Long-lost and abandoned, an Ancient City spawns in the Deep Dark biome. Chests are guarded by sculk sensors and shriekers. You can find treasure and the new enchantment (read more below). You can also find Reinforced Deepslate which can’t be obtained in Survival. The only good thing about the Deep Dark is that mobs don’t spawn in Ancient Cities.

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 lower 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.

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).

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. 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.

The newest enchantment to Minecraft! This enchantment, when added to boots, 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 boots. It cannot combine with Soul Speed, Frost Walker, or Depth Strider.

The horror entity we’ve all be waiting for (which I personally find unsettling) 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.

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.

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, don’t drop any loot (for now), and are better off left alone.

Download the latest snapshot here! Learn how to install a snapshot version with this guide!

There’s plenty more to uncover about this snapshot, so read more in Minecraft’s blog!

Be sure to save this zip to a location on your computer that you can easily access later. You can download the latest snapshot from Minecraft’s website or by clicking this link.

To unzip, you’ll need a program like WinZip to do so. You’ll want to export this file into your .minecraft/versions folder.

To find your .minecraft folder:

• Windows: Press Win+R and type %appdata%.minecraft and press “Ok”
• Mac OS X: Ijn the Go menu in Finder, select “Go to Folder” and enter ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft
• Linux: ~/.minecraft or /home//.minecraft/

Once the launcher is open, navigate to the “Installations” tab.

Make sure the box for “Modded” is ticked, then click the New Installations button, as shown above.

In the new window that appears:

1. Name it whatever you want.
2. Click the version that matches the name of the file you downloaded and extracted.
3. Click Create when ready.

You should now see the created new installation listed in the Installations tab. Press Play to start up Minecraft!

Learn about the first 1.19 experimental snapshot, featuring the Deep Dark Biome!

• Right click the file or folder you want to download.
• In the menu, shown in the image above, click “Download” and Google will begin the process.

If you’re downloading a folder or more than one item, Google Drive will convert it into a .zip file. We’ll deal with this in a bit.

A save window will pop up for you to choose where to save your file temporarily on your computer.

If you only downloaded one item, then you can skip this step! You will need a program like WinZip in order to complete this step.

To extract a file:

• Navigate to where you saved the file.
• Either double click it to open or right click and select “Extract Here” from the menu.
• Decide where you want to extract the file and unzip it to there. Preferably somewhere you can find it later.

Now comes the final and most important step. Go to the Google Drive account you want to upload the file or folder to.

• As shown above, click the New button on the top left of the Drive.
• In the menu, select “File Upload” or “Folder Upload”, depending on the type you’re uploading.
• In the window that appears, navigate to the file you want to upload and click “Upload”.

As you can see in the image above, a progress window appears in Google Drive. Depending on the size of the file or folder, this can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes.

Once the upload is complete, you’ve successfully transferred files between two Google Drive accounts!

In January of 2021, the Raspberry Pi Pico module was unveiled and released with an MSRP of $4 USD. This marks the first official microcontroller to come from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It’s extra small, about the length of your thumb, and is powered by the RP2040 processor mentioned above.

We adore the Pico and its creation has led to some really cool projects that we never even considered possible. But thanks to its small size and low power demands, it’s proven to be a useful little board with loads of potential and 26 GPIO to take advantage of.

In October, the Raspberry Pi Foundation team announced the release of a new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W board. This is a successor to the Raspberry Pi Zero W, offering more processing speed than its predecessor, with measurements capping in at 1GHz. The biggest drawback to the new module is its lack of memory. Despite the upgrades, it uses only 512MB of SDRAM.

The coolest part about the new Pi Zero 2 W is how easy it is to replace the old model with the new one. The form factor is identical, meaning your biggest hurdle will be software-related. You definitely want to back up any current project build before trying to switch to the new board.

