the same reason we don't have sharks. It's that hostile mobs in Minecraft are never real world creatures. Crocs could be neutral I think at most.

And it really depends what the conditions of their neutrality were, because polar bears are only hostile to you if you get close to their cub. If you find a lone adult polar bear, they do nothing to you. So they are real world creatures which, you know, are still I think the only creatures that hunt and kill humans in real life. Um but uh yeah, like th they've they've made the conditions of that that way

in Minecraft to highlight the fact that they're endangered and, you know, to give them somewhat sympathetic appearance as a creature. So I feel like crocodiles might have to have something similar, whether it's like they don't mess with you unless you step on them, or, you know, if you step on them maybe they stay neutral to you, but if you like hit them they return fire in the same way that wolves and dolphins do, or, you know, if you get too close to them they

attack you but if you're a good enough distance away they leave you alone. There could be some things like that. In terms of how they attack, like you could imagine it being a fairly realistic thing where their whole point is, you know, they deal damage to you, but they kind of clamp onto you and it restricts your movement a little bit and then they try and drag you into the water.

And around the same time as the Great Hunger there was the other mob vote mob that was the Barnacle, I think. That was the sort of loose name for it, where it was going to be like a squid like thing that lived in the water and would try and like drag you down instead of allowing you to surf And I can see why that didn't make the cut in terms of the mob vote, because gameplay-wise, that sounds a little bit more irritating. Then again, we all voted for the phantom. So who am I?

But I think it it would be interesting to have crocodile encounters feel a bit more realistic to what might happen in real life as both a cautionary tale and also to add some variety to things instead of it just walking into you and dealing down. Um

I suppose the difficulty then just becomes how do you get it off you? Does it happen just for a fixed length of time and then you have to attack it again, or can you attack it while it's still attached to you? How does that work in the physics of the space? So

There's there's room for crocodiles to be an interesting game mechanic, and I'd be curious if mods out there have implemented them in a way that isn't just it walks up to you and you take damage, but it would be interesting to see if there's examples of that out there.

I like the idea of them as adding motion to the game as well. Like I mean, we've seen frogs, you know, walking around in swamps, but bees flying around add a lot of really fun animation and motion to a scene in Minecraft and Even having a crocodile like sunning itself on the s on the sand next to a swamp or swimming around, we have dolphins that kind of swim around and do stuff, and we have fish.

that I mean, like, maybe don't come out of water on purpose, but we don't really have a mob on in the overworld that would swim around on the surface of the water like a boat, where you could see it in the water poking out and like see it from both perspectives. And I think that would be interesting to just kind of like, you know, you're looking out over your swamp and just watch a crocodile swim by. Like that could be

a fun, you know, animation to to see add movement in the game. And a lot of times when I'm not sure what the function is, I think it's because they're trying to heat up. Um, but the crocodiles will sit with their mouths open, like on the banks of rivers and stuff like that. And that's just it's just a cool thing from nature documentaries that you see, and then be neat to kind of see that that pose in Minecraft would add like that visual interest to

to a scene and maybe in your zoo. You know, like it it'd be cool to have those kind of behaviors in the same way we talked about earlier with like sheep eating grass and pigs wandering around. Like it'd be fun to have that kind of stuff embedded in the mob so that it would add life and nature to your scene, not just have it be a utility or something that you have to avoid.

Yeah. It's also another ecosystem opportunity because I think it's crocodiles that have the birds that sort of have that symbiotic relationship with them and clean their teeth for them and stuff and so So yeah. I I like the idea of this also being an opportunity to add birds to the game through something like the crocodile, even if it's just an aesthetic thing, a little kind of quirk of uh the way that works out in the implementation of it.

Um moving on from crocodiles, the other thing that immediately occurred, I think, to both of us was chameleons. Yes. Um because of course uh Minecraft's got a lot of iconic textures and you think of chameleons, you think of them being able to adapt to their background and and sort of blend in. I think it would be a really

if not straightforward thing to implement, then at least a very visually easy to understand idea to implement. And the question remains, to what benefit are chameleons sort of able to adapt to their surroundings? Like I think it would be fun to have Something that blended in as again, like sub block detail is something we talk about a lot. I think it would be really interesting to have creatures that sort of acted like A bit more decorative.

