Minecraft’s Biggest Summer Update Drops Tomorrow — Vibrant Visuals, Rideable Ghasts & More!

Image: Minecraft Visual Update/Mojang

Mojang is rolling out two significant Minecraft updates that were previously showcased during Minecraft Live in March—Chase the Skies and Vibrant Visuals.

These updates mark a major shift in both gameplay and graphical presentation, particularly for Bedrock players, and aim to improve exploration and quality-of-life across the board.

Starting with Chase the Skies, version 1.21.6 introduces one of the most exciting mobs in recent memory—rideable Happy Ghasts. These large flying creatures aren’t just for show. Players can raise them from “dried ghast” blocks found in the Nether’s Soul Sand Valley or crafted using soul sand and 8 ghast tears. Once hydrated in water, they hatch into Ghastlings, which can be fed snowballs to grow into full-fledged Happy Ghasts. When fully matured, they can be equipped with colorful harnesses (crafted using leather, glass, and wool) to serve as airborne mounts, carrying up to four players at once.

Image: rideable Happy Ghasts/Minecraft/Mojang

Flying solo or with friends is more convenient now, thanks to the Player Locator Bar, a new HUD feature that replaces the XP bar in multiplayer. It shows the positions of other players using colored dots and arrows for elevation. If you'd rather keep a low profile, crouching with certain items—like a carved pumpkin or mob head—makes you invisible to the radar.

On the visual side, Bedrock Edition is getting a substantial glow-up with Vibrant Visuals. The update introduces pixel-perfect shadows, enhanced lighting, volumetric fog, and water reflections. These additions bring Bedrock much closer to the kind of shaders usually reserved for Java modders. While Java players won’t get the full suite just yet, Mojang has confirmed environmental fog updates and plans to bring more features down the line.

The updates also include practical tweaks. Saddles can now be crafted using 3 leather and one iron ingot, eliminating the randomness of loot chests. Leads, now made with just string, have better physics and can even tether boats or ghasts. You’ll also be able to remove saddles and harnesses using shears.

Music lovers aren’t left out either. A new “Tears” music disc will drop from ghasts if they’re defeated using reflected fireballs. On top of that, composer Amos Roddy has contributed five new ambient tracks that will play in different biomes.

A new cloud rendering system has also been introduced, supporting render distances up to 128 chunks.

Additional tweaks include streamlined lodestone crafting, more farm animal variants, improved Enderman behavior, and an updated Realms UI. Mojang has also fine-tuned mechanics like splash potion physics and projectile accuracy.

As per Mojang’s updated content strategy, these game drops are part of their move toward smaller but more frequent updates.

Minecraft’s Vibrant Visuals and Chase the Skies updates launch tomorrow, June 17, on all platforms.