When did Minecraft Caves and Cliffs part 2 release?

The Caves and Cliffs part 2 update, or Minecraft 1.18, released on November 30, 2021. You can now explore all of the new biomes, taller mountains, and larger caves made possible with this update, and there are plenty of new things to see which we’ll explain below.

There are 8 new biomes available in Minecraft Caves and Cliffs update part 2

One of the biggest sets of new additions that arrived with the Minecraft Caves and Cliffs update part 2 are the eight new biomes that have been added into the game. You can find fresh underground Dripstone Cave biomes, and several new mountain biomes. Aquifers and new cave types have also arrived with this update, to make the subterranean biomes of Minecraft more interesting. Here’s what you need to know about each one:

Noise caves and aquifers are new cave features

Noise caves are a new way of generating caves that leads to greater natural variety out in the world, and there are three food-themed variations of them: Cheese, Spaghetti, and Noodle. Cheese caves, much like real-life Swiss cheese, are large holes that lead to cavern formations of differing sizes. Contrarily, Spaghetti caves are long and relatively narrow paths that go all over the place. Lastly, Noodle caves are very similar to Spaghetti caves except they are thinner and “squigglier”. This new system mixes in with the original cave and canyon generating systems to create much more diverse cave systems found in a world.

Aquifers are another new feature that can be found in caves with the Minecraft 1.18 update. These bodies of water form in noise cave areas with their own local water level that’s independent of sea level. Depending on the size of the cave system, this can result in giant underground lakes, although aquifers can also generate inside mountains and at the surface. You also have a chance of stumbling across a lava aquifer if you’re below y0.

Dripstone Cave Biome

You can find Dripstone Cave biomes underground in the Overworld now the Minecraft 1.18 update has gone live. These biomes are (unsurprisingly) full of Dripstone, a rock block that allows Pointed Dripstone to form beneath it to create stalactite-like formations. Dripstone is mainly used for decoration and occurs naturally in certain cave biomes.

In these Dripstone Cave biomes, you’ll find Dripstone, in both block and pointed forms, abundantly on the floors and ceilings. Dripstone blocks on the ceiling with water above them can form into stalactites, which will then cause stalagmites to form directly below. A pair of these formations can eventually join up to form a Dripstone column. Copper ore and small water pools are also commonly found in Dripstone cave biomes.

Lush Caves biome

As the name suggests, this underground biome type features caves filled with lush plants. Moss covers the floors and ceilings and Spore Blossoms grow on ceilings too. Your path will be lit by Glow Berries that grow on Cave Vines from the ceiling. If you’re exploring the Minecraft Overworld, you’ll know a Lush Cave is below you if you stumble across Azalea Trees as they keep their roots firmly in the caves. As such, Azalea Bushes can also be commonly found in Lush Caves. This new biome also serves as the only place to find axolotls too!

Grove biome

Groves are a new type of snowy biome that commonly occur on high altitude terrain but below mountain peaks or hilltops. You’ll find spruce trees, naturally-occurring powder snow, plus a lot of rabbits, foxes, and wolves in Grove biomes. Make sure you wear Leather Boots to avoid falling through the snow!

Meadow biome

Like Groves, Meadow biomes also spawn at higher altitudes near mountain ranges or up on plateaus. Meadows are full of grass and flowers, but there is a chance that a tall and lonesome oak or birch tree, often with a beehive, will be generated too. In terms of wildlife, you’ll find donkeys, rabbits, and sheep grazing on the meadow grass.

Lofty Peaks biome

The mountains you find in Lofty Peaks biomes are the kind that you might have seen in a nature documentary. They are very jagged and feature snow, stone, and goats making them their home.

Snowcapped Peaks biome

Serving as almost the opposite of Lofty Peaks, the Snowcapped Peaks biome contains smoother mountain peaks with ice as well as snow. However, you will still find goats.

Stony Peaks biome

This biome features lots of stony mountain peaks that vary between jagged and smooth. Like Lofty Peaks, goats are commonly found in Stony Peaks biomes. You’ll also have a chance of finding strips of decorative Calcite blocks within the stony mountains.

Snowy Slopes biome

Snowy Slope biomes are like a more extreme version of Grove biomes. Snowy Slopes generate at higher altitudes beneath mountain peaks and hilltops – just like Groves – except they feature very snowy terrain, so much so that powder snow traps can be hidden within. Leather Boots are essential to traversing these biomes safely. Look out for goats and rabbits on your travels though.

In Minecraft Caves and Cliffs part 2 update, mountains are getting taller and caves are getting bigger

Another big change that’s included with the Caves and Cliffs part 2 update in Minecraft 1.18 is that the world has received a big vertical expansion to accommodate a lot of the new biomes. Minecraft’s in-world Y-axis has been expanded by 64 blocks in both directions, creating a total vertical building range of 384 blocks, up from 256 blocks. In terms of the in-game coordinates, that’s from y-64 to y320.

You’ll notice that generated mountains can now be taller thanks to the taller ceiling, and caves go even deeper – as far down as y-64! With the raised world ceiling, clouds now spawn higher in the sky too, at y192 instead of y128. With these changes and the new biomes in update 1.18, ore veins and ore distribution is getting significant changes too.

Minecraft Caves and Cliffs part 2 update introduces large ore veins and new ore distribution

With the underground world of Minecraft expanding vertically down by 64 layers, loads of opportunities for even more mining of ores and materials will open, but the task of finding exactly what you need might be a bit trickier. In Minecraft update 1.18, new large ore veins can be discovered underground. These winding formations are rare but contain a lot more of a particular ore than usual. Mine between y0 and y50 to find Copper veins with Granite mixed in, and search within y-8 and y-60 to find Iron veins with Tuff.