Um, and I feel like a lot of mobs wander around a lot when you try and use them decoratively, they're never where you want them to be. Whereas I feel like chameleons tend to just kinda hang out from what I've seen. They don't move especially fast, or if they do, they move in short bursts and then they stay still for a while. It'd be nice to have something that felt a bit more pet like whilst not strictly speaking being a tameable animal. And I think it'd be nice to have something that

adds a little bit of interesting background detail, could even add a puzzle element after a fashion of sort of spot the chameleon in this image or whatever. There could be some fun things to do there. So it wouldn't necessarily be a hugely functional addition to the game in terms of what it provided mechanically, unless you gave it some sort of more magical thing or

you know, right clicking on a chameleon gives you something like invisibility as an effect or, you know, allows you to make some kind of camouflaging thing. Um, I think overall it could just be a fun ambient addition to the game in a way that would be really fun for players to see what they could do with it once it was implemented in a similar sandboxy way to the sulfur cube, although obviously we're not gonna be kicking the chameleon around a field.

Yeah. And they're a fairly boxy looking lizard anyway, like because their tail coils up, like that could easily be made into like a a square spiral, you know, in Minecraft. Uh they have like a a ridge along their back, so they again they kind of look square or or rectangular in nature. Some chameleons have got horns on the front of their face, and I mean depending on the model, they could keep in like include or or not include those.

Uh but the color changing could be really fun, as well as the the pattern changing. So in c in cartoons you see one, I think there was a chameleon in Tangled, I want to say the Disney Tangled. It's a chameleon. That's her best friend. Um, and it's just really fun in animation when they have the chameleon completely change both like the front and the back have its body to match behind it, and then the only thing you see is an eyeball.

Uh, and I think that that would be kind of a fun thing in Minecraft to have like an eyeball looking and moving around while you can see like half prismarine and half nether bricks. Like, what is this thing? Just because that's where it decided to stop moving. Um, I think that could be really, really cool.

I I never thought about the whole idea of giving invisibility, but that's kind of fun. Like maybe you need to get kissed by a chameleon in order to get invisible and that would involve the tongue thing. Because if anybody's ever seen a chameleon eat, like it is wild. The tongue is ridiculous. I think they fill it with air. I think that's how it actually extends it. Uh and I feel like that could be a fun thing to include in the animation of.

Of the the we we sort of get it already with the frogs, like I don't want to retread that, but I I feel like they could maybe eat fireflies or something. Like how do you feed them if you decide to domesticate them? Uh I like the idea of them being like a statue,'cause they move really slowly. They tend to almost comically slowly in terms of especially if they're stalking prey.

And they tend to like go back and forth. Like they don't just constantly move forward. Like they move forward and then they move back and then they move forward and then they move back. So it's almost like a little bit of a dance. And so you could s sort of have that as like either a personality or a or a trait of the animal in Minecraft or just like a s fun

uh Easter egg. You know, like if you if you stick around long enough you might see it do like the similar to like the the panda sneezing. If you stick around long enough maybe a chameleon does like its little dance. Uh that could be that could be kinda fun. But I like the idea of color changing too and I could it almost be used as like canary in a coal mine, like maybe it changes r to red if there's certain mobs nearby.

um could be worth you know bringing with you. But the other thing is like how big are they? Because if you need them to mimic textures, they have to be big enough that the the 16 by 16 pixel are gonna match up with a block. And that pixel density consistency we talked about in the new mobs. So a chameleon in Minecraft is probably gonna be the size of a dog, right? Like it's not gonna be the real scale, because really I think they're only twelve or

fourteen inches long. Like they're not big as far as lizards go. Or animals go, I guess. Probably midsize for a lizard. But like it's just it's they're not a large animal in real life. So similar to a bee, like bringing them in the Minecraft, I can see them being a little bit more chunky. Yeah, uh Wikipedia says they vary greatly in size and body structure, with maximum total lengths being the smallest

