Mojang developers working on the latest Caves & Cliffs' axolotls, goats, and glow squid mobs bring a plethora of new features to Minecraft, and the latest developer update outlines many of the most interesting and important changes they'll bring. Though players have gotten to experience some aspects of the update through playable snapshots, the first half of the update still isn't coming until summer.
Minecraft's Caves & Cliffs update is highly anticipated, having first been announced in 2020 and partially delayed only just recently. In April, Mojang announced that the Caves & Cliffs update would be split into two parts, with new mobs and blocks coming this summer, and many of the world-building elements not arriving until the holidays. Though fans were disappointed, the devs wanted to ensure that the update lived up to its potential.
In a new Minecraft Dev Diaries video, the new mobs coming in the Caves & Cliffs update were deeply detailed, with the axolotl and its properties taking center stage. The real-life creature is endangered, and its inclusion in Minecraft is intended to bring awareness to the interesting animal. In-game, the axolotl is intended to be the ocean biome's equivalent of wolves, acting as companion for players while underwater.
Though axolotls cannot survive on land (in real life or in Minecraft), the mob will be useful to defeat underwater threats like guardian temples when it arrives in the first half of Caves & Cliffs' rollout. Lured with a bucket of tropical fish, the creature will follow players into battle, where it can grant regeneration and remove mining fatigue if players help them defeat an enemy. Players can also breed axolotl, which has a 1 in 1,200 chance of spawning a rare blue axolotl in honor of the number of real axolotls estimated to be left in the wild. Adorably, Axolotl mobs also plays dead when close to death, regenerating until it's strong enough to fight again, much like a real-life axolotl.
The dev diary also outlined the goat and glow squid mobs, with the devs explaining that the goats are mischievous creatures who aren’t afraid to bump players off high mountains if they get too close. Goats can also jump, allowing them to get to strange places like roofs and mountaintops. Glow squids, meanwhile, were revealed to not actually give off their own light, but they remain illuminated even in absolute darkness. If attacked, the glow squid will go dark and zoom away to escape death. They drop glow ink sacs that can be applied to signs and item frames, making them glow in the dark even without a light source.
The new Minecraft mobs will offer a bevy of content, and it'll be fascinating to watch players test the new additions' limits once they go live. Although bigger features like revamped cave generation being pushed off to the update's latter half, Minecraft’s Caves & Cliffs' first update still sound like they'll change the game in very cool ways.
Minecraft is available on all platforms.
Source: Minecraft
