The Spawn Chunks: A Minecraft Podcast – A Break From Blocks

Welcome to the spawn chunks episode number 279 for Monday January 8th 2024 my name is Johnny but the internet knows me as pixel riffs and joining me for the new year is Joel dougen hi Joel hello hello and thinking ahead to the things that we are going to be doing in the New

Year some of us are going to be playing board games uh and they might have birds in them they might have rivers and Fields in them they might have birdhouses you never know and if you want to hear more about that and some of the gifts that we gave and received over

The holidays then you can check out the render distance that’s the extended version of the podcast you can get it at patreon.com thepa chunks it is the first episode of the month and the first episode of the new year so a huge thank you to all of our patrons for your

Support you are a big part of the reason that Johnny and I get to do this every week and we can’t thank you enough the monthly Minecraft hangout will happen later this this month that’s a perk for our patrons that happens live in the Discord and it will be a bit beefier to

Make up for the one that we could not get to over the holidays because Christmas fell on a weekend and kind of extended uh that break a bit the quarterly hangout will be later in January or potentially earlier in February depending on when the data is available for the final episodes of 2023

That will be the Q4 as well as the full annual wrap-up and the quarterly hangout for those of you that don’t know is another perk for our patrons that’s where Johnny and I sit down and talk about YouTube numbers podcast downloads how the show is doing plans for the

Future that kind of stuff so look for that in the next you know four to six weeks uh and as for scheduled changes there aren’t any we’re back to recording Mondays live in the Discord 10: a.m. Atlantic and 2 p.m. in the UK again another perk for our patrons you get to

Hang out here live with us we’re also very excited to announce that Mojang developer nmon will be joining us sometime soon to talk about his recent addition to the Mojang team and some features he’s worked on directly but perhaps not the ones you think we are still firming up exact recording dates

Uh he might be appearing on a an upcoming Monday but we might end up recording slightly out of sequence there depending on his availability uh but in the meantime we are planning on taking a few listener emails for that show so if you have any questions for nmon please

Send them to the usual email address that is spawn chunk [email protected] once again that’s spawn chunk [email protected] and make sure you put nmon in the subject line so we can sort through those question questions before the and make sure we’ve seen all of them so that we can select a

Few so I took a giant break over the holidays and I I know this has happened to me before where I go into the holidays thinking I’m going to do some extra streaming I I talk about it on podcasts you know keep keep an eye on the twitch Channel you never know what

Might happen and I ended up doing a whole lot of nothing which leaves me with not a lot to talk about here in the login but uh may be something we can talk about I think in the main discussion later on but coming back to it like looking ahead

To the things that I want to accomplish now that you know we’re recording podcasts this week and I’m going to be streaming this week um I’m thinking about all the stuff that I have left to do in in West Hill and really you know as I think about it it it just comes

Down to two kind of broad brush Strokes which is the interior design of the keep inside West Hill that’s the big ticket item to finish the town uh and I I’m sure there’ll be like a detail sweep to make sure that I don’t have any like pigs on roofs and like you different

Stuff like that um but the the other things are just like exterior things like roads and rivers and the kind of stuff I was kind of poking at a little bit before before the break and so there really isn’t a whole lot left and I don’t know if you’ve ever

Had this with big projects as you come closer to finishing them him up I I’m excited to finish and I’m excited to move on to something else in Minecraft but at the same time I’m almost kind of thinking like what else can I do like what like is there anything else that I

Can like it’s it’s like it’s that one part of like I don’t want to leave any stone unturned I don’t want to like leave something that’s really obviously something I forgot but I also it’s just that I don’t want to it’s not anxiety that’s the wrong word but it

It’s that tentativeness of moving on to something else having done the same thing for so long right yeah absolutely and it’s something that I’ve felt in a variety of situations from finishing series and stuff to finishing larger projects and it’s obviously something that I’ve seen a lot of recently with

Hermitcraft having wrapped up their series and taking such a focus on their videos for the hermitcraft recap project it’s the same thing that they’ve been talking about there’s this sort of odd Melancholy to it where it sort of feels like you’re stepping away from something for the last time and you’re thinking am

I ever going to come back here and in the case of them with their server closing down and starting a fresh world it’s a very different situation from what you’ve got where the Citadel is going to continue on and you’re just moving on from this project but it’s h

It’s the same sort of feeling and it’s an interesting Twist on that to be effectively Your Own Boss in this situation right you don’t have anybody else on the Citadel necessarily pressuring you to move on you’re just trying to figure out when is the the artistic side of this project going to

End and when can I stop tweaking things and uh and and feel like I have closure on it so yeah that’s a that’s an interesting feeling but one that definitely applies to Minecraft especially once you’ve been working on a project for as long as you have and when it gets into feature creep

You know like that that not feature creep that’s not the right term but it’s the same sort of feeling in that you just keep on adding you know like you a farm could go there or I could build a wall or that could use a little dock you

Know like little stuff like that and you just end up never being done yeah and so I think what I want to refocus on is is the priority of of finishing West Hill and everything like immediately adjacent to it and then farms in the valley and

Things like that I think I might try and um leave as like a hey this is meant to be an ongoing Zone not just one single build like a one-off thing so I can always come back and and you never know like it might be worth it to wait

Because like you know the longer I wait the closer we get to the new blocks from 1.21 and so there could be some things that I might be able to use in the walls around the fields or things like that so I’m trying not to to pressure myself

Into completing the area 100% which if anybody has known me uh and how I play Minecraft over the last few years like leaving things either unfinished or that incomplete feeling like that’s that’s not a natural state for me so in a way it’s kind of a challenge to learn to

Like no you need to like look this is not all going to happen now you know you’re going to have to walk away and come back and the good news about coming back to do a farm is that the whole time you’re building the farm you’re right

Next to this giant build that you’ve done and so if people are you know looking to see it as part of your content then you can always return and that’s something else I realized too as I’ve been building West Hill I’ve been bopping back and forth to different

Areas of the server you know you go back to the gold Farm to repair your gear you go back to other bases to uh gather stone or andesite or things that you know you’ve got in chests in different places and that’s the nice thing about

Westle as well is I have a lot of stuff uh stored up and once I finish the a and leave it there’s a really good chance I’m going to be working on something in the future going like oh uh I need to craft like you know 100 repeaters or

Something like that but I don’t have any stone I know where there’s Stone you know and go to the dozens of chests that I have you know buried underneath in the keep or you know if I when I move everything over to the Crypt you know under the graveyard then I’ll have a

Reason to come back to the area which is nice and I think working on other projects and and doing other things in the area will will help with that I just I want to moving forward I want to just not but take such big bites like I want

To try to do smaller projects so even if I come back to West to do something it’ll be like let’s build a medieval Bridge or a windmill not like a new town you know I think I’ve done and and I think too like I’ve done the town thing

And I think I’ve learned a lot and I’d like to do something else so I can expand just my artistic repertoire I guess you know like what I have in my back pocket in Minecraft I want to learn how to do some some different stuff yeah yeah

Definitely good to Branch out I found that the first time I built a castle in guide season one I immediately wanted to build another Castle because I learned so much during the process but I think that was a slightly shorter process even even that um and you want to avoid being

Like one of those progress bars that gets stuck at 100% but still isn’t done if you know what I mean like this the the rendering video like uh export process from Premiere that always goes 99 100% And then stays on 100% for like 10 minutes it’s like that’s that’s not

