On October 3, the best-selling game of all time, Minecraft, announced during a Livestream, its new update, but what does this mean for players?

   Mojang Studios, the developers of the massively popular sandbox game Minecraft, recently held their annual digital festival announcing next year’s “Caves and Cliffs” update as well as some other features that will soon be coming to the game. All of this was announced live to the public via live streams on streaming platforms YouTube and Twitch.

   The upcoming update will add many new varieties of caves to explore as well as completely reworked mountain generation. The most prominent feature of these new cave biomes is the variation in size. Since the beginning of the game, Minecraft has always only had small caves and ravines that really limited the potential of exploring underground. Now the caves will vary in between the small tunnel-like cavities and the enormous caverns covering a vast area.

   There were also 3 new biomes added for below ground exploration. The lush cave biome is filled with greenery and life, containing many new blocks. In the lush caves you can find axolotls, adorable aquatic creatures that are going extinct in real life, added to the game to raise awareness. The second new biome type is the dripstone cave, a vast cavern filled with stalagmites and stalactites, large rocks sticking out of the ground and hanging from the ceiling. Finally, there is the deep dark biome, a series of overgrown tunnels that are home to the warden, a new creature that is blind, hunting you down and attacking based on the vibrations of your footsteps.

   Players have been asking for an update to the game’s cave generation for almost a decade and voted on the cliffs and mountains last year. According to Pixlriffs, a popular Minecraft YouTube content creator, on Twitter “Phenomenal. A cave update is actually happening. Never thought I’d see the day.” People who have played this game for an extended period of time are happy their voices have finally been heard by Mojang to release a cave update.