Around the Block: Windswept Savanna

Minecraft’s savanna biome is a pretty chill sort of place. There are lots of building materials, plenty of passive mobs, and no thunderstorms. The wide-open landscape makes it easy to see foes approaching, and renders fall damage totally irrelevant in day-to-day life – unless you dig straight down. You’re not still digging straight down, are you?

But this pastoral paradise has an uglier cousin, whose visage is twisted in all kinds of strange and unexpected directions. Its terrain is wildly unpredictable, with cliffs that soar into the sky and deep, dangerous lakes. Avert your gaze, because our biome of the month is the windswept savanna.

Finding a windswept savanna is not easy. They’re only rarely generated by the incomprehensible algorithms of world creation. When they do show up, it tends to be bordering temperate or warm biomes, and not very often next to a regular savanna biome.

Mojang Studios' naming team has struggled over the years to come up with a moniker that befits this odd collection of the bits of terrain that no one else wanted. First, it was called "savanna m", then "mutated savanna", then "shattered savanna", before finally (well, hopefully) settling with "windswept savanna".

While the savanna is a pretty great place to set up home, you definitely don’t want to live in its windswept variant. The mountains are so steep that they’re almost unclimbable, and fatal fall damage is a constant risk. What’s more, giant overhangs create patches of ground that never see the sun – allowing all kinds of nasty beasts to spawn even during daytime.

If you do visit this uncomfortable place, be sure to bring plenty of ladders, healing food, and other consumables, because even just an exploration trip can be seriously hazardous. 

There’s not even much to collect if you do visit. It’s the same grass, coarse dirt, stone, acacia, and oak that you’ll find in plenty of other places. Llamas don’t spawn here, nor do villages. Even the pillagers tend to stay away. Only the hardiest horses and a few other passive mobs are willing to eke out a precipitous existence on the sides of the cliffs.

So my advice is to remain far from this place. Do not seek out whatever strange forces shaped the windswept savanna into what it is today. If we don’t give them any attention, maybe they’ll just quietly go away...