Minecraft beta now offers cute hot and cold pig variants

According to me and, no offense to me, the RPS folks, Minecraft is the best PC game. I played for three hours today, and among the many build challenges and adventures, there is a small story surrounding Piggy. We named him “Porky”, we kept him in a cage as a pet and in a tragic accident we watched him fall to his death from our Sky Island. RPS Hush, Porky.
How many pigs like Porky have you befriended over the past hundreds of hours of gaming? I’m not sure – dozens, hundreds – but soon such pigs may take on new forms. 15 years later, Mojang has added a new type of pig to Minecraft.
Specifically, it’s getting two new pig variants. Cold pigs are covered in fur and can be found in cold and frozen biomes; warm pigs are found in sandy biomes and are rusty brown. Mojang calls it “warm pigs” because they know that, fundamentally, all pigs are hot.
These adorable pork chops are part of a number of minor updates to Minecraft, all of which are currently available for testing in Java Edition (only some are available for testing in Bedrock Edition).
Forest biomes are now also shedding leaves, which will fall from the tree canopy and leave leaves on the ground. Fallen leaves serve to decorate the squares and rustle as you walk through it. In the meadows and birch forests you’ll also find wildflowers, which have multiple stages of growth and can be collected to make dyes. Currently, only falling leaves are present in the Bedrock Preview and Beta.
Finally, the lodestone crafting recipe is being modified. This compass-pointing block can help players find their way home, and previously required eight hewn stone bricks and a netherite ingot to craft. Netherite is not easy to obtain in Minecraft and requires a long and lucky visit to the Nether to obtain Ancient Shards. This seems a bit silly given that lodestone is designed to help players complete the simple task of not getting lost near home, so lodestone can now be crafted with simple iron ingots instead of netherite. This turns late-game items into early or mid-game items, which make more sense.
All of these changes are minor, but gosh, I play a lot of this game now. I was excited to have leaves on the ground. My hobbit house will look very quaint, with leaves on the ground outside.