Highlights

  • Minecraft updates focus on specific areas, improving the game's longevity bit by bit.
  • Underwater building in Minecraft, despite being improved through features like conduits and swimming, can still be tedious due to a lack of visibility and hazards.
  • Introducing permanent fix items like night vision gear could enhance the underwater building experience.

Minecraft has seen a great deal of change in recent years, with its recent 1.21 update being particularly ambitious. However, there's one place within Minecraft—one that has already been the recipient of a major update—that could see a major splash with some minor changes.

Mojang has become increasingly willing to update some of Minecraft's older features, specifically minor areas that have remained intact for many years. From 1.13 to 1.18, Minecraft's updates revolved around bringing a fresh coat of paint to massive sub-systems, such as villages or the Nether; on the contrary, updates like 1.20.5 and 1.21 have granted changes to smaller bits of minutiae. The former made big changes to wolves, while the latter finally brought in new paintings and switch-ups to the Bad Omen effect. With the news that bundles are still being worked on by Mojang, it's likely that similar tweaks will keep flowing—a great sign for the game's longevity.

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Underwater Building In Minecraft Needs A Boon

Minecraft's 1.13 Update Aquatic did a lot to make oceans more of an interesting biome. Not only did it make the undersea floor more desirable with litanies of shipwrecks and ruins, but it balanced out new loot with new dangers in the form of the drowned. Additions like swimming, conduits, and bubble columns also served to make just being in the ocean an easier time. Despite this, there's a good deal that could be done to give underwater travel some quality-of-life, particularly when it comes to building.

Underwater Building Is Plagued With Hazards

Underwater building in Minecraft can be tricky, and to an extent this makes sense; players expect it to be a harsh environment given the many perils of our own real-life seas. If a player does enough exploration, however, they can construct a conduit to make underwater construction far easier. This opens up the sea to all the submerged builds players want to construct, from aquariums to ocean bases to submarines.

On the other hand, underwater building is still broadly undesirable. One of the biggest reasons most Minecraft builds stay above the sea is just the lack of visibility. Caves got a lighting upgrade with glowing lichen and massive lava rivers, but underwater builds will always require night vision in order to be looked at from a distance. That's all without mentioning the many hazards, with drowned attacks being particularly disorienting. The Fatigue effect, induced by elder guardians when in the vicinity of an ocean monument, is also a regular factor thanks to its incredible range.

Permanent Fix Items Should Be Introduced

Just as the conduit already fixes many problems of being underwater, there should be higher unlocks that add ways to further solve the above issues. A big thing that Minecraft could add is some sort of permanent night vision item. This can be in a form similar to the turtle helmet or Terraria's mining helmet, offering less defense for a utility boon. It can be locked away behind a new boss or alternative tier of progression, as it certainly shouldn't be easy to find, but just having it would be enough to make building underwater more worthwhile.

In terms of other updates Minecraft's ocean could receive, it would be great to see the range of the elder guardians' Fatigue effect reduced. On the subject of those pufferfish-adjacent minibosses, it would be helpful for sponges to see an increase in their drop rate. They should still be exclusive to the monument, but it would be better for these structures to guarantee a ready supply of them. Moreover, a whole alternative gear set could be made for easy underwater construction at the expense, again, of defense.