As far as official accessories go, the LEGO Build HAT was launched in October. It’s made to work with the Raspberry Pi 4 and has connectors that are compatible with LEGO Technic kits. This HAT is most optimal for students who’ve taken the time to play with LEGO robotic kits in the past. It bridges a gap that makes it easier to grasp real-world applications of the Raspberry Pi.

The PicoSystem was a long-awaited accessory from Pimoroni. It wasn’t immediately available, but was hyped up early in 2021. It has a small display, 4 buttons, a D-pad, and is powered by the RP2040. To keep things mobile, it has a nook for clipping onto keychains and can be recharged using its LiPo battery. This system isn’t intended for emulation, but rather programming original games with Python.

The Pimoroni Pico RGB Keypad Base may be the 4×4 glowing input device of our dreams. It features 16 programmable keys with a silicone cover on top. You will need to purchase a Pico separately to set up and use the keypad. It’s designed for USB input, so your keypad project can be plug-and-play.

If you want to add power to your Pico project, the Pico LiPo board from Pimoroni is an easy way to get started. It’s built around the RP2040, offers 30 programmable GPIO pins, and features a JST connector (sometimes referred to as STEMMA QT) for attaching LiPo batteries without the need to solder.

One of the most popular modules to come from Pimoroni this year is the Pico Display Pack. It requires a Raspberry Pi Pico to operate and features a small LCD display for video output. In addition to the cool little screen, it has four buttons around the perimeter that can be programmed with custom functions. It’s an excellent board—especially for young makers who want to tinker.

If you’re looking to build your own keyboard, you need to check out Adafruit’s KB2040 RP2040 Kee Boar Driver—an RP2040-based driver board. It’s been so popular that it’s already sold out on the official Adafruit website. It has 30 GPIO to use and 8MB of SPI flash.

This RGB keypad from Adafruit offers a few extra modules than the Pico RGB Keypad from Pimoroni. With the MacroPad RP2040 Starter Kit, users have a small LCD screen and rotary encoder to program, as well. These extra design elements make it a bit more exciting, but also raise the price. You won’t need to supply your own Pico as the board is built using the RP2040 processor.

This board is an excellent choice for the education field as well as makers who want to experiment with robotics. Developed by Cytron, the Maker Pi RP2040 features the RP2040 processor and a variety of tools for controlling things like motors for custom robot projects.

This Adafruit Feather is RP2040 based. Users have 30 GPIO to play with and all the compatibility that comes with Feather accessories. Users can program projects using MicroPython, CircuitPython, or C.

Want to make things even smaller? Adafruit’s QT Py RP2040 board is so small it makes the Pico look huge. It’s build on top of the RP2040 processor and features a Qwiic JST connector along with a USB Type-C port. It has a form factor of just 21.8mmx 17.8mm.

The release of this RP2040 board was long awaited. It’s a hair smaller than the Raspberry Pi Pico, but offers both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support. This wireless support sets the Nano RP2040 Connect apart from other RP2040 boards, but also bumps the price up to around $12 when the Pico goes for $4.

SparkFun also got in on the RP2040 action with this thing—or should we say SparkFun Thing Plus? It has a JST qwiic connector, a couple of buttons, a USB Type-C port, and 30 GPIO. This board is a lot easier to power with the JST port while reserving the original form factor as close as possible. This module also has a mounting hole in each corner to help make it easier to attach to whatever fun project you’re working on.

Teeny boards mean teeny components! The Arducam 5MP Plus OV5642 Mini Camera Module is made to connect with boards as small as the Pico. It can capture images at 5MP and store them as JPEG files. If you’ve got a Pico project in mind that needs a camera, this is the module you need to consider.

The Pibow case is a classic rainbow-striped Raspberry Pi case and with the release of the Pi Zero 2 W, Pimoroni made a new special edition. The Pibow Zero 2 W model fits the Zero 2 W perfectly and is incompatible with previous Pi Zero models. It exposes the GPIO and ports for easy access, so you don’t have to remove it from the case to tinker when using it for projects.

