I haven’t played Minecraft regularly for years, but I still love it when new features and creatures start to appear in the game. Without fail, this means that always creative Minecraft players will find unexpected ways to use them. The newest Minecraft snapshot adds a few more parts to the next Caves & Cliffs update, including the beautiful shiny squid and their shiny ink.
Mojang’s update notes for the 21w03A snapshot explain what is possible with the new shiny squid and its ink. They were made to live in deep, dark caves, but Mojang said they will not spawn naturally in this snapshot. For now, you will need to create a creative world and use spawning eggs to summon them.
Naturally, I found a small dark lake and dropped a handful of them and they are very beautiful. They even make a sweet little tinkling sound as they float.
The shiny new squid is also not all that shines in the new update. Bright lichen has also been added, a source of plant light that can be found and harvested with scissors inside caves.
If you kill a shiny squid, it will drop bags of shiny ink that can be used to make the text on boards visible from a distance. Apparently, it can even be colored for an extra touch. I’m already interested in seeing any shiny screen that players can create.
As always, Mojang is conducting the Caves & Cliffs update, adding new snapshot additions for players to try out in advance. In other photos, so far, they’ve added blocks of copper and amethyst, as well as those axolotls that everyone is so excited about. Be careful, the axolotls will attack shiny squids, so make sure you don’t leave them hanging.
If you want to get to know squids on your own, load the Minecraft launcher and choose “latest snapshot” in the installs tab. It must be labeled as 21w03A.