Minecraft April 2024 highlights: All major features and changes

April was quite a month for Minecraft, While there was no major content added, it did bring a very interesting minor update - Armored Paws. It is unique for being the first named minor update, and brought armadillos, wolf armor, and new wolf types. April also saw a lot of interesting experimental content added to the game.

All of April's major changes, updates, and experimental features are detailed down below, along with what makes them such substantial changes.

---

Minecraft's April 2024 features, changes, and experiments

April's Armored Paws Update

A player brushing scutes off of an armadillo (Image via Mojang)

As previously mentioned, Armored Paws brought three main features to the game. The first of these is Minecraft's adorable armadillo mob. These are found within savannas and badlands biomes in small groups. Armadillos will curl up into a ball to protect themselves from undead mobs or springing players. They can be led with spider eyes, which are also the food needed to cause them to breed.

For obvious reasons, spiders aren't fans of armadillos and will actively run away from them, similar to how Minecraft's cats are able to scare away creepers and phantoms. Armadillos also occasionally drop scutes, at a similar rate to chickens dropping eggs. Players can also use a brush, originally intended for Minecraft archeology, to brush scutes off of armadillos.

The scutes are needed to craft wolf armor, the most significant of the update's additions. Wolf armor can be placed on wolves to protect them from most damage. This protection works the same as a shield, converting heart damage into durability damage until it breaks. Minecraft's new wolf armor can also be dyed using any of the game's colorful dyes.

Wolves have been made much better combat companions with April's Armored Paws update (Image via Mojang)

Wolves also had several changes made to them. The most significant, visually, of these changes are the eight new fur patterns players can find across many of Minecraft's most beautiful biomes. Wolves also had their health doubled from 10 hearts to 20, though they lost their environmental damage resistance to balance things out. Healing wolves with food has also been made twice as efficient.

---

Experimental content in Armored Paws

Trial chambers are amazing for seeing most of the current experimental content (Image via Mojang)

April's Armored Paws update also marks a new point in Tricky Trials experimental content. Since it is going to be the main focus of Mojang's development moving forward, it's a great time to recap the biggest experimental features in the game as of Armored Paws.

The first experimental feature worth mentioning are the upcoming trial chambers. These are underground structures filled with trial spawners that summon waves of enemies and will spit out loot if these mobs are defeated. This loot can include trial keys needed to open vaults and is also part of experimental content.

The crafter, breeze, and bogged are three of the biggest experimental features in Armored Paws (Image via Mojang)

Trial spawners are also the home of one of the update's two new mobs - breeze. This air elemental hops around like a spring, launching the player around using wind charges. These mobs drop breeze rods, needed to make wind charges and maces.

Crafters are a revolutionary addition to Minecraft, coming with 1.21. This block is able to take items as input and combines them to craft new things. Being able to automatically harvest and process mob farm drops is going to make survival farms so much more advanced than they already are.

The mace is the final major of Minecraft Tricky Trials. This weapon allows players to convert fall damage into attack damage, at the risk of fall damage should the attack miss. The weapon will also cause an AoE knockback when a target is struck from the air in this way. There are also three new unique mace enchantments to make the weapon even more unique and strong.