Another new creature is making its way into Minecraft after winning the 2022 installment of the mob vote. The winner of this vote is the ancient Sniffer, which is a giant beast that loves plants.
The Minecraft community was tasked once more with helping Mojang pick a new mob type to develop for Minecraft during the 2022 installment of the annual mob vote. The voting process for this version of the mob vote ran a bit differently as the voting did not take place on Twitter and instead asked players to vote through various Minecraft platforms.
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While most mobs are thought up and created just by Mojang themselves, the Minecraft developers introduced the mob vote system a few years ago to allow the community to help shape some of the new content that is added to the game. Previous mob votes have added new creatures like the Glow Squid and Allay.
The 2022 installment of Minecraft’s mob vote featured three contenders. These contenders were the Rascal, the Tuff golem, and the Sniffer.
While the mob vote is usually pretty divisive and generally features a nearly even split in the number of supporters for each contender, the Sniffer was voted in with over half the community backing it.
Of those who participated in the Minecraft vote of 2022, 55.1 percent voted for the Sniffer, 27.7 percent voted for the Rascal, and 17.2 percent voted for the Tuff golem.
The mob vote took place in October 2022 and the Sniffer has now been developed by Mojang to be included in Minecraft’s 1.20 update. The ancient creature is clearly a fan favorite, so here’s everything that players can expect to see when the Sniffer is officially added to Minecraft as a new mob.
What does the Sniffer do in Minecraft?
As its name implies, the Sniffer loves nothing more than to sniff around. It is a passive peaceful creature, which means that players cannot tame it but they can breed it. Additionally, this mob will not attack players.
Once they have been hatched, Sniffers will find unique seeds for players by sniffing around. This creature loves plants and thus will seek to help players grow some of their own.
Mojang has also revealed that the Sniffer will bring players new types of plants to the world of Minecraft. Currently, the only asset that this creature digs up is the seeds to grow the new Torchflower.
Mojang previously teased “ancient seeds” which may mean that more unique types of plants that only the Sniffer can find will be added in the future. The Sniffer is currently only available in beta and snapshot versions of Minecraft, so it is very much so still in development.
How do you get a Sniffer in Minecraft?
For the current versions of Minecraft that players can test the Sniffer out in, it is exclusively available as an egg that players can hatch through creative mode. Before it is actually released as a feature, Mojang will add the functionality of how players can regularly go about obtaining this mob.
Mojang previously said the Sniffer is an ancient mob that can be hatched from eggs found in chests located around underwater ruins. In addition to finding this creature in underwater ruins, Sniffers will also be able to be uncovered by performing Archeology on suspicious sand.
After obtaining a Sniffer egg, players will need to help the creature hatch into a Snifflet before it then grows into a fully functional Sniffer. The details of how this process will work have yet to be revealed.
Some of this information was teased before the Sniffer was actually selected as the mob vote winner which means that some functionalities related to how players will go about finding this creature could potentially change. But most parts of the functionality should remain fairly similar to what Mojang previously teased.
Although the Sniffer was thought to be extinct, the Minecraft community selecting it as the winner for the 2022 mob vote means that it has now been revived and will soon become free to roam the world once more.
When will the Sniffer be added to Minecraft?
No official release date for the Sniffer has been shared by Mojang just yet, but as has been the case with previous mob vote winners, the Sniffer will arrive in the next big Minecraft update.
Minecraft’s next big update is 1.20, which is scheduled to release sometime in 2023.
