Admittedly, spinoffs haven’t had the biggest impact on the sandbox best-seller so far, aside from a Minecraft mob vote that nearly got an Iceologer similar to the Minecraft Dungeons enemy into the game. Minecraft Legends’ strategy concept may lead to a variety of mob concepts that shine in a sandbox context, however. It would make sense if the Minecraft Legends protagonist can expand the Overworld’s army partially by crafting golems, so maybe these golems or other handmade utility mobs will appear in Minecraft, giving players a new way to populate their settlements with helpful artificial neighbors.
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Minecraft Deserves More Utility Mobs
At the moment, Minecraft only has a couple of mobs that players can intentionally create as helpers. Iron golems are likely Minecraft’s most famous example; although they can spawn naturally in villages, players can spend their iron to build a bodyguard as well. Mojang has also created snow golems as player companions, and although they’re less useful as protectors than their iron counterparts, they can be very helpful as an endless source of snow. Sadly, the list of player-made mobs ends there. Minecraft features lots of friendly, helpful creatures of other kinds, such as the allay, but the golem list remains short.
Minecraft Legends seems like the ideal opportunity to expand the list of handmade mobs. In order to protect the Overworld, players could see themselves creating all kinds of new mobs with distinct uses and behavior, from coal golems that light fires to amethyst golems that create razor-sharp terrain to ward off the piglin Nether army. The Minecraft Legends reveal trailer already suggests that players can build structures, so it stands to reason that players might get opportunities to build a few new mobs too. If that’s the case, then some of these mobs should find their way into Minecraft.
Just about any new kind of golem or other craftable mob could be a great addition to Minecraft. A coal golem could keep the player’s furnaces stoked, an animated scarecrow could guard areas by frightening hostile mobs, and so on. The copper golem, another defeated Minecraft mob vote candidate, proved that there are still lots of creative niches worth filling with handmade utility mobs. Minecraft Legends provides Mojang with an opportunity to experiment with this type of creature, so hopefully it leans into the golem archetype in order to flesh out the Overworld army and test concepts for Minecraft itself.
Now that Minecraft’s Wild Update has added the allay, players might want to avoid holding their breath for more utility mobs in the near future, but it’s entirely possible that Mojang a little more emphasis on the idea after it finishes Minecraft Legends. Spinoffs are a great chance for Mojang to think about the Minecraft IP differently. Action-strategy, dungeon-crawling, or any other genre could push Mojang towards designs that it may not have thought of so quickly when focusing on Minecraft as a sandbox game. While there’s a case to be made for keeping many of the spinoff’s ideas separate to preserve its distinct identity, Minecraft deserves to share in the fruits of its labor by gaining new mobs inspired by the strategy model.
Minecraft Legends releases in 2023 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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