At twenty-two millimeters or point eight seven inches. Oh my gosh. And the largest being sixty-eight point five centimeters, twenty-seven inches. Okay, that's bigger than I thought. Couple of feet long, yeah. And there's some really bulky looking ones. So I think if they're at least like the size of a block That could work out and you know, it it it depends how their sort of body shape is, whether or not they

fill up the block space in that way. But yeah, there could be room either side for like the tail and and everything. I feel like overall chameleons have a lot of potential just in that we have precedent for a couple of their like appearances with like frogs and

I can see the axolotl legs being used for something like a chameleon, but then the frog tongue action and the way they open their mouths and everything being a very easy sort of template for a chameleon's behavior. Lizard behaviour in general, because a lot of them have the chameleon. you know, grabbing insects out of the air tongue sort of behavior. So yeah, that's um that's a a strong possibility I think if they look at adding lizards into

So something that I thought about after thinking after the the slow moving chameleon and the and the crocodile was something faster, like a gecko. And you could even uh since you mentioned amphibians, you could maybe throw in salamander as like a yeah. They're amphibians, but they would also work in a very similar way and serve a similar function to geckos in that

They're often thought about as cute. They're usually brilliant. I mean, they can be pretty normal desert colors, but you can also find geckos that are like. Blue and red. Like they're beautiful bright creatures. And they have huge eyes, which would lend itself very well to to Minecraft. And not to mention we I meant to talk about this earlier, but lizards in general kind of have that wall-eyed look.

And so it really lines up well with the the cows and the sheep in Minecraft in that the lizards are like looking in two different directions at the same time. Uh and they would suit that for sure. Uh but they I mean geckos have got huge eyes, they can be really color colorful. I would imagine them as passive desert dwelling uh lizards. They're also pretty fast though. Like they skitter along the sand, they're chasing flies, like they're chasing airborne insects a lot of the time.

uh or climbing trees or doing things like that and they tend to be uh more active. And I don't know how that works in Minecraft. There's not a heck of a lot in Minecraft that moves quickly. That's not a flying animal. And even then bees are pretty slow. I think the fastest flying thing is maybe a phantom. Yeah so I like uh to have something skittering around in Minecraft, maybe a baby zombie is the fastest thing on on land right now. So I don't know how that translates to have something that has

four legs and is low to the ground and and moves like a lizard. Because geckos specifically have that wiggle when they move. Like they they really their spine goes in like an S curve the whole time. They'll move in a straight line, but they they really wiggle around. And uh they would be, I guess, a natural predator to insects, but like

If you add the lizard without the insects, that it doesn't make any sense. So like I feel like if you added a gecko, you would have had to either at the same time or previously added something like a beetle or a bug or something to the desert for it to eat.

uh and and be part of that ecosystem, which I think is great educationally. Like I like the idea, like you keep on mentioning ecosystems. And I think that's a great idea for Minecraft is to add multiple animals to kind of like round out the ecosystem and bring that level of education to the game. And I think deserts could really use a lot of love. So I l I lean heavily on on lizards being added to and insects to the game for like the desert.

uh and Badlands to kind of like build those out a little bit. Uh but I think a gecko would be would be really fun. And I guess in a similar nature, a bearded dragon uh It's kind of an iconic looking lizard. Again, fast moving. Um, but like I I struggle to think about what they would add for gameplay. That's the only thing. Like I don't know what a gecko or a salamander or a bearded lizard would add other than just like cool colors.

and animals that are very vibrant, which is lovely, but like I don't know what you would do with them in the game.

Yeah, and the the same really goes for my next thought which was snakes because again, they're iconic creatures from uh real world like everyone really knows what a snake is and most people know to stay away from them. Uh in the UK we only have one variety of venomous snake which is the Adda.

and they're not all that dangerous at all. We have two other types of snake that live like natively, like grass snakes and stuff in the UK. But obviously elsewhere in the United States and Australia they have a lot of venomous snakes and a lot of uh creatures that you are expected to stay away from unless you want to get really messed up. Um and so snakes feel like an obvious reptile, but not of obvious benefit to Minecraft.

because I don't really see them doing much other than being predators to other animals, again with that ecosystem idea, or just inflicting some sort of venom slash poison effect on the player. And they feel like they'd be at most at home in like savannah and jungle biomes, maybe? It would be interesting to have like snakes that dangle like vines the way that, you know, jungle snakes sometimes do. But I'm not certain they add value to either biome beyond just sort of arbitrary biodiversity.

