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Deep Dark Experimental Snapshot Feedback

This week we released a side snapshot for Java containing a work in progress version of the Deep Dark feature set, including the Deep Dark biome, Ancient City structures, Sculk blocks and...THE WARDEN!

As well as your general feedback, the team also prepared some questions that they would love to hear your thoughts on after playing:  

  • Was the Warden challenging? If so, what did you enjoy / not enjoy about your encounters with the Warden? 
  • Describe any encounters you had with the Warden - did they feel enjoyable? 
  • Were you able to figure out how to sneak around the Warden? 
  • Were you able to loot chests in the Ancient Cities without being killed by the Warden? 
  • Describe how the darkness effect felt 
  • In your encounters with the Warden, how scared did you feel?  

For more details on in this snapshot and how to access it, check out the blog post over on Minecraft.net.

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  • 1
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    Something odd that happened was with the way the ancient city generated in my world. It seemed to generate in a big, dripstone cave, so giant dripstone stalagmites ended up replacing parts of the structure and blocking hallways. I'm not sure if this is intentional.

    Also, despite no mobs supposedly being able to spawn in the deep dark, there were monsters everywhere, and they ended up getting killed by a warden and spreading more sculk. My concern for this is that sculk might build up too much without player interaction.

    As for the warden itself, its behavior is rather strange... It'd often hyperfixate on mobs on the other side of walls, and awkwardly stare at the wall for long periods of time. 

    I love where it's all going, but I do believe there's some issues with generation and behavior. 

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    I hope Warden can destroy blocks. Example: Stone Herbal Stone Leaf etc

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    I wanted to do a video on the snapshot, but didn't have time to edit out all the screaming and crying in fear. This is absolutely terrifying, and its absolutely amazing! The Warden brings fear back into the game, not just any fear, the same fear from when I was a kid surrounded by zombies and creeper in the caves back in 1.5.

    I do feel like the Warden should break blocks, it would stop the player from towering too high if its close enough, and it would make the mob even scarier. I feel the loot in the new structure is very well balanced with the strength of the Warden, but its very easy to avoid by breaking shriekers.

    In the normal caves this wouldn't be a problem, cause they often spawn in clusters of multiple shriekers, but in the cities finding more than 1 is rare. I think it would be cool if breaking the shrieker could somehow wake up the Warden, like sending vibrations through the ground that wakes it up, or make it shriek as you're in the process of breaking it.

    Given the new horror aspect of these features, it feels weird to not have some kind of jumpscare, although that might be pushing it too far from the minecraft feeling.

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    (Part 2) Bringing a few stacks of eggs to spam chickens in the deep dark turns the whole thing on its head.
    -In addition to the above, simply sneaking away from an encounter is also extremely simple. And in the case of navigable terrain, the player is faster in full sprint even if a chase breaks out. While the Warden will chase for a long time, if there's a two block tunnel or an aquifer nearby, escape is quite possible.
    -Systematically breaking the sculk network is quite straightforward (if time consuming) with pick or explosives, evading the Warden every time it shows up. Smaller sculk patches can be neutralized without any aggro
    2. Overall I enjoyed the Warden interactions. I'm not honestly looking for an absolutely terrifying experience, so I do enjoy all the ways I could cheese around it, but at the same time, it felt a bit too easy.
    3. Yes, see above.
    4. Have yet to try to loot them in earnest. Current reward seems a bit light though.
    5. The darkness is honestly a paragon of the whole experience, and in my opinion the one thing that seems just about perfect right now. Not being able to see where the Warden is unless it's too close for comfort is definitely unsettling. The whole dynamic of an area changes completely under the effect, even if you're on the surface in broad daylight. It's an integral part of the experience as is. Nerfing it would make it ineffective, buffing it would make you straight-up blind. (Continued)

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    So, to begin :
    - The structure looks sick. Loving it, new enchant is somewhat cool and the Warden has good animation. I love the way the Warden arrive and leave.
    Finally, the Darkness effect is a great addition.
    Now the possible improvements :
    - The first thing coming to my mind is the loot, I think it's Not worth it at all to go in these cities. So, having a goal could be cool!
    - The Warden is scary, like very scary... when you've got no stuff. However, it's super easy to avoid it. A lava bucket, a tower of 4 blocks or hiding in the walls. I think that the difficulty of the Warden could be improved in a technical pov, what I mean by that is that it could have more ways to attack the players than just hitting him? So, it's a fun and really scary encounter, easy to understand the situation (to be silent ...) but it's somewhat easy.

