Minecraft 1.18 Caves & Cliffs update: Expected release date, best features and more

Minecraft Caves and Cliffs 1.18 update is the biggest in the game's decade-long history. With it, developers are going to change the entire Overworld dimension forever.

Last year, Mojang announced the Caves and Cliffs update during Minecraft Live 2020. Players have been asking for an Overworld revamp for a long time, and developers wanted to make sure that the update turned out great. Therefore, to maintain the update's quality, Mojang decided to split it into two parts.

Many months have gone by since the release of the update's first phase. Players are now awaiting the release of Caves and Cliffs Part 2. Minecraft 1.18 is now coming close to its expected release date.

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Minecraft 1.18 Caves & Cliffs update will bring players new cave biomes, changed RNG system and more

Expected release date

As per Minecraft developers, the first pre-release for Minecraft 1.18 update will arrive on November 11. This means developers are bidding farewell to snapshots and entering the final stage of the Caves and Cliffs Part 2 update.

The last time, Minecraft 1.17 update came out 10 days after the first pre-release. Players can expect the much-awaited Caves and Cliffs Part 2 to launch around 22 November 2021.

During 1.17 pre-release testing, Mojang announced the launch date a few days after pre-release 1. Players can therefore expect Mojang to announce the official date for the 1.18 update pretty soon.

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Major features

Cave biomes (Image via Minecraft)

Minecraft 1.18 update is about revamping the caves, mountains and overall terrain generation in the Overworld. Minecrafters will finally be able to discover the much-anticipated cave and mountain biomes.

The 1.18 update will add cave biomes to Minecraft for the first time. As a result, players will get to explore beautiful lush caves and dangerous dripstone caves. They will discover moss blocks and axolotls in the lush caves, whereas dripstone caves will have pointed dripstones and frequent copper generation.

Along with new caves, Minecraft 1.18 update will add three noise cave types to improve the cave generation in the Overworld. These will generate sound deep down to Y level -59.

Mountain biomes (Image via Mojang)

Players will also get to see many new mountain biomes. Apart from this, developers have tweaked the overall terrain generation and changed the RNG system for the Overworld.

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What's not coming to Minecraft 1.18?

Removed features (Image via Mojang)

Minecraft 1.18 update was stressful for developers. They were able to add every new world generation content except deep dark caves. The Warden, sculk blocks and deep dark caves will come in The Wild Update.

Bundles and goat horns have also been moved to Minecraft 1.19. Players will have to wait for The Wild Update, which will be released at some point in 2022.