Weird Connections of the Slime | Minecraft Deep Dive

Minecraft has a lot of mobs that are interesting in some way examples include bosses like the ender dragon and the wither these are enemies that exude mystery their mere presence seems to beckon us to try and figure out who they are and why they exist yet there’s

Another mob that at first may seem quite dull and forgettable i’m referring to the slime a squishy green cube that hops around it’s one of minecraft’s simpler mobs and most people probably won’t see anything special but the slime is one of those things that becomes increasingly mysterious the

More we start to think about it why are its spawning conditions so weird why can’t it split into smaller copies of itself and why is there a different version of it in the nether welcome to deep dive a series where we’ve been exploring the secrets of minecraft tonight we’re going to take a

Look at the slime and in the process we’ll discover some fascinating connections that may be unexpected while it may be useful if you see my previous deep dives i’ll do my best to explain everything here with that out of the way it’s almost time to investigate the

Slimes join me for a dive beneath the waves Before we get started let’s hear from our sponsor core one of the things a lot of you may not know about me is that i made my own video game several years ago using unreal engine 3. i had no modeling experience but i was able to slowly

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Pin comment to download core for free slimes are without a doubt one of the weirder mobs to exist in minecraft unlike most enemies there are multiple distinct sizes and killing a slime splits it into several of the next smallest size for example the largest naturally spawning size is four killing

That results in several slimes of size two killing those produces size one and killing one of those drops a slime ball which could be thought of as size 0. while each size differs in attributes like health and attack strength they still look and act identically to one

Another to rephrase the size of a slime does not fundamentally change what the mob is this property distinguishes the slime from most other mobs in minecraft we can’t simply chop a cow in half and expect both sides to still be functional the reason for this is that the cow is a

Complex life form and an arbitrary cut may potentially sever important connections between internal organs but this is not the case for the slime any potential cut of the slime causes it to remain living all of the smaller slimes retain the capabilities of the larger one this property is more like something

We would expect to see in a plant or fungus not a complex multicellular being there’s a real life example that has an obvious connection slime mold while the term refers to about 900 different species they are united in several interesting properties first slime molds are single cellular organisms meaning

That individual cells can live and survive on their own but something strange happens when many of these cells group together they congregate and begin to simulate a singular organism sections of the group can create stocks which develop fruiting bodies to aid reproduction they can work together to

Find the best pathway through a maze avoiding harmful locations furthermore there is some research which suggests that slime mold can remember some types of knowledge even during dormancy a property which some scientists refer to as primitive cognition it’s a fascinating emergent property remember these are all individual organisms working together we can rip

Slime mold in half and each side will continue to grow and operate independently what we’re seeing in minecraft is remarkably similar to the real-life slime mold slimes are not complex multicellular beings instead there are many single cells working together to simulate certain elements of a multicellular being it’s a substance

That even when split in half continues to show the same properties and behaviors it has eyes and a mouth quasi organs like the slime mold’s fruiting bodies it has a simple intelligence capable of targeting players and avoiding the dangers of drowning slimes are unlike any other overworld mob and

This slime mold connection offers a solid explanation for many of their oddest qualities this is an important step forward in our understanding of the slime but the mysteries definitely don’t end there slimes have some of the most unique spawning mechanics in the game they spawn in two locations with very

Specific but different conditions the first is that slimes can spawn in swamp biomes at night but not just any night their tendency to spawn is directly connected to the phase of the moon during a new moon slimes do not spawn as the moon becomes fuller slimes spawn

More and more often until the full moon when they are most likely to spawn this chance goes down as the cycle completes so the obvious next thing to figure out is why the moon phase is important slimes are not the only mob whose spawning mechanics are affected by the

Moon during a full moon skeletons and zombies are more likely to spawn with enchanted gear at a higher level spiders are more likely to spawn with potion effects and half of all cats are black each of these effects is in some way tied to magic enchantments are clearly magical as are potion effects

Furthermore black cats are always found in witch huts which implies that they too have some sort of magical connection it appears as though there’s something about a fuller moon which causes magical events to occur more often but what one of the tricky things about the astronomy of minecraft is that it does

Not work in the same way as real life the sun moon and stars all move in unison this is inconsistent with the fact that the moon has phases which would normally be caused by the lunar orbit around the earth so looking to the astrodynamics of the minecraft world for