    > I think that it needs to be A FLYING ENNEMY! It would avoid players to tower and make things more spooky and challenging ! Finally, a little and annoying ennemy, like a silverfish but Warden like?
    Because one of the weakness of the Warden is being too big.
    To make it shorter, I think it's great for a first snapshot but it needs to have higher stakes, to be more challenging, more interesting. Better loot and harder Warden ! :D Thank you for reading :)

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    (Part 3)

    6. I have to say that for the purposes of testing I played from a Creative setup, not true survival where I'd go through the arduous process of collecting precious resources that I'd fear losing. Therefore the whole experience would probably be much more unnerving than it was. I was a bit nervous, but felt rather safe with the arsenal of responses at my disposal. Being able to easily whack the Warden to death without fear of retaliation takes a lot out of the fear factor. To be honest, as it stands right now, I'm more scared of creeper surprises near lava. I can see how the Warden would be terrifying to a new uninformed player who casually struts into the Deep Dark, but otherwise it doesn't do much. With the DD being mob-free and the Warden dynamics being very specific, the whole experience is far too predictable. Only summoned by specific player actions, only via a specific chain of blocks, takes a specific amount of time to show up, only detects specific things (noise), and can be avoided or defeated virtually risk-free using very simple strats.

    A huge amount of the fear factor in Minecraft survival comes from unpredictability. You might be able to sprint around at night on flat terrain without much fear, while digging straight down into a cavern full of monsters can result in needing a change of underpants. Same with creeper surprises on high ledges or near lava, or realizing that a ghast has come to admire your nether parkour skills. (Continued)

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    Was the Warden challenging? If so, what did you enjoy / not enjoy about your encounters with the Warden? 

    • It was awesome! The ambience is incredible, the sound design and darkness makes being hunted by a Warden feel thrilling and horrifying. Since facing one in combat by brute force is impossible, it made me feel like I had to avoid them at all costs.

    Describe any encounters you had with the Warden - did they feel enjoyable? 

    • I just played survival and made my way to the coords of the nearest Deep Dark biome. It felt so haunting to stumble upon the biome like that in the wild, that was a great experience.

    Feedback:

    • Whenever you're near a sensor (<10 blocks), if the sensor gets activated by anything, it'll trigger nearby shriekers, even if you yourself are silent. This got frustrating; bats and zombies would summon a Warden by no fault of my own. Feels like an inconsistency.
    • Some of the magic died when I realized how easy it was for Wardens to get stuck or to avoid them. At least on Hard difficulty, there should be a way for Wardens to dig up/down to you. 
    • Honestly, the Deep Dark should be a lot more common. Like, double or triple it. I understand you want the experience to be special, but only one occurrence per 3000 blocks is overkill and a huge shame. The biome is way too rare currently, especially as it can be very small. I want to wander the world and always wonder what's below me, but from experience, the world didn't feel any different anywhere but in the Deep Dark.
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    (Part 4) This unpredictability and suddenness with which situations can change counts for a massive amount of the fear of Minecraft. The core philosophy behind the DD seems to intentionally steer completely away from that. This is really nice in its own way because it provides a very novel kind of experience to Minecraft. However, it also means that it has to go the extra mile to reinstate that fear. The dynamic nature of Minecraft that normally poses threats to the player instead becomes their most powerful weapon in the DD. To address this, some changes definitely need to be made to how the Warden operates. I'm no game designer, but these are some things that I think should be strongly considered:

    -Attack radius. I believe it is an ABSOLUTE must for what the Warden is meant to be that it can return melee attacks from any distance and angle that a player can hit it. When you can turn the Warden into a big cow with lots of HP by placing three blocks or digging up two, there is no survival horror. I think it would be really cool if the Warden could do an overhead arm swipe attack (even better with high knockback) to deal with towerers, for example.

