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Mojang Studios has added a structure to each of Minecraft's recent updates. With the 1.19 Wild Update, the developer introduced Ancient City, an extremely spooky underground structure infested with sculk blocks and a deadly beast called Warden. Fast forward to the present, and the developer is working on a new underground structure called the trial chambers.
However, looking at the list of features both Minecraft structures offer and the overall activities players can indulge in, the trial chambers could be much more fun than the ancient city ever was.
Note: This article is subjective and solely reflects the writer's opinions.
Why Trial Chambers have the potential to be more engaging than Ancient City in Minecraft
Fighting through various mobs vs exploring in fear of the Warden
Ever since Minecraft was first released, it featured fighting off various hostile mobs to protect oneself. Players are chased by various kinds of enemies in dark and dingy places around the world but are given a chance to fight back using weapons, armor, shields, and more.
The new trial chambers contain new trial spawner blocks that spawn various kinds of hostile mobs. Breeze is a brand new mob that will also be added to the structure. This wind-inspired mob will shoot wind charges but can easily be killed with strong weapons.
The mob will drop breeze rods that can be extremely useful in crafting new items. The trial chambers will also have dispensers shooting arrows, further increasing the challenge.
For more daring explorers, there is a special ominous event that can be started with the bad omen status effect, which increases the difficulty of trial chambers with stronger hostile mobs spawning from ominous trial spawners.
The constant mob spawning in trial chambers makes the structure challenging and alive.
On the other hand, Ancient Cities are dead silent and dark, with no regular hostile mobs spawning in the palatial structures. This vast underground city in Minecraft is filled with sculk blocks that can spawn the Warden, one of the most powerful mobs in Minecraft. The safest way to explore an ancient city is to sneak and make sure not to open any chest or break any block near a sculk sensor.
Though this adds the thrill and horror factor, there is not much to do other than just sneak and be in constant fear of making noise. If the worst happens and players encounter a Warden, they do not have any option but to run away and hide from the beast, particularly because the hostile mob is extremely difficult to kill and does not drop anything of value upon death.
Usable vs underwhelming loot
Getting valuable and usable loot is what encourages Minercrafters to enter structures and risk their lives.
With the Minecraft 1.21 update, Mojang Studios brought some of the most exciting new loot like breeze rods, heavy core, and more that can be used to create new weapons like mace and wind charges. The mace is a brand-new melee weapon with unique damage mechanics. Wind charges are ranged weapons used by the new breeze mob that can be used by players to knock themselves or entities away.
Apart from that, the trial spawners, new trial chamber vault, regular chests, and even decorated pots will also offer all kinds of common and valuable loot. New items like bold and flow armor trims, guster and flow banner patterns, and flow, guster and scrape pottery sherds.
Though ancient cities have some of the rarest loot in Minecraft, some of it is underwhelming and not the most useful. Two of the new items that are exclusive to the ancient city are disc fragments and echo shards.
As of now, echo shards can only be used to craft a recovery compass, which can show where the player's last death location. This is not a new feature since there are tried and tested mods for it. The gravestone mod can not only show the exact coordinates of the last death location but can also safely store a player's inventory.
Players need nine disc fragments to create the new "5" music disc. However, finding nine fragments is extremely tedious by itself.
Even if the ancient city is filled with loads of sculk sensors that can be useful to players for wireless redstone contraptions, they can be found in the regular deep dark biome itself.
Most chests located in ancient cities often become inaccessible simply because they are surrounded by several sculk sensors and shriekers. If players try to break one shrieker to clear the area, another one will activate and summon the Warden.
It is worth mentioning that ancient cities do have good loot, but obtaining it can be tedious rather than fun.
Perks for exploring with friends
Minecraft is even more fun when played with friends on a server. Players can explore the world and work together to build structures.
When Mojang Studios developed trial chambers, they had multiplayer gameplay in mind. The new trial spawner blocks can detect the number of players approaching and spawn a certain number of hostile mobs accordingly. This allows each one on the server to have fun and fight their share.
Furthermore, trial spawners and vaults will have loot for every single player. It will not act as a regular chest, which once looted, will be empty if other players try to loot it. This gives a chance for every player on a server to enjoy trial chambers equally.
While ancient cities can be interesting to explore with other Minecrafters, since they all need to coordinate and stay quiet, not everyone will receive an equal chance to loot items. Furthermore, if one player accidentally summons the Warden, every single player needs to evade, which can be quite chaotic and difficult.
