Candidates for 1.20's "Catch Up"

Minecraft Live: Minecraft 1.20 Update Thumbnail. Taken from YouTube.

This was originally going to be the first in a series of January 2023's "Just an Idea" posts, but then I realized that it doesn't fit the criteria I set for that category. A lot of Minecraft rumbling is on its way and I wanna start with things we know about that haven't got into both versions of the game just yet. Either they got delayed, promised for the "near future" and things like that. We have a lot of features and chances that were teased and announced, but players are still waiting for Mojang Studios to properly introduce them.

Developers have a great opportunity to use Patch 1.20 as a catch up update. While it's hard to say whenever or not they would go in this direction given some recent developments with the game (that's a different subject on itself), "articles" like this aren't about sticking to the reality and being pessimistic about it. What I will go is to just list some previously teased stuff that could've been added to 1.20 with positive/hopeful attitude.

Archaeology.

Obviously, I'm starting with the Archaeology. It was meant to release with Caves & Cliffs update and we have the general idea of how this system should work... At least, the vision Mojans Studios had a couple of years ago. Some details might've changed over time and maybe we won't have to wait much longer to see what's the current state of Archaeology. Many people suspect/expect this feature for Patch 1.20 and Ulraf's hints in this tweet doesn't help it.

There should be more elements to it than your brushes, clay pots and ceramic shards. You'll probably be able to recover minerals (like diamonds & diamond blocks) since it was shown in the initial announcement. Some new enchantment might sneak in via another exclusive book available only by uncovering it through dig sites. And you'll likely be able to get all kinds of enchantment books, really. More decorative artifacts could've been awesome like skeleton head for various mobs. You know, something that's commonly assosiated with Archaeology.

Desert Update.

We're getting Camels, so Mojang might as well give them some company in a form of Meerkats. It doesn't seem like anyone at Mojang specificed what they would do as I couldn't find anything specific regarding that. Minecraft Wiki's page does mention Oases as one of its features while I couldn't find it at Desert's video or Biome Chooser article for Minecon Earth 2018. Not sure where it came from, but Oasis would be great for Camels.

However, I'm not exactly sure if we would get two wood types in this update. Perhaps it's going to be like Nether Update (Patch 1.16) and I'm just overthinking it. Maybe I'm just having very low expectation from Mojang Studios nowadays, not sure. Palms trees could give them an excuse to add Coconuts as new food and maybe even an alternative source of milk! Again, Camels will spawn in Desert and that's basically why I think this update has the most chances for proper introduction. Even though Desert got the least amount of votes.

Badlands Update.

Let's assume that Camels are more than enough for Desert in Patch 1.20 from Mojang Studios' perspective. This might be the case, especially if Archaeology will actually appear as it would make a lot of sense to have dig sites in that biome. Biome vote option from Minecon Live 2019 were the luckiest of them as we already got two out of three updates (Swamp & Mountains) people were initially voting for. There's only one left now.

Another type of cactus is fine. Tumbleweeds are awesome as long as they can roll around. I'm not sure what kind of function Vultures would've had since (again) I couldn't refresh and/or find anything specific about them. Recovery Company furfills one of the functions that Vultures could've had (point to your death location), so maybe they could've been able to somehow keep all the loot save from despawning? Either way, there's a catch here: Mountains were updated in Caves & Cliffs (Patch 1.17), Swamp in Wild Update (Patch 1.19). Maybe we should expect Badlands update in 1.21.

Conclusion.

As might as I would like for Mojang to add in everything they've mentioned in the past, I'll take Patch 1.20 as "Quality of Life" update with less (by recent standards) additions if it means increasing the stability of both version of Minecraft and dealing with various bugs. Original can always use some optimization. Bedrock Edition's performance was the highlight of this iteration of Minecraft in comparison to Java Edition in a while, but nowadays it got so much worse. Whenever you're a low end PC user like me currently, (probably) Android/iOS players... I feel bad for Nintendo Switch folks. Every platform has issues, pretty much. You can write an entire post about that. Most likely even a few!

It's also important to mention that there're a lot of features that were either teased or mentioned by Mojang Studios developers at some point of time. Minecraft Wiki has a useful list of those for both original/Java and Bedrock Editions. More specifically, a functionality for Fletching Table and Savanna update. I felt like the first one was too short to mention separately. While Savanna was more popular than Desert at the time, I'm not confident in it getting an update soon. I don't feel like Mojang would want to deal with Termites implementation after Fireflies. I know they had an official reasoning for it, but it's my hunch that perhaps some technical difficulties affected their decision as well. There're developer builds for Bedrock Edition and some leak had Fireflies, I believe.