MINING DIAMOND ORE IRL?

It takes less than a second to mine diamond ore with an iron pickaxe in Minecraft, but how long would it take to mine this stuff in real life? The channel Whats Inside dives into this exact question, taking a chunk of real-world diamond ore, and trying to mine it with actual pickaxes. As expected, it doesn't go as fast as in-game, but the results are pretty interesting nonetheless. One thing that stands out early: naturally occurring diamonds usually aren't blue or turquoise, but yellowish or clear. Neat!

Do they eventually find any diamonds in that ore? We will find out soon!

WII U: MARIO MASH-UP PACK COMING SOON!

Minecraft: Wii U Edition has been available for some time, but it has always lacked something the XBOX version in particular already has: feeling like the console it is played on. XBOX Edition has a number of packs themed around popular titles on the console, but why not the Wii U version? Why not, indeed!

As the trailer gave away (especially if you watched it before reading this), a free Mario Mash Up pack is on its way to Minecraft: Wii U Edition. It has a Mario-themed world, 16 original songs from the insanely popular Mario 64, a specific Mario-themed texture pack, and a ton of skins featuring your favorite Mario characters. In total, there are over 40 characters to play as. As one might expect, the two titular plumbers and the princesses are included, but Mojang even packed in some of the more folk like Kamek (the named magical Koopa Troopa wizard), one of the Hammer Bros, and that pernicious plant, Petey Pirahna. It’s a delightful mix, all in all.

So, what will this pack cost? Nothing. Zero dollars. Zero euros. Zero pounds, rubles, anything. Free!

All existing owners of Minecraft: Wii U Edition will get the pack on May 17th as a free update, but it will also come with the retail version of Minecraft: Wii U Edition, which is due to appear in-stores from June 17th. The disc comes in a box, which are notoriously easy to gift-wrap (wink wink).

Both the digital and the retail version of Minecraft: Wii U Edition costs $29.99, 30 golden coins, or the equivalent in your region.

MINECRAFT 1.9.4 NOW AVAILABLE!

1.9.3 is ready to play, and it's so fresh and new, it's now 1.9.4! 1.9.3 had a minor bug that gave an erroneous snapshot warning, which was fixed in 1.9.4.

So, what came with 1.9.3/4?

FEATURES

• Added & changed some minor things
  • Improved chunk cache performance
  • Decreased memory usage for biome caching
  • Re-added, then removed Herobrine

BUGFIXES

• Fixed a memory leak in pathfinding
• Fixed pathfinding performance issues introduced in 15w49a
• Fixed entity collision causing excessive lag
• Fixed a performance issue in chunk generation
• Fixed some wasteful code for navigation listeners
• Fixed ArmorStand collision code being wasteful
• Fixed Zombie pathfinding to unreachable targets causing server lag
• Fixed some erroneous skin part display logic
• Fixed a crash when trading too many items at once
• Fixed the sound engine pitch algorithm not working properly

Please report any and all bugs you find in Minecraft to bugs.mojang.com. If nobody reports a bug, you might get version 1.9.5 with Herobrine added!

As with prior major version releases, you can update in the client without any special settings. If your profile is set to use the latest version, this will happen automatically. Enjoy!

MOD SPOTLIGHT: WEATHER, STORMS, & TORNADOES (1.7.10)

Weather. It exists in Minecraft, albeit in a simplistic form (rain, or no rain), and rains about as frequently as the real-world UK. Even so, it's a pretty basic system, and doesn't accurately model any sort of climate pattern. What if you wanted actual weather patterns? Storms building visibly in the distance, different weather for different regions, and massive natural disasters? All of that is insideWeather, Storms, & Tornadoes, by Corosus! It packs a ton of features in an easy-to-use package:

- Localized weather! See rain and nastier storms coming in from a distance
- Replaces vanilla clouds with custom particle-based ones that always shift around
- Replaces rain and snowfall with a particle-based one that blows in the wind
- Rain clouds build up moisture from water and moist biomes
- Stormfront system uses biome temperature differences to create nasty storms
- Improved look of storms from old weather mod
- Forecast block that projects the active storms on a grid
- Machine block that can create various types of storms at that location
- Deflector block that can destroy storms within a 150 block radius to protect your creations
- Wind Vane to show the direction of the wind (Model made by Razz of DecoCraft)
- Anemometer to show the speed of the wind
- User friendly GUI to enable/disable the most common features, comes with advanced options
- Scenes enhanced with falling leaf particles and waterfall effects
- Trees make blowing in wind sound, waterfalls make strong water sounds
- Can enhance snowfall with more gradual smooth buildup (default off, memory hungry!)

Want to try this out for yourself? Head on over to the download page, and get ready to have some real weather in your Minecraft world!

ELEMENT ANIMATION: BLOCK BY BLOCK (A MONTAGE)

Element Animation - creators of the ever-popular Villager News series, among other things - has put together an amusing music video montage of everyone's favorite underachieving villagers! Telling a curious story of the villagers going through a...well, a montage, this video comes with a unique new song, and all the charm we've come to expect from the poor villagers. Enjoy!

GAME THEORISTS: THE ENDING, DECODED?

Game Theorists have touched on Minecraft before, talking about the physiology of creepers. This time, they dive into something a little more cerebral: the somewhat cryptic and contentious ending of Minecraft! There isn't much I can say without spoiling the whole thing, and it's definitely a hefty watch at fifteen minutes, but if you have some time, it's an interesting examination of the ending which has left many players stumped. Enjoy!

EUROVISON STAGE FOR MINECRAFT

Eurovision might be over, but that doesn't mean the fun has to end! Why not host one of your own, using the same stage featured in the event? Mojang teamed up with FyreUK and SVT (a Swedish TV channel) to build the Eurovision stage in Minecraft for PC (the Java version), and it's pretty solid. Building it to-scale does lose some of the finer details (as does happen with large blocks and small items), but it's a strong approximation of the actual stage, and is more than enough to host some pretty killer shows!

To use the map, download and unzip the map file, then place the resulting folder in the Saves bit of your game directory. A quick way to find the game directory is to click Edit Profile then Open Game Directory from the launcher.