And I think you've you've seen the snakes that they have in Hightail, right? Like that that's another example of a a voxel game that's added snakes. What do you feel like they brought to Hytale and is there anything there that really could port over to Minecraft? I mean, the experience of they're very low to the ground, they're hard to spot in the kind of foliage that Hightail has, like the high cr grasses and the bushes. So like you'll stumble upon a snake w that you didn't realize was there.

And there's a couple of different varieties. There's like a rattlesnake and a cobra. And the cobra sits up a bit before it attacks you. Uh the the rattlesnake just kind of does its thing. They generally ignore you unless you get too close. So like they don't seek you out. If they see you, they will just kind of mind their own business. But that's true of a lot of

mobs. Except with the exception of like tigers and bears in Hightail that will see you and then pursue you. Uh the the snakes will see you, but like unless you encroach on them, they won't really mess with you. Um but when you fight them it goes as expected, like they lunge at you and they try to bite you and you have to block and then kill them. And then they drop a venom sack that's used in crafting. I think in both weapons and potions, maybe just potions.

But they have like a use. So like if you need a venom sack, you either get it from a spider or you get it from a snake. And so that's kind of like the their their function. But They work in Hytale, I think specifically because of how Hytale approaches how they model and animate the mobs, and that not everything is a straight line.

Snakes move and they slink along the surface like you'd expect a snake too. Minecraft doesn't even give animals knees. Yeah. And so I don't know how and this is gonna be true of lizards as well, even a crocodile. Like I don't know how Mojang animate something like a lizard if it doesn't decide to break this very stiff model, very stiff animation.

rule set that they seem to have put themselves in, uh, because lizards, as I mentioned, they kind of wiggle when they move. Crocodiles don't swim in a straight line. Like they they their their tail is a rudder. You know, like it just you really have to add segments to it. And I so I don't know how lizards, specifically the walking, a crocodile moving around in the ocean would probably be okay. Um but

walking on land, like you really have to make them feel a little bit more flexible in in order for it to work.'Cause they don't the like their hips don't work like mammals, right? It's a different it's a different thing altogether. So um I I don't know because with Hightail they work because of how all the mobs are modeled in that game. Uh and so when you're not exactly surprised to see a snake. You're just like, oh cool, there's snakes in the game.

Uh and then you immediately kind of understand how it's gonna work because you've seen the way that a rabbit moves or you've seen the way that a wolf moves in high tail. You're like, okay, these things are really animated. So kind of the sky's the limit. Uh and so with with A snake in Minecraft, like I w what does that look like? A stick? How does that work? It just occurred to me that the possibility for a snake in Minecraft, it moves like the game snake, like the arcade game.

Uh where it just it moves at at right angles exclusively. But obviously that c controlled by the the you know, whatever pathfinding ability they give it rather than the player controlling it, you know. That would look cool. Yeah, I mean it'd be pretty funny. Like I don't know if it would really fit the world of Minecraft at all, but as a video game in joke it would be quite funny.

Yeah. I I feel like the other thing about snakes too is like there's a lot of people that are scared of snakes. There's a lot of people that are scared of spiders too. Yeah. So like I th I feel like there'd be definitely a vocal uh minority in in the Minecraft world saying like do do you have to add snakes? Like you've already got spiders. Like do we really need more of these? The in Indiana Jones response immediately to put snakes. Why is it always snakes? Yeah, totally, totally.

Yeah. Uh, to go over a couple of other things that I thought were interesting that maybe lead us into the next discussion section is a tortoise could be a fun variant of a turtle. I can't imagine much new from them, but rather than owing always having to go to a beach or the ocean to find a turtle.

