ibxtoycat – New Minecraft Biome: Mangrove Swamp (Bedrock & Java)

A brand’s new biome has arrived into minecraft and that means that your swamps are gonna stop looking like this and start looking like this after 1.19 comes out which fun fact there is a first ever 1.19 beta slash preview for minecraft bedrock as well as a 1.19 snapshot which released today including

This brand new biome except it’s actually a biome variant that’s right the mangrove swamp as delightful as it might look it’s actually just a variant of the existing swamp and so the existing swamp is here to stay and that makes everything okay even though the old biome looks crappy it does make some

People happy and so i wanted to go through a little bit of a review of everything new because i’m someone who spends hundreds of hours looking at seeds and generation in minecraft for the sake of various videos and uh so i figured it’d be interesting to look at

This new biome and give it a little bit of a rundown first things first though please do subscribe perhaps some notifications turned on if you want to see other minecraft survival based videos obviously this is covering what’s coming in a new update including a bit

Of a prediction on a release date by the way because they gave a really interesting hint in the changelog uh in there but first let’s explain the mangrove swamp so this is of course a brand new swamp biome variant or you can just call it a biome by itself i mean

Honestly with the way minecraft works these days the terms are getting kind of mixed around a little bit and the most interesting thing about this biome is the fact that it’s going to have a brand new tree type a tree type which isn’t quite here for bedrock yet so as you can

See uh even though we’ve got these uh roots here which are not logs you cannot craft them uh like they are if you actually look at the trees themselves the trees themselves are currently made of oakwood the rare steak wood that everyone loves the red wood that makes

All these beautiful things is not yet here for bedrock which is interesting that they could go through all of the effort of adding this whole biome uh but they couldn’t actually add the wood yet whatever we’ll just uh pass it for now just know there will be a brand new type

Of wood here there’s also these brand new uh mangrove whoops there’s also these mangrove postules you’ll find around the place they are used to plant new trees uh the mangrove roots like i said already and the top layer of the biome is covered in this delightfully interesting uh kind of looking mud block

This is the mud block right here it can be used to craft mud bricks and all sorts of other things and the things that i that i like most about it are honestly the sounds when you break and place it you’ve got to admit whether you like

That sound or not and a lot of people do fall on the knot side of the spectrum that was a very satisfying sound and so yeah as you can see this is a biome made up of new blocks and it fits into the wild update because look how wild this

Place is most of you will be coming here to get the new trees but some of you might appreciate the brand new mud which can be used for mud bricks might appreciate the mangrove roots which can be used for all sorts of wooden base builds that don’t quite fit the normal

Builds and also because it’s just some different terrain to make the world feel that little bit more alive um and so yeah before we talk about the bees that can spawn here before we talk about all the things that happen let’s talk about how the terrain actually looks also that

That which appears to be here the terrain itself in my opinion looks really good but it does have a couple of flaws in its current iteration uh that i think that probably uh should be addressed actually first things first what are the things i like the things i

Like is that it feels way more swampy you could actually ride a boat through here and it would feel like a proper swamp experience in my opinion while still having all the hallmarks of what a swamp should have it’s got lily pads it’s got the murky water this is a

Bedrock exclusive i’m not mistaken uh but it has this murky swamp water where you can barely see because it’s a swamp it’s gross you don’t want to be swimming in this water uh in the real world and so yeah it’s it’s very immersive but it has that fun feeling that a swamp has

However it then has a few things that disappoint me the first of which are the random grass patches you’ll find i mean it’s an interesting color of grass don’t get me wrong but it feels like it doesn’t merge well with the mud in its current state maybe there needs to be

Like pathway you know maybe this needs to be something that isn’t just random splotches again there’s probably some biome design that will be done here before the final release but then also i feel as though mud shouldn’t just be surface deep as you can see anywhere you

Walk around this biome if you remove some of the mud there is dirt directly below it again maybe this makes some sense to someone out there i i could maybe see it making some sense there however to me i don’t like the mud just being one block deep it makes the biome

Feel like a retexture or like they just replace the grass or something if there is mud in the biome it should be in some places quite deep so that’s my first uh complaint about this place mud uh just doesn’t feel right being only on the

Very very surface and even if it is only on the very very surface it’s only on the surface where there’s land the moment you go into water which is hard to show because of the very same cloudy water i was just talking about but the moment we go uh

Down a little bit more as you can see it’s dirt again which just starts to make the mud feel like an afterthought rather than one of the key parts of the bime itself so yeah i think the mud placement is kind of disappointment and you know like right given that the mud

Is one of the few blocks that defines the thing uh it is important to get that right maybe in the real world the way mud works is it’s only a meter deep and never anymore but for the sake of minecraft and for the sake of people who

Are going to be collecting this stuff um having one block deep means that enough people are gonna be running through here breaking this block and then the grass is just going to spread back through and it’s going to be a weird old swamp again maybe a weird consideration maybe we’re

Talking about people who destroy biomes which is a small category which specifically includes me but it’s still something worth mentioning the other thing that’s worth mentioning about this is the way the whole place kind of feels i don’t know it feels like it’s lacking some form of unique plant on the ground