Our answer is not going to help us we’re forced to take the celestial bodies at face value instead of trying to figure out how the phase works the solution is rather simple what if the moonlight is what’s important the full moon produces the most moonlight and the new moon the least the light

Does something special something weird to the overworld however the moonlight does not affect the number of mobs just the potential magical effects the specific mechanics of mob spawning are connected to block light levels which do not change with the moon phase instead it appears that the moonlight is a

Magical catalyst of some sort driving magical events in previous videos i’ve talked about how magic works in minecraft we know that magic doesn’t just happen it requires energy from somewhere for example when enchanting this energy occurs in the form of experience we see it in beacons

Potion brewing the wither and so on and so forth while the details are explained more fully in the above video for now it’s good enough for us to know that this magical energy exists and is active in all known minecraft magic one potential explanation is that the moonlight contains some of this magical

Energy that’s why magical events occur more often with more moonlight but there’s one mob that is so closely tied to the moonlight that it cannot spawn without it which is of course our slime this implies that the slime is unlike most mobs an inherently magical being slimes cannot exist without this energy

It’s a fundamentally different type of life form we’ve already seen evidence of this during our slime mold discussion is it possible that these bizarre properties are driven by the magical energy radiated in moonlight but why swamps well the answer may be quite simple swamps tend to be hot and

Humid and perhaps this produces the best conditions for the weak energy from the moon to spawn slimes so for now we have at least some understanding of the first spawning condition of slimes but one very curious mystery is that slimes have a second totally different spawning mechanic deep underground far away from

The swamps and moonlight on the surface we can also find slimes it must be below level 40. it happens regardless of light level and independent of the moon phase but strangest of all it only occurs in specific chunks called slime chunks these comprise about 10.4 percent of all

Chunks and they are distributed randomly without any sort of pattern it is in these chunks that the second spawning option may occur this is totally bizarre it would be strange even if we didn’t see slimes above ground but together how is it possible that such a unique mob occurs

In two totally different places well let’s try and think through this one sticking point is that there are literally no other unique features about slime chunks they can occur in any biome and the only thing that makes them special is that slimes can spawn there it’s therefore tricky to determine what

Is different about them since we don’t have any more evidence our best option is to assume that the underground slimes and the above ground slimes are produced in a similar fashion in other words is it possible that the swamp conditions are somehow replicated underground but in a way that’s not obvious

Right now we don’t have the tools to answer that question to understand what’s going on we’re going to need to take a break and look at the slime’s evil twin in the nether the magma cube magma cubes are very similar to slimes they have the same shape as well as the

Splitting properties they also bounce around and act similarly there’s clearly some sort of connection so perhaps understanding the magma cube will help us understand the slime the spawning conditions for the magma cube are much simpler they spawn in several nether biomes including nether wastes and basalt deltas these two biomes comprise

About 54 of the total area of the nether furthermore they can also be found in nether fortresses in other words magma cubes in the nether are much more common than slimes in the overworld when the smallest size of a magma cube is killed it drops magma cream much like

Slime balls and slimes it’s safe to assume that the body of magma cubes is made of magma cream and when we take a closer look at it we discover another connection to the slime it’s possible to combine blaze powder with a slime ball to create magma cream this is actually

Pretty important it appears as though magma cubes are very similar in composition to slimes but with the addition of blaze powder so how exactly do these magma cubes spawn anyways there’s no moonlight in the nether and there are no slime chunks either well as we’ve discovered almost

Everything about the magma cube is the same as the slime with one key difference the presence of blaze powder is it somehow possible that this powder gives us a hint as to how they spawn we’ve established that moonlight contains magical energy required for slimes to exist interestingly we know

That blaze powder also contains magical energy it’s the fuel we use for brewing potions in other words it’s crucial for the production of many magical effects we also see it in eyes of ender powering inter-dimensional teleportation blaze powder and moonlight contain the same type of energy while blaze powder is

Seemingly more potent their basic capability is the same it would therefore seem possible that the blaze powder in the magma cube serves as the magical energy necessary for the cube to exist just like the moonlight for the slimes blaze powder is found throughout the nether we see it indirectly with the

