It’s been years since I’ve played Minecraft regularly, but I still really enjoy it when new features and creatures appear in the game. It definitely means that the ever-creative Minecraft players will come up with unexpected ways to use them. The latest Minecraft snapshot adds some more parts of the upcoming Caves & Cliffs update, including the beautiful glowing squids and their glowing ink.
Mojang’s update notes for snapshot 21w03A explain what’s possible with the new glow squid and their ink. They’re meant to live in deep dark caves, but Mojang says they won’t spawn naturally in this snapshot. For now, you need to create a creative world and use spawn eggs to summon them.
Of course I found a dark little pond and knocked down a handful of them and they are quite beautiful. They even make a sweet little tinkling sound when floating around.
The shiny new squids don’t shine in the new update either. Glow lichen has also been added, a plant light source that can be found and harvested with scissors in caves.
When you kill a glowing squid, they drop glowing ink sacs that can be used to make the text on signs visible from afar. Apparently it can even be colored for some extra flair. I’m already interested in seeing the glowing displays players come up with.
As always, Mojang is heading towards their Caves & Cliffs update by creating new additions in snapshots for players to try out ahead of time. In other snapshots so far, they’ve added copper and amethyst blocks as well as those axolotls that everyone is so excited about. Beware, axolotls attack glowing squid, so make sure they don’t hang around.
If you want to meet the squid yourself, load the Minecraft launcher and choose ‘last snapshot’ from your installation tab. It should be labeled 21w03A.