By Vivienne Forstner

Minecraft, one of the best selling games of all time, is known for its blocky design, age-friendly gameplay, and of course, the mobs. Any living entity in the game, whether it be a simple sheep or the mighty ender dragon, is called a mob. The developers of Minecraft are constantly changing and adding to the list of mobs to keep the game interesting and provide new opportunities and challenges. On October 3rd, 2020, Minecraft’s Twitter account held a live poll where players of the game could vote for the next mob they wanted to be added. There were three options to choose from, the first being the Moobloom, a friendly yellow cow that grows buttercups on its back and interacts with bees. The second was the Iceologer (which I personally think should have been called the “chillager” as a combination of “chill” and “pillager”) which is a hostile pillager who lives on mountain tops and hurls deadly ice clouds at players. The third and final option was the glow squid, a mob similar to the one already in the game except for the fact that, wait for it, it glows.

Minecraft fans of all specialties, from speedrunners to PVP experts to coders (and even just casual players), endorsed which mob they wanted to win. Initially, it was believed that the main competition was between the iceologer and the moobloom. The glow squid, while cool in theory, was not advertised as bringing any new material into

 the game. Not to mention, the name is a bit misleading. Minecraft’s current lighting mechanics can’t actually support a moving light source. Many people thought that it would be a helpful addition to deep sea explorations, especially since the 1.13 addition of the drowned; an underwater zombie that can bear tridents and is a real pain in the butt when trying to do any type of underwater explorations. Drowneds are notorious for sneaking up on you at the most inconvenient times, so a new light source would help you to be able to spot them before they spot you. However, it seems so far that glow squids will emit light similar to an enderman’s eyes. They will be able to be seen from a distance and will most likely have particles surrounding them, but they will not create any extra light to the surrounding area.

The glow squid definitely has a lot of potential. I hope that they will drop some sort of new resource. A regular squid usually drops one ink sac that can be used to make black dye. I’m hoping that the glow squid will drop an ink sac that can be used to make glowing dye, or at least a dye that gives off a similar effect that enchanted armor does.

In addition to this, the long-awaited caves and cliff update was announced! It’s going to introduce several new materials, mobs, and biomes that are going to really improve the game. Mountain and cave generation is going to see a massive upgrade, as they were outdated and needed some new properties. This will be the first update to the overworld since the Buzzy Bees update from December 2019.

Four new and incredibly interesting mobs are going to be added – the glow squid (which was a result of the mob vote), axolotls, goats, and the warden. The warden is by far the most exciting out of these. It’s a hostile mob that lives in the depths of the dark caves. One of the warden’s most interesting qualities is that it’s blind. This is the first blind mob in Minecraft. The warden is extremely powerful and can one-tap players in

most armor with the exception of diamond and netherite (which, even in that case, it only takes about two or three hits). The way it sees is through another new item called a sculk sensor, which basically allows it to use echolocation. This inadvertently introduced a way to make wireless redstone, which will no doubt be used for complex and creative projects by the redstoners of Minecraft.

Overall, this update will majorly change the way the game is played. It will add infinite creative opportunities and a new type of challenge for players new and old. Everyone is patiently waiting for summer 2021 to explore this awesome new update.