Dawn of “The Copper Age”
“Minecraft LIVE - September 2025” on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/live/AEHc8jrcc6g?si=go_Z3TmWi3Tes0X2
This year, Minecraft has been shifting gears. The monolithic yearly updates and mob votes fans once knew are now packaged into smaller, quarterly updates. In other words, Mojang is slowly making way for more content to be sprinkled throughout the year rather than introducing massive overhauls and new biomes once in a calendar year. This is a smart tactic, ensuring their players have new stuff to play, build, or fight with more frequently, keeping the fourteen-year-old game enticing. The days of two-week Minecraft phases may slowly be dissuaded with the promise of more mobs, more blocks, and more exploration every season of the year. With two updates already come and gone, Mojang now prepares for their third of the year, coming just in time for the fall. Minecraft’s “The Copper Age” update drops tomorrow after months of testing and teasing the content to its fans.
Minecraft’s Upcoming Update
From the jump, the spotlight landed on “The Copper Age.” Minecraft developers have finally leaned into the copper aesthetic, promising it more use than just aesthetic. Some of the features they highlighted were obvious, finally allowing players to craft copper tools, armor, and weapons. Copper will no longer just be a building block, but a proper step in a player’s progress through survival. The damage, durability, and effectiveness sit between stone and iron. However, the promise of a more abundant ore leads me to believe that copper will still be useful for the builders (like me) who don’t want to constantly waste iron ingots making axes, pickaxes, and such to gather materials or replace misplaced ones. In addition to these more functional player items, copper will also find its purpose in horse armor and a new light texture! Yes, there is finally a new way to bring light to your builds aside from the typical sources of fire and redstone lamps (or even the somewhat newer soul fire). Copper torches and lanterns share the same texture as the ones we know and love, with a green hue. While it might not seem like much, the fixtures add a spookier, more mischievous light to work with. Some of these additions may not provide the most powerful upgrades, but they add a meaningful middle tier to Minecraft’s familiar progression system.
Yet, the real show-stealer was not the copper tools but rather the Copper Golem. The mob, as many might recognize, was originally presented in the mob vote of 2021 but lost to the Allay. Four years later, it is finally getting its time to shine, and players could not be more excited. With the simple recipe of a copper block and a carved pumpkin, a Copper Golem with a copper chest will spawn, but that’s not all. The Copper Golem functions as an automatic chest organizer, bringing stacks of items placed within the copper chest into nearby wooden ones. For all the messy Minecraft players, this mob might just make their lives a little easier each playthrough by keeping their bases organized.
Besides Copper Golem’s functionality, they make for great company! If not waxed, the Copper Golem will oxidize just like other copper blocks in the game. Yet, their change is not just visual. No, over time the Copper Golem will steadily move more slowly—creaking more with each step—before eventually becoming a statue. Once in their statue form, their standing position can be switched between four unique poses. When the Copper Golems are in each of these positions, the team explained that they emit unique redstone signals, meaning password-protected bases are within our grasp at last. With a good builder and an even better redstone engineer, you can set up a hidden base that only opens once the golem statues are moved into the right poses. Bases have never been more secure
Another highlight for many players was the shelf block Mojang is adding with “The Copper Age” update. For the first time, players have a hot bar swap. Each shelf can hold three items (sort of like an item frame) that, with proper setup, can be used to exchange the tools and items in your hot bar for the ones lined up along the shelves. While this is a great feature, the shelf block also has great aesthetic functionality for builders, standing in as that long-awaited vertical slab we still haven’t gotten. Many players were quick to test the shelf as decorative pieces rather than functional ones. Instead of using trapdoors, or perhaps in addition to using them, shelves can add great texture to your Minecraft builds. In other builds, they could even be used to set up shop backgrounds. Shelves not only act as storage but can also make it more visually interesting. One idea I saw over the past month, after this was teased, was using the shelves as a bar-back for potions. Behind a counter, the shelves stored various kinds of potions and making for a much more appealing display than item frames.
The Winter Snapshot Preview
In the final minutes of Mojang’s livestream, they teased their final update for the year, titled “Mounts of Mayhem.” This winter expansion appears to push some of the more radical changes, introducing another weapon type, a new mount, and a whole new way to explore underwater. The new weapon is one fans have been talking about for ages: the spear. Not only is this a tiered weapon (meaning the material it’s made of affects its damage and weight), but it also scales to how fast you are going. In other words, mounted combat (or even elytra combat) has gotten much more interesting. With proper timing, players can do heaps of damage to players atop their horses, their flying ghosts, using their elytra, or even underwater with Minecraft’s newest mountable mob: the Nautilus! By using pufferfish, players will not only be able to breed these aquatic creatures but tame them as well. Once tamed and saddled, you can ride them underwater with an automatic water breathing effect for easier sea exploration and base building. But that’s not all. Drowned can also be found riding their own zombie nautiluses, wielding tridents, making the already scary creatures even more frightening. The land-dwelling zombies have also been given their own mount with the zombie horse. They will spawn in survival, wielding spears and ready to pressure the players like never before. All-in-all, this “Mounts of Mayhem” update adds more dynamics to underwater travel and mounted combat, bringing more life to the steadily growing game.
The Community’s Reaction
Despite Mojang’s promise to bring more frequent updates to the game, fans are still skeptical that what they are doing might not be enough. Some have said these updates resemble fan-made mods that are put together more often and in much less time. Others seem to believe that these smaller and quarterly drops make the game more engaging all year round. The reactions might be split; half still want the developers to be more adventurous in their updates, while the other half seems to enjoy this shift. Mojang is trying to answer some of the prior year’s concerns by bringing its community more content throughout the year. This leads to fewer game-changing updates, but the sum of each patch helps frame the future of Minecraft much more positively.
Stay tuned to Pages and Pixels for more Minecraft coverage and the latest gaming news—because the Copper Age is only the beginning.
