The Mystery of the Minecraft Giants

There is a mob in minecraft which to this day has never been used a mob which throughout the game’s 11 year history has been changed time and time again but has never actually been properly implemented into the game a mob which only long time players of the game

Seem to remember a mob which for most players is nothing short of a mythical being one which could be considered as rare as herobrine you see this mob is strong so strong that it has one of the strongest attacks in the game being able to do 37.5 hearts of damage in just a

Single blow more than 6 times the max damage of an enderdragon a mob so strong that it has health which rivals the wither and a mob so big that is over 10 blocks tall but it is a mob which can never properly spawn in the vanilla game

And that mob is the giant today we’re going to talk about the story of the giant the minecraft mob which was never implemented properly into the vanilla game why was the mob introduced in the first place why do the developers still keep updating and making changes to it even though it cannot spawn

Why is the giant still in the game today we’re going to go through all that and more but first let’s talk about the history of the giant and when it was first added the giant was first introduced to the game on february the 5th 2010 over 10 years ago now in in-depth

Version 0.31 201 0 0 205. now unfortunately this version of the game has been lost and as such all the evidence we have with this version is from blog posts screenshots and videos nevertheless this update was actually quite important as it was the first version of the game to introduce the peaceful

Easy normal and hard difficulty options which you still have in the game to this day anyways the first version of the giant added to the game was just an oversized version of the zombie as at the time notch didn’t have a proper model and used the zombie as make do

The first ever video footage of the giant was actually from notch’s own youtube channel called nizoche which he unfortunately has private all videos i was able to find an archived version though the original video called very first test run of giants on minecraft was uploaded by notch on february the 4th

2010 one day before giants were added to the game officially the giant’s earliest versions were fairly basic but functional still they were able to walk around and move just like zombies and also act like a hostile mob walking towards a player whenever they saw them but unlike normal zombies they couldn’t really attack

According to the wiki page on giants they can only touch or attack players if they are standing on top of them however through my own testing i discovered that giants can only attack players if the player is somewhat below them but is quite buggy and inconsistent

The giant has 100 health points which is 50 hearts and has a height of 12 blocks and a width of 3.6 blocks the giant does different amounts of damage depending on the difficulty the player is playing on on easy the giant does 13 hearts of damage on normal it does 25

And finally on hard it does 37.5 hearts of damage however this also seems to be quite buggy and inconsistent as through my own testing i noticed it rarely ever did the right amount of damage as the wiki had listed when attacked the giants made the u

Damage noise which was the same as the player at the time in this early in their version of the game where the giant was first added they could actually spawn naturally albeit buggy as you can see in notch’s old video the mob remained mostly unchanged all the way throughout beta into version

1.0.0 but sometime along the way they were changed to no longer naturally spawned as they were considered overpowered and too strong no biomes include giants on their spawn list and in order for the giant to spawn they require a light level of 11 or above and also a light level of a or

Less which is impossible meaning they cannot naturally spawn that change is undocumented however but we can assume that it happened before alpha at least in fact it’s likely it was implemented not too long after giants were added as even later in their versions don’t have naturally spawning giants

So now you know the history of the giant and how it was once able to spawn naturally but then changed and left untouched up until version 1.0.0 up until this point the only way to spawn giants were through the use of mods such as single-player commands and

Seemed that mojang had lost interest in developing the mob strangely they continued to update it but before we get into that consider subscribing as only a small percentage of you guys are actually subscribed and it really helps me out no pressure though anyways in minecraft version 1.0.0 the game’s full release giants were

Officially changed for the first time in almost two years the sounds they made when taking damage would change from the uh sound to the tick sound which is similar to the sound players made when taking damage but still they were not implemented into the game properly and still couldn’t spawn

Then in minecraft version 1.4.2 specifically snapshot 12w38a released september the 20th 2012 the giant’s damage noise was changed once again to be a more updated tick sound but they were still unable to spawn naturally in the game and the only way to do so was through mods however that would change on october

25th 2013 when minecraft version 1.7.2 was released and giants could now be summoned in game by opening to lan and using the slash summon command they could also kill players a bit easier as i noticed anyways now that they were finally able to be spawned without modding the game

Surely mojang would decide to do something with them well no in fact only a year later in september of 2014 with the release of minecraft version 1.8 the ai for giants was removed this meant that when spawned in with commands or mods that would just stand still and do nothing