Ores as a whole have seen lots of redistribution with this update, largely to compensate for the huge increase to the vertical world size. One of the key general changes to ore distribution is that individual ores have more specific layer ranges to generate in, so there won’t be a particular Y level that is good for all ores. Here’s a list of where you can find ores as of the Caves and Cliffs part 2 update:

• Iron Ore: Below y72 with a strong bias towards y16. Also generates above y112, with increasing iron ore deposits the higher you go.
• Copper Ore: Between y0 and y96 with a strong bias towards y48. Also look in Dripstone Cave biomes underground.
• Lapis Lazuli: Below y64 with a strong bias towards y0. Lapis Lazuli below y-32 or above y32 can’t generate in open air and can be found buried or in water instead.
• Coal: Above y0 with a strong bias towards y96 and above. It has reduced air exposure, so it is also more commonly found buried or underwater.
• Gold: Below y32 with a strong bias towards y-16. Extra Gold can still be found in Badlands biomes.
• Redstone: Below y16 and increases as you go below y-32.
• Diamond: Below y16 with more Diamond the further down you go. Like Lapis and Coal, Diamond has reduced air exposure and is commonly found either buried or underwater.

Candles have been added for all Minecraft players in the Caves and Cliffs part 2 update

Having only been in the Java Edition of Minecraft for about a year and in beta versions of the Bedrock Edition for several months, candles are finally available for all players now Minecraft update 1.18 has released. These light sources can be crafted with a Honeycomb and a piece of String, then dyed to change their color. You can also add one on top of an uneaten cake to give it a true celebratory feel.

The new Warden mob is coming in a future update

Unfortunately, the new Warden mob was delayed out of the Minecraft Caves and Cliffs part 2 update, but since the Minecraft The Wild update launched, it’s in the game along with the Deep Dark.

Wardens and the Deep Dark biome aren’t the only things that didn’t quite make the cut for the 1.18 update, however. Archeology, bundles, and goat horns won’t be in Minecraft just yet either, but will come in a later update.

For those not in the know, Archeology will allow players to use a copper brush to reveal items buried in Sand, Gravel, or Dirt Blocks found within a new Archeology Site structure. Goat Horns have a chance to drop from goats after they charge into a solid object and can be used by the player to make sounds. Finally, Bundles are craftable sacks that take up one inventory slot but can hold several items of different types – useful for long journeys and extensive mining expeditions where food and material storage is essential.

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Minecraft Respawn Anchor explained

Minecraft Netherite

Look out for Ancient Debris to craft Minecraft Netherite while in the Nether

If you’re a Minecraft veteran, you’ll know that beds do not work in the Nether. In fact, they blow up if you try to use one. However a Respawn Anchor allows you to set a spawn point within the Nether and, best of all, it doesn’t explode. Using a Respawn Anchor makes the Nether a little more habitable, particularly for anyone embarking on lengthy Nether trips.

When you’ve got one (details on how to craft a Respawn Anchor in Minecraft below), you need to charge it with Glowstone. One Glowstone block is equivalent to one respawn and you can add up to four blocks, meaning you can respawn four times before needing to replenish the Respawn Anchor. You do need to ensure the surrounding area is not obstructed however, otherwise you’ll see “You have no home bed or charged respawn anchor, or it was obstructed” when you die.

Interestingly, Hoglins will flee from Respawn Anchors, meaning you don’t run the risk of one being next to you when you respawn. Using a Respawn Anchor in the overworld will cause it to explode though, so don’t even test it out. 

Minecraft diamonds

Make sure you know how to find Minecraft diamonds

To get Crying Obsidian, you need to find a Ruined Portal, and they can be found in either the Overworld or the Nether. They can be found in every biome in both dimensions and there’s also a 5% chance it’s a Giant Ruined Portal. Once you’ve found some blocks, just mine it with a Diamond Pickaxe like normal Obsidian. Blocks of Crying Obsidian can also be found in Bastion Remnant chests, and can be obtained through bartering with Piglins when you give them a Gold Ingot, although the chances are quite low.

To get Glowstone, you need to mine it in the Nether and is frequently found hanging from ceilings in large clusters. When you mine it with a regular pickaxe, it’ll turn into Glowstone Dust, but four bits of Glowstone Dust can be reformed into a Glowstone Block. If you’ve been doing some Minecraft enchanting and have a Silk Touch pickaxe, you can mine the Glowstone without breaking it down into dust.

The Respawn Anchor is currently the only use for Crying Obsidian, other than as a decorative block. As long as you don’t explode it in the Overworld, one Respawn Anchor will suffice for a while if you keep restocking it with Glowstone.

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• What is Minecraft Realms?
• How much does Minecraft Realms cost?
• How to start a Minecraft Realm
• How to invite friends to your Minecraft Realm
• How to backup your Minecraft Realm

Minecraft Realms and Minecraft Realms Plus explained

Minecraft Realms are private multiplayer servers that allow you to invite ten other players, giving each of them access to the always-online server. You can either create a new world as a Realm or convert one of your existing worlds into one. However, Realms are a premium feature and you must pay a monthly subscription to keep the Realm open to other players. Depending on your subscription, you can also get new content each month, including maps, mini-games, and character skins.

Your Realm will be online 24/7, so anyone that you’ve invited to join you will be able to play for free whenever they choose, regardless if you’re there or not. Because you have full control over who can play on your Realm – you can revoke access at any time – it’s also a safe space for younger gamers to gather and play with friends without the worry of who they may be interacting with.

