Ancient city in Minecraft 1.19 update: All you need to know

It has been over two years since Mojang revealed deep dark caves at the annual Minecraft live event. During the stream, players saw a cube-shaped structure in deep dark caves and many have pondered about it ever since.At Minecraft Live 2021, Mojang officially revealed the ancient city, a giant eerie structure found exclusively in deep dark caves. After watching the preview of ancient cities, the community was no longer disappointed about deep dark caves getting delayed to version 1.19 

Developers shifted deep dark caves and all of its features to The Wild Update as it had become a pretty large project on its own and outgrew the scope of the Caves & Cliffs update.Development on The Wild Update has been fired up, and an experimental snapshot has been released featuring the warden, deep dark caves, and ancient cities.

Mojang recently released an experimental snapshot for Minecraft Java Edition which introduced deep dark caves and all of its features. It was the first snapshot for The Wild Update. Players can finally explore ancient cities before the official release.Ancient city is no doubt a dangerous and terrifying structure. Being in the deepest layers of the Overworld, the entire atmosphere of this structure is different from anything players might have previously seen in Minecraft.

Based on its shape in the experimental snapshot, ancient cities are similar to strongholds in terms of size. It is a wide-spread structure with many long corridors made of deepslate with flooring of wool blocks.In ancient cities, players will find multiple small compartments with all kinds of sculk blocks and loot chests. Players can find an exclusive enchantment called Swift Sneak in ancient cities.All ancient cities have a weird rectangular frame made of reinforced deepslate - a new unobtainable block. This frame looks similar to a portal, making the structure feel even more spine-chilling.

Many players have already come up with lore theories, saying that the warden and sculk blocks are from an unknown dimension and have entered the Overworld through the mysterious frame and are now spreading worldwide.

Warden is the only mob capable of spawning in ancient cities and deep dark caves. However, mobs from other caves might enter the structure, only to be defeated by the wicked warden.In ancient cities, players can find many sculk shrieker blocks that will summon the warden when activated. Because of this, players always have to sneak around and make no sound in ancient cities to keep the warden away.