For years, Minecraft has set the standard that Diamond is the be-all-end-all of materials in the game. Players have strived for just over a decade now to find the elusive mineral and use it to craft the most powerful weapons, tools, and armor available to them. Now, Mojang is mixing things up substantially by introducing a material which is even harder than diamonds, Netherite. During a recent interview with Game Rant, Sr. Gameplay Developer Agnes Larsson revealed that the decision to add a tier stronger than diamonds was not one the team made lightly.

Minecraft has a simple gameplay loop and progression. The player gets wood tools and uses them to get stone tools. Stone tools allow for the mining of iron, which then allows for the mining of diamond. After the player is all decked out in Diamond gear, there isn't much more advancement available aside from enchanting and the like. Netherite ore aims to change that, as players will now be able to take things one step further and reach a new pinnacle of power. Of course, doing so won't be easy, and will require players to familiarize themselves with the new aspects of The Nether.

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What is Netherite?

Netherite is a new material in Minecraft which is predictably only available in the Nether, but it functions differently from other ores. Rather than simply finding a diamond ore block, mining it, and getting diamonds, players will need to search for Ancient Debris blocks. Smelting these in a furnace will produce Netherite scrap. If the player combines four Netherite scrap with four gold ingots, the player can finally get their hands on a single Netherite ingot. It should be clear now just how difficult it is to get Netherite Ingots.

Thankfully, as they are not acquired in the traditional manner, they are not used in the traditional manner either. In order to get a piece of Netherite gear like the ones shown above, the player will need to head to a smithing table. By combining a Diamond Sword with a Netherite Ingot, the sword will then be upgraded into a Netherite sword. The same works for every other tool or piece of armor in the game. It is also used to create a lodestone, which in tandem with a compass can help players find their way home.

Netherite - Are We Actually Doing This?

"It was a bold thing to do, to be fair. There were many discussions in the team about this, not bad discussions, but just like 'Are we really gonna do this? Wow.' But then also, what is very important to us is to not make diamond useless. Actually, with all the features we add, we want to be respectful to existing features. We don't just want to add things and then old things become useless or not good anymore. So we also spent a lot of time on how to find a good balance there."

Larsson explains in detail why the decision to move past diamond and make a new best material was extremely difficult. It seems that both she and the team fully understood the importance of diamond to not just the Minecraft community but to the identity of Minecraft itself. Her comments on respecting existing features when adding new ones is so sincere and well founded that it is a wonder that other game developers don't try to keep that in mind when creating DLC or new content for existing games.  Most would agree after playing with the new update for a while that diamond is most certainly not useless even still.

As mentioned above, diamond tools are still needed to create Netherite tools, so players will still be spending considerable amounts of time hunting for the coveted resource. Likewise, there are still plenty of things which require diamonds that Netherite can not replace or upgrade such as enchanting tables, jukeboxes, and firework stars. Ultimately, Larsson feels as though the decision to create something stronger than diamond was done at the right time, and that doing so was extremely exciting for the whole team. Apparently, fans discovered that the reveal of Netherite happened 10 years after diamonds were added to the game.

Minecraft's Nether update is available now.

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