Minecraft Realms is available on PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices, and you can access your Realm from any of these provided you have signed in with the same Minecraft account. Crossplay is also enabled for Realms using the Bedrock Edition of Minecraft, allowing you to invite friends no matter what platform they are playing on. Be aware that crossplay does not work between the Bedrock and Java Editions of Minecraft, so if you are a Java Edition PC player, you cannot join the Realm of a Bedrock Edition Xbox Series X or PC player, for example.

Another point to note is that Minecraft Realms – for either Minecraft edition – do not currently support mods. Bedrock Realms Plus includes an array of Marketplace packs and supports user-created content, while Java Realms includes community-created content but does not support the Minecraft Marketplace. If Minecraft mods are something you care about, you may have to look for an alternative.

Minecraft Realms price and what is included

As mentioned, you pay a monthly fee to keep your Minecraft world open as a Realm. However, there are three versions of the Realms subscription, each with their own benefits, which are listed below: 

• Realms (Bedrock Edition) = $3.99/£3.29 per month
  The basic Minecraft Realms for Bedrock Edition costs $3.99/£3.29 a month and allows you to invite two more friends to gain access to your private online world. This subscription also supports Minecraft Marketplace, includes three World Slots, supports user-created content, and has crossplay across Bedrock devices and consoles.
• Realms Plus (Bedrock Edition) = $7.99/£6.69 per month
  Minecraft Realms Plus is the enhanced version of Realms and includes all the benefits of that subscription, as well as monthly Minecraft Marketplace content and access to over 150 Marketplace packs. The other big benefit is that you can invite up to 10 other players to join your Realm. You’ll get a 30-day free trial too if you’ve never previously signed up to Realms and start a Minecraft Realms Plus subscription.
• Realms (Java Edition) = $7.99/£6.69 per month
  The only Java Edition option costs the same as Realms Plus but offers a lot less. You still get to invite up to 10 Java Edition friends to join your private Realm server, 24/7 access to that server, and three World Slots, but Java Edition does not support Minecraft Marketplace. This means you can’t buy or use anything from the marketplace and you won’t get access to the monthly updates and over 150 content packs. Instead, Java Edition Realms gets free community-created content. 

Remember, for any of these subscription tiers, there’s always the option to cancel later if you feel you’re not getting much use from it. After cancelling your subscription, you’ve got 18 months to download your Realm worlds before they are permanently deleted. If you sign up for Minecraft Realms again, you can replace your new world with the downloaded backup of one of your previous Realm world – more on that further down.

If you’ve opted for the 10-player subscription to Realms Plus, you should keep an eye out for the monthly updates. New maps, character skins, and mini-games are constantly being added and as they’re available for free with Realms Plus, it seems silly not to at least check out what’s on offer.

It’s worth mentioning that if you have an Xbox Game Pass or PC Game Pass subscription, you can play Minecraft for no additional cost, but you still need to pay for Realms. You can also play Minecraft for free in a limited browser-based version of the game.

How to set up Minecraft Realms

Best Minecraft seeds

Find out about the best Minecraft seeds here

If you want to start from scratch and create a new world in Realms, go ahead and start setting up the world as you want it, with difficulty, mode (Survival, Creative), along with any other options you want to add. Once you’re happy with your settings, select the ‘Create on Realms Server’ button. You’ll then be given the option of a 10-player Realm or a 2-player Realm. Once you’ve accepted the Terms and Conditions and finalised the transaction, you’ll be able to access your new Realm – and Marketplace goodies if you selected the 10-player option – straight away.

If you want to change your current Realm world setting, you can click the ‘Edit’ button next to the name of the Realm to bring up the game setting menu. From there, you can make adjustments such as game mode, difficulty, change the name of the world or add cheats. You also get three World Slots as part of any Minecraft Realms subscription, so you’re not just limited to one world either.

How to invite friends to your Minecraft Realms

The good news is that friends that you want to invite to your Realm don’t need their own Minecraft Realms subscription to join you. To invite friends to your Realm, click the Edit button next to your Realm world, then select ‘Members’. Here you’ll be able to invite other players and manage those that already have access to the realm. You can ‘uninvite’ players if they’ve outstayed their welcome or haven’t been active for a while on this page too.

It seems that the number of invites you can send out is almost limitless but the people that can play on your Realm simultaneously will be limited by your subscription type.

How to back up or replace your World in Minecraft Realms

You don’t have to stick with the same World when using Minecraft Realms. If you want to start a completely new World or if you want to replace your current one with another, you can do that too. But you might want to back up your current World before doing so, otherwise you’ll lose any progress you’ve made on it.

To back up your existing World on Minecraft Realms, click the ‘Edit’ button next to your Realm world and select ‘Download World’. This will save the World to your device and you’ll be able to play it locally or re-upload it again later if you change your mind.

To replace your current World on Minecraft Realms, again click ‘Edit’ next to your Realm world and select ‘Replace World’. You will be then asked to confirm this action before being presented with a list of available worlds to replace it with. Once selected, the new world will be uploaded and you’ll be ready to go.

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Whether you want a frog army or a garden full of croakers, here’s every frog type and everything else you need to know about Minecraft frogs.  

How to find Minecraft frogs and use them  

Minecraft frogs naturally spawn in Swamp and Mangrove Swamp biomes. You will find them near the water, where they appear in groups of two to five. Although they won’t spawn anywhere else naturally, you can take the frogs out of the swamp (leading them) and breed them in a different biome. The biome where the tadpoles grow up will then determine the type (colour) of frog you get.

