The second installment of Mojang’s new Minecraft Monthly debuted today and brought with it a few exciting reveals, like the first Sniffer egg hatching and an improved emote system. But what might be the most exciting news of all is that a bug that has been a nuisance for an entire decade has at last been fixed.
The bug that has finally been fixed is related to how horse breeding has worked in Minecraft for the past 10 years. Before it was fixed, this bug made it so that when two horses were bred, the resulting offspring would almost always have worse statistics than both of the parent horses.
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This was especially frustrating as players would generally try to find and utilize two horses with phenomenal statistics in the hopes that the child horse would then grow up to be even better than the parents. It was technically possible for the baby horse to end up with better statistics, but the chances were so low that the general consensus is that it was effectively impossible. This sentiment was echoed during Minecraft Monthly when they also agreed that the horse-breeding bug made it “basically impossible” to breed a better horse.
Now that Mojang has fixed this bug, all foals that players breed now have a solid chance of obtaining superior statistics. This means that players can now scour their Minecraft worlds for the fastest horses possible and then have them breed to produce an even more impressive steed for their adventures.
In addition to this exciting bug fix, the Minecraft Monthly event also featured a few other important reveals and shoutouts related to the latest preview versions of Minecraft and the larger Minecraft community.
Outside of the horse breeding bug finally being fixed, the next most exciting reveal from the Minecraft Monthly event was the official hatching of a Sniffer egg. The Sniffer is the latest community-voted mob and won the 2022 version of the vote during the Minecraft Live event which took place on Oct. 15.
Since then, Mojang has been hard at work developing players’ chosen mob into a creature that will join the game permanently with the 1.20 update. The small feature this creature had during Minecraft Monthly teased the baby version of the mob, which is called a Snifflet, as the first-ever hatching of the adorable creature took place.
Although the hatching was quite an exciting look at what players can expect to see when the Sniffer is officially in Minecraft, there is likely still more content that will be unveiled about this creature before it is released. The creature was originally teased to be recovered from ruins found underwater, which means that players are still expecting a look at how they actually obtain and raise the passive mob.
Mojang seems to still be in the process of developing the latest community-voted mob, but they seem to have perhaps teased this with the following Twitter post.
Mojang also unveiled a new emote system for the Bedrock version of Minecraft, improved accessibility settings for the 1.19.4 Java version of Minecraft, and a new collaboration with NASA that introduces the Artemis DLC pack inspired by the upcoming NASA Artemis missions.
Outside of new Minecraft content, Mojang’s video also featured two special shoutouts to massive Minecraft community events. The first was for the Squid Craft Games 2 event, which was a Twitch Rivals event that brought together both the Spanish and English-speaking communities for the epic six-day 2023 installment. The second shoutout went to Noxcrew and Smajor’s MC Championship (MCC) which returned from hiatus to host the 29th run of the Minecraft event on March 18.
Most of the exciting new content featured in the latest installment of Minecraft Monthly has already been officially released for players to experiment with. The one major feature that won’t be released until the 1.20 update is the Sniffer, so players will have to keep waiting for them but can test them out in the various beta and snapshot versions that are already out.
While waiting for the Sniffer to officially join the game, players can at least enjoy a fixed version of the horse mob now that the horse-breeding bug fix is already available in the 1.19.70 update for the Bedrock version of the game and in the 1.19.4 update for the Java version of Minecraft.