Magma cubes as we’ve talked about more explicitly it’s clearly connected to the blazes themselves furthermore both the blazes and the gas can shoot fireballs which are extremely similar to fire charges crafted using blaze powder this means that blaze powder has also made its way into the ghast one of the

Nether’s signature mobs the prevalence of blaze powder in the nether implies that there’s a lot of inherent magical energy throughout the dimension we consistently find magical items such as gas tiers or nether warts far more often in the nether than we do in any other dimension an interesting element of this is that

Magical energy is not equally distributed one example is the nether fortress these areas spawn blazes and magma cubes and are thus the most common place where blaze powder can be found i won’t get into the details of why this is here but you can watch my video about

The wither for more information for a current discussion the important thing to understand is that magical energy is found more densely here than in other places yet while nether fortresses are the places with the most blaze powder there’s another location where it occurs that is a lot more subtle blaze powder

Is found in magma blocks which can be crafted using magma cream which as we already know contains blaze powder magma blocks are generated randomly throughout the nether there’s a chance for any netherrack to be replaced by a blob of them hot spots at low altitudes where blaze power is generated seemingly

For no reason there are some parts of the nether which can spontaneously produce blaze powder and slime in block form with no discernible pattern random magical locations scattered about does this remind you of anything we’ve seen before well what if it’s the same basic idea as the slime chunks we’ve established the

Magical properties of the blaze powder in magma blocks but the energy contained within needed to come from somewhere similarly we know that slimes require magical energy above ground it has to come from the moon but below ground these slimes would still require magic just as the magma blocks require magic

This connection is far from obvious but it appears as though the mechanism that produces magma blocks is the same as the one that produces slimes both occur in random sections of space at low altitudes both need magic to even exist so what’s stopping a magical hot spot from producing both of them

If this is truly the case then why do the nether hot spots create magma blocks but not magma cubes it may simply be that cubes are a higher energy level than blocks after all there are places in the overworld where magma blocks can spawn deep in underwater ravines for

Example but even the most extreme environments of the overworld pale compared to the nether we do find them in some of the harsher volumes of the nether such as the basalt deltas slimes on the other hand do not require anywhere near this level of energy to be produced dull moonlight is

Enough this implies that while similar hotspots occur in the overworld they’re much less powerful than in the nether and could not produce anything more than a slime let’s get a quick recap slimes require magical energy to be produced in the overworld swamps it occurs as moonlight but this magical energy can also be

Found in dense hot spots deep underground we know this is possible because we see the same thing happening in the nether fortresses are the most extreme examples but it also occurs in places with magma blocks this theory is somewhat complex and it relies on a conjunction of seemingly unrelated ideas

Found in totally different places on their own each piece of evidence doesn’t tell us much however when put together a theory forms that is more complex than the sum of its parts just like real life slime mold lots of small parts work together to produce something far more interesting

Now as with all theories i encourage you not to take my words as truth rather think about the evidence and come up with your own ideas there are a few things we need to discuss about this theory one aspect that we did not totally explain is why these hot spots

Exist randomly we’ve talked in previous videos about some things having more magic energy than others but what makes these hotspots special one option is that it’s just truly random noise that’s how it’s presented in game but it’s also possible that there’s some in-universe reason for these specific locations

Either way we don’t really know for sure there may be some people who counter and say that magma blocks exist just because of heat and not some inherent magical energy but it seems to me that the two might be connected blaze powder is obviously hot and more magical beings

Occur in the nether the hottest place of all furthermore portals require heat so while magma blocks could be considered a product of a hot environment i would argue that most magic requires some form of heat to begin with i’m not convinced we can totally separate the two especially considering the magical blaze

Powder found within the magma block this was not an easy theory by any stretch and we had to search far and wide to find any sort of explanation still i believe this theory is at least plausible enough to be considered does it make sense to you did i miss

Something am i totally incorrect the main purpose of this video is to get a discussion going with enough people thinking about it we can surely figure out how everything works if you think you found something please mention it in the comments below you can also post it

On the rgn subreddit or come on over to the discord server we’ve had some really cool conversations and i’d love to hear your voice also don’t forget to check out core it’s completely free use the link in the description to get started we’ll go ahead and end with that this

Has been retro gaming now thank you so much for watching and i’ll see you all in the next episode have a great day