Frogs aren’t the most useful mobs Minecraft has ever seen though. If you kill a frog, it may drop one to three experience orbs, but no items. However, you can use frogs to create froglights; a luminous decorative block. It has a chance of dropping whenever a frog eats a tiny magma cube. 

Types of Minecraft frogs

 There are three frog types in Minecraft: Temperate, Cold, and Warm. The type is based on the biome the tadpole grew up in, and the main difference between them is their colour. Here’s an overview: 

• Temperate frogs: orange. These frogs naturally spawn in normal Swamps. You will also get Temperate Frogs if the tadpole grew up in a mild climate such as hills, most forests, normal taiga, meadows, and plains.
• Cold frogs: green. These frogs don’t spawn naturally. You can breed them in a snowy, frozen environment. Think of a frozen Taiga or snowy mountains.
• Warm frogs: white. White frogs spawn naturally in Mangrove Swamps. You can also breed them in jungles, deserts, and savanna. 

Can you tame frogs in Minecraft? 

Unfortunately, frogs aren’t going to be your next Minecraft pets. Unlike mobs such as the horse, cat, and wolf, they can’t be tamed. However, you can still make them follow you by holding up frog food (more on that below). If you want, you can lure them into a pool, garden, or even your home.  

How to breed frogs in Minecraft 

Who cares about house pets if you can start a Minecraft frog farm? Yes, while you can’t tame them, you’re still able to breed frogs. All it takes is the right food: slimeballs. 

After feeding slimeballs to at least two frogs, they will enter ‘love mode’ and one of the frogs will start searching for a place to lay their eggs. The eggs, or frogspawn, can only be placed on a water tile with air above it. The frogspawn will eventually transform into tadpoles, and the tadpoles will become new frogs.

Minecraft frog breeding tips 

 A few more things you might want to know about Minecraft frog breeding: 

• The frogspawn will only appear once the pregnant frog finds a suitable water tile (so make sure they have access!).
• One tile of frogspawn can hatch two to six tadpoles.
• Tadpoles may be eaten by axolotl.
• Since tadpoles count as baby’s, they don’t drop items upon death.
• Both frogs and tadpoles will follow the slimeball.
• You can move tadpoles in a bucket.
• Tadpoles die when they’re left on dry land.

How to get slimeballs to feed Minecraft frogs 

Only one more thing you need to figure out before you can start the frog farm: how to find slimeballs? As the name suggests, slimeballs are dropped by slimes. These green, blubbery mobs spawn in slime chunks below layer 40 or in Swamp biomes between layer 50 and 70 when the light level is 7 or less. Don’t worry too much about this; they’re pretty common in the swamp.

Earlier announcements mentioned fireflies as another food source, but this was changed shortly before Minecraft update 1.19 came out, as fireflies are poisonous to real-life frogs. 

Best of luck on your search for Minecraft frogs!

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I miss my wee daughter when she goes to nursery school for a few hours three days a week, for goodness’ sake, how on Earth do I explain to her what’s going on here? Minecraft Active Citizen (opens in new tab) – a new playable project that sees Minecraft: Education Edition partnering with the Nobel Peace Center – perhaps can’t explain exactly what is happening in Eastern Europe right now to my three-and-a-half year old, but it is designed to explore and extol the virtues of real-world peace to a younger audience. “In-game, students follow the lives of four Nobel Peace laureates,” explains Allison Matthews, the head of Minecraft Education, “and by immersing themselves in the actions these laureates took in order to improve their community or create peace in their part of the world, we hope students can learn that small actions have ripple effects around the world and through time.”

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Meet the Minecraft builder recreating the entire Star Wars galaxy one planet at a time

The Minecraft Active Citizen project has been in the works for a while, granted, but it enters the world at a poignant moment in time. Since the launch of Minecraft’s Education Edition in 2016, conflict has swept Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, with terrorist insurgencies, civil unrest, and drug wars having affected many more countries and sovereign states across the globe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month marks the latest stain on history – the move itself a major escalation between two nations already locked in conflict since 2014 – and we explored what it’s like for game developers in Ukraine, working and living under the shadow of war at ground level. Minecraft Active Citizen, on the other hand, takes a more philosophical stance and macro approach in its pro-peace/anti-war message, but it’s impossible to ignore the real-world circumstances that frame its arrival today, March 1, 2022. 

Matthews agrees, and says that while she and her team have been working alongside the Nobel Peace Center and non-profit organization Games for Change since the summer of last year, the project’s core lessons and themes of championing world peace feel more relevant now than ever. We are of course also still in the midst of a global pandemic, a devastating world event that has killed several millions of people, and has likewise turned the routines of Active Citizen’s core audience (8-16 year olds) upside down via sporadic but still ongoing nationally-enforced lockdowns and quarantine measures. The fact that Minecraft can offer familiarity and relatability in its educational setting, then, is invaluable. 

“In Active citizen, we’re touching on topics that really matter in the real world. So it’s not just about how you become a better game player, it’s about understanding that if you approach a situation with compassion, or you approach people with understanding and with an attitude of peace, then things can unblock, you can actually make better progress and make lives better than otherwise,” says Matthews. “And so those are the sorts of lessons that seem quite subtle, perhaps. But when you play through Active Citizen, there is a real feeling of the impact that you’re having, even on the non-player characters in the game when you make certain decisions.”