Just seeing a tortoise walk across a desert could be kind of cool. And they could have the same sort of features, like they lay eggs, you get scoots, you like all the different things that a a turtle scoot would give you. You could just do it from a different venue. Sort of like how we've got different variants of cows and different variants of wolves now, like having a tortoise be like a variant of.

uh the turtle they could just call it a a desert turtle and a sea turtle and then just make it look like a tortoise it doesn't have to be called a tortoise I think they could for Minecraft purposes they could just call it you know what it is um and the other thing that stuck out when I was looking up uh other lizards

was the Komodo Dragon and the Hila Monster. Uh these are just such large, unique animals in the world that I would imagine Minecraft would just kind of like lean into something of their own. Like it might be inspired by A Gila Monster or it might be inspired by a Komodo dragon. Komodo dragons are massive, by the way. Like

Huge, huge. Um, and I would just I would imagine that Minecraft would just say, All right, well, that that's such a specific animal in the world. We'd be better off coming up with like a lizard version of a sniffer, you know, like or or s like something of that nature, of that scale, and just like, let's just make it up. We'll call it, you know, an end lizard or, you know, a nether lizard or something and just kind of make it up as they go.

Um, but the reason I brought them up is because they do have a unique scale for the Komodo Dragon, but then the the Hela Monster is a is like a black and orange thing. So like I could see that in the nether. Like it just it looks fiery even though it isn't, you know, in real life. Um so I think that could be kind of fun. Yeah, Komodo dragons will like stalk if not people then at least like they they they are apex predators in their environment. Like they will they will hunt

And so it would be kind of interesting. And I I know they're island dwelling, like they're mostly in like Indonesia, I think. And so it would be really funny to me. if they were on those occasional lone islands that you find in ocean biomes, the ones that you're like, I need to find a place to put my bed.

so that I can sleep for the night when you're kinda crossing a large ocean. It would be kind of funny if a little unfortunate if one of those happened to be inhabited by this enormous lizard uh that was then gonna try and attack you as you tried to sleep. But yeah, I I d I think

Maybe like stony shore biomes could benefit from having something like that around and yeah, I imagine behaviour wise they'd typically just be kind of basking in the same way that a crocodile might, you know, but I think it's uh Again, like you said, really worth Mojang coming up with their own sort of more fantastical take on what it could bring to the game in terms of behaviour because Otherwise it's just sort of a thing that exists rather than something that adds more gameplay value.

Right. And actually that brings up something that I had thought of before as well, which is an iguana, you know, basking on the rocks could be kind of fun, especially if you could tame them. Like if in the Minecraft world if you could have a pet iguana And it would like be like a wolf, but in the ocean. So like if you go to fight and there's drowned or there's uh guardians, if the iguana would then attack the guardian.

But I get like I guess they do that with axlottles now. But like axlottles to me are just so squishy. Like they don't seem like they're at all a fortified companion. Whereas, like, there's wolf and wolf armor. I mean, they could give iguan as a armor, you know, like that'd be you have an armored lizard swimming next to you, that'd be kind of fun. Ha ha. Little mini Godzilla next to you. Like I think that could be kind of kinda fun.

They could they could they could have fun with it if they want to go full video gaming with it. I think there's there's a few options there.

So as far as fantasy stuff goes, uh I think you and I again both went down the same path here. Uh you could just take the things that we've mentioned already and make them bigger You know, like what happens if a chameleon is the size of a goat, you know, uh or something that you could

you know, as as a player. Like we've already got jousting with spears. What about jousting with giant chameleon tongues? Like that could be a really oddball fun thing to do. Um or if a gecko was really, really large and you fed it livestock instead of insects. Like I like I don't know. I d there's something really cool to me and cartoony about the colors of geckos and chameleons that says like you could scale this up and get away with it in Minecraft. Like you could make

either one of those the size of a horse and I don't think any Minecraft player would roll their eyes. They would be like, oh cool. This is this is massive, but this is really neat. Like this could be a really fun thing to to to play with. Um but I again like I don't know outside of like another mount that we don't need, like I I don't know what the the functionality would be. Um like maybe like we've talked before about the idea of Of a grappling hook in Minecraft?