And look at like how it cut this desert off from another part of the desert that’s actually incredibly strange huh but um yeah i’m just here to kind of show that like yeah there’s not really enough going on here there’s grass but grass doesn’t feel quite right coming

Out of the mud i mean in my mind it should be slightly re-textured maybe even more of a different color or you know i i don’t know what you would do of it but there’s definitely some things they could do to make the the grass feel

A bit more like it belongs there as opposed to being an off-board and then also the dead bushes which i that there are they spawn somewhat rarely in here uh but it feels as though we need something a bit more tailor-made for the swamp again if the wild update is all

About wildlife doing something that isn’t a dead bush might be a good idea although again like maybe it’s actually this really good idea but to me the the dead bush is amazing in places where you cannot get wood but is it so necessary in places where you can and pro tip you

Might not know this but in the mangrove swamp you actually can get wood all of the time let me let you in on a little secret here’s what you do you climb the mangrove roots or you break them or you don’t even do that you just break the

Wood which will be mangrove swamp when the update comes out and boom there you go in fact since we’re getting a little bit um you know lost while trying to like since we’re showing off an inferior version of the biome right now that has you know that this looks like cardboard

Instead of steak so if i would show you what the steak should really look like wait actually i wonder will the will this tree be in the exact same place all the buy and be in the same place if we use this exact same seed on java let’s find out the answer is Oh okay as you can see there is in fact a mangrove swamp right here and as you can see it’s got the correct lovely little uh red i wouldn’t say medium rare steak this is a full-on rare steak right here so as you can see this is the mangrove

Swamp the exact same biome but added to the java edition snapshot of the same update uh in case you’re curious although java snapshots are just labeled as like this is week 14 in the year 2022 uh the bedrock beta is the first one for version 1.19 and we’ll come back into

Why that’s such a big deal later and what that means for everyone java or bedrock players uh alike but for now just kind of know that these biomes are very very vertical they they almost feel like mini jungles when you look from above or maybe like mixed with a little

Bit of roof forest it’s a very fun biome to explore from above if you’re a creative player however if you are someone who plays a lot of survival don’t be tricked by these kind of vertical visions also this is so much bigger of a biome on java when compared

To bedrock seriously look at the size of it here and then for size comparison over here i mean it’s incredible i personally am off the preference that the java size might be uh slightly better than like a long fin narrow biome like this i mean what is

This is this chile we we don’t need to be so long and narrow we can be a little bit more chubby you know we can be chilly even if we have to be but the important thing to also say here is that as well as being uh kind of like this

Size and looking like also as you can see look look at this tiny swamp that it’s created i i’m so fascinated by this but um also the other thing i’d say is that the tree cover is much better maybe because i’m looking from above but i think this is a much more natural

Looking mangrove swamp as opposed to like whatever this is it’s just so crowded as far as the eye can see there’s even yeah i’d say the java uh version definitely has the the better wood type but as far as everything else is going uh might need some revisions there is

Gonna be a lot of feedback there’s gonna be a lot of changes to make on this that’s why i want to be as clear as possible my uh my opinions here that like yeah we can’t go one block uh deep not only for the fact that like it’s

Kind of ugly if you break the block and like it doesn’t feel correct but also look at this this is natural generation it just doesn’t look right to have the mud be surrounded by dirt underneath it feels incorrect i also say the tree cover on java is a bit too high

From above maybe that’s what you want though because if you were riding horse above this biome it would be great as someone who does a lot of just ignoring biomes by riding horses over them it’s great however is that what they’re going for maybe it is maybe it isn’t i don’t

Know their their real goals or visions but what i can say is that yeah when there is a clear waterway this biome looks extra cool i mean combine that with the way oh they did add the water effect to java oh but actually it goes away after some time too

Honestly it looks pretty good here see love to see love to see the changes they’re making to make 1.19 better full both platforms speaking of both platforms though although bedrock version might have gotten a more refined or less refined depending on your position um version of the uh the

Mangrove swamp this week the jar of edition did have quite a few exclusives and i want to talk about them a little bit the big one though is this the recovery compass it looks like kind of like an inverted regular compass but it’s a really cool feature and let me

Explain to you why first things first uh obviously it is a not a regular compass the regular compass always points towards a fixed spot in your world that is the same for everyone that is the spawn location it doesn’t point towards north although that could be almost as

Useful a feature it always points towards the spawn location look in my inventory it’s focusing there right now whereas the recovery compass focuses nowhere it seems well actually what it’s doing is it’s pointing towards the place where i last died was it just so happens that i haven’t died yet in this world

Because it’s a creative world even though i’m pretending it’s survival of my game mode right here i’m not doing a particularly convincing job but if i were to die you’re not should we should we show you what happens if i were to die oh no a great injury has befallen me

As so often happens well now as you can see oh i gotta get back up there anyway as you can see my recovery compass is always pointing me towards that place where i died which conveniently enough will be where all my stuff is being stored and not despawning

Because it’s out of the world render distance out of the place where i actually can do which means having one of these when you die if you’re not sure where you die is going to be potentially really handy there’s a lot of really weird edge cases about this i’d love to

