After a few teasers, Minecraft has shared the name for its next drop in a blog post. Now known as "The Copper Age", this one plans to add a huge amount of new content from weapons to mobs, alongside improvements to make your life as an adventurer a lot easier. According to the announcement , it took the team a while to figure out if there could be "more ways to use copper" before stating "we've finally cracked it! It's almost like we're entering a new Minecraft era?"
We've already seen elements of the drop such as the copper golem and more importantly, shelves, but there's a lot more to look forward to, especially after copper was introduced back in 2021 and hasn't had a huge amount of use since. But now, copper can be used for tools and weapons, and you'll even be able to kit yourself out in a full set of copper armour if you've got nothing stronger to use.
Copper tools and armour will be more durable than stone, but not quite as tough as iron. Fortunately, copper ore spawns a lot more regularly than iron. So if you're caught in a pinch and desperately need to upgrade your stone tools, you won't have to worry about tracking down iron straight away.
Alongside new tools, there's a lot of new decor to help make your base (a 4x4 wooden plank if you're like me) more homely. Copper lanterns and copper torches are being added to shake things up from the standard torch we're used to using. All copper decor will oxidise over time too, which changes the appearance of things like lanterns and chains.
You can wax any oxidised items to turn them back to the original appearance, but I think it's a nice touch. Which is probably a good thing as I'm the worst at any sort of base maintenance in Minecraft and will definitely forget this function. The amount of times I've patched up holes left by creepers with dirt blocks is frankly embarrassing. This oxidisation even applies to your copper golem too. They'll eventually turn into a statue if you don't keep on top of waxing them, which is a pretty neat piece of decor on its own to be honest.
The blog post also alludes to a special interaction between the iron golem and copper golem, but there's no explanation as to what makes it so sweet. It's just something we're expected to discover on our own. Hopefully that doesn't mean the iron golem will throw our new friend into the stratosphere which is usually the interactions I see with this mob.
The only downside is that this announcement doesn't contain any sort of release date or window for the update, so it could be a few months before we get to experience it for ourselves. If it's anything like the last drop, there was a month between the name announcement and the release, but I don't want to get too excited about decorating if it's still going to be a few months yet.
