10 best tips and tricks for Minecraft 1.20 update

Minecraft 1.20, dubbed the Trails & Tales update, arrived on June 7, 2023. Since then, players have been diving into the release's new features, which include cherry grove biomes, archeology, and the debut of sniffer and camel mobs. However, a new update also brings new challenges, and players will want to be prepared.

Although Minecraft 1.20 doesn't exactly change the game in a ground-breaking way, there are certain adjustments that have been made that gamers will want to be aware of. Additionally, there are also a handful of tips, tricks, and suggestions that they may want to use to get ahead in this newly released content.

If Minecraft fans are just getting started in a new Trails & Tales world, there are a few recommended pointers to help them ease the learning curve of the 1.20 update.

Note: This article is subjective and reflects the writer's views.

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10 tricks to help players navigate Minecraft's Trails & Tales update

1) Keep your diamonds and netherite handy

Although Minecraft 1.20 introduced new armor customizations in the form of armor trims, it also introduced a change when it comes to obtaining netherite gear. Due to the implementation of Netherite Upgrade Smithing Templates, players will now need this new item to upgrade diamond gear to netherite quality.

Since this is the case, they'll want to keep a healthy stock of diamonds and netherite ingots handy if they want to upgrade to netherite gear quickly. Once they find a Netherite Upgrade template (check treasure rooms in bastion remnants!), they'll be able to plop it down and quickly upgrade their tools, weapons, and armor.

Naturally, diamonds and netherite ingots are some of the most precious materials in all of Minecraft. As such, it justifies players storing them in a secure place and leaving them there until they can find the necessary smithing templates.

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2) Clone your smithing templates

Smithing templates are Minecraft 1.20's primary resource for both upgrading to netherite gear as well as trimming armor. Since this is the case, players will usually need more than one template to get a full set of netherite gear or trim their armor from top-to-bottom. Fortunately, there's a solution that should save them some time.

Instead of roaming through various generated structures and looting every chest available, gamers can clone their existing smithing templates. The process does require seven diamonds, which isn't cheap, but making one template into two is certainly better than hours of searching for templates in generated structures.

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3) Bring brushes everywhere

Minecraft players can create the new brush tool in the 1.20 update by combining sticks, copper ingots, and feathers. This single item is the core tool to take part in archeology in the game, and allows players to brush suspicious sand and gravel blocks found within many different generated structures throughout the Overworld.

Archeology can yield plenty of goodies, from pottery shards and sniffer eggs to more conventional resources like emeralds and diamonds. In this light, players should bring a brush or two with them wherever they go. They never know when they might stumble on some trail ruins or a desert pyramid worth excavating.

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4) Camels' protective properties

Camels may not be the most popular mob addition in Minecraft 1.20, but they may end up being more useful than the sniffer in the long run. This is due in part to their height, which makes them tall enough to protect their riders from melee attacks from enemies like zombies, vindicators, sword-wielding piglins, and more.

If that wasn't enough, players should be able to traverse over unsteady terrain easier with a camel. These mobs have the ability to scale 1.5-block heights, meaning they can clear things like fences without needing any assistance from a carpet block or a sizable jump.

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5) Ocean ruins matter again

For quite some time, Minecraft's ocean ruins were considered subpar due to the lack of real loot they could offer. However, their prospects got a little brighter thanks to the inclusion of suspicious sand and suspicious gravel blocks in their compositions. This allows players to turn ocean ruins into archeological sites.

In addition to the standard loot that ocean ruins provide in their suspicious sand/gravel, gamers who find these structures in a warm ocean have the chance to unearth a sniffer egg. This feature makes these aquatic locations much more beneficial than before.

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6) Signs are now double-sided

Ever since Minecraft's early days, players in the vanilla game could only apply text to one side of a given sign block. Fortunately, this changed early on in the 1.20 update's development cycle. Fans can now add text to both sides of a sign block, including the new hanging signs that debuted in Trails & Tales.

As an added bonus, Minecraft players can now interact with a sign block and change its text directly. No more breaking the sign and placing back down to edit the writing on its face!

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7) Sculk shriekers can be silenced with water

Early on in Minecraft 1.20's sequence of snapshot betas, some substantial changes were made to sculk blocks found in the deep dark biome. One such alteration was made to sculk shriekers, which are pesky blocks that can alert the Warden when disturbed by nearby vibrations.

The good news is that Minecraft 1.20 tweaked sculk shriekers to be slightly less of an annoyance. Players can now waterlog these blocks by covering them with a water source, which will keep them from playing their ominous shrieking sound.

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8) Moss blocks are much more useful

Moss certainly had its uses before in Minecraft, but these blocks may have become even more helpful than before. Not only does it halve the hatching time of sniffer eggs from 20 to 10 minutes, but it has also received a little utility when it comes to farming certain crops.

Specifically, sugar cane and bamboo can now be placed on moss blocks, where they will grow. It's a small change, but one that makes moss a little more helpful than before, if players don't have any other blocks to spare at the moment.

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9) Torchflowers are more helpful than expected

In the beginning stages of Minecraft 1.20's growth, torchflowers acquired from sniffers didn't exactly amount to much. In the final build though, they've gotten a few extra perks that should make them worth seeking out. Sure, they can be used to make orange dye, but their uses surpass that simple application.

To be more specific, torchflowers can be added to Suspicious Stew in the crafting menu to bestow players with Night Vision when consumed. These ancient plants can also be used to lure bees, which should make corralling them to a new home or location a little easier in the long run.

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10) Larger mobs will no longer fit in boats

Minecraft players may have gotten accustomed to moving most in-game mobs via boats, even those that are clearly way too large to realistically fit. The 1.20 update has made quite a change to this, keeping the sandbox game's larger entities from fitting inside boats or rafts.

It's more of an inconvenience than a positive change, but it's certainly something for Minecraft players to be aware of.