Why Sniffer is the least useful Minecraft mob vote winner in recent years

Sniffer was the mob vote winner during Minecraft Live 2022 and was added to the 1.20 update. They were up against Rascal and Tuff Golems in the mob vote competition. These mobs were portrayed as ancient beings, whose eggs needed to be found and hatched to spawn them in the world. They will then find unique plants and flowers for players.

While this was fascinating at the time, this mob is not as nearly as useful as some of the other recent mob vote winners.

Note: This article is subjective and solely reflect's writer's opinion.

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Reasons why Sniffers are not as useful as other Minecraft mob vote winners from the past

Hard to find and little to offer

Sniffers are hard to find and offer little to players. (Image via Mojang Studios)

Finding Sniffers is not easy in Minecraft. They do not naturally generate in any biome or cave. First, players need to find a sniffer egg from ocean ruins that are generated in ocean biomes. Then these eggs need to be placed and taken care of for several days, which can be a tedious process. Though these mobs can be bred, they cannot be tamed and be kept as pets.

Once hatched, it will spawn a Sniffer that will roam around the world and sniff around dirt blocks. When the mob finds something, it will perform a digging animation and spawn a unique seed. This seed can be of torchflower or pitcher, both of which cannot be obtained without the mob.

While these two seeds and their plants are unique in appearance and texture, they can only be used for decoration. Hence, the pain a player takes to find Sniffer eggs and spawn one from it is not fully reciprocated with what the mob offers.

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Sniffer lags behind when compared to other mob vote winners

Allays and Armadillos are much more useful than Sniffers. (Image via Mojang Studios)

Though Mojang Studios' main aim with mob vote competition is to create smaller mobs with little use and focus more on the community's interaction with them, some of these mobs are still extremely useful. Sniffer's lack of use is highlighted even more when it is compared to other Minecraft mob vote winners.

For example, the mobs that won the mob vote competition before and after Sniffer, Allays, and Armadillos, are extremely useful in Minecraft.

Allays were added in the 1.19 update and can be used by players to pick up dropped items in the world. They can help explorers keep track of any useful item that is being dropped and left behind. Allays can also be used in a farm where they can pick and drop items towards a note block, near which a hopper collects them and stores them in a chest.

On the other hand, Armadillos brings one of the most craved features to Minecraft in the 1.20.6 update. These creatures can be brushed to obtain scutes. These scutes can then be crafted into wolf armor, which a player can place on their tamed wolf. This will give extra protection to the tamed wolf from any hostile mob attacks and creeper explosions.