The Happy Ghasts Are Here!

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Today, the long-awaited “Happy Ghast” update seems to have finally hit both versions of Minecraft. This, of course, means that the Bedrock version now has the spicy visuals, and Java just the Ghasts. Which is fine. The Happy Ghast is an inversion of … uhm, the Sad Ghast? Is that what we’re calling her? And you can find them around fossils in the Nether. Which is exactly what I tried to do in a world I’ve been building on for a couple of months now.

A while back I wrote about how The End poem sort of helped me re-contextualize life, and I feel like that’s still true, now. Even if actually beating The End of Minecraft kind of left me feeling like there’s no real other bigger goal to work toward, aside from spawning a Wither and fighting to the death for a chance to get the ingredients for a beacon.

An item I feel is kind of worth having, but at the same time, is that it?

But now we have potential flying mounts to use in the game in the form of joyful ghosts that don’t shoot fireballs at you and blow up all of your hard work!

I’ve already built a dock, ready and waiting for my first Ghast.

But little did I know what was ahead of me …

So, over a month ago, when I first heard of this update, I went into the Nether and I made sure to find myself a Soul Valley where I could easily find fossils, and, in turn, a Happy Ghast. Flash forward to me having more knowledge, little did I know … These things would not spawn on already discovered chunks.

This means that, for hundreds and hundreds of chunks, or blocks (?) around me, there was no chance at all that I would find a Dried Ghast anywhere near my base location.

Awesome.

I didn’t really know what else to do, so I started running. And what did I find?

More fossils with zero Dried Ghasts! Oh no!

With just my tools in my inventory, a compass pointing to a lodestone in my base, and some obsidian, I decided that this was enough to take a risk (mind you, before I made it to this point, I died and lost my entire set of Netherite tools).

And then I was off, and I think I ran for a couple of minutes before I hit the Crimson Forest. The dastardly, red-everywhere and piglet honkers threatening to eat my face off, biome.

A mother frikker of a forest that would go on, and on, forever …

Until I eventually hit … more Crimson Forest!

This was, by far, the largest amount of this type of biome I’ve ever seen in my Minecraft history, and I’ve been playing since 2010. But, not all was despair. I did find myself a pretty strange Bastion. A structure I hadn’t previously been able to locate before.

But, these structures are also pretty tough, if you’re not busted out in fully enchanted weapons and armor. Those axe-wielding pigmen are, needless to say, a pain in the ass, and absolutely not worth fighting a whole platoon of them, just for maybe finding some Netherite.

So I kept going.

It was a couple of minutes more (maybe 5?) of treading ground beyond this Bastion that I eventually found myself in an undiscovered Soul Valley, and, although I forgot to take screenshots of this part, every single fossil had a dried ghast near it. So, I grabbed a few, for good measure. Because I ain’t coming back to this place any time soon. Heck no.

But then I turned around.

I wonder if there’s a record for how fast someone’s built a Nether portal? Regardless, I got away and jumped back into the Overworld, with quite a bit of my health missing from the jump. And, also coming to find that I was a few thousand chunks? Steps? Blocks? … away from my base.

This was the easy part though. I had the compass pointing at the lodestone. All I had to do was follow the red arrow for about ten minutes or so, right?

Well, basically. Except I had to traverse a massive ocean and be shot at by about 400 Guardians.

But when I finally found land nearer to home, I found this …

An unoccupied igloo type base? Is this something that spawns now?? Is there someone living in my singleplayer world??? The stranger part, was that this little hovel was lit with redstone torches, which raises even more questions. Those things don’t really provide any light!

I wasn’t quite sure what I stumbled upon here, so I just kept on going, climbing over like three different mountains, until I finally made it back. And once I did, I built myself a little Ghast-growing-enclosure behind my base, and plopped this little dehydrated dude down.

For this (and a few other) Dried Ghasts, I had to travel probably the equivalent of the span of West Virginia, and then back again. And, although I now finally have what I’ve been waiting months to decorate my world with, I have to ask Mojang just one thing: Can you guys please make it so previously rendered chunks UTILIZE NEW CONTENT?

Thanks.