The Spawn Chunks 351: Vibrant Variations

May 26, 2025 | podcast

Jonny, and Joel share tweaks to gameplay in the latest Minecraft snapshot, answer listener email about building with the happy ghast, and discuss the scope of rendering that Vibrant Visuals may try to focus in on.

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  • The Citadel | Westhill
    • The Citadel is now on Spring To Life, Minecraft 1.21.5… Just in time for 1.21.6 do likely drop in a few weeks. 😛
    • Spent some time exploring to pick up the new bush, firefly bush, dry grass, wild flowers, and leaf litter, and return to Westhill to make a temporary micro farms, and stock up on each.
    • Lit the dim streets of the West Quarter with soul lanterns, and bits of glow lichen, and adjusted some foliage to include the new bush.
    • Staying organized while decorating more of the inside of the Westhill keep by using a new quality of life mod for inventory management.
  • Misadventures
  • CraftMine
    • The April Fools snapshot continues to pitch curveballs!
      • Finally completed the challenge mine that requires you to defeat waves of skeletons. 
      • A second challenge mine required you to defeat… A single Enderman. CraftMine continues to troll.
    • Unlocked two more rooms of the labyrinth, one of which had invisible walls!
      • Still unsure where any of this may be headed.
    • The amount of unlocked items means inventory management has started to get unwieldy.
      • Especially when one of the ‘mine ingredients’ spawns lit TNT near you every so often.

Minecraft News

FROM: Donoraffe
MEMBER: Community Miner
SUBJECT: The Ghastly Ladder Problem

As someone who needs to trim a very large, very long hedge knows, trimming the top of it can take a long time. Moving the ladder is similar to how Joel was mentioning repositioning the ghast could get equally painful. Since you can entice ghasts with snowballs, do you envision Mojang implementing a snowball on a stick? I feel it would be equally apropos, and ridiculous!

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Donoraffe plummeted to his doom after clipping through his ghast while trying to reposition it with his new fishing pole attachment.

FROM: OccidentalAvian
SUBJECT: The Forgotten Experiment

Hi Pix, and Joel,

The recent addition of the new Cartographer village maps to the snapshot, pulling elements from the Trading Rebalance, reminded me of another set of experimental snapshots that I’d like to see make a comeback: the Combat Tests.

Given that a lot of recent changes have been tested using the Experimental Features data packs, such as the Bundles, Trade Rebalance, Minecart Improvements, and Redstone Experiments, I’d love to see the return of these Combat Tests for modern versions of the game, especially because the last Combat Test was released 5 years ago, in 1.16.2.

OccidentalAvian did not die, because they had a stack of 16 healing potions in their hotbar.

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Vibrant Visuals: Incremental Update Or Revolutionary Change?

FROM: Zing
SUBJECT: Vibrant Visuals Incremental Or Revolutionary?

Good day!

Now that Vibrant Visuals is released as a stable experiment in game, I turned it on on my server, and our first impressions are that it’s an incremental update overall – and that’s a good thing.

Rather than being a revolutionary experience, this feels like how I always saw Minecraft in my mind, and how my friends did too. This also means that 16×16 custom textures which haven’t yet been updated for Vibrant Visuals’ shine can still be used quite smoothly.

That said, I can’t help but wonder what a more dramatic change would have looked like. What do you think? Is a more tame update the right move for the future?

Zing was blinded by the sun and could no longer write this letter.

Jonny, and Joel expand on Zing’s email to discuss where they think Vibrant Visuals will focus in order to appeal to a broad spectrum of Minecraft players, while also remaining accessible from both a user, and hardware perspective. Where do we want Vibrant Visuals to take Minecraft? What level of control may still be left up to players? How far can be too far when it comes to rendering light, and texture in Minecraft?