A Minecrafter’s best friend ｜ The Story Of The Wolves

The Wolf. What better companion to bring with you on your epic Minecraft adventures? They're loyal, brave, and will stay with you through thick and thi- Oh. Oh my god. No, not that way. And here I was, hoping we'd get to at least the opening titles before incinerating a wolf. Wolves. They're the most mysterious mob in Minecraft history. Well, no, not really. But I'm trying to get you hyped up here. I think they are playful and curious. One major trait for the wolf is loyalty, I think. I mainly see the wolves as a companion. Bad survival instincts. Perhaps, or perhaps their love of lava baths is just ahead of its time. The wolf was one of the earliest Minecraft mobs, and like all our best ideas, we got it from someone else. The story is actually that Notch met with another game designer, Peter Molyneux, and Peter said that his son really loves dogs. So I got the task of introducing dogs to Minecraft. Whether it's a wolf or a dog, it's up for discussion. Anyways, Jens did a great job adding good boys to Minecraft, earning our favorite boy both a biscuit and a walk. Since that OG white wolf, yes, I'm calling them wolf from now on, we've introduced lots of different variants, which can be found all over the overworld. We wanted it to be in different biomes, because then you can, you know, set these fun goals for yourself to go out, explore the world and collect them all. My favorite wolf variant is the spotted. Arctic wolf. It spawns in pack of one, so it's kind of lonely. The black wolf is my favorite because it looks very cool. Five-year-old Samuel answered that question. My favorite wolf variant is the... Oh, I've just been told that no one cares. So let's move on and talk wolf taming. In order to tame a wolf, you have to find a wild one and then offer it bones. It has one chance in three that it will become tame, and then you will immediately notice it because it will get the red color and sit down and look at you. Or as Samuel likes to say... Heart magic happens. If you feel heart magic happening to you, by the way, consult your doctor immediately. So you tame them with bones, but they don't eat bones, which, I mean, makes sense. You can't really get nutrishment out of that. You can't, but I eat 50 bones a day. I mean nothing. You tame the wolves with bone and you breed them with meat. Or any type of meat or fish you can find. Rotten flesh. Yikes. It adds a lot of personality, the fact that besides looking at you, they tilt their head when you're holding some food. Very simple, but very cute. Just like me. And this works for both breeding and restoring a wolf's health. When they're hungry, they'll let you know. You can read the emotion, the state of a wolf, by looking at its tail. If the tail is pointing towards the ground, then it's hurt, and if it's up, then it's healthy. And yet people still call me weird for staring at wolf tails. Admittedly, I was doing it for 16 hours straight. Anyway, wolves often run wild and free, leaving a trail of, oh dear, wool blocks and meat all through the overworld. No, no, no, don't. Don't kill. You can often find them battling skeletons. They have some beef with them. So if they see a skeleton, they're just gonna attack. They're made of bones and they like bones, so I think it's understandable. Gosh, if they ever find out that we're full of bones, we're in big trouble. They also react strongly when they get wet. Relatable. Well, actually, not really. I don't shower. They actually get wet when it rains or when they walk in water, and then they shake the water off when they get on dry land. A charming little animation to give them more character. So the rules are clear. Don't upset them with water. Don't leave them unsupervised next to sheep. And please don't hit them by accident. Oh, sure, by accident. Because... Wild wolves get very upset if you hit them. And they also have a flocking behavior. So if you hit one wolf, all other wild wolves in the vicinity will also get angry and they get this really aggressive looking texture on them. Ah, but don't worry if you're one of our billions of creeper or llama viewers. Wolves don't attack creepers, and they're scared of llamas? That can't be right, surely. The fact that the llamas may spit upon their foes I think is scary enough. Llamas look quite intimidating, in a sense, you know, with their long head. Uh, sure. When I joined Mojang, I started to work on llamas. I started to read a lot about llamas. And one thing is that llamas actually, in the real world, sometimes are used to protect sheep because wolves actually, in the real world, also get scared. I keep forgetting that Minecraft is the most realistic game ever made. Still, aggressiveness and cowardly behavior aside, wolves, once tamed, are the perfect companions. It's a friend to bring on your adventures. Wolves will attack things if you attack them, and they will attack hostile mobs. So they're, I suppose, a little bit overprotective. But not good enough for one overprotective puppy parent. I would never dare to take my wolf anywhere outside the vicinity of my base camp, so to speak. It's someone I come home to. Someone to greet me with those happy eyes. Well, that's nice, Samuel. But wolves weren't meant to be cooped up inside. If only there was a way to give them more defense. The wolf armor is intended to give the wolves a little bit more survivability, not just fancy-looking reasons. It's great, right? It just absorbs most of the damage that is dealt to a wolf. It's an armor, so it can't block poison. But otherwise, all physical damage and more, it just absorbs it. Okay, Marco, tell us how to armor wolves. Go! To get the wolf armor, you need armadillo scutes. And to get the scutes, you need to craft a brush, which is fairly easy, even if you need the copper, which maybe is a bit hard to get at the beginning. Once you have your brush, you go to an armadillo and you brush it. If you don't have a brush, you can just wait around an armadillo because from time to time, they just shed off some scutes. And when you have five scutes, then you can craft the wolf armor. Can't believe I spent three days waiting for an armadillo before I remembered to turn the game on. The armor, alongside the wolf's collar, are customizable by color. With so many color combo possibilities, you can make your wolf a true fashionista. With the wolf variants, the team and the sound designer, Sandra, they've been investigating sound variants as well. It adds so much personality to the wolves. Well, that sounds good to me. I'm so lonely. The big legacy is, of course, that they were the first tameable mob that you could turn into a pet. You have them as your companion. They walk with you. I think that's quite an important feature. One of the most iconic mobs, right? I mean, we have the creeper for the hostile mobs, but for the friendly one, I think it's probably the wolf. There's so much more we could do with pets and the way the player interacts with pets, which I really hope we do in the future. Intriguing. For now, the wolf remains the perfect Minecraft companion. And if my pet pig is watching this, please pretend you didn't just hear me say that. See you next time. Now, where did I leave my wolf? Ah, yes. In that bubbling lava pit. Oh.