Minecraft 1.8 Update Brings Pandas, Stray Cats, Bamboo, And More

Minecraft has been updated to version 1.8, bringing a bunch of new features, updated templates, functions, a few experimental gameplay changes, and more. Players will, for example, find that stray cats now spawn in villages and can be tamed using fish. As previously promised, the game also now features pandas that spawn in jungles and bamboo will now appear in some chests.

The newly added pandas were first previewed back in late September during MINECON 2018. Players will find them within jungles; as with the real thing, these new blocky creatures lounge and roll around. As mentioned, version 1.8 also brings stray cats that can be tamed with fish. Ocelots, on the other hand, can no longer be tamed, but players can feed them to "gain their trust."

Bamboo will be easier to find as it will show up in some chests and will sometimes be found while fishing within jungles. The company plans to add natural bamboo spawns in a future update. Players can use bamboo to craft climbable scaffolding.

In addition to the new in-game characters, Microsoft and Mojang have added new achievements that include the ability to breed two pandas using bamboo, to get a gift in the morning when a stray cat has been tamed, and a "Top of the World" achievement when scaffolding has been placed to the world limit.

Other changes include making phantoms afraid of cats — they won't swoop down if a cat is around. As well, there's now spawn eggs for the zombie horse foal and skeleton horse foal, tropical fish are bigger in version 1.8, and there's a new crafting recipe for Packed Ice. The new features and changes are joined by a slew of bug fixes, among them being fixes for various crashes, better performance on low-memory devices, better game file loading times, and more.

Players can find the full changelog here.