Minecraft 1.18 Update

Mojang recently released a new update to their sandbox game, Minecraft. They named the update “Caves and Cliffs.” In the release, they planned to introduce new mobs, shaders, graphics, lighting, and design to their game. When they were at the pre-release stage they decided to introduce the cave part first and release the cliffs update later in the year. From the first stage of the update they introduced many new and interesting blocks, mobs, plants, graphics, lighting, and mob drops. The mobs they introduced into the game are the axolotl and the goat. 

The axolotl is an exciting new pet that players can tame with buckets of fish. They can also breed them with cod. They come in four colors: gold, cyan, brown, and blue. Axolotls can perform cool tricks such as flipping underwater, jumping out of the water, and if damaged, they will play dead while regenerating health. Instead of having to make a pool or lake for them to thrive in, players can collect them in a bucket of water to keep them from despawning. They can also help players by attacking underwater mobs such as guardians and fish. 

The second mob they introduced is the goat. Goats can be milked and can be sheared for wool, giving them the abilities of cows and sheep. Goats have a 1 in 100 chance of ramming the player trying to knock the player off a cliff to kill the player and a 1 in 50 chance of being a screaming goat which will scream at random when the player is nearby. Players can also collect their horns. Players collect horns when a  goat tries to ram the player off a cliff. Before they can, players place a block in front of the player and the goat will ram the block instead, and drop their horn.

Mojang has also added some new blocks and features to make worlds more interesting and detailed. They have also added different types of caves to make underground exploration more interesting. The first cave is the lush cave, inside the player can find axolotls, and five new blocks. Moss block can be added to cobblestone and will make it mossy stone, which was previously only obtainable in dungeons. It can have bone meal used on it to spread the moss to other blocks. The moss block variant moss carpet  has the same features as carpet, but can also spread with bone-meal. There are also glow berries, which can be eaten to regain food bars and can be found growing from the top of lush caves. Finally, there are azalea bushes and flowering azalea bushes. When the player uses bone meal on a bush it will grow into an azalea tree. The player can also find these trees above a lush cave marking that there is one under the tree.

The second cave is the deepslate cave. Players can find this a lot deeper in the ground than most caves. They have a block that can only be found there: deepslate. They also have a deepslate variant of all the ores that can be collected in the game; deepslate is harder to mine than other blocks. The player will easily find lava pools near or in this cave.

Some variants of the caves are dripstone generated mega sized or miniature. In the dripstone variant, players will find dripstone hanging from the top of the cave or the bottom. The mega variant of caves can be hundreds of blocks tall with tons of ores in the walls or ground. There is also the miniature variant that could be 1 block by 1 block, but are usually very small with very little ore in them. 

Lastly, Mojang has added new graphics: the ores have a new look and a deepslate variant. They have also updated cave generating sequences so the caves will be more random and different.