    -Fluids handling. Should be able to swim or something similar, maybe immune to fire/lava too

    -Not getting paralyzed by multiple mobs. Either prioritize player sounds or deal with things one at a time

    -Summoning sequence is long, lots of time to react

    -Some sort of abilities to hunt down players that are towering/tunneling are a must

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    "Was it challenging?" No, a pillar or a two block tall hole in a wall was sadly enough to be safe and the ruins provide it already. I extra crafted a set of iron doors and some wodden ones. Only later I learned that the warden is 3 block tall and no doors are needed in a 2 block hole. Also even with the head space the warden is not able to break doors of any kind. That makes a zombie in hard difficulty way more dangerous then the warden.
    A range attack while roaring maybe a pull effect would be nice. For doors the warden should bend down and be able to crawl into a 2 block space while breaking doors. People who want to escape still have the trapdoor solution and hide in a one block space.

    "what did you enjoy" the warden has a present even more then a wither. It demands immediate attention and with the darkness effect it pulls the rug under you to orientate yourself.

    "sneak around" took some moments but the warden started to hunt down some skeletons and bats, so I was able to sneak away with my loot.

    "Were you able to loot chests in the Ancient Cities without being killed?" Yes, sneaking, grab and run and bats provided distraction till I was back in my wall hole to hide.

    "Describe how the darkness effect felt" I love this effect wanted this kind of effect for some map types. Hope we can scale the area with the amplifier in the release.
    Also big thank you, for the option to remove the pulse.

    "how scared did you feel?" less then a Alien:Isolation but "nicely" scared. Good sounds.

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    When spectating the Warden it should have a custom shader (like when you spectate a creeper it becomes green and pixelated) perhaps it could just be a black screen cause the warden is blind.

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    I think any mob spawners (mineshaft spawners and dungeon spawners) shouldn't be able to be there in the deep dark. I definitely also think it would be cool if there was an overwhelming amount of sculk all over the caves in the deep dark, and not just little patches distributed throughout the caves. The warden also can just be outran if you keep sprint jumping in a straight line. Aquifers shouldn't be able to merge into the ancient cities either.

    I also would like to give a suggestion, the deep dark should be more crammed in the caves, less open space in some areas. The thought of being stealthy in tight spaces and maybe potentially being chased in tight spaces definitely limits options and would help with the fear factor of only focusing on running in a tight area.

    Anyways, great work, keep it up with the warden! Can't wait to see the final results of this.

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    Hey Mojang,

    You did a great job but,

    Deep dark biomes are very small, and have very very little skulk,

    I imagine it like very dark wih skulk everywhere,

    Its a normal cave, with very little skulk,

    The warden its very easy to defeat.

    The darkness effect its cool but you need to get it better.

    The loot its not great,

    I think you should put a unic item for the cities. and change the enchantment

    Thank you :))

     

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    Warden should be able to outrun the player, I mean sprint jumping of course, and towering up must be countered somehow. The player should be in an utter feeling of fear, hopelessness and despair when they make a mistake. Also about sculk shriekers, they seem to be not working sometimes and it takes WAAYY too long for Warden to spawn. When the player has a hoe, it becomes trivially easy to locate and destroy the shrieker before it summons Warden, even if there are multiple shriekers present in the area, preventing the summoning is easy.

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    Please give Warden ability to break blocks when warden is angry. Breaking block has to be his ability as he dig up and down the ground when spawn and despawn. So please, without block breaking ability warden is no fear for players.

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    Warden didn't notice the sound of anvil falling from sky. But the anvil makes a "dang" sound when it hits the ground. I personally think this is a bug that will kill warden's pleasure.

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    In the Nether, when applying the darkness affect, nether fog is removed for a short amount of time as the darkness "closes in". This means that the Warden can be exploited to locate fortresses, bastions, and other nether features with ease. I assume this is not intentional.

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    • Were you able to figure out how to sneak around the Warden? 
    • I had some fences which I quickly made a 3x3 safe area (5x5 fence square). I was able to stand in the middle and be out of reach.
    • I then dug down a block and dropped the warden in to a 2 block deep hole which she couldnt get out of
    • I also used water buckets to send a flow that pushed it away.
    • The Warden also tried to path find through lava to get to me after a used a lava bucket as defence
    • I think the warden should be able to break blocks/fences etc, and be able to pick up broken blocks etc and throw them at players (Think the hulk) causing some knockback and damage. this would allow attacking pillared players, and climb out of holes.
    • Better path finding around lava is needed
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    New music in deep dark biome, a orror music, when you enter, in biome, the music stop, and you heard a strange song, very silent....

