Since the early 2010s, Mojang has striven to make Minecraft reflective of real-world environments. Initially, this first began with simple forests filled with oak trees and the occasional birch trees among small lakes, beaches, and stone peaks. However, it quickly expanded with more varied biomes found in different hemispheres of the world, such as taiga forests, swamps, jungles, flat grasslands, and oceans. As Mojang continued to update the various biomes players can live within Minecraft in the late 2010s and early 2020s, additional extreme environments were included in the game, such as the badlands and ice spikes. With Mojang recently adding more temperature-based cosmetic changes to Minecraft, the Swedish developer should consider adding more temperature-based mechanics to the game.
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Minecraft’s Recent Environment Updates Explained
Since the new year began, Mojang has continuously released new snapshots featuring content coming to both Minecraft Java and Bedrock Editions. In 2025’s first snapshot, Mojang unveiled two new Pig variations, one for warm biomes and another for cold biomes, alongside the common, pink, domesticated Pig. These new Pigs came with new falling leaves from every non-Pinaceae tree, leaf litter that will coat the ground, and wildflowers found in meadows and birch forests. Before January was over, Mojang unveiled new warm and cold variants of the Cow to join the Pig alongside swamp native firefly bushes and new ambient sounds for the badlands and desert biomes.
February continued Minecraft’s new environment-focused update trend with the announcement of new warm and cold Chickens populating worlds, the chance for a pink flower to grow on top of cacti, and the debut of dry grass popping up in the badlands and desert areas. Pigs, Cows, and Chickens weren’t the only mobs to receive facelifts this winter season, as Mojang subsequently announced that Sheep would have a higher chance of spawning with light gray, light blue, blue and cyan wool in cold biomes and with gray, yellow, orange and red wool in warm biomes. Camels will additionally begin spawning in normal desert biomes instead of just desert villages. The most recent snapshot, 25w08a, further changed leaf litter to be tinted based on which biome it’s in.
With Minecraft’s recent changes to Sheeps’ wool spawns, black Sheep will be the most common type to spawn in cold biomes and brown Sheep will be the most common in warm biomes.
Potential New Environment Mechanics in Minecraft
Based on Mojang’s renewed focus on going further in depth in cold and warm biomes’ features, the developer should consider adding more environment-based gameplay mechanics to Minecraft. These mechanics don’t necessarily have to be added in Survival Mode and could be made optional or required in Hardcode Mode. The most logical gameplay mechanic to add alongside all of these new cold and warm biome features is the process of either freezing to death or dying of dehydration. Many of the most popular survival games out today already feature similar mechanics, such as 7 Days to Die, Ark: Survival Evolved, DayZ, Frostpunk 2, Subnautica, and The Forest, so it would make sense for Minecraft to feature similar mechanics in some form.
To best showcase this new gameplay mechanic, Mojang could introduce a third meter on top of the hunger and health bars to indicate body temperature. In cold biomes such as taiga forests, frozen oceans, ice spikes, and snowy slopes, this bar could slowly be filled with a blue color to indicate the player will soon die of frostbite. To rectify this, players could place multiple campfires and furnaces to stay warm or wear leather armor to stay a bit warm while exploring cold environments. Torches, meanwhile, could provide players with only a little bit of warmth compared to campfires and furnaces. However, if players wear metallic armor such as gold and iron armor, this could cause them to die faster in cold environments, as these armor types provide no warmth.
Minecraft Temperature Mechanics in Warm Environments
In warm environments such as the badlands, deserts, jungles, savannas, and warm oceans, the new body temperature meter bar could slowly be filled with a red color to indicate the player will soon die of dehydration. To prevent this, players could keep bottles of water or potions handy to quickly cool down or jump into nearby bodies of water. However, hot surface biomes aren’t the only places players will have to regulate their body temperature. As players mine deeper towards bedrock and, in turn, the core of the planet, temperatures will rise quickly underground, making it imperative players have buckets or bottles of water to quickly cool if they stay for too long near bedrock and lava. These realistic changes could make Minecraft more of a challenge, which serious survival players would surely appreciate.
- Released
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November 18, 2011
- ESRB
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E10+ For Everyone 10+ Due To Fantasy Violence