In practice, Active Citizen sees players starting out at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, where they’re introduced to the creator of the Nobel Prize, Alfred Nobel, as well as four Peace Prize-winning laureates, Malala Yousafzai, Wangari Maathai, Fridtjof Nansen, and the Dalai Lama. Designed with classroom use in mind, coinciding lesson plans offer extracurricular reading for teachers and students alike, with the ultimate in-game goal for players being to create a unique Minecraft build that represents active citizenship for them; select entries of which will be showcased at a forthcoming Nobel Peace Center exhibition. 

Matthews says that her own favorite part of Active Citizen is the 14th Dalai Lama’s section, whose famous teachings, she says, have inspired various other facets of Minecraft Education Edition’s wider catalog – not least last year’s collaboration with the Met Office on Climate Futures. “When you play through his part of the experience, his character repeats, ‘be in peace; be in peace,’ and I literally could feel the tension coming out of my body,” Matthews adds. “You go through different activities, they get harder as you go, and at the end you help a group of NPC villagers, each of who has a problem that impacts the next villager. And when you unlock the problem for each villager, they immediately understand that another person was having trouble too. Those lessons of community, those little gestures of peace and assuming best intent – they are just very powerful. And that’s what I’m hoping people will get from this.”

Peace together 

One of Minecraft’s strongest qualities in educational terms – both vanilla Minecraft and Minecraft: Education Edition – is its scope to harness the imagination and passion of its players in order to help them learn without realizing they’re learning. The interactive nature of video games helps this to no end, whereby games can be more persuasive in delivering their message compared to more traditional media, such as books and film. The consistency with which video games can convey information is also vital in this process – best exemplified at the beginning of the global pandemic, when real-world rules changed overnight; but when video games provided familiar safe spaces with persistent, unchanging rules. 

For so many of the parents I’ve spoken to since March 2020, this very feature of video games helped dismantle some of mysticism around the medium – where it became clear just how valuable the social elements of online worlds can be, at a time when real-world socializing became so restricted. Matthews adds: “When the world went into lockdown, when young people weren’t able to go to school, we realized how important schools are, not just for educational purposes, but for the social aspect too, connecting with their friends and just interacting with other humans. And so we found that games like Minecraft became a safe place to connect with your friends, or just a place where you can have community when you can’t have community in real life. I think that gave a lot of credibility to the power of video games for mental wellness and connection.”

“We hope that carries into Active Citizen. For younger students, hopefully they’ll take away some of those concepts about how small gestures of peace and small actions can have small impacts that then have ripple effects. For older students, I would love to know that teenagers are digging in more deeply into the life stories of the Nobel Peace laureates and being inspired to take what they’ve learned about peace into the real world.”

In relative terms, ‘peace’ to my three-year-old is when her little brother is out with my parents, Granny Jackie and Granda Joe. Peace is when she isn’t wrestling for control of her micro scooter that her little brother has taken a shine to since learning to walk, or when I choose to put Gabby’s Dollhouse on the TV over the Teletubbies. There will be a joke about twisted world leaders throwing their toys out of the pram in there somewhere, but in all seriousness, my young daughter can’t, and shouldn’t have to, comprehend situations like the one we’re seeing unfold in Ukraine. The man in the video on my phone shouldn’t need to choose between what he views as his civil duty and the safety of his family, and his little girl – who can’t be much older than my own – certainly shouldn’t be forced to say goodbye to her father before boarding a train to unfamiliar surroundings. 

Video games’ place in all of these discussions – of war, terror, politics, and justice – can feel trivial. I know that I often question the value of writing about video games in the wake of real-world conflict and moral crisis, and as a parent I now view the medium through an entirely different lens than I ever did before. This goes both ways – sure, I might worry about the amount of screen time my wee ones are clocking up during an average week (something which seems to be increasing by the minute at the moment); but I also believe more in projects like Minecraft Active Citizen (opens in new tab), much more than I might have done in my formative years. 

Video games probably won’t ever end wars, but they are invaluable tools for educating and informing children and adults alike. In the words of the Dalai Lama, as he appears both in the real world and as a pixelated 1.8 x 0.6 grouping of blocks: be in peace; be in peace.  

Fancy checking out Minecraft Active Citizen (opens in new tab)? Follow that link to do just that.

For other games like Minecraft just follow that link instead. 

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“EyeMine allows you to play Minecraft using just eye movement alone,” project lead Bill Donegan explains. “It’s like an on-screen keyboard that lets you look at the different buttons and then do those actions in-game, and you also look within the gameplay area to do things. So for instance, if you want to mine, you look at the keyboard, select the mine action, and then you look within the game at where you want to mine.” 

Shortly after EyeMine officially launched in 2018, the first player the SpecialEffect team saw using the software was based in Japan, which quickly demonstrated the far-reaching impact EyeMine was already having worldwide. “They posted a video clip and it just made my day!” SpecialEffect founder Dr Mick Donegan recalls. Over the course of 2020, the charity has worked to bring a new and improved version of EyeMine to Minecraft; released in January of this year, the update brings with it a host of new features to make the software easier to use and more effective in-game for beginners and experienced EyeMine users. 

EyeMine V2 

EyeMine helps players control the game with Eye Gaze, a technology that can be used to control computers through eye movement with the use of an eye-tracker. As with so many of SpecialEffect’s projects, the updated release known as EyeMine V2 came about as a result of player feedback. What initially started as an update to make EyeMine more stable with the latest version of Minecraft became a much larger project, with more features and settings introduced to make the overall experience of using the software and playing Minecraft even more enjoyable and accessible. 