  • 3
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    Diamonds in loot, emeralds, golf, more OP, but more skulk, more, and the warden need to kill mobs faster, now its like a baby, he is to slow for kill mobs

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    When you kill a warden, the skulk can kill you, with a explosion, or the soul can give you a effect

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    sculk xp storage is an intresting concept but currently i feel like its very underpowered... a blaze drops 9 xp wich would convert to 9 blocks worth 1 xp each wich i would have to mine afterwards.currently the only way to really use it handsfree is with a wither cage... even if tnt would work i would have to dupe or craft loads of tnt..i think a balanced system of xpstored/decay/distance to catalyst could make for much more intresting setups allowing for very complex xp storages while forcing the player to find the sweetspot of how much xp can be stored for how long.currently furnaces are just a much better, simpler and easier version of xp storage

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    I feel like within ancient cities segments of it need to be better connected so the warden can chase and follow you around. Else just a small parkour jump is enough to escape him.

    Also it would be amazing and terrifying if the warden could destroy blocks in his way if its charging at a player. That would help so the warden can't be cheesed that easy.

    I love the atmosphere that the darkness effect provides and the sounds are on point.

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    Another idea, would be if you break the block the Warden decided to crawl back into, you will wake him up and he will chase you again. This will add fear to everyone block you mine in the deep dark

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    The Warden, as expected, is easy to avoid the moment in jumps into water. However, for some reason, it's unable jump out of shallow water blocks back onto land unless there are slabs or stairs, essentially turning small pools into very effective Warden traps. I think this might be a bug.

    Other than that, the Warden is legitimately terrifying and is a great addition to the game. 

  • 1
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    I know the warden can be cheesed but I also know you're working on that so i've avoided doing that so far.

    However, there have been a few things that completely stop the warden without my interaction at all, which honestly took me out of the experience completely, which is quite sad.

    1: water, the warden get's completely trapped in water, especially if it's flowing down on top of it or very deep. It'd be great to see the warden maybe be able to swim or just escape the water.

    2: currently, it walks directly into lava. This has happened as it chased me multiple times and caused a pretty big problem given it then couldn't move at all.

    3: it just got stuck I have no idea why, it just kept trying to move past a single block but wouldn't jump. this changed after i made a new sound or hit it. still a very weird situation. 

    4: spawning/falling in a small hole. any hole that's two blocks deep is a tragedy cause the chances they'll spawn or fall in it and not get out is unfortunately been pretty high for me.

    Honestly the simplest idea i have for fixing these could be letting the warden climb blocks like a spider.

    -Structures:

    The way mineshafts can generate in the ancient cities is not a bug, it's a feature (I hope pls.) :) It could be more thematic though if mineshafts near ancient cities were out of spruce with soul torches/lanterns but that's just a very basic idea. would be a cool indicator 

    Anyhow these actually feel like bugs and not just it being too easy, so I thought of reporting them

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     I cannot access the new things in the snapshot, And also when I make a new installation, it disappears in the installations thing.

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    I LOVE the Warden sooo much! I've always wanted something so terrifying and doesn't need to look like a horrible mess to be so. My only complaint is how easy it is to cheese it. It could climb the tower like how spiders can climb walls, although, umbrella builds could cheese that too... Or maybe you could have it roar to knock players off the towers or maybe it could smash the ground to cause a shockwave. Whatever the case, I am in love with the Deep Dark, it's just the Warden needs atleast a vertical reach.

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    The Warden gets always distracted by bats and makes running away from him much easier

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    I personally see little reason to enter the Deep dark more than 1 time so I suggest more exclusive loot for the city like a book that gives efficiency for only deep slate. And maybe a new banner pattern or disc

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    One problem I ran into was mobs spawning on top of the large center structure and other high up areas. These mobs could then jump down and anger the Warden. It was very inconvenient. Other than that one problem though, the snapshot felt very spooky! Loved the darkness ambience, and the Warden and it's sounds are absolutely perfect! Love where the game is going, and I can't wait to play this with my dad!