Everything You Need To Know About Minecraft’s 1.19 Wild Update

The biggest biome addition is the Mangrove Swamp! The Mangrove Swamp generates near warmer biomes, such as jungles and deserts. Mangrove trees add color to this otherwise gloomy looking location. These trees have large roots protruding from the ground, and their saplings can be planted on land and in water. A new tree means a new set of wood blocks including planks, doors, trapdoors, and more!

Another new block family is mud, which can be created from a dirt block and water bottle or be found in a mangrove swamp. The mud block can be placed atop pointed dripstone to dry out and turn into clay. Mud can be used to craft various mud brick blocks that players can use to build with.

The darkest biome in Minecraft, the Deep Dark, is dimly lit and eerie. The floor is covered in sculk blocks, with shriekers at every corner, ready to call out to the warden. Thankfully, the warden is the only mob that spawns here (for now).

Ancient City

Long-lost and abandoned, an Ancient City spawns in the Deep Dark biome. Chests are guarded by sculk sensors and shriekers. You can find treasures and the new enchantment (read more below) in rooms hidden beneath reinforced deepslate. The only good thing about the Deep Dark is that regular mobs don’t spawn in Ancient Cities.

Items and blocks you can find in Ancient Cities:

• Soul sand, soul fire, and soul lanterns
• Candles
• Skeleton skulls
• Basalt and deepslate (with variants of each block)
• Wool
• Echo shards, disc fragments, and the Swift Sneak enchantment

Sculk

The newest family of blocks are now available, dwelling in the Deep Dark.

• Sculk: When wool blocks are placed on a sculk block, it will let nearby sensors know, preventing that vibration from being excluded.
• Sculk Vein: Found at the edge of sculk patches, can be placed in any orientation, and can be waterlogged.
• Sculk Shrieker: Responds to sculk sensors that detect vibrations and send out a warning signal to distant wardens. Shriekers are found in the Deep Dark or growing from Sculk Catalysts.
• Sculk Catalyst: Blooms when mobs die within an 8-block radius. Mobs that perish in its presence don’t drop experience, instead a bubbling charge will be created where it died. This charge will spread through sculk veins and sculk blocks in random directions until they find a valid block they can convert into sculk.

Things to know about sculk blocks: All blocks require Silk Touch to acquire. The hoe is the most efficient tool for all sculk blocks.

In case you want to experience the power of these blocks, here’s some footage of my exploration through the Deep Dark experimental snapshot.

The Warden

The horror entity we’ve all be waiting for (which I find terrifying) has arrived. This creature has no eyes, and seemingly has souls embedded into its chest. The lore behind that is up for discussion, but right now, I can’t handle thinking about it.

In case you don’t believe me, here are some stats on the warden:

• Immune to lava and knockback
• Isn’t slowed down in water
• Has 250 hearts (500 health points)
• Does 15 hearts (30 points) of damage in Normal difficulty
• 3.5 blocks tall (making it taller than iron golems and enderman)
• Has a ranged attack that deals 10 damage with a distance of 15 blocks
• The ranged attack bypasses shields, armor, and penetrates walls

Wardens use vibrations as a way to navigate around, and when that’s not enough, they use their sense of smell to track down prey. Mojang Studios states, "In the Deep Dark, wardens are everywhere-you just can't see them."

Spooky.

It can detect and path find toward the general location of a player or mob through a "smelling" action. Thankfully, it will prioritize smelling the player or mob that it is most suspicious of, rather than the one closest to it. So if you’re playing with a friend, then there’s a chance you’ll survive.

In the Deep Dark, Wardens are everywhere–you just can’t see them.

The more vibrations a warden detects, the angrier it will get. In fact, the souls within its chest will beat. Meaning, the faster the beat, the angrier it is. Also, if you set off a shrieker block, you can hear the warden responding back to it.

If you’re wondering how strong a warden is, let me put it into perspective. I tested with both full netherite and diamond armor. I died in two hits.

Wardens can also disable shields, drops a sculk catalyst, and are better off left alone.

Darkness

Unique to the warden and sculk shrieker, the Darkness effect will afflict you when nearby. It lowers the gamma down to “moody” and, in periodic pulses, will dim the overall brightness of the world.

There is a new accessibility slider called “Darkness Effect” which controls how dark it gets when a warden of sculk shrieker gives it to you, but doesn’t affect the fog distance.

Swift Sneak Enchantment

The newest enchantment to Minecraft! This enchantment, when added to leggings, allows your crouch movement to be as fast as if you were walking.

It can only be found in chests in Ancient Cities, has three levels, and can only be applied to leggings. It cannot combine with Soul Speed, Frost Walker, or Depth Strider.

Hint: You can use a command to get level 4 and 5 of this enchantment.

Originally, the Wild Update was going to add both frogs and fireflies. However, in their February Minecraft Now, Mojang Studios announced to scrap fireflies. Because in reality, fireflies are poisonous to some frogs, they didn’t want to give misinformation in their game.

Instead, frogs eat tiny slimes, slime balls, and magma cubes. While you can’t tame frogs, you can breed them, lead them, and put tadpoles into buckets.

Frogs have three variants: temperate (orange), warm (white), and cold (green). To get different variants of the frogs, currently the best way is by bringing a bucket of tadpole to a different temperature biome and letting them grow up there.

Frogs croak, jump, swim, and (slowly) walk on land. They can jump over five blocks and prefer lily pads and big dripleaf.

Tadpoles

Tadpoles are born when two frogs are bred with slimeballs. It takes 20 minutes for them to grow into a frog after birth, which can be sped up using slimeballs. The frog type depends on which temperature it grows within. They jump around like fish when on land (and can perish that way).

