Since September 2023, Minecraft has shifted its major update strategy to twice-annual “game drops” that add new mobs, blocks, and items to the game. With the latest Minecraft Live event, we now know what 2025’s first game drop, Spring Into Life, contains. Get ready for a bunch of animal variants and some really cool new plants being added.
Starting with plants, players are getting something they’ve wanted for quite a while. After first being teased a number of years ago, firefly bushes are being added to the game. The bushes will grow in swampy biomes and near water, offering the twinkling lights of fireflies to add a little brightness to the night. Additionally, per Mojang, you’ll be able to place the bushes, which are plant blocks, underneath other blocks to make your builds shine.
Other plant-based additions:
- Leaf litter
- Falling leaves
- Dry grass
- Cactus flowers
- Bushes
When it comes to the best part of Minecraft, all of the animal friends you make along the way, the number of types is about to get a lot bigger. Pigs, cows, and chickens are each getting two new variants: cold and warm. The new ones will be found in cold and warm biomes, respectively. Meaning, you can find a warm variant cow in the desert, while the snowy plains biome will be home to the cold version. So if you’re trying to catalog every animal that roams around in Minecraft in some sort of massive zoo, you’ve got some work cut out for you.
Other updates from the first game drop include:
- Sheep spawning: Brown sheep spawn in sandy biomes, black sheet in chilly ones
- Wolf variant sounds: There are now seven wolf “personalities,” characterized by the sounds they make, from “cute to grumpy”
- Ambient desert sounds
- New lodestone recipe: They require iron ingots now, rather than netherite
- Cartographers sell maps to biomes and villages
- Wandering traders sell good for less and have more they will buy and sell
- Spawn eggs in creative move have been redesigned to look like the mob they spawn
The first game drop of 2025 will be available March 25. Game Drop 2, which was also revealed during Minecraft Live, does not have a release date yet.
