Minecraft will finally introduce bundles four years after initial announcement

The bundle might be the most controversial item in Minecraft's 15-year-long history. Originally announced in October 2020 as part of that year's live event, it was intended to be Mojang's solution for the inventory issue, allowing players to store up to a stack of random items in a single slot. However, several delays left the item in development even four years later.

Thankfully, though, this finally seems to be changing, with the game's official X account tweeting out that bundles are finally being added to the game after four long years of waiting. Everything players need to know about these items in preparation can be found below.

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What are Minecraft bundles?

The crafting recipe for the bundle (Image via Mojang)

As previously mentioned, bundles were Mojang's solution to the inventory issue. Assuming the crafting recipe hasn't changed at the last minute, players will need two strings and six rabbit hides to craft one. Minecraft deserts are the best place to hunt for rabbits, as the relatively flat ground makes it easy to see long distances.

Bundles are similar to other storage methods in that they can hold different types of items. However, they have a capacity of only 64 items. The math for how much space an item takes up can be confusing. For normal items that stack up to 64, the capacity is one-to-one, which is easy.

Items that stack up to 16, though, are different. Each item consumes four bundle capacity as that's the same proportion when the stack is increased back up to 64. Items that don't stack at all, such as water buckets or Minecraft swords, take up an entire bundle when placed within.

It's worth noting that while Minecraft shulker boxes cannot be placed within a bundle but other bundles can. The inner bundle will take up the capacity of the outer one, equal to four plus the number of items within the inner bundle. This means players can condense bundles for extra storage space in an emergency or when storing them within a base.

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The development history of bundles

This pop-up interface was hard for Mojang to nail on mobile (Image via Mojang)

As touched on earlier, bundles were first announced in October 2020. This means that technically, the announcement wasn't quite four years ago, but it's close enough. They were originally intended to be a part of Caves and Cliffs before it was then split into more than three distinct pieces. In a strange way, this means that Caves and Cliffs is fully releasing only now, several updates later.

Minecraft's bundles were delayed continuously due to development issues regarding their mobile UI. Mojang was having difficulties figuring out how to design the UI in a way that both looked good and was easy to use on mobile. Since all Bedrock versions are the same, they need to have the feature implemented at the same time, hence the delay.