Axolotls keep up their brand of predator when it comes to tadpoles. Be warned, they will attack and eat tadpoles. However, once your tadpole grows to a frog, they’re safe from harm. At least from an axolotl.

Froglights

There’s also a new set of blocks tied to the frogs: froglights! A new light source block, the froglight, is dropped when a frog eats a small magma cube. Depending on the variant, there are three new colored light blocks in orange, green, and purple!

The allay won the Minecraft Live 2021 mob vote. Its main function is to find blocks or items for a player, collecting the same items from the world as it holds in its hand. It can carry up to a stack at a time and will drop its collected items when in range of a note block. The note block it connects to will have a vibration particle visualization.

If holds an item it got from a player, it follows that player, up to a distance of 64 blocks away. It also is immune to damage from its owner while holding an item! They can sometimes spawn in cages next to pillager outposts and inside woodland mansions.

There are a plenty of new items to get excited about in the Wild Update:

• Boat with chest (all wood variants)
• New music and associated discs
• New paintings that were unused in Java Edition and were only available in Bedrock Edition
• Recovery Compass: A new type of compass which can point to the last place where the player died.
• Disc Fragment: A fragment of the Music Disc "5", which can be crafted into the disc. Can be obtained only from the chests in the ancient cities.
• Echo Shard: Can be found only in loot chests in ancient cities and used to craft recovery compasses.
• Goat Horn: Drops when a goat rams coal ore, copper ore, emerald ore, iron ore, log, packed ice, or stone. Can play a loud sound that can be heard from afar, with a cooldown around 7 seconds between each use. There are 8 variants, each variant has its own unique sound. The Seek variant sounds eerily similar to the Horn of Gondor…

A handful of new advancements were added in the 1.19 update:

• "Birthday Song" - Have an allay deliver a cake at a note block
• "Bukkit Bukkit" - Catch a tadpole in a bucket
• "It Spreads" - Kill a mob near a Sculk Catalyst
• "Sneak 100" - Sneak near a Sculk Sensor or Warden to prevent it from detecting you
• "When the Squad Hops into Town" - Get each frog variant on a lead
• "With Our Powers Combined!" - Have all three froglights in your inventory
• "You've Got a Friend in Me" - Have an allay deliver items to you

Added new Lena Raine music:

• "Ancestry" plays only in the deep dark.
• "Aerie", "Firebugs", and "Labyrinthine" plays in the lush caves, all types of swamps, forests, and jungles, as well as the menu screen.

Even textures and models got updated:

• Brewing Stand: Slightly changed its texture, to make their arms connect to their bases. Updated base UV's and texture to match a graphical fix in Bedrock Edition, which has no effect on visuals.
• Cocoa pod: - Slightly changed the stage2's texture, to make width consistency with other stages' textures.
• End portal frame: Slightly changed its texture, to make better transition with the end stone texture.
• End rod: Removed unused pixels in its texture.
• Mycelium: Slightly changed its side texture, to match other dirt-based blocks.
• Piston and sticky piston: Changed their textures, to match the color of the oak planks on the piston head.
• Smoker: Rotated pixels in the bottom left corner in their textures, to make a correct direction.
• Boats: The paddles represent their respective wood color and their inside rims of the boats are darker, to match Bedrock Edition.
• Evoker, illusioner, and witch: Changed their models, now their last two rows of pixels on their robes can render.
• Fence: Changed the model when in an item frame, to make their two horizontal bars thicker, matching the thickness in their block form.
• Leather cap: Changed its texture, to extend the center bar on the back face to the bottom.
• Llama: Changed all variants' chest texture, to use the chest texture since the texture update.
• Spiders and cave spiders: Fixed texture mapping of both types of spiders.
• Pillager: Changed its model, slightly shortened its coat to match its actual texture.
• Villager: Changed their models of all biome variants, now their last two rows of pixels on their robes can render. The color of the top and bottom of their legs now matches the sides correctly.
• Vindicator: Changed its model, slightly shortened its coat to match its actual texture. The "gap" between the two arms is connected correctly now. Changed the color of the seam face between their upper and lower arms, which is not visible in default.
• Zombie villager: Changed their models, now their last two rows of pixels on their robes can render. Changed their clothes texture in all biomes (except desert and swamp), the color of the top and bottom of their legs now matches the sides correctly.

These are changes made to the game that aren't necessarily related to reported bugs:

• Doors: The top of doors no longer flips unnaturally when opening in certain directions.
• Glow lichen: Can now be placed on the top and sides of soul sand and maximum height snow.
• Leaves: Leaves are now waterloggable.
• TNT: Ores and spawners blown up by TNT ignited by a player now drop experience.
• Vines: Can now be placed on the sides of soul sand and maximum height snow.
• Scaffolding: When used as fuel for furnaces, they now burn as long as a bamboo does.
• Shield: They now properly spin around their own center axis and show up in the right place in item frames.
• Endermen, Skeletons, and Wither Skeletons: Now spawn from light level 0 to 11 in the nether, which is a wider range than before.
• Goat: Now can drop 2 horns each. The number of horns left to drop is represented on the model.
• Parrots: Can now imitate wardens.
• Wandering trader: Now sells 1 mangrove propagule for 5 emeralds.
• Minecart with chest, Minecart with furnace, Minecart with TNT and Minecart with hopper: Crafting recipes are now shapeless, and they drop themselves when broken.

That’s all folks! These are the main features of the Wild Update 1.19 for Minecraft! Plenty of other changes were made to the game, along with bug fixes and behind the scenes coding.

Good luck, adventurers, and we hope you don’t end up fighting the warden before you’re ready!