The Spawn Chunks 038: Wandering Chunk Mail

May 6, 2019

A light news week has Joel and Jonny reaching into the Chunk Mail bag to respond to listener questions and discussion topics. Plus, speculation on some cryptic social media posts from Mojang.

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Minecraft News

  • @Dinnerbone (Nathan Adams on Twitter)

Chunk Mail

FROM: Andy

Hello Pixlriffs and Joel,

 

I am an avid Minecraft player and consumer of Minecraft media including your podcast.  I have been a long-time viewer of a twitch streamer known as Philza. He exclusively plays Minecraft on hardcore mode, for a small but dedicated audience, and had until recently survived for over 5 years in his world. Over the last several years in his world he’s transitioned to making epic builds and has achieved some truly amazing things.  He died this past Wednesday (4/24) working on his latest build, hollowing out a huge area underneath a swamp housing a witch farm for a custom biome he was going to make. He was lighting up the area as he was working on, causing mob spawns to compact into unlit caves he would occasionally find. He came up against a baby zombie with fully enchanted gold armor, a creeper, a skelly and a spider all at once and died fighting them off and almost got a notch apple off before he died.

 

His clip of the event has gone viral and is now the most viewed MC twitch clip of all-time with, at the moment, just shy of 1 million views.  His story has been picked up by a number of gaming and news websites and he was also just interviewed on BBC tv and radio. I am writing because I think it would be a great idea to either interview him on your podcast or at least give him a mention to bring up the topic of Minecraft hardcore, a topic that I have never really heard you guys talk much about on your show.

 

He is a great guy and deserves all the love he is currently getting and giving Minecraft.

FROM: Dan

Hey Pix and Joel,

 

Loved the last episode (37), and just wanted to chime in on the issue of villager trading in 1.14. You mentioned on that episode that trading to get emeralds had been a bit nerfed, which is absolutely true. However, many pillagers also drop emeralds, which could be a decent way to farm emeralds to make up for the trading change. Just thought I’d toss my two cents in on that topic!

 

Keep up the great content, looking forward to more Spawn Chunks!

FROM: Watti

Hello guys:

 

I am a 55 year old player who has a 13 year old special needs son. We play together and I have created a world on realms which we share. It allows us to play together even if I am away. Currently, he is creating an Easter egg hunt (a little late) for us to do using colored shulker boxes with turtle eggs inside.

 

I heard the comment on your latest podcast that turtles were a “meh” addition to the game. My son loves them. Although, he cannot tame them he still names them using name tags and follows them around the realm. It’s sometimes fun to be involved with a build or exploring and see Timmy the Turtle come cruising by.

 

Not everything in Minecraft needs to be exploitable. There is an argument for the esthetic value of animals. There is always a certain “wow” factor i still get coming across a polar bear and a her cub when exploring arctic biomes.

 

In fact we’d like more. We’d love to see biome specific critters like lions, bears, deer, antelope, sharks, whales, hawks and eagles, even squirrels and songbirds. Not all of these need to have valuable drops, although deer are obvious game animals. Neither do their AIs need to too complicated. They could go a long way to making the experience more realistic just by appearing as part of the scenery like polar bears.

 

Anyway, thanks for the podcast and keep up the good work.

 

Watti and Son.

FROM: Surprise_Tulpa

Hello Jonny and Joel.

After seeing the Hytale trailer, I had a thought; Does Minecraft get the amount of work hours it deserves given the the amount of money it earns?

Minecraft raises as much money as most triple-A games, as it is the second best selling game of all time. If you compare Minecraft to The Witcher 3 or Grand Theft Auto 5 for example, Minecraft lacks content, polish, stability, etc.

Don’t you think Minecraft would be a better and wider game if a triple-A studio like CD Project Red or Rockstar would develop it and put all that money back into the game?

I think what most of us like about Minecraft is the genre of 3D voxel-based sandboxes it has created, but since there is no direct competitor, Minecraft happens to be the best automatically.

Hytale looks like Hypixel’s attempt at a game as broad in scope as Minecraft, but Hypixel is not a triple-A studio either.

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