Minecraft’s new beta version showcases Allay, Deep Dark sculk blocks, Darkness effect

Mojang’s new Minecraft beta preview 1.18.30.22/23 for Bedrock edition has given fans a look at some highly anticipated features coming to the game soon. These new features are some of the first of Minecraft’s The Wild Update centered around new biomes and mobs.

Allay

One of the biggest additions being previewed in this beta version is the new allay mob. The allay was the winner of the Minecraft Live community vote in 2021 and beat out two other potential mobs.

The main purpose of an allay is to help players gather resources. After you give an allay an item, this little flying creature will hold the item in its hands and go out to gather more of it. If players place a note block near them, the allay will return there to drop what they find as well as occasionally hanging around to dance.

Allays seem to be a rare creature and, as of now, can only be found in cages around pillager outposts or inside of rare woodland mansions. Everything Mojang has highlighted about the allay thus far can be read here.

Deep Dark

A terrifying new area that will soon be home to the fearsome warden, the deep dark is a biome that generates deep underground below y level zero. It will also eventually be home to a new type of structure containing precious loot called ancient cities.

In beta preview version 1.18.30.22/23, various sculk blocks located within the deep dark are featured. These blocks and what each of them does is listed below.

• Sculk, which is a decorative block.
• Sculk catalyst, a block that will bloom and generate other sculk features when a mob is killed or dies within eight blocks of it.
• Sculk vein, a block that sculk catalysts can generate in their blooming process.
• Sculk shrieker, a block that will shriek when a player steps on it and summon the warden when it is added into the game.
• Sculk sensor, which recognizes any vibrations located within nine blocks around it. This includes any events that make noise such as mining, using an elytra, or jumping unless the player is sneaking. The vibrations detected by the sculk sensor are also passed to the sculk shrieker, thus summoning the warden.

Darkness Effect

This new effect makes it so that players can barely see anything and can currently be applied by sculk shriekers. When the Warden joins the game, it too will be able to apply this effect to players. Because of this, light sources will be essential in successfully navigating the deep dark and taking on the warden.

Full notes for everything included in beta preview version 1.18.30.22/23 are available below, courtesy of Mojang.

Allay

• Allay can collect the same items from the world as it holds in its hand
• If an Allay holds an item it got from a player, it will follow that player
• The Allay is able to drop items at nearby Note Blocks
• When playing a Note Block near an Allay, that Note Block becomes the Allays favourite Note Block for 30 seconds, and the Allay will attempt to drop off items at the Note Block rather than at the player
• If an Allay has items in its inventory, it will attempt to give them to its owner
• The Allay sometimes spawns in cages next to Pillager Outposts (similar to Iron Golem), and inside Woodland Mansions

 Known issues

• The Allay may get stuck in a loop collecting and delivering one item from its inventory, especially when similar block types are used (such as regular and red sand)

Deep Dark

Sculk

Please note: The Warden hasn’t made its way into the game yet, but it’s getting ready for its big debut.

• Changed Sculk Catalyst block to match recent redesign which is described below:
  • A mysteriously soul-emitting block that blooms when mobs die within an 8-block radius
  • Mobs that perish in the presence of the catalyst will not drop their experience
  • Instead, a bubbling charge will be created at the place the mob perished
  • This charge from mobs will spread through Sculk Veins and Sculk blocks in random directions until they find a valid substrate that they can convert into Sculk
    • The value of the charge is directly proportional to the amount of XP the perished mob would have dropped, and each time a block is converted into Sculk, it will remove 1 value from that charge
    • This charge in the Sculk blocks and Sculk Veins will eventually decay, but it will decay much, much slower in the close vicinity of the Sculk Catalyst, and much faster away from its host
    • If the charge decays 4 blocks away from the catalyst, it has a chance of growing a Sculk Sensor or a Sculk Shrieker
    • Charges and their values also merge when they move to the same position
• Made some changes to Sculk Sensors to be at parity with Java Edition
  • They now make no activation sound when waterlogged
  • Vibrations are now also occluded by Wool blocks

Darkness Effect

• A new mob effect unique to the Warden and Sculk Shrieker, which will afflict players with the effect when nearby
• Lowers the gamma down at an equivalent of “Moody” while having this effect
• In periodic pulses, will lower the overall brightness of the world so that the darkness creeps up against light sources
• When the Warden is around, torches will be more important than ever!

Features and bug fixes

Updated Touch Controls

• Enables preview of new touch control schemes for players on mobile devices
• These can be enabled by navigating to Settings > Touch > Enable New Touch Control Schemes
• Please let us know what you think here.

Gameplay

• Changed the spawning logic for Iron Golems and Cats to make it easier for them to spawn in roofed areas, like underground villages (MCPE-142292)
• Scaffolding can no longer be placed without support on y=0 (MCPE-150765)
• Fire that exists before the Fire Tick game rule is enabled will continue to spread again (MCPE-140396)

Vanilla Parity

• Shulkers now have a chance to spawn another Shulker when hit by a Shulker projectile (MCPE-104826)
• When a mob picks up an item, the item can be seen slightly “pulled” towards the mob right as it picks it up. This matches the behavior of Java Edition
• Blaze Fireball will deal knockback on impact
• Acacia Trees now grow Leaves on every branch below Y = 0 (MCPE-151386)
• Mobs can no longer spawn on Campfires (MCPE-152770)

Blocks

• Glow Lichen does not generate hanging in the air inside Strongholds anymore (MCPE-123448)
• Glow Lichen now correctly checks for the face of the block they are attached to be full
• Glow Lichen can now be attached to Leaves
• Blocks such as Glow Lichen, Torches, and Redstone can no longer be placed on or attached to Brewing Stands 
• Blocks such as Glow Lichen, Torches, and Redstone can now be placed on or attached to Trapdoors, depending on their state
• Azaleas and Lily Pads are now broken by flowing water (MCPE-152040)

Commands

• Fixed an issue that would cause commands to affect players in all dimensions (MCPE-152218)

Graphical

• Fixed lighting bug where light level 1 incorrectly dropped to 0 when placing blocks in light level 1 with multiple light sources (MCPE-151266)
• Sculk Sensors and Magma Blocks are now visible in the darkness

Items

• Observers placed facing Double Chests no longer send out a Redstone pulse when reloading/re-entering a chunk

User Interface

• Fixed a bug where the “Invite” button was disabled incorrectly for clients
• Added Seed Templates to the advanced tab in the new Create New World screen (MCPE-151930)

Villagers

• Villagers are no longer able to trade while on fire

Technical updates

Components

• The trade screen will no longer open if the owner of the “minecraft:economy_trade_table” component is on fire

General

• Changed block (Cactus, ChorusFlower, Crop, Grass, PointedDripstone, Sapling) tick rates to match Java Edition (MCPE-145612)
• Random tick positions will no longer be chosen below the world

Molang

• Clarified documentation for query.is_item_name_any that the slot index is required when there is more than one slot, i.e. the hotbar

Technical experimental

GameTest Framework

• EntityType
  • Added read-only property id: string- The identifier for the entity type
• EntityTypes
  • Added function get(identifier: string): EntityType- Returns the corresponding EntityType for the given identifier
  • Added function getAll(): EntityTypeIterator- Returns an iterator containing all registered entity types
• MinecraftEntityTypes
  • Provides EntityType constants for each standard Minecraft entity type

 General

• Removed BlockImmovable, BlockBreakOnPushand BlockOnlyPistonPush components from data-driven blocks