Gameplay is where things get a little harder to judge. On one hand, Nebulous clearly takes its premise seriously: this is a game designed to bring the realistic feel of naval combat into the three-dimensional realm of space combat. Radar profiles, tactical positioning, strategic missile pathing, realistic blind spots, and intense damage scenarios all meld to create a heart-pounding experience. I spent half an hour during one of my earliest games just burning far out from the center of the engagement zone, occasionally (and fearfully) turning my radar on to try to get a fix on my enemy’s position (whilst trying to hide mine from their target lock).

On the other hand, once engagement begins, it quickly feels like all your careful planning and advanced early positioning is useless. Part of this is due to the time it takes to react to threats, especially if you’re commanding a larger fleet. Even when you get the hang of the incredibly complex controls, it’s difficult to take charge of five different ships in 3D space while under attack from a clever AI. There are some fixes that I hope the developers will institute throughout future patches, but the possibility of modding the game might also introduce solutions.

The game is in pre-release for at least two years, but already there’s a lot to show. There are hints in the tutorial (which is both fun and utterly vital to understanding the controls of the game) that the single player content of the game is destined to be exciting and rich, with more characterization and storytelling than one might have expected from a combat simulation game. This is hugely welcome, and I’ll go over that in more detail later in this review.

The basics of combat and maneuvering need work to make them accessible and fun, but there’s a lot in here already that deserves attention from fans of the space-combat genre and tactical warfare alike. And the visuals, though currently simple, showcase the platform for an extremely polished and nostalgic experience that really immerses you in the gritty moment-to-moment experience of space combat.

The tutorial of Nebulous: Fleet Command is not optional. Even if you have played games like this before, you’re going to need the tutorial to make timely sense of both the controls themselves and their many varied uses.

Luckily, the tutorial is a blast. The fully voiced character LT Hazel leads you through the basics of maneuvering in space, firing weapons, and handling the complications of electronic warfare. There are some glitches in how the tutorial progresses, and it doesn’t hold your hand as well as it should, but Hazel was such a delightfully acted character that I hardly minded.

I think we can see a taste of what is to come later down the road when the developers put out proper campaign content, and it’s a taste that makes me very excited. Too many games in this form fail to feature well-rounded characters with full voice-acting, preferring to rely on text-only. That’s a huge mistake in my opinion, and seeing Nebulous break from that tradition and offer a deeper level of immersion is really cool.

Combat in Nebulous currently comes in three major flavors: missiles, point-to-point mass driver weapons (cannons, railguns), and electronic warfare. The latter of these is currently limited to various forms of radar interference, but already has a huge impact on the outcome of encounters. Scrambling an enemy’s radar tracking at the right time can mean the difference between being struck by a dozen missiles or survival. Using your electronic warfare suite at the right moment can also make cool tactical scenarios possible, like tricking the enemy into thinking a couple of small-but-loud ships are your main force, while another two hot gunships sweep around silently from behind an asteroid.

Guns play out like you’d expect: point and shoot. These are, thankfully, semi-automated. Once you tell them what to fire on, they just keep shooting. You can switch between armor-piercing and explosive ammo, but otherwise there’s not much to say.

Missiles come in different flavors, with some automatically locking on to a target via their own radar, while others can be set on predetermined flight paths of high complexity. The latter are the more interesting, since you can theoretically tell them to fly around an asteroid and attack a target from a blind spot — or lure a target in close to a ship while several missiles secretly arc back in from the sides.

In reality, however, I found that most of the strategic potential of combat is currently just that: potential.

The game offers one type of realism but does away with another by leaving all the control in your hands. The “crews” aboard the various ships don’t really do anything apart from repair damage; they certainly don’t operate the ship on their own. Literally, nothing happens unless you directly command it, and that quickly starts to feel frustrating. If you’re just controlling one or two ships, this is less of an issue, but in almost all cases I found myself wishing that the crew of my ship would take a little initiative.