Done is it um yeah yeah I hear you like you I didn’t spend a great deal of time playing Minecraft over the holidays either I’ve taken a pretty solid break from it both to visit family and because I still have family visiting actually we’ve got a a relative visiting from the

States who is staying in my office as a bedroom so I’m not in here quite as frequently as I would be otherwise but having taken a break from playing I found has not given me a break from thinking about what I want to do this

Year and so I’ve taken it as more of like a bit of a research Break um I’ve been following a few artists for a while and I get a few more artist recommendations on sites like in where it’ll like throw new stuff at me every so often and I stumbled across an artist

Called Greg frento who has a bunch of really neat illustrations a lot of which have a very simple subject but one of these popped out at me which was a floating island with a large sort of gallion style size ship beached on it and like whales floating around in the

Sky kind of thing and and a Fantastical setting but one that I thought would translate really well to a fairly contained Minecraft Project we already have examples of shipwrecks in game floating islands are a thing that the terrain will sometimes generate but I wanted to use it as a case study for

Figuring out first the inspiration for a build project then how to execute on that inspiration the drafting process and building it up until it becomes a feature of this world and I haven’t really established a build style at my central base area yet that I feel like

I’m going to follow through with and turn into a larger settlement so I thought let’s treat this as a self-contained project somewhere nearby so I’m not traveling thousands of blocks away just to see this one thing but also focus on the aesthetic quality of builds and builds not having to be functional

Or you know justifying builds a certain way in order for them to be part of your world so that’s going to be my main project for the return of Survival Guide in the new year and I’m trying to structure that in a much more formalized fashion a lot of the stuff I’ve been

Approaching in Survival Guide has been fairly casual just ping ponging from subject to subject as I go and as the need requires you know I I think okay I’ve got to fill up the prismarine in my storage system so I need to build a guardian farm and after the guardian

Farm I’ve got easy access to XP so I can go and do big strip mining projects without the need to repair my tools at a very kind of slow XP farm and so forth but this is the point at which resources are no longer scarce in fact if anything

I have a surplus of resources to the point where I want to do large building projects that will take up a lot of them and so my plan is to turn a floating island like this into a larger set piece for my world and talk a bit about the

Process of that in a series of tutorials I’m on uh Gregory’s page right now it’s very cool I like I like the style and the it reminds me a little bit of Studio gibli like just that kind of Whimsy and yes absolutely you just it’s it’s like all these things are are

Rendered realistically from a illustration point of view but they don’t all go together when it terms when it comes to like our world you know like whales flying in the sky and floating islands and stuff but it still looks like you know probably like a you know

Mid 15th century or 16th century gallion like you know yeah it it it looks it looks very very apt don’t come at me if I got that date wrong um but he’s got like uh houses built on the back of giant fish and that kind of stuff right

Alongside a series of portraits which are really cool of like pop culture kind of film figures but but there’s there’s some really neat stuff in there a couple of castles and just things that provide this really nice uh build inspiration and so yeah we’ve talked in the past about drawing inspiration from artists

And going to places like art station to search for specific keywords and whatnot but this was really Serendipity that it popped up on my Instagram feed and I I got I got really into that that art style so going to try and do it justice

In in game um I have popped back into the survival guide world since the new year I I did a stream the other day just the usual chop in Tuesday wood Gathering kind of stuff um but I probably won’t be back at full capacity for a couple of

Weeks yet so uh easing into the new year I think with uh an approach that’s lending more towards planning than actual Gameplay at this stage I need to find a way to ease back in as well I don’t think I’m going to jump right back in and go straight at

The keep details you know like I think I’m going to continue on with the rivers and kind of think about things from the outside in and just not get distracted and get like going down roads around corners and things but like try to think about you know what is happening in

Inside and I think I might make a new list like a shorter list you know you ever find that when you have four pages of lists and everything like half of them is all checked off you kind of find it difficult to to figure out like where

You are like what is the thing you need to do next so you kind of like all right Turf that list copy all over the stuff that needs to be done and then you have a brand new list with nothing’s checked off but it’s it’s half the length you

Know it tends to be a lot easier to parse so uh moving forward that’s probably how I’m going to approach things but I I think that’s I think it’s a good way to get back in there’s there can be that kind of hard smack in the

Face of in any job doesn’t matter over all of my career coming back from any holiday there’s always that kind of like woof okay I have to do this like high octane back to Monday to Friday 9 to5 you know when I was working in TV animation and stuff and when you’re

Doing this kind of thing self-generated content it’s a lot easier to be like I can work a half day today you know I can I can work myself back up to it uh after taking a break yeah well we’re going to dedicate some of our main discussion

Today to talking about taking a bit of time away from Minecraft and what that can do for your mindset uh since many of us play Minecraft as our principal form of recreation I hope this will be something that relates as much to our audience as it does to us uh in the

Position of playing Minecraft as more of a career thing but in the meantime we’re going to move on to the news we have a little bit of news filtering in from Over the new year including a Minecraft Bedrock Edition beta and preview this is 1.20 6024 there are no new Java snapshots at

The time of this recording but there was this one Bedrock beta published on January 4th 2024 and as always Mojang is asking for your feedback on recent feature updates and uh bits and pieces like that bug fixes and whatnot so they encourage you to uh add your feedback

Over at the feedback. minecraft.net page and Report any bugs you might encounter at the usual bugs. mojang.com so in experimental features the armad dowo now emits vibrations when rolling up and unrolling which can be detected by skull sensors baby armadillos will no longer move towards their parents after rolling

Up the armadillo’s legs no longer flicker well rolled up and they now play the correct sounds when rolling up fixing a couple of bugs in uh Minecraft Bedrock Edition specifically the trial spawner has some improved particles the breeze can now jump while standing in water and now avoids trap doors when

Pathf finding they’ve removed the darkening tint in the wind burst particle to uphold parity with Java Edition and the volume of sounds for equipping and removing Woolf fer is now controlled by the friendly creatures slider in features and Bug fixes Pistons pushing pulling or destroying blocks no longer risk teleporting surrounding

Players towards towards the world’s origin this is something I’ve actually noticed popping up as a bug that people report a lot on the Minecraft reddit so really happy to hear this one’s been fixed I know it’s been aggravating Bedrock players for a while along with that several crops flowers and blocks

Including glowstone dust and gravel no longer have an increased chance of drops when mined with a enchanted book of Fortune they fixed a bug where the player would exit a vehicle at an incorrect height if the vehicle was over a fire block they’ve renamed sko to turtle sko in preparation for armadillo

Skuts also being a thing villagers who are mistakenly assigned to the same bed or workstation as others will now actively seek out a new bed or workstation puffer fish no longer inflate and deflate repeatedly when a player is at a specific distance animal equipment such as horse armor and wolf

Armor no longer has a chance of being duplicated when the animal carrying them is killed pillagers now spawn correctly near Pillager outposts and mobs that have partial blocks I.E trap doors slabs Etc specified as part of their list of blocks to avoid in their navigation components should now avoid them

Properly in Realms news the Realms tab in the new play screen should no longer be stuck in a loading State they fixed a crash that could occur in the play menu whilst looking at Realms and corrected translations about posting and liking on Realms stories in vanilla parity news

Trail ruins will now be placed in the same location and configuration as in Java and some villagers could have their skins not matching their professions but that should now have been resolved as a bug fix as well the armadillo has a new look posted on December 24th from Minecraft on

Twitter quote we’ve listened to your feedback here is a new iteration of the armadillo in beta and snap shots next year the most notable feature of the redesign moves the eyes to the side of the head they previously on the front of the head so uh let’s start with that