W what if that's a tongue? Like what if it's like Spider Man? You know, like and you've you've gotta have a a chameleon or a or a gecko or something with you and they use their tongue to like get around. Uh maybe instead of being really large the gecko is small enough to sit in your shoulder, but

it obeys your command and it will like sling you around like Spider Man. I I don't know. It's there's some fun there's some fun cartoony stuff that you could do. Like I'm thinking about whenever I've seen a lizard in like a Disney Pixar movie or

in like a ninja turtle like mutant lizard situation where like they just they're using their tongue to do all kinds of unnatural stuff and usually we're with other characters in the movie going like that's really gross, you know? Just there's some fun stuff to be had with lizard tongues, I think.

Yeah, no, I think I think that's definitely a way of getting some fun gameplay stuff out of it that feels a little bit off the wall but still consistent with stuff Minecraft's already given us, like the notion that the crab claw was gonna be this sort of extendable reach thing if they implemented crabs, like that that's yeah in line with that really for me.

Um, and yeah, I I do think the oversized stuff could be interesting. Even with like the Komodo Dragon idea with them being quite large anyway, my thought for if there were a mount of some kind was that normally when you're riding horses around because you're three blocks high or more, all of a sudden you end up getting like hit in the face with trees, there's leaves everywhere and stuff.

If you're riding a lizard that's already low to the ground, you maybe stick at that two maybe slightly over two block height, you encounter that much less. But if it still has the flexibility that horses have of being able to run up a block without having to jump, then maybe those are ways of getting around a little bit easier, if not early game, if it's too hard to find these things, then at least later on and they provide a bit more options in terms of like

racetracks where a horse rider might not be able to get through like a low barrier, but maybe there's a a route that the lizard rider can go and that compensates for maybe they're slightly slower or, you know, there's some stuff that the horse can do jump wise that lizards couldn't and that kind of thing. So yeah, there's there's definitely room for for rideable lizards.

Because the alternative in terms of the more fantastical side of things is getting into historical lizards, by which I mean dinosaurs.

And I know Hytale again has done stuff like this where they've added dinosaurs to sort of like hollow earth style regions of the world and um Minecraft has obviously stayed away from doing sort of I I won't call dinosaurs low-hanging fruit, but I they're in that sort of category of obvious additions to the game just for the sake of making it more fun, because everybody loves a dinosaur.

Um, but the closest they've come to adding a dinosaur really is the sniffer, because it's an ancient mob that you sort of revive from these old eggs in a very Jurassic park, you know, your scientists didn't stop to think if they should, they would just put this thing on moss and let it grow.

Um I think dinosaurs feel a little far fetched, but they are definitely one of those cool video game things, and so it's whether or not they plan on splitting the different Um the the the ultimate cool move they could b they could do is have dinosaurs just be in an end update. And you find them all on like a uh an island somewhere out in the void and you go, What are all of these T-Rexes doing here? you know, and it just seems like the most video game decision of all time at that point.

And I think that there'd have to be a delicate balance too, because like I would imagine for players, like mostly plant eating dinosaurs would be the friendly ones that you would want to have like cows and chickens. You'd have the Bronosaurus, the Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Ancleosaurus. Like these are my favorite. uh dinosaurs growing up. I know there's too many to to name uh all at once here, but then having carnivorous dinosaurs like T Rex and Velociraptor would be less

convincing to Minecraft's style. So they're they're not as boxy and as lumbering. And they've done the s the sniffer lumbering animation very well. So I can see a bronosaur or, you know, a big triceratops walking around feeling very, very similar. Uh a br a triceratops would be a similar size and shape to a sniffer too, or at least

Somewhere's in those those realms. I know specifically Triceratops were huge. Don't come at me, listeners, but like I've a smaller version of the Triceratops family, uh like a protoceratops or something like that, could be could be workable with player scale.

Um, but I feel like you'd run into problems with like a behavior standpoint because like a T Rex, just like with the lizard with the Komodo dragon is gonna wanna eat everything, player included. You know, like you know that Bronosaurus you just found? That's a T Rex steak. Like just there's all kinds of issues. And then like

I don't think a T Rex is gonna look at a one meter high fence in the ground and say, like, well, that's gonna keep me out. You know, I feel like there'd be all kinds of issues with like finding cool dinosaurs and having to like do something before they All eat one another or eat you. And I I I don't know how you balance that in in Minecraft. Like all that said. If you gave me Minecraft's version of Dino Riders from the eighties, then the kid in me would be very, very happy.

