I’ve been keeping an eye on the Mojang employee twitter feeds and I’ve been seeing a bit of information about the upcoming 1.7 update for Minecraft. Though Notch and Jens have agreed to keep the adventuring aspects of the patch a secret, that doesn’t seem to extend to the more normal type of changes, including new additions to the game.

Notch has been busy getting ready for, and being at, E3 lately, so he has been preoccupied. Even so, he’s tweeted a few bits of good information. A friend has saved me the trouble of going through Notch’s tweets with a post on his blog at Encrazed Crafts. So be sure to check that out for the things that Notch has discussed recently!

Jens (@jeb_) has been moved off the Pocket Edition and back on to regular Minecraft. And he has tweeted a few things of very great interest:

• Added Minecraft shears. Has uses on sheep, leaves, tnt and a fourth thing, which will remain secret for now. (source)

In subsequent tweets he elaborates. The shears diffuse TNT, thank god, that really needed a legit way to do. They are also the only way to get a reasonable amount of wool from sheep, though killing them will still give one block of wool. The shears also destroy placed wool blocks faster than other tools.

• Heh ok… Time for the piston mod. It’s incredible how much more dull something is when there’s little room left for my own creativity. (source)

So woohoo the piston mod is on the way! He does only say “probably” in version 1.7, but I believe it’ll happen. I’ve been waiting for this  to be included for at least 3 update cycles now. I’ve got some projects to finish up and a lot of things to try out with those pistons! Later he also relents in the face of “nerd rage” and says that he’ll include sticky pistons. Which as far as I’m aware means they pull blocks instead of pushing them. Could be extremely useful.

• All animals will be more persistent “soon,” so re-growth of wool will be necessary. (source)

This is promising as well! Clearly makes sense to be added along with the shears. Maybe Jens is getting along to really extending the Minecraft farming mechanics!

Those are the big items I’ve seen come through lately, and I’m pretty excited for the direction things seem to be headed! This of course is only the few things that haven’t been completely hushed as part of the big Adventure Update. And with the big E3 news about Minecraft I posted earlier this is shaping up to be one heck of a year for Mojang!

Happy Crafting!