They could be pushed and attacked but they would not react basically rendering them useless mojang had effectively killed any functionality the giant had however while their ability to actually do anything was completely removed strangely enough mojang also fixed a bug where armor and tools would not render when on giants

So they could now properly wear armor and tools if you summoned one in this is what confuses me the most though why fix bugs related to giants that make it more functional while also complete removing its other functionalities anyways in 1.11 the entity id of giants

Was changed from giant to the capital g to giant with a lowercase g but that is a negligible change as this update basically changed all minecraft entity ids so the giant was not singled out or anything but now comes the weirdest changes of all on october the 24th 2018 the first

Minecraft 1.14 snapshot called 18w34a was released this snapshot changed the giants for the first time in four years as it seemed prior to this mojang had finally forgotten about them the update was only a minor texture change that is barely noticeable but if anything signified that mojang had remembered that the

Giant existed and was finally considering doing something with them and then only a few months later in december of 2018 with another 1.14 snapshot 18w50a a whole new wave of changes were implemented to giants first of all they were given an ai again specifically the zombie ai

This meant that they could move like zombies once more but it also meant that they now burnt in sunlight which they didn’t previously they also were given the zombie damage sound effect and would make zombie groating noises interestingly they were given the ability to move twice as fast as zombies

Making them really scary as they could actually outrun players they could also properly hit players now making them even more of a threat mojang made it so that they could attack and infect villagers just like zombies and also added a baby giant variant so mojang had officially made giants

Functional again in fact they were now more functional than ever the only thing they were missing was the ability to spawn naturally in the game when this snapshot was first released based on all the changes players began believing that after nine years giants would finally be properly implemented into the game and who

Wouldn’t all these changes look really really promising well about one month later in mid-january of 2019 another 1.14 snapshot 19w03a was released this snapshot added a few things such as composters but also reverted all giant changes from snapshot 18w58 all those new changes and uai which was given to the giant

Was removed just like that for no apparent reason and giants went back to being pointless mobs which have no ai once more and to date that was the last update giants have received and since then it’s been about two years with no word of mention of giants from mojang

It seems that they finally forgot about the giant once more alright so i know this is kind of a disappointing story everything was going so well and it seemed as if giants were finally gonna get their spotlight but then mojang decided they didn’t want anything to do with them anymore

So what happened why was there so many updates and improvements for them just to be removed again well there is no official word so we only have theories the first theory was that they were going to be included in raids which are being introduced in 1.14

This kind of makes sense as they were also given the ability to harm and convert zombies to zombie villages in the original snapshot however it’s likely that they were removed not long after as the giants would have struggled to pathfind around a village were also probably too big and

Would likely get stuck or have difficulties pathfinding the narrow and small village areas i think that this is one of the main issues the giant has and the reason it hasn’t been properly implemented yet the giant is just too big and it seems that it would definitely need its own ai

And spawning conditions in order for it to work properly alongside that maybe mojang just thought that it was too strong as we saw previously the giant could actually outrun the player in snapshot 18 w50a this would likely spell death for the majority of players as the giant does massive damage

The giant is more of a mini boss kind of mob and mojang probably don’t know what to do with it yet it also just seems that players don’t really care too much about the giant anymore so mojang don’t really feel pressure to re-edit when i was reading through reddit threads and watching

Snapshot update videos i was surprised by how little people mentioned the giant changes in fact i watched about five or six different videos on snapshot 18 w 50a not a single person mentioned the giant changes in their videos with only a few scarce comments bringing it up

So it seems like players have just forgotten or have moved on but while giants have not seen the light of the game for 10 years now i wouldn’t give up on them just yet with the recently announced 1.17 caves and cliffs update it seems mojang is finally experimenting

A bit more with minecraft features that have been untouched for years in fact the game is actually getting a mini boss called the warden i think that if anything the warden displays that mojang may begin implementing strong and powerful monsters which can be encountered in the overworld randomly and not full-on

Bosses such as the wither and the ender dragon so who knows maybe the giant or some variation of it will finally properly enter the game in a future update as a minibus or something maybe a new biome will be added which is designed for giants and their spawning but only time will tell

And that’s the story of the giant the minecraft mob which has never been properly implemented into the game but has been continuously changed and updated over the years still we may never know if it would be able to spawn naturally as only time will tell i hope you enjoyed today’s video it was

A bit shorter as i was away for half the week and didn’t have as much time to make one but anyways join the discord and follow me on twitter and also be sure to subscribe thank you all so much for watching