Actually how do you feel about the new look of the armadillo oh I think it looks much better I I think it uh it looks cuter and more more like an armadillo I think that’s it’s one of the things and it also lines up with other animals and mobs in Minecraft that have

That long kind of snout like a goat or a horse uh I I think that it looked a little bit too much like a mouse previously and and now I think it has more of the um like the longer thinner nose which is difficult to achieve in Minecraft with the blockiness of the

Model but I think by moving the eyes to the side it really emphasizes that long kind of forehead that that armadillos have and I think it helps the head look longer uh I don’t think they’ve made it longer it doesn’t look like it has any extra pixels but they’ve made it they’ve

Made it lighter uh it certainly has it’s like the top of its head now has the same sort of texture color as its back because their armor kind of goes right down it’s almost like they have a little helmet on yeah yeah and so I think I

Think it looks good and they’ve changed the ears too the ears also seem uh a bit smaller and maybe at a different angle I can’t really tell from the the image i’ I’d like to see you know some more shots of it or even you know more uh animation

From it to see if anything else has changed I know that they added um in the snapshot or the the beta preview here they added different frequencies or different vibrations and I think that’s really cool um but yeah I’m visually I think it looks it looks pretty good it’s

A little bit lighter I think one thing that is nice about it is that it looks less like a dirt block and the the contrast on the little the the ridges in the armor on the back of it I feel like it’s a it’s a better

Contrast and so it looks more like a unique thing as opposed to kind of like a little brown blob which I think is good yeah yeah definitely I I think think yeah the the lighter shell texture like I wasn’t really expecting them to change much about the coloration of it

Which they have they made it like a warmer color the previous one was a bit more purple now it’s slightly more kind of pink feels a bit more like a Terra Cotta block I feel um but yeah I I think it’s a an overall really good change and

I’m I was honestly on the fence about the eye position like I can take or leave it as far as like the character of the mob goes but I agree with the people who are kind of uh advocating for it to be more like the goat which has the eyes

On the sides of it head and it feels more like a realistic way that that animal would render in Minecraft um I think one of the justifications for putting the eyes on the front of the head was that you were supposed to be interacting with it fairly frequently

And it kind of gave it more personality if it felt like it was looking at you but personally I didn’t find myself interacting with these things head on a great deal during the time I spent in snapshots in the first place so I do think it makes just as much sense for

The eyes to be on the side and you running at the armadillo from the side than it does to for you to run at it from the front a lot of mobs do this thing where they will turn to face you dead on when you’re standing within a

Certain like notice range of them right um and so like cows and sheep and stuff will do that and I’ve often find that kind of odd because of the way animals in the real world will look at you I mean take parrots as an example right parrots I believe even in Minecraft have

The eyes on the sides of their head and they have a very small head so putting the eyes on the front it’ll just look like a black bar instead of a pair of individual eyes but the parrots will still turn to face you beak forward when you approach them and that’s not how

Birds react in real life at all a bird always looks at you kind of sideways and that’s a characteristic of birds that everybody is naturally familiar with if you’ve seen one ever and they don’t do that in Minecraft so I wonder if in future to tighten up mob Ai and even if

It’s not to change much about their walk cycle and animations and you know overall Behavior but I do wonder if animals with eyes on the sides of their heads are ever going to look at the player using the side of their head instead of the front or if that’s just

Something that is so naturally hardcoded into the game that it becomes too inconvenient to change after a while I I like the idea of having the body of the animal face towards you but then just have the head tilt either to the left or the right and just kind of

Have it look at you from from inside I mean it makes sense uh and these changes had me thinking about some of the other animals that the armadillo doesn’t line up with and how some of the new passive mobs like the goat for example have been

A little bit more I I guess realistic in terms of how they’re modeled after their real world counterparts but they’ve also got more detail like you know like the armadillo has like the outer shell layer the um the goat has got like the bushy kind of layers to its coat and and has

That that interesting shape to it it’s not just a box you know like uh the sheep for example are really just like really early Minecraft kind of boxes and and they have that head uh same with the cow they look straight at you and when you think about a sheep model versus a

Horse or I mean horses have been in the game a while although they got a little bit of a touchup a while ago um but we look about like a goat or an armadillo compared to a sheep you go wow that’s weird you know like the Sheep I mean and

And I think we’ve mentioned this before you mentioned it before in the show where like some things are probably tied into a lot of merchandise or Minecraft marketing or have just been so iconic like you think about the creeper and that’s pretty synonymous with Minecraft right yeah but when you think about a

Sheep like it’s not that sheep in general are you know part of Minecraft it’s that specific dead stare from a sheep that is like Goofy and weird and now part of the part of an inoke I think within within the community um and I have seen some texture packs where

People have changed you know the ducky looking chickens in Minecraft to look like chickens and the and the Sheep to look like sheep and the cows to actually look like cows and I I do like what can be done uh when an artist does it the right way specifically I think I saw

Like a highland cow I think that’s the right name for them yeah uh the bushy cow and and like the goat that works really really well because you don’t even have to give it eyes you can give it like a little bit of a mop like a

Little cartoon mop that you know the eyes would be underneath you know and I I think that works really really well so uh I’d be curious to see as Mojang adds more mobs to the game in future if Natural Mobs like an armadillo receive this kind of treatment but then other

Things like The Strider or the the breeze like the more Fantastical things uh passive or not get like the the we’re just going to do however we want like more binocular kind of like straight ahead Vision uh cartoony as opposed to something that is a little closer to uh

The way things work in in real life I’m trying to think about anytime I’ve seen an animal like this in a Disney cartoon where I don’t think they move they might move the eyes to the front they kind of anthrop waries things in something like zootopia they would but in something

Like say 101 Dalmatians like any bird like a pet bird in that era of Disney would be like you said looking at someone side ways you know like any of the the Ravens and something like Sword in the Stone or or that like they would be animated like real birds not like

Birds that would be looking at you straight on whereas I think like the crows or something in Pinocchio they they have eyes kind of like in the front of their face as opposed to on the side well the the one that Springs out in my mind is an animated Armadillo in

DreamWorks The Road to El Dorado there is there’s an armadillo that they used to play like an ancient meso American ball game at one point and that pretty much it’s it’s kind of ambiguous and obviously there’s a lot more detail that you can put into a handdrawn animation

Than you can into something like Minecraft with limited textures um but the the eyes face forward a fair bit of the time but they are sort of around the the curvature of the head in a way that it really isn’t possible to do with a boxy shape of a Minecraft armadillo so

Yeah there’s uh there’s some creative license to be had there and I agree that I think the the creative license in Minecraft can be much more easily had with original uh creatures because nobody can tell them hey that doesn’t look like real life because you’re like congratulations it is a wind Elemental

Good luck pointing to one of those in an encyclopedia you know um but yeah makes makes perfect sense to me I’m looking forward to seeing if any more iterations come through for the armadillo but I expect the voices in the community that were calling for the armadillo to have a

More realistic look are probably a lot happier with this one I’ve certainly seen a lot fewer negative takes on the new look of the armadillo anything in particular from the Bedrock preview that stand out to you um first of all the fact that scoots have been renamed to Turtle scoots

That’s something that I think still hasn’t changed in Java yet but makes perfect sense to me to avoid confusion uh like I said during the news read I think the Piston pushing block was the one that was jumping out to players the most along with I think it might have

Been fixed in a previous uh beta but maybe hasn’t come to the full release yet but there was an issue where players would take full damage When jumping occasionally and that could lead to it building up to the point where they would just be pillaring up in the way

