7 things that made Minecraft 1.21 special

Many of the recent Minecraft updates have come with minor controversies. The Wild Update upset fans by failing to add fireflies or updated birch forests, while fans were frustrated with the continual delays of the warden and deep dark biome. This meant that 1.21 really needed to be a special update to regain the confidence of the greater community. Thankfully, Mojang delivered just that.

Seven examples of features that Mojang added to 1.21 to make it feel like a love letter to fans are detailed below, along with what makes these changes so noteworthy.

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7 great features that made Minecraft 1.21 special

1) Automated crafting

By far the most impactful addition to 1.21, in terms of potential utility, is Minecraft's crafter block. This is a new redstone component that is able to take items as input and combine them into more complex ones. This has brought the automated crafting that many of the game's best mods are known for to the vanilla game.

The potential of the crafter is nearly limitless. Minecraft's best farms can have the outputs combined to make commonly used items, or machines can be made to automate the crafting of items with hard-to-remember crafting recipes. The block will only become more useful as more features are added to the game.

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2) New weapon type

The mace is one of the more interesting weapons in the game (Image via Mojang)

New weapon types are very rare additions, making each one incredibly special. In fact, before 1.21, the last weapon to be added to the game was crossbows, all the way back in 1.14 in 2019.

This means that the Minecraft mace is the first new weapon to be added in half a decade, and Mojang made it quite an interesting and fun item to use. Players can completely nullify fall damage while getting insane bonus damage when attacking with the mace. It also has a powerful AOE (Area Of Effect) knockback blast, unlike anything else in the game.

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3) Wind charges

Wind charges are one of the most interesting 1.21 items (Image via Mojang)

Wind charges are one of the most interesting items in the game's recent history. They are also one of the most helpful utility items available to players. They can be used to launch entities at decent distances, meaning that they're great for player launchers. They also work incredibly well with the previously mentioned mace, sending players into the air to get extra damage.

Wind charges can interact with many different redstone components, such as buttons, levers, and bells. This gives them even more potential uses in redstone builds.

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4) The breeze mod

The breeze is quite an interesting mob (Image via Mojang)

Speaking of wind, the breeze is another wind-related 1.21 feature that makes the update much more interesting. This mob is a new elemental that heavily resembles the Nether's blaze.

They attack using wind charges, which deal little damage but send players and hostile mobs flying. They are also totally immune to ranged attacks due to being surrounded by gale-force winds. Apart from this, breeze mobs move in a very unique way, bouncing around like springs.

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5) Potions of oozing

Brewing an oozing potion using a slime block (Image via Mojang)

Oozing is the most useful of the four new 1.21 Minecraft potions. Brewed using a slime block, oozing potions cause affected mobs to spawn two medium slimes upon death. These slimes act normally, spawning smaller slimes that then drop slimeballs on death. However, this is also what makes these potions a special 1.21 feature.

Potions of oozing give players a new way to farm Minecraft slime without needing to create large structures or mine out entire chunks. A looting sword and a splash potion are more than enough to farm considerable amounts of slime, bringing a new level of convenience to collecting the resource.

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6) Bad omen revamp

High level raids are a great challenge to take on with friends (Image via Mojang)

Bad omen received an interesting revamp in Minecraft 1.21. It no longer automatically applies when a raid captain is killed. It requires players to consume ominous bottles, which then apply bad omen. When entering a village, bad omen then converts into raid omen, which actually triggers the raid.

Bad omen will convert to trial omen when entering a trial chamber, which starts an ominous event. This gives players better loot than trial chambers normally have, including the heavy cores needed to craft maces.

This is what makes the bad omen change so special. It's a foundational effect with different paths depending on where the player goes. This implies that Mojang will continue to build on this system, introducing more new branching optional pathways to explore in the future.

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7) New paintings

The paintings added with 1.21 (Image via Mojang)

1.21 also brought with it 20 new paintings. This is the first time that paintings have been added to the game since 1.4.2, all the way back in 2012, when a painting of the wither was added to the game.

This makes the new paintings quite historic, as it has been more than a decade since the last addition. 15 of these paintings are also by Kristoffer Zetterstrand, who did all the game's original paintings.