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Staff
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Staff
Published
4/2/24

Let's Play: Animal add-ons

Unleashing the beasts in the Minecraft world!

Usually in this beloved/peerless/Oscar-worthy series, we take a monthly deep dive into a map on the Minecraft Marketplace.

However!

This month’s entry is going to be a little different and not just because we're considering handing it in late. Nope, this month we’re taking a deep dive into add-ons.

ADD-ONS? WHAT? 

Calm down! Add-ons are the newest additions to the Minecraft Marketplace. Instead of bringing you to a new world or map, they add on new features to your current ones. Still not following? Don’t worry – neither are we. So let’s look at a couple examples to help figure out what we're rambling about. First up, Naturalist by Starfish Studios. 

NATURALIST 

by Starfish Studios 

A large group of animals in Minecraft.

When the Naturalist add-on is active, it adds two new animals to your Minecraft world. Hang on, did we say ‘two’? Oops, slight typo there. we meant to say it adds over a hundred new mobs. Yes, if you’ve ever wanted to swim with blocky penguins, fill your farm with flamingos, or just stare awkwardly at a giraffe, this is probably the add-on for you. 

Now, you can just start a new world with this add-on activated and then take your time exploring your Overworld full of new mobs. Or if you’re, say, on a tight Minecraft.net deadline, you could play in Creative mode and start throwing spawn eggs everywhere. We won’t waste your time making you guess which one we opted for. 

A group of giraffes in Minecraft.

The giraffe! OK, our writer may have panicked after summoning the first one and thrown tons more spawn eggs, ending up with a giraffe army. Hey, we're not complaining! We think?

A boar in Minecraft

The boar! And there’s something delightfully sassy in the way they’ve done the eyes that makes me smile. Awww, look how unimpressed they are to be here! :D

A Minecraft flamingo!

The Flamingo! These majestic pink birds manage to stay standing on those beanpole legs despite having beaks that should really send them face first into the dirt. Bravo! 

A Minecraft insect!

Don’t waste time trying to get the boar-to-fly, when you can simply track down a butterfly! Excuse us for one second *takes copy of ‘Segues for Dummies’ and throws it into roaring fire.*

You don’t just get a ridiculous amount of animals. You also receive a handy book stuffed with info about all your favourite new creatures (and your least favourite – looking at you, termites). It’ll also tell you if they’ll drop anything when they die or whether you should just leave them alone, you monster.  

You can also craft yourself a capture net which can be used to catch bugs, something we wish we’d known before we tried to get a now-very-annoyed flamingo inside it. If there’s a more relaxing way to play Minecraft than running around trying to catch butterflies, then no – there isn’t – STOP LYING. 

A book about a tree frog.

Sadly we don’t have time to cover over a hundred animals in this humble little blog post. So we're going to have to start playing favourites. How about… penguins and racoons? YES, penguins and racoons! Together at last! 

Minecraft penguins and giraffes!

PENGUINS! Seen here wondering why we summoned them in the plains biome with all our giraffes instead of somewhere icy. Yes, well, ahem, sorry about that.

A Minecraft racoon!

The racoon! Seen here… oh goodness, no. Don’t look into its eyes! WE SAID DON’T LOOK INTO ITS

PETS 

By Spark Universe 

Perhaps you prefer your animals more domestic? Or at least a little less terrifying than that racoon? Then maybe you’d be better off trying Pets by Spark Universe. Here’s some good news – it’s completely free! Oh, unless you like paying for things? In which case, that wasn’t good news. Sorry. 

Anyway, the add-on adds ten pets to your Overworld. Common household pets like the guinea pig and the hedgehog and the T-rex! Wait... what? 

A pet of unknown kind, conveniently named 'T-rex'

Actually, we couldn’t find the T-Rex, so we just called our new pet cat ‘T-Rex’ making this technically a T-Rex screenshot. Convenient!

You can explore the Overworld for a new animal companion, or you can keep your eye out for the wandering pet trader. This merchant is wearing an audacious green apron, and speaking of green, you better have some emeralds. We found one who wanted FIVE EMERALDS for a guinea pig! This happened days ago and we're still crying. 

While we try to calm down, let’s have a look at some of the pets: 

A Minecraft capybara.

The capybara! Seen here photobombing the hedgehog and completely stealing its limelight. We’d be more judgemental of this pathetic behaviour if it weren’t so relatable. 

A Minecraft guinea pig!

The guinea pig! Look how tiny they are! As you can see, they’re so teeny and fragile looking, that we were afraid to even put the cursor over it. Stay safe, buddy!

A Minecraft hedgehog!

The hedgehog! Wait, no, this is just the guinea pig again. Man, the hedgehog can just not catch a break today, huh?

We sure hope that this add-on has scratched your pet-owning itch at last! It would have for us, if we'd had enough emeralds to buy ourself a pet hedgehog. Instead, we had to settle for a pet creeper, whic was – for some reason – free of charge? In fact, we’d better go feed them before they throw an explosive tantrum. See you next month! 

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