Minecraft's beta versions now offer adorable hot and cold pig variants

Plus a crafting recipe update

Minecraft is the best PC game, according to me and the RPS staff who dare not cross me. I played it for three hours today and, among the many build challenges and adventures, a small story formed around a baby pig. We named him Porky, we caged him as our pet, and in an unfortunate accident, we watched as he fell to his death from the sky island that was our home. RPS in peace, Porky.

How many befriended pigs like Porky have there been across the last several hundred hours of play? I'm not sure - dozens, hundreds - but soon such pigs might have a new form. After 15 years, Mojang are adding new types of pig to Minecraft.

Specifically, it's getting two new pig variants. The cold pig is coated with fur and will be found in cold and frozen biomes; the warm pig will found in the sandy biomes and is rust-brown. Mojang are calling it the "warm pig" because they know that, fundamentally, all pigs are hot.

These cute porkchops are part of a handful of minor updates coming to Minecraft, which are all currently available to test in the Java Edition (and only some available to test in Bedrock).

Forest biomes are also now getting falling leaves, which will flitter from the tree canopy and leave leaf litter on the ground. Leaf litter can be used to decorate blocks and rustles when you walk through it. In meadows and birch forests, you'll also find wildflowers, which have multiple stages of growth and can be gathered to craft into dye. Only the falling leaves are present in Bedrock preview and beta currently.

Lastly, the Lodestone crafting recipe is being amended. This block, which compasses point towards to help players find their way home, previously required eight chiseled stone bricks and a netherite ingot to make. Netherite isn't easy to come by in Minecraft, requiring a long and lucky visit to the Nether to obtain Ancient Debris. Given that the Lodestone is meant to help players with the simple task of not getting lost near their home, that seems a bit daft, so a Lodestone can now be crafted with a simple iron ingot in place of the netherite instead. This turns a late-game item into something early or mid, which makes more sense.

All of these changes are small, but god, I play so much of this game now. I am pumped for there to be leaves on the ground. My hobbit homes are going to look so quaint with leaves on the ground outside.