What is an NPC in Minecraft Education Edition?

Minecraft Education Edition offers a wide range of features which focus on learning. They also help teach the users instead of being just a fun game mechanic.

The compound creator, lab table and more provide educational gameplay mechanics to the player. Additionally, there is one feature that educates them in a slightly different way: the NPC.

NPCs are only available in Minecraft Education Edition, and they offer the chance to learn about coding.

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What is a Minecraft Education Edition NPC?

NPCs in Education Edition are created by the players instead of being an already designed in-game feature like in other titles.

According to Minecraft,

"NPCs are humanoid characters in Minecraft that can be used to provide ambiance, fun interactions and communications related to lessons, directions or dialog."

Instead of just interacting with and playing alongside NPCs, Minecraft Education Edition users get to create their own and customize them. In the process, they learn about its nuances and intricacies, right down to the coding process.

In order to create NPCs, players can open their inventory (type E) and add a spawn egg(s) to their inventory. These spawn eggs can be used to place an NPC anywhere on the map.

Spawn eggs are used to spawn NPCs. (Image via Minecraft)

To program the newly spawned NPC, players will need to right-click on the current one to open up the customization screen. Then, they can customize their NPC's name, color, displayed text, and more.

Players can then add URLs or other special commands in the NPC "Advanced Settings". This can be accessed repeatedly by World Builder to further edit the NPC as many times as required. Players can continue to tinker and edit the NPC as long as they please.