Adjustable keyboards have been added so that players can change their own settings for certain gestures, such as walking speed and mouse sensitivity, while combat has also seen some improvements to make automatic bows and arrows more efficient. Additionally, an Ironsights mode helps players zoom in for more precision as they build, default settings are also easier to adjust for beginners playing the game with EyeMine, and a saved toolbar lets players quickly access their favorite or most-used Minecraft items. 

One of the biggest improvements is the new dwell building functionality that allows players to choose where to place blocks by looking at a spot directly in the world of Minecraft to speed up the process of building. Mick tells me all about Becky Tyler, a long-time EyeMine user who built a pet emporium in just three hours using the new dwell feature; previously it would have taken her two days to build. 

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Becky tells me over email that she first tried out EyeMine back in 2016, and has since gone on to provide lots of feedback to SpecialEffect about features that could be added to improve the software for all of its users. As well as being one of the charity’s ambassadors, Becky also runs her own YouTube channel EyeGazeGirl (opens in new tab), where she posts videos that show her using EyeMine to play Minecraft with her eyes (opens in new tab). 

“I really enjoyed building my pet emporium! It was so much quicker in the updated version of EyeMine, which made the process a lot less repetitive and laborious,” Becky says. “I love finding all the animals to put in the shop too, including some fish, which were new in version 1.13 of Minecraft, so I hadn’t had access to these before.”

A lot of work has been done to ensure that EyeMine can be used by as many people as possible and suit the needs of a variety of player levels. With a range of settings to cater to those who are entirely new to Eye Gaze technology as well as long-time users, EyeMine can also work with a number of different eye-trackers including lower-cost ones. From basic setups with fewer inputs on the on-screen keyboard to more advanced settings for experienced players, the software can be adapted to the individual needs of each player. 

Minecraft for everyone  

Not unlike the updated version of EyeMine, the charity initially began developing the software for Minecraft in response to requests from Eye Gaze users who expressed an interest in playing the game after watching others enjoy it on YouTube. 

“People tend to say, ‘I would like to play this game,’ and we’ll try and find a way for them to play it,” Bill explains. “And a lot of the time that’s on consoles with controllers and we adapt physical controllers, but we do a lot of work with Eye Gaze as well. This was a bit of an overlap in that we just had a small group of people who are Eye Gaze users that were really into Minecraft; they watched YouTubers, but they couldn’t actually play themselves. So it was always in our minds.”

“And then it just so happened that we tried this communication software that we used on another project of ours that was just exclusively for Eye Gaze access to communication and computers,” Bill continues, “which is, again, like an on-screen keyboard, essentially, that we can adapt to the user. So we tried playing with that to see what we could do [in Minecraft].” 

Bill goes on to tell me that the moddable nature of the Java Edition of Minecraft is largely why SpecialEffect had so much success with Minecraft. Once they discovered Eye Gaze controls could have an effect in-game, such as movement with WASD keys, it demonstrated that Minecraft could pick up the input and something could be developed. Not long after, programmer and technical consultant Kirsty McNaught joined as a volunteer and started looking into building something that could be optimized for the game. 

“We always had a bit of a view that we want to give access to Minecraft, but we might learn stuff to play other games with Eye Gaze as well. Because it still is, and particularly at the time, very restricted in what you can do in terms of games with Eye Gaze. It’s got all this opportunity, but playing games [with it] is underdeveloped. So Kirsty started work on it, and it turned out this other piece of software called OptiKey (opens in new tab), an open-source communication keyboard, is available that you can play around with a lot more. So then she decided to use that instead of building something completely from scratch.” 

Levelling the playing field 

Once SpecialEffect had a software program that could work within the game, the continued development of EyeMine from user feedback has taken it to where it is today. The work done with Eye Gaze technology also led to the launch of the new Eye Gaze Games website (opens in new tab) late last year. The website features a selection of games that can be played using Eye Gaze (opens in new tab), and every game is freely available for everyone to download and try. As well as offering up a library of games for players with physical disabilities to enjoy, Bill and Mick say they hope that it will also show game developers what’s possible when it comes to using Eye Gaze in games 

“Hopefully someday there’ll be access to more games, but right now there isn’t. So we created this suite of games called Eye Gaze Games,” Bill says. “It’s an underserved area, so it’s just trying to offer more games and also show other people what’s possible, and some elements of best practice from what we’ve learned through the years using Eye Gaze”.

“There’s a range of games like chess that you can play against anybody around the planet, and a driving game and that sort of thing, just to introduce people to Eye Gaze,” Mick says, “including developers as well, so they can see that it isn’t actually rocket science it’s just about your interface design. Even just by getting in and tweaking your interface, you can let a lot more people enjoy your games.”

From its initial launch to the latest updated version, EyeMine continues to help people around the world enjoy Minecraft. From building pet emporiums to playing with friends and experiencing all of the possibilities of Mojang’s adventure, Mick hopes that the free software will encourage more people to try using Eye Gaze technology. 

“We’re hoping that by helping people use gaze tracking for fun, it’s going to encourage more people to actually experience Eye Gaze,” Mick adds, “and realize how exciting and liberating it can be.” 

You can read more about the new and improved version of EyeMine here (opens in new tab). 

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“Play is at the heart of everything we do, but safety comes first. Yes, even before play. To this end, Mojang Studios enlist the help of moderators who work tirelessly to maintain Minecraft’s welcoming environment,” explains a post on the official Minecraft website (opens in new tab).

“This is work we’ve been doing for a long time, but we’ve recently added new moderation actions to the Bedrock version of Minecraft. These tools are meant to help ensure that all our players can continue feeling as safe as possible within Minecraft and Realms on Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Windows 10, iOS, and Android.” 