For every ship in your fleet, you are directly responsible for manually maneuvering and attacking. Point defenses will fire on their own, but without proper maneuvering and use of the electronic warfare modules this often doesn’t do anything to save your ship from a sneaky missile attack.

So, while tons of fun tactical potential exists, I mostly found myself charging straight into the AI fleet and launching all my missiles at the last possible moment, doing catastrophic damage while constantly rolling my ships to ablate damage across a larger surface area.

The Future of Nebulous

I hope that part of the development is a move towards autonomous and semi-autonomous ship control. It would be great if you could select certain ships for various levels of autonomy, sending them off on prescribed flight paths (for instance), but with full self-control to break off to defend themselves as necessary. Space warfare of the type imagined in Nebulous during its alpha release feels a bit like controlling a swarm of space drones, rather than overseeing the movements of a human-crewed fleet.

It would be a lot more fun to step back and control ships only as you see fit, rather than being wildly forced to control the whole fleet at once, from their firing solutions down to their orientation. There’s just too much to do, and it doesn’t feel realistic.

There is the ability, under “accessibility options” to turn on something called “active pause”. As soon as I found it, I found myself playing with this on the entire time because it slows the game down 25%. It also throws up a massive and extremely annoying “game speed 25%” message in the middle of the screen, clearly indicating that the devs don’t really feel that it’s fair to play that way.

I disagree with that assumption, and I’d take pausing in Nebulous much farther. Rather than active pausing, I’d introduce game-speed as a dialable control for normal gameplay, and include a full-pause functionality under accessibility. Those who want to play MMO style would probably have to forgo that, but, for the rest of us who like playing games single-player, this would be a game-changer (literally).

Being able to fully pause the game could allow us to actually execute all those cool firing solutions, or have time to react to intense surprises. It simulates having an entire crew of adept officers as they react to a situation, allowing you the chance to queue up some responses which you would then adjust as you go. Since this is a physics-based game, it’s not like you could change the outcome of a direct hit, but you might be able to have a lot more fun trying to do so.

Maneuvering your ships in Nebulous is at once fulfilling, exciting, and deeply, deeply frustrating. While some of the difficulty is inherent to a game where “up” is relative, some is also baked into non-intuitive controls and non-intuitive graphical interfaces.

You have two modes to play in: the live mode, where you are actually looking at your ships as they glide through space, and a strategic mode that allows you to zoom out farther and provides a wealth of vital flight and targeting data.

Live mode is more fun in some sense because that’s where you get to see the real action unfold, but you’ll likely end up spending more time in the strategic mode as you try to keep track of all the dozens of moving parts the game foists upon you.

In the strategic mode, you have a more visible way of experiencing the “globe” of space surrounding your ship, and you can use this area to plot maneuvers and advanced missile paths. It all looks nifty, too, like something out of an ’80s science fiction series heavily based on submarine combat. But, this all becomes frustrating as well, since it’s quite difficult to make your keyboard and mouse movements correspond to a fully-3D sphere of movement. Trying to target above and below the central axis of one of my warships became a grueling activity.

Some graphical aids would help with this, such as making part of the sphere blue and part of it red, and perhaps offering a keyboard key that aromatically switches you between “top” and “bottom” or “front” and “rear”, so you can more easily move control which part of the sphere you’re actually targeted on.

A pause function would be invaluable here as well, as it would give you time to check in on what’s happening in the larger field of combat, set up some missile strikes, and respond better in the heat of a crisis. More importantly, you could pause the game while you actually figure out if you’re even shooting in the correct direction, or if your graphical representation of space is playing tricks on you.

On the other hand, the subtlety of the maneuvering in this game, when in the live mode, was a treat. You can roll your ships, orient them with fine-grained precision, and create paths for them to follow as need arises. All of these elements become vitally important for when you arrive in combat, or for when you’re trying to get the drop on an enemy. There’s something satisfying about dropping a warship with a small profile “down” toward the center of the engagement zone, only flipping it at the last moment to reveal both its massive radar signature and its impressive array of cannon.

