Play Tricky Trials on June 13

Today I’ve got news that’s as smashing as the mace, as exciting as the trial chambers, and as rewarding as the vault. The Tricky Trials Update’s official release date is June 13, which means in just a few short weeks you can play with all the new update features on both Minecraft: Java Edition and Bedrock Edition!

Discover the trial chambers

Trial chambers are a new structure releasing as part of the update that are filled with traps, tricks, and treasures! No-one knows who built these sprawling copper structures (or if they do, they didn’t tell me!), but we do know what you’ll find inside them: a slew of new challenges, mobs to do battle with, rewards to claim, and blocks to build with.

Meet the mobs that lurk there

Wander down the oxidized corridors of the trial chambers far enough and you’re sure to see a trial spawner light up, spilling out hordes of hostile mobs! If you’re lucky, you might even meet two new hostile mobs that call the trial chambers home: the breeze and the bogged. The breeze is a mob that not only boasts envious eyebrows, but also a powerful projectile attack that can send its foes flying. This mischievous mob loves to leap dizzying circles around players and is hard to pin down with arrows. If you want to best a breeze, you’ll have to be quick on your feet, and even quicker with your sword-slashing! Keep your eyes peeled for the bogged too, a poisonous skeleton that’s as happy in the trial chambers as it is in muddy Overworld swamps. Clad in rags and covered in moss and mushrooms (cute!), this fearsome foe will do everything in its poisonous power to make your trial as challenging as possible. Can someone please remind me to add milk to my trial chamber preparation list?

Adventure solo or with friends

With danger lurking around every corner, and chambers filled with traps, it might be a good idea to team up and venture into the trial chambers with friends. (Not sure how to get the gang together? Find out how to play multiplayer on either Bedrock Edition or Java Edition). Sure, the challenges might scale in chaotic-ness (definitely a word) with more players, and the fights will still prove a challenge, but you know what they say! Friends that stay together, slay together all get rewards from the vault!

Reap the rewards

The vault is a special new block added as part of the Tricky Trials Update that rewards every player with precious, precious loot in exchange for a trial key! Unlike chests, which can be emptied by one player in a Realm (usually one of my brothers…), the vault rewards every player in your adventuring party that unlocks it with a trial key once! But what do you need to do to clasp your blocky hands around that key? It’s quite straightforward: defeat all the mobs from the spawner. Doesn’t sound too hard, does it? In fact, if you’re sitting there thinking it sounds easy, then fear not! This update has something for you, too.

Level up your challenge

If you’re the kind of person that sees a bottle labelled “Ominous” and thinks “yum!”, then you’re going to really love ominous trials. The new ominous trial feature is part of a larger system of opt-in challenges that also include village raids – perfect for players that like to sprinkle their Overworld adventures with a healthy dose of extra peril. To trigger an ominous trial or a village raid, you need to find an ominous bottle and drink from it to gain the optimistically titled Bad Omen effect. Ominous bottles can be dropped by raid captains or looted from vaults. Then it’s up to you which ominous path you wish to take next: run into a village to trigger an illager raid (sorry!) or venture into the trial chambers to transform your Bad Omen effect into a Trial Omen effect and trigger an ominous trial. Ominous trials are like regular trials, only harder. With the Trial Omen in effect, you’ll find that the trial spawners around you will start spewing out tougher mobs (with even tougher armor!) as well as potions and projectiles. Battle on until the spawner resets and you might be rewarded for your bravery with an ominous trial key! These unlock ominous vaults (there’s a theme in the naming here), which reward you with rarer loot – like the heavy core, a component used to craft the new mace!

Smash your foes, or leap to victory

The mace is a new weapon coming as part of the Tricky Trials Update, and it’s smashing. Crafted using a breeze rod (dropped by breezes) and a heavy core (a new item only found in ominous vaults), you’ll feel more powerful than a charged creeper with this new weapon in your hand. Use its smash attack while falling and knock back your enemies. The best part is you’ll feel like a blocky superhero while doing it – because the longer you fall, the stronger the mace’s smash. The mace also has three unique enchantments to make it even more powerful. The Density enchantment lets you deal even more damage when dropping down and smashing your foes, while the Breach enchantment lets your mace penetrate the armor of even the strongest hostile mobs (gold-clad zombies, I’m coming for you!). You can even evoke the breeze’s leaping abilities with the Wind Charge enchantment, which launches you high in the air after landing a successful smash attack (making it easier for you to chain your attacks!). If you prefer flying to fighting, then you’ll want to defeat a breeze, and get your hands on the wind charge! The wind charge launches a powerful gust of air that'll not only deal damage on contact, but also send nearby foes flying. If that wasn't enough reason to battle a breeze, did you know you can even use the knockback from the wind charge to boost your jumping ability? Wheeee!

Bring a piece of the trial chambers home with you

What’s a holiday into a hostile-mob filled trial chamber without a few souvenirs? Decorate your base (or your armor) with a memory of your trickiest trial chamber experience with the new armor trims, pottery sherds, or banners coming as part of the update. Whether you want to show everyone you meet that you’ve bested the breeze by sporting the flow or bolt amor trims (found as rewards in the vault!), or you want to declare yourself as being firmly on #TeamBreeze by covering your base in the guster banner, there are more ways than ever to bring a piece of your adventure home with you. Personally I’m excited to update my decorated pot collection with not one, not two, but three new pottery sherds!

Unwind from your challenge with auto-crafting

After all that excitement you’ll likely have an inventory full of new items and more than a few maces to craft. That’s where the crafter comes in, because this powerful new block uses redstone for automated crafting. Pick a recipe, add stacks of ingredients, supply a redstone pulse, and tada! In just a few ticks, your auto-crafted item will pop out into the Minecraft world.

Build with new decorative blocks

Alongside the copper bulb, a redstone-toggled light source that dims and brightens depending on its oxidization levels, there are also a host of new tuff and copper blocks to use for building that long-overdue base extension. Wax lyrical about copper thanks to the copper trapdoor, copper door, copper grate, and chiseled copper block, which can all oxidize, plus be waxed and scraped. Tuff blocks now also have a family of craftable blocks, so you can chisel them, polish them, and turn them into stairs, slabs, bricks, or walls! Bring a bit of the trial chambers home with you – or better yet, relocate your base into the trial chambers themselves!* *Caution: your neighbors might be hostile.

Decorate your base with 20 new paintings

There are also twenty new paintings coming to Minecraft as part of the Tricky Trials update. These include five by Mojang Studios’ very own Game Artist Sarah Boeving, and 15 by Kristoffer Zetterstand, the artist behind such Minecraft classics as “Skull on Fire” and “Pigscene”! These are three of the new Minecraft paintings: Cotan (left), Fern (middle), and Sunflowers (right) all by Kristoffer Zetterstrand. Here are two more of the new Minecraft paintings: Baroque (left), and Humble (right), all by Mojang Studios' Game Artist Sarah Boeving.

Are you ready to play Tricky Trials?

And what should you do after you’ve adventured, fought, defeated, triumphed, jumped, smashed, built, decorated, and crafted? Go in hunt of another trial chamber! Each trial chamber structure is randomly generated, meaning you’ll face a different layout, different foes, and different traps in each one you find! Get ready to play the Tricky Trials Update in Minecraft: out June 13.