In Minecraft there are many ways to move quickly. But a new variant is so fast that the game can hardly keep up.
If you play on a Minecraft server with many friends, you know the problem: The game world is huge, and getting from A to B can take quite a while. Many players simply build roads or tunnels for that. Those who prefer a more elegant solution build a rail network or a boat connection. However, the possibly fastest method was implemented with the latest snapshot (a test version) of Minecraft.
What happened? In the current snapshot 20w11a, which is part of a large patch to revamp the Nether, there is a new enchantment called “Soul Speed.” This allows the character to run faster on soul sand. Normally, you are slowed down on soul sand.
If you combine this enchantment with other effects, such as diving (characters are fast while diving), you can achieve an incredible speed. How fast this new top speed is, is shown in a short clip:
Traveling 1400 blocks in about 6 seconds using soul speed in the latest snapshot from r/Minecraft
How fast is it? In the shown clip, the player travels 1,400 blocks in 6 seconds. This corresponds to an average speed of 266 blocks per second! There is currently no faster method of travel in Minecraft.
A bit slower – but no less absurd – is this small demonstration of the speed buff. In the YouTube video, you can see what happens when the YouTuber docm77 taps the W key to walk just once. The game then accelerates him on soul sand (with water on top) to a high speed:
How do you get the enchantment? In the current snapshot, the enchantment can only be obtained through trading with the Piglins. This is a new species that lives in the Nether and loves gold – here we introduced the Piglins in detail.
What is the problem? The speed leads to greater issues. Characters move so quickly with this trick that Minecraft often cannot load the corresponding “chunks” (a unit of measure for areas with blocks). As a result, it often looks like the character is falling through the game world. Especially on multiplayer servers, this could lead to significant lags when Minecraft tries to load the chunks crossed at this pace.
There is thus a high probability that this type of movement will be removed before the official release of the patch. But for the moment, it’s a pretty cool way to get around.
