Minecraft was first made publicly available in May 2009. A year later the game was already very popular and getting frequent updates packed with new features. And it was during 2010 that saddles were added to Minecraft, letting you ride pigs and, later, horses. Weirdly, however, for a game all about crafting things, you couldn’t just make one yourself, but instead needed to find them on your explorations. 15 years later, however, they’re finally becoming craftable.
Earlier this week, Minecraft developer Mojang highlighted a new update coming to the super-popular open-world survival game. This update adds some new music, which is cool, but more importantly it finally lets players craft saddles after nearly 20 years of them being random drops. Yes, for the last 15 years the only way to get a saddle—without mods or cheating—was to stumble upon one in a chest or dungeon. That’s always been annoying as saddles are useful items that allow you to ride pigs and horses, though riding horses came later as they weren’t added to Minecraft until 2013.
In the blog post announcing the update, which is currently only available to Java snapshot and Bedrock beta/preview players, it’s clear that Mojang knows that saddles not being craftable has been a sore subject for fans.
“Gone are the days of endlessly scouring the Overworld’s chests just so you can tell your steed to go left,” said Mojang senior creative writer Cristina Anderca. “Now you can simply craft a saddle by using 3 leather and 1 iron ingot. Want to give your pig a frolic break? Simply remove the saddle by shearing it. It’ll pop off, ready to be stored, put on another mount, or pointlessly carried in your inventory until you remember it’s there.”
While some longtime players have joked that saddles and riding horses are worthless as there are faster ways to move around Minecraft, many were still happy to see craftable saddles finally be added. It just always seemed so silly that players could build castles, swords, armor, and more, but not a simple saddle. And this new saddle recipe is pretty easy to put together, so new players or folks starting new worlds can now start using horses to get around sooner and without relying on luck. Truly the end of an era.
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