In the latest snapshot of Minecraft Patch 1.18, mob spawners are becoming more dangerous. It’s time to unpack a lot of torches.
A few days ago, there was an initial experimental preview of the upcoming Minecraft Patch 1.18. Now, “Experimental Snapshot 2” has been released and is already making some fine adjustments. In addition to changes to the biomes, the difficulty is also being adjusted. Mob spawners will become a challenge as they can no longer be easily disabled.
What are mob spawners? Mob spawners are one of the first objects that have been around since the early days of Minecraft. These are cages that typically stand in small rooms and display a specific monster type inside – such as skeletons or spiders. Every few seconds, the mob spawner creates more of these monsters. This makes places with mob spawners dangerous, but also lucrative if one wants to farm loot from these monsters. Additionally, there is almost always a chest with extra rewards found at the mob spawner.
What was the problem? In the last snapshot, Minecraft was changed, so that monsters can now only appear in complete darkness. As soon as a block is illuminated by the slightest light source, no monster can spawn anymore. This is pretty cool for those who do not want to clutter their world with endless torches that only ruin the aesthetics.
However, this had the unfortunate side effect that mob spawners hardly pose a threat anymore. A single torch was enough to completely deactivate them. This will now be changed.
What adjustments will be made to the mob spawners? Mob spawners will get a special rule that excludes them from the usual spawn conditions. In the future, mob spawners can create enemies as long as the lighting on nearby blocks is at light level 11 or lower. Since the maximum light level in Minecraft is 15, it will require a lot of torches or other light sources to reliably deactivate a mob spawner.
What else is changing? Besides the mob spawner, the snapshot has brought a lot of new features, mainly bug fixes or adjustments to better align the world with the changes from the previous versions. Highlights include:
- The creation of biomes has been improved, and there should be fewer “micro-biomes” scattered everywhere.
- Clouds are now at level 192 (previously level 128) to avoid cutting off so many mountains.
- Beaches are now larger and extend further into the land. However, not every shore is a beach, making them somewhat rarer.
- The height of the tallest mountain peaks has been raised. The tallest mountains can now reach up to level 260.
- Ore veins are slightly bigger and more frequent, as players have encountered them too infrequently.
- The gigantic cave entrances are slightly smaller, and the caves now less frequently span from the surface to level 0.
The YouTuber wattles showcases many of the changes in his latest video so you can get an impression for yourself:
Can you play the snapshot? Yes. However, you can’t start it directly via the Minecraft launcher; instead, you need to manually download and install the snapshot. You can find the link for this in the sources indicated below this article.
What do you think of the many adjustments? Are you really excited for Patch 1.18? Or are you still missing a highlight?
