I've no idea if any of us can run it, but the RTX update is available for all now.

That's half the fun!

My PC ain't RTX spec, unfortunately. Are the new consoles getting a ray tracing update?

Fingers crossed for somewhere down the road, it'd be really dumb to ignore consoles that have the capability (to some extent).

In the meantime I'll make do with PC shaders. And speaking of, I was messing around on Java over the weekend and got the fabled BSL shaders running - and holy shit, the game was so damn beautiful it brought tears to my tired old eyes. Will have a go at a couple of simple builds next weekend and see how they look.

Genuinely bowled over by how beautiful this game can be.

Ah is that why?

The only block that looks better is netherbrick. I don't know how much difference there is from previous base, but that shader we were using was like Minecraft HD.

Built a super simple lil house in Java creative mode. As a controller user it's not the simplest thing to play, and I'm relying on Steam's Big Picture controller software to emulate m&k, which it does a decent job of tbf.

The results are well worth any initial awkwardness though, and playing this game with sticks while lounging out on a sofa and looking up at the BSL shaders doing their realtime shadow, volumetric light, and ambient occlusion magic on a big TV is something else. The pics really don't do it justice.

Took a trip to the Nether to explore the Basalt Delt and Warped Forest biome to see if I could realistically build a base there. I'd kinda forgotten how dangerous the Nether was since the update and it didn't end well. 

My enchanted diamond chestplate got destroyed and I lost my totem of undying, but I now have this really cool Fake Death emote...

End raid, anyone? Or tomorrow afternoon, s'all good.

Edit: Cheers for the End blasting session, Dante. We'll get that Elytra next time!

The month long Minecraft Community Celebration ends this week (Friday?), so if you haven't jumped on the marketplace and grabbed all the free cosmetic items and maps, make sure to do so.

Great vid regarding modern city planning in Minecraft. Might be worth a look if you haven't already seen it, Dante. Most of it's a bit beyond regular survival building, but there are some great tips in here. This guys other vids are all worth a look as well.



It does seem like most of these large modern city projects are done in creative, and with large build teams, but I'm sure this kinda thing could be scaled to whatever suits you.

Was great to get some more time in with Beano yesterday. After getting tooled up we took the Nether road to the desert village and the savannah for a look around, then took a winding river trip back through the jungle. Love that river system around our base. 

Just before Beano jumped on I witnessed something completely new to me. Was walking along, minding my own business, when lightning struck a horse in front of me. The horse transformed into a skeleton horse ridden by a skeleton archer with enchanted bow and helmet, then three more spawned around him and they all began to attack. 

It was such a cool and unexpected moment, and I just wish I'd been able to clip it. After my initial wide-eyed amazement I took down the archers (and unfortunately one of the horses by accident), and I now have three pet skeleton horses to add to my stables. How great is that?

Also, ray tracing has indeed been released for the masses on Bedrock. Providing you have an RTX card.

I've had a couple of weeks off myself, will get back on this weekend. I've got plans.

So the Realm seemingly shat itself yesterday, and replaced the world with a brand new one. After spending hours trying to upload a backup, I gave up and came back to it this morning. The backups from that day before the world replaced itself are gone, so the latest one I have is from 23:35 the day before. It still won't work from PC, so I had to go on the Xbox to be able to replace it.

Annoyingly this is before I moved a load of villagers and switched their jobs. I don't know if anything else is lost, but unfortunately there isn't much else I can do.

I'll have a look in a few mins, but thanks for sorting that out, Dante. That's two file corruptions in a weeks or so now?

Edit: Yup, Everything I've built in the river is still there.

Here it is lads! 1.17, or as you might have heard it called, the Caves and Cliffs Update is out!



Part one you say? I guess there's so much stuff they split it in two. So we get the caves now and the cliffs later? No? We don't get either of them? SO why's it called that? Because Marketing? FFS. 

All right, what do we actually get then? Watch this video to find out? FFS.



So because I love you, I've spent far fucking longer than I intended deleting some chunks from the game. Why far longer? Because Bedrock is Bedrock. Anyway, I cleaned up the edges of the map, and then took off a fair bit of the top, and most of the ice region to the east past the pillager outpost.

I've left the portal at the top, the ocean monument, the stronghold and the portal where the Basalt Delta is, but deleted a fair amount of chunks around them, so there are some quick ways to get to new blocks.