Sure. Like I just, you know, I mean minus the lasers that that were all mounted to them, but like having, you know, you and a friend on the back of a Bronosaurus with like a couple of bows and arrows. fighting another pair of friends that are on the back of a T Rex that are, you know trying to shoot you or trying to run after you or something like that.

Just to your point previously about trees, like does a bronosaur care about trees? I I can very easily see the way that mobs move in Minecraft with a bronosaur that you think would just step over these things, be caught on them. Kind of like You know, a a a d a big dog that thinks it can't get over a small gate just'cause it's a gate and doesn't realize that it's four foot tall and just has to step over it.

Yeah and I think that, you know, you'd probably run into that a lot with these. Um, but it c it could be very fun from just a d like a visual aesthetic, but I I don't know how you do

just one or two without adding enough that people are super satisfied, because there's always going to be someone that's just not quite happy with it. And to the point about um people you know adding us in replies, even just like with archaeology You'd be under a certain amount of pressure to get certain things right because there's a lot of people out there in paleontology or just that are fans of dinosaurs.

that would just like, well, it's not really a dinosaur, or it's not really this, it's not really that, or these two dinosaurs wouldn't exist at the same time because they were sixty million

years between them existing on the planet. So I like your idea of adding them to the end'cause that's one way you can kind of like get away with it. It's like, all right, well, this isn't realistic. It's an it's another dimension. And that's what I I always find funny'cause like we bring it up a lot on the show about how realistic an animal would be adding to Minecraft.

a game where you fight a dragon in a different dimension at the end. So I feel like a little bit of leeway with things like this could be fun. And and I think maybe the end dimension might be one of the best ways to get dinosaurs into the game without having there be a lot of questions. Yeah, and uh th it also m would mean m M Minecraft had to take a stance on whether or not dinosaurs had feathers.

And things like that. Like there's if if you're adding like real world dinosaurs into the game, then there's there's always that problem. But that's obviously where they can take things a little bit more fantastic. I mean, the thing is, since Minecraft's inception, obviously we've had a lot of other survival crafting games come along, some of which, like Arc Survival Evolved, revolve entirely around you taming and riding dinosaurs. So there's certainly

you know, entries in the survival crafting genre out there that have done the dinosaur thing even if Minecraft hasn't. So I think there's room for originality to come through in Minecraft's ideas as they're so Uh this discussion has run a little bit long, so we're gonna wrap up this episode there for today, folks. Thank you so much for listening. You can find more information about our show and links to some of the stuff that we've talked about today over at thespawnchunks.com.

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My name is Johnny, but online a guide by Pixoriffs you can find most of what I do at youtube.com slash Pixlriffs where the Minecraft survival guide is currently in its third season.

I also try and stream three days a week on Twitch, where I do behind the scenes work for my YouTube series. I'm the voice of the unofficial HermitCraft recap, which you can find through a quick YouTube search, and aside from that, I'm at PixelRiffs on both Blue Sky and Instagram. Joel, where can people find you online?

I will point you towards the Citadel Cafe, my other podcast about sci-fi and fantasy entertainment. We have a new episode recorded. It's in the editing hopper. Should be up before the end of the month. We talked about Daredevil season two of Born Again as well. As uh Star Wars Darth Maul Sith Lord or Maul Sith Lord. So those are the two major topics on that show, as well as some Lego, as a matter of fact.

So uh always a fun time over on the Sigital Cafe. Speaking of fun times, I stream on Twitch Tuesday through Saturday. That is uh nine o'clock during the week, uh a.m. and then one p.m. on Saturday. And right now uh there's a return of the Friday Lego Let's Chat. But in between uh I'm working on the uh command center, of course. Thanks for visiting the Spawn Chunks, the world outside is infinite, so the dinosaurs must be out there somewhere.