That you typically do and take a lethal amount of damage out of nowhere um and so there’s occasional issues like that that do seem pretty gamebreaking about bedrock and G give it the reputation as being like a buggy version of the game um but naturally it has such a wide

Player base that you imagine the sample size of people who are going to run into those bugs is much greater than those on Java um but yeah I’m I’m very interested to see what the Bedrock Community thinks of some of the the newer changes and the more crucial fixes coming through

Because it seems like some of those have been irking them for a while I don’t know enough about the Bedrock bugs to know you know how long these have been in so that’s I mean always good to hear bug fixes I’m I’m curious about the parody stuff uh and

And how that might come into the Java snapshot that we’ll probably see you know probably this week or next whenever they get you know things rolling back at in the new year and the thing that caught my attention was the vibrations you know that the armadillo will emit uh

As well as things like the path restrictions of a breeze now avoiding trap doors uh and can jump when standing in water and I just kind of thought of the people that might be making or taking advantage of the either of these mobs for any kind of like red stone or

Trigger mechanism or map for the breeze like anything like that that you can give players like oh by the way if you wanted to do anything unique or fun with this mob here are a set of rules that it will kind of adhere to and you’re thinking about a breeze that might want

To you know you might want to use the breeze to push things around you know and if you know that will it’ll avoid trap doors you might be able to sort of aim it you know and I I think that kind of stuff is is interesting people much

Smarter than me I’m sure will figure it out in over time um but uh same thing with the armad like anything that admits a specific vibration you know when roll you know for for stuff like that uh so when it rolls up it gets scared so like

You could put something that would scare it near it and then it could roll up like every so often and maybe use that as like you know a random signal generator or maybe because of a specific frequency of the vibration then you it allows your Redstone Contraption to do

Something different than it normally would like that kind of stuff I find really interesting I think the breeze thing also allows for consistency of its behavior when you fight it in the environment you’re expected to which is the trial Chambers because in the rooms that have Breeze spawners there are

Those buttons on the wall that activate and Trigger different dispensers and some of those can contain buckets of water which will flood that area of the room creating an obstacle for the player or you know whatever else right and so if the breeze ends up in one of those

And is unable to jump then the player can take it on much more easily and effectively Nerfs the ability of the breeze to counteract that by leaping away uh and that was one of the things that I found Difficult about fighting them when I dipped into the trial

Spawners in the snapshot was how much they leap away and then they’re keeping you at a distance by firing wind charges at you um so it makes them more Dynamic to fight and makes the fight actually feel like a challenge so I think that plus avoiding trap doors when pathf

Finding makes perfect sense based on the example trial uh trial chamber that was in the um in the Minecraft live presentation where they had that trapdoor obstacle in the floor and the wind charges were able to open and close the trap doors to drop players down through the floor I didn’t encounter any

Of those when we explored the trial Chambers in snapshot so I’m not certain if those got implemented or if they were just an example but if they are going to be implemented having the breeze sat on top of one and then dropping itself through the floor accidentally kind of

You know gives it the opportunity to trap itself mistakenly which could be frustrating for a player and obviously isn’t the intended mechanic there so I think it makes a lot of sense for the breeze to avoid anything that would be natural obstacle or be able to react to those obstacles if that’s the

Environment we’re going to encounter them in yeah I totally agree we’ve got some chunk mail this week and if you’d like to write in and help our 2024 email stores reach their capacity you can send that message to spawn chunk [email protected] first message comes in from Dale better than dying

Armor hello pix and Joel since Mojang hasn’t yet addressed the popular request of being able to dieye Wolf armor I thought maybe they were thinking of another way to customize them I’m probably very optimistic here but what if instead of dying you could craft the wool farmer with various items that

Would not only change its appearance but also add functionality for example adding a prismarine Shard to the crafting recipe would make your wolf a better swimmer blaze powder would make for better fire resistance nether scrap for blast resistance a feather for fall damage protection Etc to get a bit crazier hello modding

Community add a goat horn to the wool armer recipe for an evil look and better teleportation range or a firework rocket for following you when you fly anyway what are your thoughts do you think Mojang is cooking something up Beyond dying wolf armor thank you for your

Great podcast Dale was slain by Charlie the dog wearing Pillager wolf armor it’s going to teleport and spawn kill me in a loop oh no [Laughter] that is that is the problem with uh your your wolves becoming pillagers and yeah I I think uh some of these ideas I mean

With a nod to the modern Community are naturally a little farfetched for vanilla Minecraft although I would love to see a flying wolf personally I just think the the prospect of your wolf getting if not little elytra then at least like a firework rocket that it can

Ride behind you as you fly around would certainly solve the problem that I have with pets following you in Minecraft which is that your preferred way of getting around is going to be elytra and crossing water with more than one animal uh is really difficult by boat so having

You know a way for them to follow you through the sky so you don’t have to worry about the teleportation behavior is uh is is going to be welcome I think um I was expecting the goat horn suggestion to be more about the wolf having like a Sonic bark or something

Like that but I think we’ve had a similar suggestion for the goat horn before um some of the slightly more downto Earth ideas though like the The prismarine Shard allowing them to swim a little bit faster not only makes sense mechanically and adds to a bit of

Quality of life for using wolves with the player um but also adds interesting new ways to use old items which is I think the prospect that I find most attractive in this suggestion I agree and one of the things that I know was uh part of the feedback

That people were giving about the new Woolf farmer is that it added some protection but not a whole lot and so any chance that you have to increase the resiliency of your wolf so that all the work that you put into taming it and then giving it armor doesn’t all end if

It dies unfortunately by drowning or you know stepping in lava by accident because you took it to the nether or whatever and I think that having that kind of uh tweak to it is is really interesting and I like the idea of using something Beyond just a dieye to change

Also the aesthetic of the the wolf farmer and that could work in two ways like if you are doing a PVP situation you’re bringing these wolves in then a wolf with bright orange or bright blue armor you’d be able to say oh that’s that’s a swimming wolf or that’s a fire

Wolf or whatever you want to you know call it and I think that could be really fun to like break up the the same old same old I I guess the con the the contrast of that is that dying wolf armor just like you die other things in game that’s

Consistent game mechanics right so if you want to make your wolf armor red the first thing you think of is I need red Dy not I need you know something else that’s going to make it red like Redstone like that you Redstone wouldn’t be the first thing that popped into your

Head right um although I I guess there is some parallel with the armor trim yeah and that we use the minerals in the game to to tweak the armor trim and I remember when we were talking about armor trim that people were asking asking about whether or not the armor

Trim would going to was going to be purely aesthetic or whether the different you know minerals that you were putting into the armor for the color was also going to add some sort of functionality to it and obviously we know now that it’s just it’s just aesthetic changes and I went a little

Bit further thinking like okay so so they all gave some good examples but imagine if something like lapis in turning your wolf armor blue could also increase the drops of XP that you get when your wolf is with you so if you’re out fighting mobs and you got your wolf

With you for protection then you’ll get extra XP if you have lapis armor on the wolf um I think that an ink sack could maybe make the wolf invisible to hostile mobs at night making them more useful and again encouraging players to use this feature interact with them and

Maybe take the wolf out at night when there’s a lot of mobs around when you might want to go get some XP or or get some you know um some drops you know bones and different things from from mobs and uh when I think about bones I

Also think about you you know how bone meal functions with crops and growing plants and things and maybe a wolf could I don’t know maybe water your BL plants if it had a a bone armor I’ll let you use your imagination yeah they’re going to add a couple of animations for that

