The Minecraft RTS spinoff is inventing new enemies, too

Minecraft Legends creative director Magnus Nedfors and executive producer Dennis Ries sat down during the Xbox booth livestream at Gamescom this week to deliver a couple new details about Legends, including info on some new mobs—both friend and foe. As with its past genre experimentations, Mojang and Blackbird Interactive's upcoming RTS spinoff is going to make its own mark on the Minecraft world. Dungeons stepped out of the bounds of existing Minecraft lore to create mobs needed to suit its action RPG world and Legends is doing the same. 

As we learned in its initial reveal trailer, the big baddies of Minecraft Legends are the familiar Nether denizens, the Piglins. While we're familiar with Piglins and Hoglins in Vanilla Minecraft, Legends is adding what Nedfors calls a "Pigmadillo," which crouches down into a cube and, despite what you'd assume based on the physics of a cube, offensively rolls towards what it's attacking. There are also "Bruisers" which Ries points out have two giant razor blades to wield. Bit horror-esque, innit? Both new mobs make an appearance in the new cinematic trailer that Mojang showed off.

Over on the friendly side, two types of golem will join your army: the Cobblestone Golem, who is apparently great for taking down enemy structures, and what it sounds like Ries calls a "Plank Golem" which is a ranged unit. They also mention something called speed wheat and a special type of mushroom for jumping extra high that you can use to get across the world and unlock new areas in Legends.

Minecraft Dungeons, for its part, also added new mobs like the Iceologers and Mountaineers. The Iceologers wound up being included in the Minecraft Live 2020 fan vote for which mob to add to Vanilla Minecraft. They lost to the Glow Squid, but I wouldn't be surprised to see one of these new Legends baddies given the same chance at Vanilla Minecraft fame.

And in case you missed it, there is definitely a badger at the beginning of the trailer too. Project Badger was the codename for Minecraft Legends before it was revealed, which may be all that's a nod to. But hey, maybe it will make its way to official mob status too.

Minecraft Legends - A trailer animation of a badger in a green field sniffing a studded mace that landed in front of it.

(Image credit: Mojang)
Lauren Morton
Associate Editor

Lauren started writing for PC Gamer as a freelancer in 2017 while chasing the Dark Souls fashion police and accepted her role as Associate Editor in 2021, now serving as the self-appointed chief cozy games enjoyer. She originally started her career in game development and is still fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long books, longer RPGs, has strong feelings about farmlife sims, and can't stop playing co-op crafting games.