The post goes on to detail the changes, which includes giving moderators the power to ban players “who do not follow [Mojang’s] Community Guidelines when sending online messages using our services (Realms) or Featured Servers, and communicating online through signposts and books”.

“By introducing these new tools, we aim to ensure that our Community Guidelines are enforced, which in turn will help us provide a positive and enjoyable environment throughout our games,” the update concludes. “And there’s even more to come. We are constantly evaluating new ways to help us make our community a safer space for everyone, and will keep you updated on the progress. In the meantime, please be nice to each other!”

The biggest Minecraft DLC mash-up in the history of the game is coming with the Minecraft Star Wars DLC (opens in new tab). The pack includes content from A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and the latest hit DisneyPlus show The Mandalorian (opens in new tab).

The Star Wars mash-up has a skin pack, featuring locations and 36 character skins from the original film trilogy and The Mandalorian, with a full bespoke texture set, mobs, so you’re able to recreate iconic scenes from the franchise. 

Getting ready to jump into the new DLC? Check out our Minecraft guide (opens in new tab).

For more, here’s our list of the best survival games (opens in new tab) you can play right now.

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Edge issue 339 (opens in new tab), which goes on sale in print and digital forms Thursday, November 7, crowns the dozen games that we believe define gaming’s most transformative decade to date. This is not a ‘best of’ list; it celebrates the games which have impacted the industry in ways that go far beyond their mere quality. Spelunky, for instance, is here not just for being brilliant, but also for birthing the Roguelike. Amnesia: The Dark Descent didn’t just redefine video game horror; it also gave us the Let’s Play. 

A 12-cover split run means each title is given the prominence it deserves; inside, in-depth analysis gives (we hope) proper context to each inclusion. Here’s all 12 covers, which have been randomly sorted at newsagents’ and in subscriber letterboxes up and down the land.

Limited-edition ‘Games of the Decade’ box set

For collectors, we’ve produced a limited-edition box set containing all 12 covers, available from Thursday, November 7. You can get your hands on that here (opens in new tab), although you should act fast before it sells out. 

For more industry-beating access to the very best that the video game industry has to offer, why not subscribe to Edge? You’ll save on the cover price and have your copy delivered to your door (or device) each month, complete with exclusive subscriber covers.

You can subscribe to the print edition (opens in new tab), digital version, or save even more with the print/digital bundle – whatever you choose, you can rest easy in the knowledge you’re getting the full story before anyone else.

The post Edge magazine issue 339 celebrates the defining games of the decade across 12 collectors edition covers appeared first on Game News.

Lots of texture packs and shaders can really change up the look and feel of the Minecraft world, and likewise the addition of adding ray tracing makes a big difference to the many landscapes in Mojang’s sandbox adventure. Just looking at the comparison between a landscape with RTX on and off above shows just how good it will look, bringing in gorgeous rays of light and noticeable texture changes. 

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What is ray tracing, and is it really the future of gaming? (opens in new tab)

Minecraft isn’t the only one to get a ray tracing makeover. Nvidia have also announced a whole lineup of other games that will also be getting ray tracing support in the build up to Gamescon, including the likes of Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2, Wolfenstein: Youngblood (opens in new tab), Control, and Watch Dogs: Legion (opens in new tab). 

News about this ray-tracing addition comes just after it was recently revealed the super duper graphics pack was officially canceled (opens in new tab). The pack, was originally set to launch back in 2017, later got delayed to 2018 before being canceled altogether. Set to make some serious visual upgrades to the game, the cancellation left many feeling disappointed, but it looks like Nvidia is set to more than make up for it for PC players.

Looking to give your Minecraft world an overhaul? Check out our list of the best Minecraft texture packs (opens in new tab), or watch the video below for an exploration into the limitations of open world games. 

The post Minecraft is getting official RTX ray tracing support on PC from Nvidia appeared first on Game News.

Maybe you’ve never heard of Minecraft. But pretty everyone’s heard of Minecraft – even my mum knows what it is and she doesn’t know how to turn on my computer. The building/world exploration game that’s basically on every gaming platform you can think of, from PC to mobile, has slowly taken over our lives, hypnotised children, taken over YouTube streams the world over and spawned dozens of games like Minecraft (opens in new tab) too. 

Sometimes it’s difficult to believe that this block-based game started life as the product of one lone Swedish developer – the now fairly infamous Markus “Notch” Persson – has gone on to have such stratospheric heights of success. 

But even once you get past the fact that Minecraft has inspired a seemingly endless supply of ports, merchandise, and even an adventure series from Telltale Games, there’s still so much more to be astonished by. Here are seven rather mind-blowing facts about Minecraft that you probably never knew about.

7. It has all of Denmark

It’s definitely not uncommon for players to recreate stuff in Minecraft and it happens so frequently that we’ve become almost jaded by the near constant announcements. The USS Enterprise? Yawn. The saucer section probably doesn’t even detach. Game of Thrones’ King’s Landing? Wake me up when you do a perfectly scaled recreation of all Westeros. Granted, the latter would require some interpretation, since not even George R.R. Martin knows exactly what exists at every single point of his fictional realm. But Denmark? Denmark is defined. People know what’s going on with Denmark.

That’s why the Danish Geodata Agency was able to do a complete a 1:1 scale recreation of the entire country. Four-thousand billion bricks compose the country’s roughly 40,000 square kilometers of Nordic tracts, complete with buildings erected across major metropolitan areas. Note that the map takes up 1 terabyte of data, and Denmark proper is the 133rd largest country in the world by surface area. Just imagine how big of a hard drive you’d need for Greenland.