Maybe a leg here and there you know I can I can see where you’re going with that though and I think part of the difficulty for me with this idea is comes down to uh what interface are you using to upgrade this like you can imagine it being added to the smithing

Table but then with the examples that Dale was giving in this email you’ve got to then add prismarine and blaze powder into the rotation of potential materials to add to the smithing table and then maybe players get confusion about whether those can be used to upgrade

Certain armor trims I think one of the things about the smithing table right now that is is kind of like it it works out okay is that the netherite upgrade template is the only only thing you can put into the smithing table that is not just an aesthetic armor trim right but

That still has an Ingot as a component because you still need to add an Ingot of netherite in order to upgrade a tool from Diamond to netherite and so that still works for the Silhouettes of the different items cycling through in the table where it’ll tell you yeah an iron

Ingot and a gold ingot will also work here but they’ll just be part of the the armor trim upgrade and you can still use a netherite Ingot aesthetically speaking whereas if you start adding in functionality that applies only to very specific things it becomes more esoteric and that’s where you need something like

A recipe book specifically for the smithing table or some kind of in-game prompt that is slightly more advanced to let the player know what stuff applies to what after a while if you start to add in too many trial and error mechanics to a system like that then you

Start to develop more scenarios in which the player can get frustrated and that’s that’s a bit of a problem so it either requires a bit of a a tweak to the smithing table to make it more obvious which materials would apply to which or you’d need to have a different system

For infusing Wolf armor with these new components my brain went right to like a doggy groom station like you see on social media if you’re watching a dog get a haircut like yeah get get your wolf up on on the on the The Grooming station and and augment the armor just I

Just farfetched kind of jokey but yeah I I I would imagine that if they you give more aesthetic changes to the wolf armor it probably will go the the route of the die um it would be nice if they were able to do something else I don’t I’m

Not sure what what it would be or how you would do it I’m not sure if you’d want to like in a way that you um right click on a wolf to make it sit or right click with a bone to feed it I I don’t

Know whether once it has armor maybe you could right click on the armored wolf with you know lapis or Redstone or whatever and maybe maybe that could have an effect but I yeah it’s uh what I what I find interesting about that kind of idea is that in order to I think create

Something that would have functionality and Clarity in the design you’d probably also have to get into a different texture model so like if something was a fire resistance armor or a swimming you know like an underwater breathing armor or something like that I feel like just

Having them be the exact same design but just different colors is it’s not the best um we’ve heard before from I think it was um I think it was King big dogs that said like you know talking about the potions that yes color changes alone are an allright fix for now but

Ultimately from game design you want to create more variety across you know UI and ux for for clarity yeah and and I think that you know having a different like I would imagine you know when you think about a fire resistance armor on a wolf There’s an opportunity there to put

Flames on it it you know or spiky stuff back of it yeah yeah exactly you know give him give him some some bling Racing Stripes you know for for the speed for the speed potion wolf um but like stuff like that I think you know ends up being

While a good idea it ends up being a lot of work you know for making those things stand out clear you know clearly especially again like I mentioned if you’re doing a PVP situation where you need to figure out what armor that wolf has from across a field before you

Engage you know if that’s a big part of of your gameplay then you want to have a strong silhouette and right now it would just look like a you know a wolf like there wouldn’t be any any changes to it so I think to conclude my thoughts on

This the other problem here is that what players have voted for was the addition of an armadillo effectively like the way it was presented to us was you’re voting for a mob but people are fixated on the functionality of these mobs and therefore the functionality of the wolf

Armor and Beyond a certain point I think Mojang has to realize hey we’re putting more effort into this wolf armor concept than we put into the mob as a concept and so it starts to feel unbalanced as a feature that players have voted to get into the game ostensibly we voted for

The creature and the Wolf armor is just a bonus but right now I feel like people are dwelling on the wolf armor as you know something that they they voted to add to the game I feel like there’s may be room for Wolf Arma to expand in

Future but at this point it really feels like the armadillo is what we should be focused on even though the armadillo does not do a whole lot Beyond give you the ingredients to craft wool Farmer in the first place our second email comes in from it ekin with the subject of invisible item

Frames hello jool and pix I’ve recently noticed the frequency of invisible item frames in creative mods maps and builds and was thinking about some possible ways they could be implemented into vanilla survival invisible item frames are great for small small details scattered around a build and can be even

Used for more complex things that add onto other blocks one possible implementation could be splashing an item frame with an invisibility potion for a permanent effect this could have a radius so that multiple frames can be made invisible at once when broken they could either drop an invisible item

Frame item or just revert back to their normal selves this could end up being expensive though since potions can take a while to mass produce and they aren’t stackable another possible implementation could be crafting and visible item frame in a crafting table with invisibility potions this could

Work with any amount of frames but for example 64 frames and one potion could make 64 invisible frames if the crafting recipe was one item frame to one invisibility potion the possible drawback would be the expense to craft that’s it for now have you guys ever used invisible item frames in a build

And do you have any more suggestions as to how they could be obtained in survival it’s ekin simply didn’t die what a happy ending that’s the best way way to start the new year yes yes absolutely um so invisible item frames I have not had a great deal of experience using them in

Any of my Worlds the chief reason being most of the worlds I play on like Survival Guide are pure vanilla to the extent that I don’t install any data packs and I don’t use vanilla commands uh except for admin purposes or where it’s necessary for a tutorial but in the

Case of invisible item frames they are possible in vanilla Minecraft to clarify but survival is kind of the modifier here here they’re only really possible to implement through either a command which turns the item in item frame invisible or a data pack which adds something that allows you to trigger

That command so the most prominent case of this would be something like the armor stand book that they use on hermitcraft where you can control the position of armor stands but another option the same book gives you is the option to turn the nearest item frame invisible and players will simply stand

Next to an item frame or you know as close to that item frame as they they can in order to trigger that command and clicking a link in the book basically just does it for you um so it’s one way to modify access to that but obviously a

Way that players have data packed in and not something that’s intended as a vanilla survival functionality um personally I think the suggestions in it second as email are perfectly fine like I like the idea of making item frames Invisible by splashing them with a potion although obviously it makes fine

Control over that mechanic slightly difficult and the thing that I have trouble with here is the obtaining of an invisible item frame as an item in its own right for a start how do you depict that in the inventory that’s kind of a difficult one we’ve already had enough

Trouble finding gray glass panes in our gray UI right uh so so it’s the same kind of problem and also the functionality already applies to existing item frames so creating an invisible item frame at this point seems a little bit redundant even if you’re looking at it from a

Survival perspective because it just creates another item that has effectively a permanent set of the properties that you can already apply to another item given the right commands or data packs or what have you so that’s sort of my two cents on the subject I’ll

Leave it to you because I think you have a bit more experience with these than I do I use this kind of thing so often I forget that it’s not part of the vanilla game and uh while I have the vanilla tweaks uh armor statues data pack I

Don’t use the uh invisible item frame link all that often I find that that feature in the data pack sinks the item a bit too far into the surface which might be desirable if your item frame is on a wall or a chest and you want to

Have like a low profile as you walk by but if you’re trying to put something on a table and have it look like there’s a fish on the table then the fish item ends up sinking so far into the table it looks like it’s a painting of a fish on

The table as opposed to the actual pixel kind of wide item because as as we all know when you have an item in Minecraft usually in your hand it’s it’s about a pixel wide as far as those um you know 16 x 16 pixels and so I find that what