Talk about and it’s usefulness etc um but for now we just need to mention that the reason this is so cool is because they’re adding it by making it craftable with these mystical cucumbers so these mystical cucumbers they decided to call them echo shards are only found in one

Particular place you guessed it the deep guard this is another specific use case for the ancient city besides swift sneak it’s saying if you want a recovery compass you know where you got to go you’ve got to go precisely there they do stack together and they won’t work if

You’re not in the correct dimension or if you like you saw right there i haven’t died yet so in hardcore mode this has literally zero function they also don’t work on the ground because they’re not being held by anyone and so as you can see i

Mean that the ground hasn’t died yet i mean i just just you wait ground i’m gonna show you who’s boss but the ground hasn’t died and so it doesn’t know where to point on that particular point which is just so fascinating to me but yeah this is the brand new snapshot that came

Out for java the brand new beta for bedrock and like i mentioned there is a really interesting hint at the release of this update because we didn’t know if this is your 1.19 the world update is intended to be a year-long update like they’ve been doing with the aquatic

Update with the village and pillage and the never update or if it was intended to be kind of a half year update like they did for caves and cliffs part one and two um this uh minecraft has always aimed to have two updates a year um but

Given that last year was the first year they really pulled that off in a big way and that was part one and part two uh what is happening with 1.19 the answer seems to be maybe this is going to be a half your update the reason i think that

Is because we’ve moved into 1.19 betas already which would be weird for an update that’s coming out in december or even as late as like august uh sort of uh time november maybe it would be ludicrously going into 1.19 betas already they usually stay in the version

Before for betas until very close to the end and the other thing that’s very interesting is they reference in the changelog i’ll read this out uh verbatim is is the beta in the world you use for that i just want to sound bouncy okay

But i’m going to read this out as it as it is written right here uh they write that you might have guessed it in this week’s bedrock beta we’re heading to the murky marvel that is the mangrove swamp biome then they reference the uh they want to hear your thoughts through

Feedback but as they’re now approaching the final state of some features you won’t have to enable them in the experimental toggle in order to test them out this time that’s right a lot of these features are not going to be fought up as experimental anymore because they’re going to just be

Finished features it’s going to be the end finito there is no more development for these features and indeed quite a few others they are at the the last part the this the finishing of the start is over and now the start of the finishing has begun and indeed overall the many

Features the opposite of the beginning is happening and as well as all of that what you could also say is you could look at the changelog and see that they have a line on there about 1.19 splash texts and 1.19 tutorial tips for the menus and stuff these are very late

Phase update features i would say at least it could be that like oh there there’s just features they’re finishing now and ready for this update that’s coming out way later in the year but i think that is a sign that yes this is a june july first half of the year um

Update for minecraft obviously we’ve got a lot of steps to go between now and any finished release obviously that just goes without saying there is a lot that needs to happen here but i’m excited for the idea uh that we might just be getting uh you know a two

Update minecraft year and uh that includes many things about the wild update however if that is true uh the birch forest update we saw of all the new greenery we haven’t seen much of yet that would probably put an end to the idea that the ancient city portal will

Do something in this update you know it’s likely they’re going to plan that for some future update um if this is a half you know year one as opposed to a big major uh full year one uh but i imagine for the sake of like minecraft developer sanity and all the other uh

Targets that they said were being uh all the other things that they said were important when they split the caves and cliffs updates too hopefully this results in good things and hopefully it results in a less uh buggy less stressful uh more interesting time only

Time will tell uh what they do with the rest of this snapshot development cycle but i imagine we’re in the you know like we’ve gone past the midpoint for the development of this is what i’m trying to say and that is a hugely interesting thought to have let me know what you

Think though in the comments down below again i’m not gonna i’m not gonna make an exact prediction on a release date yet that is something i would love to do by again we like to compare uh versus uh previous snapshots once we see a little bit more wording that confirms that yeah

They’re coming closer to the end of adding new features and uh yeah that’s something i love to do analyze the data etc speaking of analyzing data and dates you might be wondering when am i next going to be streaming super flat survival it’s a very popular series a

Lot of people have been loving watching it thank you for the support by the way um but uh yeah i’m gonna be doing part 12 which is ludicrous to say on the flat survival with no structures uh it’s gonna be happening tomorrow my usual

Stream day uh 8 pm if you want to set a reminder in uk time and the other thing is i am also working on a big summary video for the last 24 hours of footage that i’m working through it’s taking a lot of time but i just wanted to let you

Know it’s in in progress and uh yeah i want to show people who don’t have the time to watch 24 hours of content what it looks like but if you do have time to watch 24 hours worth of stuff then really i’d better stop getting in your

Way with this video also don’t worry there’s people there that can help you everything’s gonna be okay speaking of things that are okay i hope that you enjoyed this video if it was more than okay have you considered hitting the like button did you know it doesn’t even help

Me out as a youtuber it just boosts my ego very slightly um and so you can totally not do it as well doesn’t even bother me i mean i’m asking you so clearly it does bother me but you can think more about the psychology of that

After the end of this video because it’s been a lovely time but i’m gonna see you all next time next one goodbye You