6. It was heavily inspired by Infiniminer

Do a quick search on Xbox Live Indie Games (or the App Store, or Steam Greenlight) for the word ‘craft’ and let me know when you get to the end. It’s damn near infinite, right? Even if we’re generous and say half those games are using it in the ‘WarCraft’ sense, that’s still half of infinity Minecraft clones. To be fair, the game is the perfect storm for copycats: lo-fi visuals and randomly generated content make Minecraft derivatives much easier to pull off than, say, a Call of Duty clone.

But Minecraft itself probably wouldn’t exist without Infiniminer, a multiplayer PC game about digging up materials and building cool stuff with them. Creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson has always been upfront about Infiniminer planting the seed for Minecraft in his behatted noggin. Of course, he, and eventually the team at Mojang, took the concept quite a bit further in just about every direction (literally, since Infiniminer’s maps are tiny compared to Minecraft’s potentially infinite worlds).

5. It has more than 350 splash messages

You know those weird little messages that start throbbing on the title screen as soon as you load up Minecraft? They’re called splash text, and they range from pop culture gags to near-inscrutable gaming references. Seems pretty innocuous, but like any good inside joke, it quickly got out of hand: the game included more than 100 of these bobbing yellow messages at launch and it has more than 350 today. Whichever one shows up is completely random, so you know you’ve been playing too much Minecraft once you stop seeing new ones.

Here are a few of my personal favorites:
“Any computer is a laptop if you’re brave enough!”, which may be legally prosecutable.
“Treatment for your rash!”, which I am so thankful for.
“Totally forgot about Dre!”, which, I’m ashamed to admit, I did as well.
“Stop being reasonable, this is the Internet!”, which is an unreasonable response.
“Run, coward! I hunger!”, which is a rather sinister thing to say.
“Follow the train, CJ!”, which is why I was not too upset about how things ended up with Big Smoke.

4. It’s the most-played Xbox Live game

When you think of super popular Xbox Live games, you probably think of Halo and Call of Duty and stuff like that, right? Fair enough – shooters are definitely a big part of the online experience. But they’re not the top dogs. Normally I’d drag the question of what actually is the top dog on for a bit longer, but it’s either Minecraft or I’ve accidentally put this slide in the wrong article.

Yep, Minecraft for Xbox 360 is the most-played game on Xbox Live, with users collectively pouring 2 billion hours of their lives into the game over its two years on the platform – or nearly 230,000 years altogether. Fun fact: if you were to go 230,000 years into the past you could meet the Neanderthals of the Bontnewydd Palaeolithic site in Wales (opens in new tab), and they would probably think you were weird when the first thing you did after introducing yourself was start punching a tree.

3. It’s sold so many frickin’ copies

Sales figures might be boring, but when it comes to Minecraft they’re worth paying attention to. Despite the first iteration being released way back in 2009, the game continues to sell at a mind-boggling pace, with the latest milestone being a whopping 122 million copies across all platforms. And that actually equates to 55 million monthly players, which Mojang joked (opens in new tab) would be a conga line long enough to wrap around Earth. 

And what makes that figure even more impressive is that the in June 2016 that figure was sitting at 100 million. That 122 million was reached in February 2017, meaning 22 million people bought Minecraft in that nine month period, which seems pretty insane. But justifiably so.

2. Microsoft bought it for all the money…

You might already know this one, but I swear the refresher will be worth it when you click on to the next slide. Hey, wait! You still have to read this one first. OK. Microsoft bought Minecraft (and the studio that’s responsible for its development, Mojang) for $2.5 billion. After that, Notch and studio co-founders Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh left Mojang because working is pointless when you already have all the money. Also, Notch said he’d never really wanted to be in charge of a worldwide phenomenon in the first place.

Poor guy. I could make a bunch of ridiculous comparisons to illustrate the wealth he reaped from selling this project he started in his free time, not to mention the cash he’d already acquired for heading up one of the biggest entertainment properties of the 2010s, but instead I’ll draw your attention to one perfect example…

1. …which helped Notch outbid Beyonce and Jay-Z on a Hollywood manor

… in which Notch – the quiet, portly, very pale Swede who helped make a niche fantasy MMO called Wurm Online – outbid Beyonce and Jay-Z (opens in new tab) who are the closest thing the United States has to a royal family on a palatial Hollywood manor. The final sum? Oh, just $70 million dollars. It’s apparently the most anyone’s ever spent on a Hollywood home, but it’s still peanuts when you’re rolling in Microsoft bucks. See, aren’t you glad you read that last slide now?

In fact, the mini-castle may be a sound investment. When you have that much cash it’s not wise to just leave it sitting around in a bank account. Granted, it will take some upkeep to keep the massive pool clean and the multiple bars well stocked and the candy room candy from getting all stuck together, but barring another housing market collapse he could do alright for himself. Meanwhile, I’ll be over here trying to mine up enough Nether quartz to make a half-decent facsimile of its exterior.

Practice your craft

Also, did you know that each of the eight bathrooms in Notch’s house has a $5,600 toilet? I bought Minecraft near the end of alpha, so in a way I’m financially responsible for about 1/373rd of one of Notch’s commodes. How much of a Notch toilet do you account for? Let me know in the comments!

Want some more revelatory factoids? Check out 7 normal, everyday things that are impossible to explain to non-gamers (opens in new tab) or 13 hardcore challenges invented by players (opens in new tab).

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