I’ve been using instead is the uh positioning of the armor stand giving the item to the armor stand either to hold it in its hand or to place it on its head and then position the armor stand where I want with a lot more finite control angles that I want to put

It at uh that kind of thing and then making the armor stand invisible so it’s the same idea it’s just that it’s a it’s a longer uh more arduous process but I really like the ability to do it I think placing your items around the world like

Fish on tables or blocks on tables or uh like mini blocks like that kind of thing as they appear in the the hand of an armor stand is really useful for adding detail and life and uh just the impression of functionality to different spaces in in in Minecraft specifically

Things like kitchens you know where you just it just looks kind of empty without any anything going on you know despite the fact that we can all eat and and cook in Minecraft right uh specifically like in furnaces and whatnot in the game so when it comes to things like uh the

Suggestion from from it’s e ekins it for me I like the idea of interacting with an invisibility potion that makes sense it lines up with the game I’m wondering if similar to how we saw the brush deplete in um in its durability when interacting with the armadillo to get armadillo

Scoots I’m wondering if instead of a splash potion you could then put an item item frame on the wall with the item in it and then I guess you’d have to shift right click in order to not swap the potion into the the item frame uh because then you’d have like invisible

Item frame meta if you had like an invisible potion and an invisible item uh but you by by right clicking uh on the item frame it would then go invisible and maybe you’d have four to eight uses of that invisibility potion I think one might be a little bit too much

Because as they mentioned in the email they’re you know expensive to craft and if you’re going to do a lot of this like you’re decorating your entire storage room with invisible item frames then that’s going to be difficult you know in terms of the stock that you need and so

Being able to use like you know three or or eight times the one invisibility potion before it’s depleted and it’s just an empty glass bottle then that allows you to put down you know eight item frames for example and just hit them all individually and say like hide

That hide that hide that and maybe there’s other ones that you don’t want to hide and a splash potion to me would be really frustrating because if it if if you miss one it just doesn’t work or or two if it has an AOE then you’re

Going to hide stuff that you maybe don’t want to hide you know yeah and and I I think that that that would be a little bit more of an accurate way to do it um I I think that kind of interaction would be better than using it to craft in the

Crafting table because I think that um I mean I I guess we have like the ink the glow ink sack example of making like a a glowing item frame so there’s that but I think that it would be not as straightforward and as they mentioned expensive uh to use it in the crafting

Table yeah I I think the problem with using a potion piece by piece like that as well is you either end up with a potion that has durability which is unlike any other potion or you end up with a situation where maybe you’ve like used the potion seven out of eight times

Can you still then drink that potion and it creates like again points of friction with the players’s expected Mechanics for those things so yeah it’s it’s a tricky one I think ultimately it could come come down to something as simple as when uh we added Glo ink to the game

When when Glo ink was was introduced and you could suddenly craft a glow item frame and whether that was you know that that ended up being a crafting recipe rather than an interaction so maybe setting up an item frame that you know is going to be invisible when you place

It makes more sense but I think the problem with invisible objects in general in Survival Minecraft is that it is a lot harder to interact with them and for the interactions with them to feel um I guess intuitive so I think one of the reasons that that is left for

Data pack and command based functionality is that there is a lot of player intention behind doing that and it feels like a player exercising a different level of control over the game than a survival player would normally have so overall I don’t know if obtaining them in survival is

Necessarily the best thing simply because on an intuitive level it introduces something that is harder for you to interact with like if you remove the item from the item frame how do you then know where that is and how do you avoid that becoming an obstacle to the

Player interacting with let’s say the block that the invisible item frame is placed on if they wanted to change what that wall looked like or something it’s it’s a difficult one I think it may be something that the team comes up with a creative solution for in future but for

Now I can see why they haven’t the other thing that I was thinking of would be perhaps a little inconsistent but something like using a glass pane to craft an invisible item frame where it would show a wood frame with a glass pane in it in your

Inventory but then when you place it down the world with something in it it would be you know invisible or the act of putting something in it would make it invisible and removing something from it would make it visible I again it doesn’t make a lot of sense I’m not sure how you

You know communicate that in your inventory to players and things like that but um we’re also dealing with in a world that has magic so maybe it’s not called an invisible item frame maybe it’s called a magic item frame yeah I don’t know you could you could

Potentially have some some play there I I know that in in the vanilla tweaks data pack if you have used an item frame and you do have an item in it and it’s invisible the moment that you remove that item the item frame also pops off like you get

Both back right becomes visible and they and it both they both drop on the ground and and I’m sure that’s by exactly you know by intention for the exact purpose you just mentioned which is like if it if it doesn’t pop off where the heck is

It when you come back you know next the next day or next week you’re like where did I put that invisible item frame you know where did I park my invisible jet you that kind of stuff and and I I I think that that that would be a simple

Solution would be like if if you remove the item then it just loses its stickiness and just kind of Pops back into your inventory yeah makes perfect sense but uh yeah we’ll we’ll wait and see if Mojang has any plans for that down the line uh in the meantime though

We wanted to move on to our main discussion topic which is sort of Minecraft unplugged and you wanted to bring this one to the table considering that yeah we’ve both taken a bit of time off over the Christmas break to kind of recharge our batteries as it were but we

Wanted to discuss what the pros and cons are of taking some time off when as I said earlier Minecraft is our principal form of recreation and in our cases something we do for work and this is something I I didn’t intend to do you know after being off

For four or five days you know with the Friday before the holiday being you know really busy with stuff and and not being able to stream getting ready for Christmas and then Christmas of course was Sunday Monday and boxing day and here around here as a holiday as well so

I mean before I knew it it was a good four or five days completely out of my studio I I wasn’t even at the computer you know to do anything I was really just visiting family or or hanging out in front of the TV for my own Recreation

And I just didn’t end up streaming it all you know making any content at all really outside of like popping in for some social media for the pre-recorded podcasts that we had made that was it and so I find that uh when I hit that

Stride I was like I I didn’t realize how tired I was and this is not a complaint like I I I love what I do but when you are as busy as as we are creating content and and being an entrepreneur and all the behind the scenes stuff that

You have to do in addition to like the three-hour streams and all that stuff um the the the treadmill that you’re on can just kind of exist and then it’s not until it turns off that you go woof wow I really needed to sit down you know

Like I really needed to turn off my brain and my phone and just go talk to people and family and have a visit and stuff like that and so I leaned into it it’s one of the things I’ve learned I would say as I’ve kind of gotten past

The whole needing to work all hours of every day is that when I do find myself realizing how tired I am I I say okay this is a good time to like you know it’s the holidays it’s a really good opportunity to just kick back and and uh

Take the break and so when I’m thinking about the pros and cons of that for me and I’m I’m curious about this for you as well PX when you work for yourself you tend to be spinning multiple plates at a time and like you like I said you

Don’t realize how tired you are until you actually stop but with that I find it takes me a while to reach break mode mentally like I can take a day off and I don’t know that I really feel like I’ve had a break whereas if I’m taking a

Couple weeks off it can be a couple of days before I even feel oh yeah like I’m on vacation you know like I don’t have to think about that I don’t have to go back into the studio I don’t have a schedule I don’t have to be anywhere or

Do anything outside of maybe plans I’ve made with friends here and there and I find that that’s you know something that is challenging uh about getting into uh getting into break mode um and thus you know giving yourself a longer break means that you have time to kind of ease

Yourself into it and then time enough to enjoy it before you you know eventually get get back to to work for it um but I I think that in terms of the the positive things you know from for me um with most things I think taking a

