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Now Available: The Trails and Tales Update (1.20)

08 Aug 2023 IMage: Illustration of Minecraft character at a lectern. To their right is a library and hanging sign, to their left are archeological ruins, above is a scene featuring cherry wood trees, a bamboo raft, a sniffer mob, and a character digging up a pottery sherd

The Trails & Tales Update (1.20) is now available for all Minecraft Education users. This long-awaited feature set includes two charismatic new mobs (camels and sniffers), bamboo, bookcases, and hanging signs, plus charming cherry groves and archaeology sites ready for your students to explore. The creative possibilities are endless!

In addition to these fun game features, we’ve also made some helpful changes for your classroom. This update includes initial improvements to increase the reliability of multiplayer connections. We’ve upgraded the coding Agent’s range and abilities so now you can use code to build bigger and better structures. And finally, this update supports a more user-friendly Templates page.

Here’s a guide to using these new features. Have fun!

Screenshot: Minecraft character riding a camel mob through a desert biome. Cacti are all around, ruins are in the background, and the sun is setting behind the ruins.

Multiplayer Improvements

Improving the multiplayer experience is one of our highest priorities at this time, as we know some of you are still encountering issues. This update includes initial bug fixes to increase the reliability of multiplayer connections and address disconnections during a multiplayer session.

Here are some resources to help you use multiplayer with your students. We’ve updated these support articles with guidance on how to set up multiplayer sessions for the best experience and the performance you should expect when using different types of devices:

Screenshot: Minecraft cherry trees with bees flying about

Tips for new features

Here are some helpful tips for using the new features:

  • Sniffers are an ancient mob that you’ve helped bring back to the Overworld. Sniffer eggs can be found in suspicious sand, which also contains other objects like pottery sherds. Once you’ve unearthed your egg, help it hatch! Once it grows from snifflet to sniffer, it will sniff out seeds you can plant to fill your game with new decorative plants.
  • Camels are a tall and rideable mob that can be saddled, tempted, and bred. We're not sure what’s more fun, riding a camel with a classmate or playing with a baby camel!
  • Decorate your creations like never before! The chiseled bookshelf block allows players to store and retrieve books and quills. Craft with bamboo to decorate your worlds with a lovely mosaic block or use a bamboo raft. Use hanging signs beneath or on the side of any wood block.
  • Explore archeological sites by digging into sand to find buried ruins and brush fragile sand blocks to extract pottery sherds. Explore the rare cherry blossom biome and discover the cherry tree sapling, wood set, and pink flower carpet block.
  • On the ‘My Templates’ page, use the ‘My Templates’ button beside the search bar on ‘My Worlds’ to switch between worlds and templates.
  • We have updates galore for everyone’s favorite coding sidekick, the agent! The agent mob now has no range restrictions; it can move and build far away from the player. The agent now has a quirky animation for unsuccessful actions and chooses which item to detect or interact with in a ‘line of sight’ in the direction the code specified, up to 1 block away. Open Code Builder to summon your agent and give it a try!

With all these exciting changes to Minecraft Education, we’ve updated our recommended system requirements for the best possible play experience.

If you’re looking for additional resources on getting setup and teaching with Minecraft Education, check out our Support Center. If you encounter any issues with this update, we encourage you to reach out to our Support Team and we can help.

We can’t wait to see the stories you create with the new Trails & Tales features!

Screenshot: Snowy Minecraft scene. Sniffer mob in the foreground, sniffing at a bunny.
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