At the end of the day, this is an area that needs to be fine-tuned for player enjoyment and ease-of-access…but clearly has the bones and muscle of an invigorating and fun experience.

Yes! But with a caveat or two.

The gameplay is highly unpolished at-present, which makes sense since this is an early release game. Expect to wait about two years for the game to take shape enough to be fully playable.

If you love space combat sims and already have a lot of experience in the genre, this will be a game you should take to easily. Likewise, if you love real-time strategy and tactics games—though the 3D playing space and complex controls will take some getting used to. The soundtrack is another big point in favor of this game, adding flavor and immersion in a way that makes battles feel positively cinematic.

I hope that the game features move toward accessibility and increase the level of AI-support that’s natively applied to friendly fleets. It would be nice if your ships each functioned on their own except when given direct orders or set to specific action profiles. It would likewise be great if, even if just for accessibility reasons, a full-pause were an option, with a normalized active pause in place for the tactical map view.

The current tutorial will get you started playing, and is fun because LT Hazel is so well voiced. However, don’t expect to be immersed beyond that in terms of story, and do expect many elements covered in the tutorial to have a far steeper learning curve.

I’m happy I supported this project because I want to see the full game take shape, and because I’m willing to tough it out with some of the gameplay elements that are more difficult to learn. Presently, it’s definitely not a game I’m going to spend hours playing, but having it at the pre-release price is nice as I wait for more features to be added and polished.

You can read more on what else was announced in the 1.19 Wild Update, however, the main focus of this Minecraft Now were the frogs.

Originally, the Wild Update was going to add both frogs and fireflies. However, thanks to the Minecraft community, Mojang Studios realized that having frogs eat the fireflies wasn’t a good idea. In real life, fireflies are actually poisonous to some frogs!

Instead, frogs will eat tiny slimes, slime balls, and magma cubes. While you can’t tame frogs, you can tame them, lead them, and put tadpoles into buckets. In order to get different variants of the frogs, currently the best way to get them is by bringing a bucket of tadpole to a different temperature biome and letting them grow up there.

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

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.

YouTube

In January, it was announced that Minecraft content on YouTube had reached over 1 trillion views. YouTube took time to celebrate and show the history of Minecraft content over the past decade, marking milestones such as multiplayer competitions and minigames, viewership and players going more global, and female Minecraft creators taking the lead!

You can view the timeline and more on YouTube’s website.

Black History Month

With February being Black History Month, Minecraft: Education Edition (MCE) features a bunch of free lessons where students can explore themes like social justice, identity, and civil rights. They’re also able to look into important moments in Black history and the present-day issues.

Offered is the Lessons in Good Trouble, a collection of eight interactive Minecraft worlds and lessons on social movements throughout history. It’s available as a free demo in MCE or through the Minecraft Marketplace.

Lunar New Year

/media/ng/y4/yw/lunar.png In honor of the Lunar New Year, celebrated between January and April, a free adventure map is available on the Minecraft Marketplace during 2022. In The Legend of Nezha, just as the Third Lotus Prince from Chinese folklore protects good and kindness, you’ll fight as Nezha against the evil Dragon King and put your wits to the test against the devious Stone Queen!

Between February 1 and February 7, 2022, you can also collect two free Character Creator items from Minecraft Marketplace: a free tiger mask and a free tiger sweater. There is also a load of paid skin packs and content released on the Marketplace as well!

Download the map here!

Minecraft Dungeons

Minecraft Dungeons hit over 15 million players!

In celebration, Minecraft Dungeons will feature the Festival of Frost until February 22. The Tower is now frost-themed, seasonal trials from the Chills and Thrills event will return, and even a free cape!

The next Minecraft Now will be on March 10, 2022, so be sure to stop by again for a recap of the next episode!