Break helps Stave off any burnout or creative bottlenecks specifically in Minecraft because it is a creative game because you are doing things uh and you are the master of those things you know if you’re playing RPG and you’ve got quests well then if you’ve taken a break

And you come back in or or if you’re not sure what to do you just look at your quest log and you do the next thing in the game whereas Minecraft like it unless you’ve really got a good plan you’re kind of left to your own devices

And and that can be frustrating if you have been doing it for you know as long as we have or as often as a lot of people do play Minecraft and um I think it’s important to to have that break you know so when it when it comes time for

You to take you know your own vacation do you find that you you struggle to take time off do you find it challenging to does it take you a couple days to get into like a relaxed mode uh it’s not difficult for me to get into a relaxed

Mode but one of the things that really has sustained my output with Minecraft over the last few years has been momentum and it’s so easy to drop that and I think difficult to regain that like you can hit the brakes pretty hard but like any like a steam train or

Whatever it’s going to take a little while to reach maximum speed again and so I find that I’m always easing myself back into it after I’ve taken a break like it it is as simple as just being able to step away from the PC and go

Somewhere else for the day or for the week or like you know going up to visit my parents over Christmas I didn’t think about Minecraft nearly at all um and it’s because I think at this point also I’m not of the age where I’m getting like Minecraft themed gifts from people

You know right like it’s not like people uh who you know I’ve known my entire life are going to going to be concerned about you know me my entire life having to revolve around Minecraft or Minecraft being my only Fascination they know I have other interests and so it is

Possible for me to go for a little while without thinking about it too hard and I I don’t bring a laptop with me that’s capable of really playing Minecraft like I think uh my my 2015 MacBook Pro might be able to load up vanilla Minecraft but probably can’t play it at decent frame

Rates these days especially after 1.8 update kind of increased the terrain height and everything so I I think it it’s easy for me to step away and I get a lot of enjoyment out of other stuff now especially having settled into the equilibrium of this being a work

Activity and not just a recreational activity um but I find that the best use of that time is still in allowing yourself to feel refreshed creatively and to recognize that Minecraft as a creative game is for a lot of us an artistic game and good art is rarely

Ever made in a vacuum right you you find artistic inspiration comes from different places different stimuli and it can be conversations with people that drive new ideas it can be seeing a new place you know travel can be inspiring whether it’s in person or online if you’re just an armchair Explorer and

You’re clicking around Google Maps or you play geoguesser or whatever and you happen to come across different world architecture that you feel inspires you or if you get some books you know from the library or from your own collection that have you know architectural reference that you can look up you can

Use it for research if you want to um but I find that even just absorbing that stuff on a slightly more passive basis I spend a bit more time over the holiday watching TV shows watching movies and suddenly I’m realizing that oh yeah there are these different color

Combinations that I could use in something there’s this this architectural style that I’m interested in playing and even just scrolling through Instagram ended up with me you know getting my latest project idea um so artistic inspiration can come from a lot of different places and it can even

Come from a lot of different media as well uh video games are a chief inspiration I’ve talked about previously using video games to help you get a a feel for environment design but other games can be a real benefit to that so even if you’re just taking time away

From Minecraft as a game and playing a few other games it’s a great way to get a feel for environment design from those games um before the holidays really began but when I started to feel myself kind of winding up my routine for the holidays I started dipping into SEO

Shadows die twice which is another one of the Dark Souls kind of family of games um but it’s set in um you know ancient Japan or feudal Japan and um I find that that has great Synergy with some of Minecraft’s more recent building block editions thinking of cherry and

Bamboo wood specifically uh so there’s potential for you to fold that back into returning to Minecraft and having fresh inspiration can help you to build that momentum back up again I’m the same way where you know I’ll want to play some other games and and I may or may not get some

Inspiration like I I was playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla which I bought for myself a couple of Christmases ago and uh it’s a very deep game and then once you’ve had some time away it kind of it’s hard to get back in because you kind of have to refresh your

Memory and maybe even read like a little bit of a Wikipedia post just to kind of get yourself back into it um but thinking about you know rivers and environments and swamps and how different games do different things um is always a great way to to get

Inspiration but I find and this may have more to do with being you know a streamer content creator than it does Minecraft specifically but I find sometimes the challenge of wanting to relax on the couch and play a video game is that depending on the game I will

Often sit there and go like um should I be using this for Content like should I be streaming this on Twitch to share the experience sure of the game um and it’s comes up kind of often where I’d see a game that would appeal to me but because

It lines up so well with something like Minecraft like you know a a city Builder or something cartoony uh or like a a management game or something that has that kind of Minecraft Vibe especially if it’s creative then I’m just like wow that really lines up with the audience I know

That my Minecraft audience would like that I should save that for the stream and then ultimately I just don’t end up playing it because once I’m back in work mode that it’s Mo it’s mostly Minecraft obviously on stream as I have a lot of

Stuff to do in the game and so so those games weirdly just don’t get end up getting played because uh they just I I think about them in a work way and so what I end up doing you know in your souls like game is a good example I end

Up playing games like you know Assassin’s Creed or something that’s more um realistic looking RPG style uh potentially like more on the you know adult violent side uh video games not that I don’t play those kind of games on stream because I’ve played Borderlands 3 before on stream but generally speaking

I tend to gear more towards like the like the more PG games on stream uh just because I know my audience and um and as a result like that there’s a real disparity between like what I play to relax on the couch versus what I would

Consider a stream game and I know we’ve talked about it before where you know you discover a new hobby or you discover this new thing and there’s always that temptation to bring it into the fold and make it part of the content but it’s like no I need to have some things that

Are just for me but even in the middle of vacation I did find it hard to kind of turn that switch off you know like I saw what was it it was like overcooked or something was just like some cool multiplayer very straightforward but seemed like it was to be a good

Community game you know like that kind of a thing and I thought well I’ll I’ll wait maybe I’ll play that with you know with other people uh and so that that kind of stuff I do I do find crops up as like a negative of not I mean not just

Time away from Minecraft that’s very specific to I think you and I given what we do but that’s one of the the negative things of time away that I experience yeah yeah but I think it can still be important to unplug if not just to get away from the game and recharge

Creatively but also to see if you want to come back to it and that’s an important kind of test for people like a lot of times we’ll get the question here on the podcast or I’ll get it you know in in the kind of stuff that I do well

People will ask you know how can I avoid getting bored of Minecraft and the answer so often is why do you feel like you need to be in Minecraft all the time you know like maybe for some people it may be the only game that they have been

Able to afford and that’s fine because I think Minecraft is a really great example of a game that you can play Forever and is a one-off purchase uh obviously there are some you know extra transactions you can take on Bedrock Edition that lead you to other content

But if you just want to play the Survival Game Minecraft forever it offers a lot of variety a near infinite allowance for variety but I think people get into the mindset of this is the only game I can play and they often get into that from creators who seem to be

Playing Minecraft all the time with a seemly infinite capacity to do more with the game and to some people that doesn’t come easily and that’s entirely fine like that that’s something that I have occasionally found does not come easily to me and in those moments what you don’t see is

Creators taking some time away like they’ll take a trip they’ll pre-record some stuff maybe and then they’ll take a week off from the game and not touch it at all and that’s important for both making sure that they get the rest and relaxation that they need and also to

Make sure that they feel comfortable coming back to it after that and checking in with yourself about that kind of thing is is an underrated aspect of any work much less you know the kind of work that we do here the creative kind of work that requires us to be

