5 new Minecraft features that turned out to be underwhelming

Minecraft is a game that has changed a lot over the years. In fact, in many ways, it is totally unrecognizable from its oldest versions, which didn't feature mining, crafting, or even survival at all. As more and more updates come out, more and more features and items are added to the game. However, not all of these additions are viewed equally by the community.

Detailed below are five examples of features and items added to the game by Mojang that received a lukewarm reception at best, along with why the community was disappointed with them.

---

5 Minecraft features that aren't quite up to snuff

1) Glow squids

Glow squids "lighting" up an underwater cave (Image via Mojang)

Glow squids are, unfortunately, not the only mob vote winner featured on this list. Mojang used to have quite a bad habit of overpromising and underdelivering with mob vote winners, with the glow squid being the best example of this. When initially shown off, it was heavily implied that the squid would both actually glow, as in, produce light, and be able to hypnotize players.

The glow squid does neither of these things. It "glows" in the sense that its textures aren't affected by shadows, meaning it's easy to see in dimly lit caves, but it doesn't actually produce any light. Additionally, it's just a retextured squid. There's not even a hint of the hypnotic nature shown off in the mob's trailer.

While glow ink is useful for glowing item frames and for making Minecraft's editable signs easier to read, it's undeniable that the glow squid added to the game is nowhere near as cool as the one shown off.

---

2) Lodestones

Lodestones are comedically expensive for how worthless they are (Image via Mojang)

Lodestones are underwhelming in that there's little to no point in crafting them. They act as anchors for compasses, allowing players to find their way back to any paired lodestone.

However, a large majority of players will just use Minecraft's debug menu to access coordinates. Even Bedrock fans have a toggle for coordinates that doesn't disable achievements, meaning Mojang doesn't consider it cheating. If using coordinates isn't cheating, why should a player bother to make a lodestone?

It would be one thing if they were cheap and easy to craft, but they aren't. A single lodestone requires a netherite ingot. Needless to say, that ingot would be much better off contributing to Minecraft god armor or better tools than an item whose entire purpose can be nullified with a single button press.

---

3) Amethyst

Amethyst geodes are beautiful to look at, but almost entirely useless (Image via Mojang)

Amethyst was one of two underwhelming features added in 1.17. The other was copper, touched on later. Amethyst is different from copper, however, in that it never got expanded upon and remains quite a pitifully underdeveloped Minecraft feature.

There are four total uses for amethyst in the entirety of the game. The first is to craft a spyglass. These items are intended to be a vanilla zoom feature, but the aggressive overlay makes them limited in usefulness. The next use is to make calibrated sculk sensors. These items are a more powerful sculk sensor, able to detect vibrations from farther away and be filtered to only hear certain vibrations.

The third use for amethyst is as an armor trim material. Amethyst will cause a purple color to be applied to armor in the shape of the used armor trim.

The final use is to make tinted glass. This is glass that can be seen through but blocks light. This is probably amethyst's most useful feature, as it allows players to see into Minecraft mob farms without causing spawn rates to drop due to light.

Amethyst is also hard to use while building due to its unique and harsh texture. This plethora of niche uses combines with how hard the block is to use for decoration to make amethyst geodes worse than any Minecraft structure that could be found underground.

---

4) Phantoms

A group of phantoms harassing a player (Image via Mojang)

Phantoms are a disappointing entry, which is ironic considering the list is about disappointing features. What makes the phantom in particular so painful is its history. They were actually the winners of the very first community mob vote, all the way back at MINECON Earth 2017.

Ultimately, Mojang just didn't really do anything particularly cool with them. Especially when compared to the other mobs in the vote, such as the giant shield-covered king blaze or the underwater entity that would attempt to drown players. All phantoms do is occasionally harass players who forget to sleep, burning to death in the morning.

The best thing about them is that phantom membranes are used to make potions of slow-falling. However, this was not enough, and Mojang eventually added a Minecraft gamerule specifically to disable them, something that can be said for no other mob.

---

5) Copper

Even at its most underwhelming, the oxidation feature was neat to see in action (Image via Mojang)

Copper is an interesting item, which was absolutely underwhelming when it was first added. However, unlike all of the other features on this list, Mojang actually managed to redeem copper in the eyes of the community.

When it was first added to the game back in 1.17, its uses were incredibly limited. In fact, there were only three: building blocks, lightning rods, and spyglasses. Due to the limited number of crafting recipes, it wasn't a very useful building block at first. Lightning rods are nice, but only useful if a player builds with flammable blocks, and the spyglass' overlay is too aggressive for it to be a useful zoom.

However, Mojang has slowly but surely made copper a better item. The game has incorporated new crafting recipes for blocks and is still doing so. Minecraft's upcoming Tricky Trials update is adding copper trapdoors, regular doors, new block variants, grates, and bulbs. Ultimately, copper serves as a reminder that any Minecraft feature that's currently underwhelming can be redeemed at any moment.