Minecraft started 2025 off with a bang by adding falling leaves, new flowers, and the absolute pinnacle of development, different pig variations. Now, instead of just having the boring old pink pig in your farm, you can also keep the cold pig and the warm pig in the pen alongside it.
There have been pigs in Minecraft for the last 15 years, but until now, they've all just been cut from the same cloth. The new warm pig can be found in hot biomes like the desert or the badlands, while the cold pig is covered in fluffy fur to keep them warm in sub-zero temperatures found in the snow biome.
If, like me, you can't wait to get your hands on these little fellas, then you can test this and the other new features out by enabling snapshots for the Java Edition or turning on previews/betas in the Bedrock Edition.
If you do end up checking this update out early, then you can also report any bugs you encounter: "The Pig Positivity Score (which I’m pretty sure pigs themselves made up) has shot through the roof since this came into testing," the official Minecraft blog post says. "But when you trek out to meet our new pigs, please report any oink-usual behavior to your nearest pig representative at bugs.mojang.com."
I'm just so happy that we're finally getting more variations for pigs. Last year, Mojang introduced nine new dog types to vanilla Minecraft, which was a huge move for collectors like myself. But since then, I've been eagerly waiting for more mob variants. There are a couple of options for animals, like cows, which also have the Mooshroom and the sadly deceased Moobloom, but otherwise, animals in Minecraft can get a little boring at times.
There's nothing wrong with this, but as someone who likes customising builds for the biome that I'm in, I've ended up using mods to give me more animal variations for every kind of climate.
My favourite mod right now is the More Mob Variants pack, which adds more types of cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, dogs, and more. With this, I can have a French bulldog or a husky instead of a plain old wolf, collect tons of wooly, cookie, or umbra cows for my farm, or even keep amber, golden crested, and stormy chickens as pets.
There are other mods available that do a similar thing, but this one in particular, created by nyuppo is by far the best and currently has over 10 million downloads. The modder also released further support for the More Mob Variants pack called, the More Mob Variants x Fresh Animations, which gives animals more traits like cats loafing or pigs rolling around in the dirt and getting all muddy—a critical masterpiece if you ask me.
The two new pig variants may not give players as many options as mods like this do, but it's still a great change, which I'm sure will be appreciated by those who just want to stick to vanilla Minecraft.
This update also includes more than just the warm and cold pigs. There are also new ambient features in the forest biomes, such as wildflowers, falling leaves, and leaf litter on the ground, making a crunching sound when you walk over it.
"On your next expeditions into forests, dark forests, and wooded badlands, listen out for the crunch of leaves underfoot," the blog post says. "Leaf litter makes a rustling sound when you walk through it and can be used to decorate other blocks. In meadows, birch forests, and old-growth birch forests, you will instead find wildflowers. These yellow and white flowers can be crafted into dye and have four growth stages that speed up with bonemeal. Place them at different angles to have your builds bloom in different patterns!"
Ambient features like these are one of the silent heroes in Minecraft. It's what makes this game so peaceful and cosy (provided you're not playing on hardcore), and it has always been one of my favourite elements of the game. So crunchy leaves are a huge win in my books.
Lastly, the loadstone's recipe is changing, making it easier to build the beacon that'll lead you back to your base, so you'll never get lost foraging or exploring again. The new recipe just calls for an iron ingot and eight chiseled bricks.
Last September, during Minecraft Live, Mojang announced that it would be approaching updates differently from there on out. Instead of releasing new features as part of a massive update that would be announced during Minecraft Live, the decision was made to scrap these and release updates holistically throughout the year.
I was initially quite sad to hear this news as I've always seen Minecraft Live as a milestone of my gaming year, and I fondly remember the excitement and anticipation of waiting to see what the new theme would be—Caves and Cliffs is still my all-time favourite update. But since this news, we've received a whole new biome, The Pale Garden, and a new mob, The Creaking, as well as this new update with the ambient pigs. So I'm actually starting to prefer the little and often method, if only because we're getting fun little features to explore on a more regular basis.
