Get ready to Chase the Skies
Fasten your seatbelts for a very special announcement, because today we can reveal the name for our next game drop: Chase the Skies! The Chase the Skies drop not only brings an exciting flying mount to Minecraft – the happy ghast – but that it’s coming soon, opening up the skies for exploring, crafting, and (hopefully) surviving!
Now please pay close attention to the following pre-flight information:
A trio of happy ghasts
Most airlines don’t ask you to find, raise, and then tame your own airplane before take-off – which is probably why I never convinced the developers to make Happy Ghast Air a thing. However! Chase the Skies does bring an exciting flying mount to Minecraft – and your check-in desk is located in...the Nether!
In the Nether, you’ll find skeletons, Endermen, lakes of lava, striders, magma cubes, piglins, and a respawn screen around every corner – but don’t let that mild peril put you off! With the Chase the Skies drop, you’ll also find a very special block: the dried ghast.
A dried ghast
These adorably dehydrated blocks are usually found hanging around fossil structures, although you can also occasionally barter with piglins for them!
If a trip to the Nether sounds too scary, then you’ll be happy to hear that you can also craft dried ghasts! All you need is ghast tears, and a soul sand block. Wait, aren’t these items you can only find in the Nether? And doesn’t one of them involve defeating a ghast? That doesn’t sound less perilous!
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PRE-FLIGHT ANNOUNCEMENTPlease take care when travelling through the Nether, and apply sunscreen diamond armor liberally.
Once you’ve survived your ordeal scorching vacation and you’ve got both blocky feet planted firmly back in the Overworld – it’s time to revive your dried ghast! Leave it in water and you’ll start to see this little block transform and become happier and happier until it finally becomes… a ghastling!
A ghastling
Did you think I was going to say a happy ghast? Not yet! Your ghastling will need a bit more love and care before you can soar through the skies together. Feed it lots of snowballs until it becomes a happy ghast, and then you and up to four friends can officially start your side-hustles as Overworld pilots chartering flights far and wide!
Player Locator bar
Isn’t it the worst when you finally reach your destination, and one of your friends keeps running off and getting into all sorts of trouble? I wouldn’t know, seeing as I am that friend, – but now with the Player Locator bar at least those on my Realm will be able to see where I’ve gotten into trouble! And hopefully come and rescue me...
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PRE-FLIGHT ANNOUNCEMENTPlayers that don’t want to be found with the Player Locator bar can crouch to remain undetected.
The Player Locator bar shows up in the same place as the XP bar when other players are in your world, and it’ll show you where your friends are with neat, colored dots! If your friend is off getting lost up a cliffside, or they’ve fallen down into a spaghetti cave, it’ll also show a handy little arrow that tells you they’re at a higher or lower elevation.
New leashing functionality
You might think leads are an odd thing to pop in your suitcase bundle, but with the new leads and leashing functionality coming as part of the Chase the Skies drop, you’ll want to make sure you have plenty at hand!
Not only has the crafting recipe become simpler for leads (now you only need string,) but you can leash almost anything to anything!
Leash multiple mobs together to create your very own caravan of camels to join you on your desert vacation or leash entities like boats beneath your happy ghast to create your very own luggage compartment!
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PRE-FLIGHT ANNOUNCEMENTPlease note you cannot leash other players to anything – no matter how much you want to stop your friends from wandering off. Use the Player Locator bar instead!
If there’s still space left in your bundle, you’ll want to pack some leather – because saddles are now craftable! Just pop 3 leather and 1 iron ingot into your crafting table, and NEIGH! You have a saddle!
Craftable saddles and new functionality for shears
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PRE-FLIGHT ANNOUNCEMENTYou can also use shears to release specific leads from a knot of leads, keeping the rest of the knot intact.
With so much crafting power now at your fingertips, the developers thought it might be good to make it easier to remove saddles as well. Which is great news for me, and the 35 still-saddled pigs in my pig pen. Now you can remove saddles using shears! Easy peasy!
New music disc
What’s a holiday without some souvenirs? Plucky explorers will want to pick up the new music disc that’s lootable from ghasts with the Chase the Skies drop (unfortunately not the happy kind. The fire-breathing, red-eyed kind).
How exactly the ghast drops this music disc I don’t know – because I’m not brave enough to find out. Perhaps you are, though! Then send me a postcard from the Nether!
As well as the music disc, you’ll also hear five new ambient tracks from Amos Roddy that will play in various Overworld biomes: Lilypad, Below and Above, O’s Piano, Broken Clocks, Fireflies, and Tears. If you can’t wait until Chase the Skies arrives to listen to these tracks, you can find them RIGHT NOW on Spotify and beyond!
Players on compatible Bedrock Edition devices can also soak in breathtaking views with Minecraft's biggest official visual refresh: Vibrant Visuals*! Fly high with your happy ghast to watch the sunrise reflect on the rippling ocean, make art with shifting shadows, descend into dark depths, or simply sit back and enjoy the vivid beauty of each biome! With updated in-game visuals you’ll see how light and shadow transform the Overworld – water reflects, forests become shaded, fog drifts, and waterfalls glimmer in the light.
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PRE-FLIGHT ANNOUNCEMENTVibrant Visuals does not impact Minecraft’s gameplay, which means you can play on Realms with friends whether they have Vibrant Visuals enabled or not! (Realms subscription sold separately. Multiplayer functionality will require platform specific online subscriptions, also sold separately)
While Vibrant Visuals is initially only releasing on compatible Minecraft: Bedrock Edition devices, this is just the first step, and we plan to bring Vibrant Visuals to Minecraft: Java Edition in the future.
For those who like to dive into Marketplace content, please be aware that Marketplace Add-Ons, Skins, and Persona items will work with Vibrant Visuals, however, Worlds and Texture Packs won't be compatible with the new mode at the time of launch.
Oh! The captain has just informed me that we’re now cleared for take-off – so get ready for an exciting, skyward adventure in Minecraft. New horizons are coming soon…!
*Vibrant Visuals is only available on compatible Minecraft: Bedrock Edition devices** All other features available for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition and Java Edition (sold separately). Multiplayer functionality will require platform specific online subscriptions (sold separately).
** Vibrant Visuals graphics upgrade is currently only available for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition.
Supported devices for Vibrant Visuals include Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Android, iOS, and PC.
Splitscreen multiplayer is not supported with Vibrant Visuals and the game will switch to Fancy or Simple rendering if multiple players are joined locally.
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