Minecraft 1.18 update: Confirmed features, snapshots details, announcements, and more

Since the start of 2021, players have been eagerly waiting for the new mountain and cave biomes. As Mojang had announced earlier, the Minecraft Caves & Cliffs update part 1 came out on June 8th.

Sadly, the update was not that exciting because the most interesting features announced at Minecraft Live 2020 were not part of it.

The update was divided into two different segments to release all the new features as smoothly as possible. Even though the 1.17 update did not have many exciting features, some useful items and blocks such as spyglass, tinted glass, and dripstone were added to the game.

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Minecraft 1.18 Caves & Cliffs update part 2

Release date

Sadly, no specific date of release of the Caves & Cliffs part 2 update has been revealed. However, in one of their articles, Mojang announced that the update would arrive in late 2021.

Minecrafters are expecting the update to be released during the winter holidays.

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Snapshots and other details

Snapshots are testing versions of the game released before every major update. Once released, gamers can try out the upcoming features and report any glitches in the game.

Mojang has announced that normal snapshots for version 1.18 will be released somewhere around September. For now, players can test some of the world generation changes in the experimental snapshots and beta versions of Minecraft.

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Main features of the 1.18 update

Cave and mountain biomes

Lush caves biome next to dripstone caves (Image via Minecraft)

Three new cave biomes are making their way to the game through the 1.18 update. These biomes are lush caves, dripstone caves, and the deep dark. Apart from biomes, new noise cave generations are also coming in the update, named cheese, spaghetti, and noodle.

The world height is being increased both upwards and downwards. The maximum height that the player can build will be Y 320, and the world will generate downwards till Y -64. Caves will generate as low as level -59, and mountains can reach up to Y level 260.

Six new sub biomes of the mountains will also be added: mountain meadows, lofty peaks, snowy slopes, snow-capped peaks, mountain groves, and stony peaks.

Sculk and new mob

Sculk sensor (Image via Minecraft)

Sculks are mysterious blocks growing in the deep dark cave biomes. Sculk sensors are sculk blocks currently present in the 1.17 version and can be obtained using the "/give" command.

The sculk sensors are redstone blocks that can detect vibrations and emit redstone signals. These vibrations could be anything, such as a player's footsteps or a block being placed.

A new mob called the Warden is going to be introduced in the update. The Warden will be the first-ever blind mob in the game, but it can detect vibration like the sculk sensors.

They will be hostile towards players and are expected to be found in the deep dark caves.