Minecraft: Who is Merl?

Minecraft has some of the most iconic characters in the gaming world, such as the creeper, the default skin of Steve, and the iconic dirt block texture. Players who have tried every spin‑off of the game might remember Merl from the now‑defunct Minecraft Earth. Merl was the mascot of this ambitious and unique game; unfortunately, not many players are familiar with it.

Mojang has decided to bring Merl back, but in a completely different way. Instead of finding it in the game, you can find Merl on Minecraft's Help Center website as a new AI agent. The developers have added an easier and quicker way of getting answers to questions about the game and its mechanics. Here’s everything you need to know about Merl.

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Everything you need to know about Merl in Minecraft

The assistant cannot answer questions about unreleased or beta updates (Image via Mojang Studios)

It seems that AI agents have become the new norm, but there’s a good reason for their widespread prevalence. You can chat with them and get answers in a concise and easy‑to‑understand way. Mojang has released Merl, an AI agent, for precisely that purpose.

When you head over to the Help Center website of Minecraft, you will find a tab in the bottom‑right corner featuring the face of Merl and a “Need Help?” prompt. Click on that to open a chatbox with an animated character on the right or the top of the chatbox. You can ask any question about the game, from the pricing in your region to tutorials about specific parts of the game.

We tried asking it about some niche things, such as how to get a charged creeper and add a custom skin to the Minecraft character. In both cases, the AI agent was able to provide accurate and point‑wise answers that were very easy to follow. This means you can get accurate answers to almost any question about the game.

This is great for players who are looking for a specific thing and want a quick answer. Instead of going to Google and scrolling through the search page, this is certainly a faster way of resolving the query.

However, there are some things to keep in mind. The AI agent is in beta testing, and some answers can be inaccurate. You can see this disclaimer on top of the chatbox. Another thing we noted was that Merl was not able to answer anything about upcoming features for the game, even the ones that have been officially announced and added in beta versions.

For example, asking it anything about the upcoming Copper Age update will result in no answer. This might be because the final versions of the features have not been added and the AI agent gets its data from Minecraft's website.