Playing this game a lot and I think that’s important too with the way that we all consume media and everything is presented in like a nice tidy fashion specifically around Minecraft a lot of the time when you think about like edited YouTube content and you don’t know whether they Blitz through you know

A 12 or 14 hour day to record four videos and then they got four days off or you know we in your world as just a casual Minecraft player you might be playing every day after work or school for two hours and then just wonder like

My gosh like why can’t I make any Headway the same way that this Creator does that I follow and they have a different schedule a different approach you know and you don’t know you don’t know what that is because it’s not often shared not not never but it’s it’s not

Often brought up because it’s not the most interesting thing to talk about in a small 20-minute YouTube video right and I think that I mean I definitely agree with you in terms of that Breakaway and whenever I get someone that comes into twitch chat and says

Like hey I’m bored like giving idea from Minecraft my first response which is a little cheap Chey is always like don’t play Minecraft like then if you don’t know what to do in Minecraft then don’t play it go play something else go do something else read something else and

And I think that that that really really helps and for me you know I love playing Minecraft but it has technically become work and I think that just like anything else you need to make sure you have a nice break from work you know like I have a separate space I don’t play

Minecraft off stream I I play it so much on stream I definitely get my fill and I certainly feel like I’m titing my own content if I play it off offline and so i’ I’d much rather save that creativity and build up that you know return to it

And and share that online with people and this is something that I find is kind of synonymous with me being an artist and that I’ve always really enjoyed the satisfactory of making stuff uh on a regular basis so if you start to miss that feeling of accomplishment you

Know because it’s not part of your routine I start to feel like I’m I’ve kind of got this buildup you know like I just I haven’t I haven’t done anything I haven’t made anything I haven’t had that creative outlet and one of the nice things about Minecraft in like that time

Away versus time back in is that boy is it easy to get back into Minecraft and make something and I’m not saying that you know you you jump back in and say I’m going to build a brand new Castle you know and and start on some giant

Project but like if all you’re doing is just a couple of things in Minecraft maybe building a house or fixing a fence or like doing something little like you can get in there and in a half an hour make something walk away from there was nothing there before and now I’ve done

Something and you feel like you’ve got that creative outlet and that’s something that I really enjoy about playing Minecraft as a game is that it it does satisfy that creative making stuff need that I have and when you take time away I I feel like I start to

Remind myself when it’s absent that oh yeah that’s a part of my life part of routine that I I really like and really helps me kind of like express myself and so by by taking time away from it whether that’s time away from gaming in general time away from Minecraft just as

A game and you’re playing you know Mario Kart with your family whatever that is I think that if you’ve got that creative bug that urge to make stuff than uh reminding your self of what it’s like when you don’t have that can help reignite you know inspiration and some

Gusto to help you get back into Minecraft after some some time away because I’m like you when I’ve had enough time away from anything it is hard to get back into it to you kind of have to steamroll and thankfully a lot of the time I I I use the mentality that

I have from from my working out from my training that you just you just have to not think and just go and the moment you do it you feel better you feel oh yeah I immediately remember how to do this it’s like the first five minutes of our

Pre-show trying to remember how to do a podcast after two weeks off you know but then 15 minutes later we’re like yeah okay we’re ready let’s let’s go and do an episode and it just feels like it feels like you know you never left and I

Think that you just have to kind of get that momentum of of like like no no I know Minecraft I I don’t need to necessarily have a mission when I sit down to play Minecraft after some time away I’m familiar enough with this game usually I mean thinking about our

Audience that probably plays it quite a bit that I can find something to do it’s really not going to be that hard for me to to find something to do in Minecraft and get back into the groove so to speak and I think one of the reasons that

Maybe people step away from Minecraft is more often than not I wouldn’t call it a rage quit situation but it can be frustration with game mechanics rather than it being an art block kind of thing right like you know I’ve definitely had situ situations in which I’ve lost a

Bunch of equipment and felt really demoralized to continue a series like if I fight the Wither and that destroys a bunch of my stuff it’s a bunch of off camera work that I then have to do to get back to the place where I was and so

Like sometimes stuff like that can feel very demotivating but time away can change that and it whatever feelings you feel in the moment can be resolved by a little bit of time and a little bit of rest and relaxation so there are all sorts of reasons to unplug from m

Inecraft but it’s always going to be there for us I think when we plug back in which we’re going to do in the new year so we are going to be uh talking about Minecraft next week and Beyond you can listen to the spawn chunks anytime

You want to and get that motivation back but that’s going to be it for this episode you can find more information about the show and links to some of the stuff that we’ve talked about today at the spawn chunks. comom the music for the show is composed by me and the spawn

Chunks is proud to be a listener supported podcast if you’re getting some value out the show why not consider putting some value back in you can do that at patreon.com thees spawn chunks to join our community pledging at any level gets you an invite to our patrons

Only Discord chat you can listen to the show live when we record it in Discord every week our monthly Minecraft audio hangout is coming up at the end of the month and a quarterly hangout is coming up beyond that so stay tuned to the announcement channel in the Discord if

You’re already a patron and you’ll get all the news about when those are in the pipeline we currently have 322 patrons which is down seven from our last recording which happened on December 20th of last year so we’re looking to add a few more people there is always

Room for more in our community special thanks go out to our content engineer patrons Hunter 555 jumbo sale mind trip media party Voyager and yets thank you all for your support on this episode sharing the podcast with your friends is the easiest way to support the show you

Can find us at the spawn chunks on social media personal recommendations are by far the best way to share the podcast just tell a friend about the spawn chunks and that they can listen on their favorite podcast app iTunes Spotify YouTube We we are all over the

Place be sure to leave a rating and a review on your favorite platform you can email the show at spawn chunk [email protected] the RSS feed is linked at the Spong huns.com and the patreon only RSS feed is on the patreon page that’s where you can listen to the render

Distance the extended version of the podcast along with that email address a reminder since we mentioned it at the top of the show I’ll mention it here for those of you who’ve listened this far that if you want a question directed at nmon uh we are going to be joined by

Nmon on an upcoming episode of the podcast so please put the word n on in the subject line so that we can sort through those and hopefully not miss any questions intended for that episode in the meantime my name is Johnny online I go by pixel riffs you can find most of

What I do at youtube.com/ pixel riffs where the Minecraft Survival Guide is currently in its third season I’m getting back into streaming 3 days a week on Twitch where I typically do behind the scenes work for the affle mentioned YouTube series but I’ve been dipping into a bit of lethal company

Here and there with a couple of groups which has been really fun I’m also the voice of The Unofficial hermitcraft recap which is currently on Hiatus as season 9 has concluded and season 10 is on the way at an unspecified time this year you can also find us through a

Quick YouTube search if you want to catch up on any previous episodes of the hermitcraft recap and aside from that I’m pixels on both Twitter and Instagram Joel where can people find you online everything that I’m doing online can be linked at jen.com that includes the Citadel Cafe my other podcast about

Sci-fi and fantasy entertainment there is a holiday Roundtable out that was published on New Year’s Eve that you can listen to that now and I will be recording the first episode of the new year with Steven ESC on Wednesday we’re going to be talking about Rebel Moon

Part one which is Zack Snider’s latest that was on Netflix that came out just before Christmas I’m Joel Dugen on social media and Joel Dugen on Twitch where I stream Thursday through Sunday mostly building on the SEL but I do play other games too see you there thanks for

Visiting the spawn chunks the world outside is infinite but it’s okay to step Away