Here’s everything you need to know about the Minecraft Trails and Tales update for Chromebooks

Can you ride a camel on your Chromebook? Why yes, yes you can! At least, you will be able to when Minecraft: Bedrock Edition officially (re)launches on Chromebooks with the release of the 1.20 Trails & Tales update.

This new update brings camels to the game as a new mount option, allowing players to saddle and ride them for exploration and transportation, but that’s just the tip of the iceber-…erm…pyramid? In fact, Trails & Tales is a significant update to the most popular game in the world that focuses on letting you tell your own stories and uncover hidden treasures!

The name represents the journey that Minecraft takes us on, and the unique stories that each of us bring back. Sometimes, that journey is literal, like riding towards the horizon on a camel with your best friend. Other times, it’s more metaphorical, like learning how to evade hostile mobs or working out a smart mining system. At the end of the journey, however you have chosen to play Minecraft, you will have your very own story that goes with it. We love hearing them, and we hope that Trails & Tales will encourage you to tell even more Minecraft stories that you can share with the world!

Minecraft.net

In addition to the camel mount, 1.20 also introduces new wood variants such as bamboo and cherry, as well as new items, a new cherry grove biome, and a new mob – the Sniffer! This big guy (or little if you have a Snifflet) is the happiest mob in Minecraft, following you, seeking out plants and seeds, and digging them up for you to collect.

One of the aforementioned items is the “bundle”, which was previously introduced in the Caves and Cliffs update but removed in 1.18. It’s now making a comeback in Trails & Tales, offering you more inventory space. You can store up to one complete stack inside of it (up to 64), unless an item stack maxes out at 16, like with Ender Pearls. Additionally, you can add a mix of stacked items in it, or a standalone non-stackable item.

Of course, the show stealer for this update is the new Archaeology mechanic, which includes a tool called the brush used to discover lost artifacts like pottery shards, diamonds, and even emeralds! Just look for suspicious sand blocks near desert temples and start digging with a shovel. By combining four pottery shards, you can create complete pots with images on them.

Honestly, that’s just the beginning of all of the changes Mojang is adding to the game. You can also hang signs on buildings, play some mob heads, organize your chiseled bookshelf, create armor trims with the new smithing table (the Runescape kid in me is excited for this one), complete change a biome with a fill command, and more.

There are already hundreds of other little things gamers have spotted and continue to “dig up” well before its release date. One such change is that enchantment glints have been removed entirely on potions, and the strength potion, for example, now resembles a dull yellow Gatorade according to my seven-year-old (it’s his favorite drink).

With millions of Chromebooks out in the wild and millions of kids and gamers of all ages now gearing up to install Minecraft on their laptops (here’s how you can optimize it to run better!), the game’s absence on the Google Play Store will hopefully be ancient history.