Minecraft, a game adored by over 280 million users, is still going strong 13 years after its first release. 

Minecraft has recently spiked in popularity, with popular youtubers like PewDiePie and Markiplier playing it. This game, which is on every device imaginable costs some money being $29.99 on Console and PC, and $7.99 on mobile, but is incredibly worth it. It is an open sandbox game, sort of like an infinite world of legos. You can either play in Survival Mode, where you scavenge for resources and stay alive. You can also play in Creative Mode, where you have all the blocks at the tip of your fingers, and you can build to your heart’s content, without ever having to worry about resources. 

This year, the Wild Update was finally launched, after being announced last October bringing the long awaited Deep Dark, and the Ancient City, home of the Warden. 

The new mob, the Warden was announced October 3rd of 2020, originally planned for the large Caves and Cliffs update, but was postponed due to it not being ready for this large update. The Warden is a terrifying monster who lives in the depths of the Minecraft world. He may be blind, but his hearing is very heightened. He can hear the slightest sound, and once he does, he will find you, and you will die. He lives in the new Ancient City, a large underground city that resides in the new biome, the Deep Dark. This new eerie biome can be found deep within caves, but make sure you are well geared, because you’re in for an adventure. 

Along with that, we got our first new enchantment since 2020: Swift Sneak. This enchantment goes on leggings, the armor piece that goes on your legs, of any kind, and its max level allows you to sneak (crouch) and move as fast as one would walk! We also got the recovery compass, a compass that points to where you last died, which is very good for those of us who die a lot. Not exactly the most useful thing though for the hardcore players. 

Finally, for things you can get in the ancient cities, there are fragments of a music disc, which come together to create the disc called “5” by Lena Raine. This new, eerie disc, tells some sort of story of the ancient city. It exposes more lore for the very deeply ingrained story of Minecraft. What could it mean? 

Along with all this loot, we also got skulk sensors, a new block that can detect sounds, similar to the abilities of the Warden. This sensor can trigger redstone, which is used to make technology like large doors, and traps, in Minecraft. 

We also got the mangrove forest, full of, you guessed it, mangrove trees! These are reddish trees that are unfortunately disappearing off our planet, so Mojang, the developers of Minecraft, decided to celebrate these beautiful biomes and added them to the game. In this forest, we get a new mob, the frog! These adorable mobs waddle around in the forest, and lay eggs when they are bred with slime balls. These slime balls come from the slime mob, a big green blob that resides in swamps and certain caves. You might think that is weird, and you would be right. They were originally planned to eat fireflies, but Mojang evidently found out that fireflies are poisonous to frogs. Cool fact, weird fix.

 On top of this, the frogs now eat Magma Slimes, the variant of slimes in the Nether, which could be considered the hell of Minecraft. When they eat these Nether slimes, they produce a new light block, fittingly named Frog Lights. 

So that’s the gist of the new Minecraft Wild Update. But of course, we aren’t done. Mojang is always adding new things to the game, and we will be seeing a whole new update next Summer.