Minecraft Village & Pillage Java update is out today

Jonny Caldwell

While we’re still waiting on the Bedrock Edition update under the same name, Village and Pillage is already out for the Java Edition of Minecraft. It adds many new additions, including items such as the crossbow, bamboo blocks, campfires, many new decorative blocks, lanterns, mobs such as pandas and foxes, and plenty of accessility improvements.

The Java edition of Minecraft isn’t updated as frequently as the Bedrock version, so updates to the app tend to be much larger. You can check out the Minecraft blog post for the full breakdown, but the update includes everything to bamboo to barrels to bells to berries and of course berry bushes, as well as pandas and foxes and crossbows. The update also includes a number of accessibility updates:

  • There’s a new Accessibility menu which provides a useful place for all of our accessibility features to be toggled
  • When the narrator is turned on, buttons will be narrated on focus
  • Most screens allow tab and shift+tab navigation through buttons, edit boxes and other UI elements
  • Most lists allow up/down arrow keys to navigate through them
  • We’ve added a new option for turning up the background of all transparent text elements, which should help make them more readable for some people

The Java edition is available on Windows 10 as well as older versions of the operating system, plus macOS and Linux. It’s different from Minecraft for Windows 10, which is based on the same Bedrock engine that powers Minecraft on Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android, but the Bedrock versions of the sandbox game should get the remaining content in the near future.