Minecraft Ancient City Portal: Top Speculations and New Dimension Rumors!

Imagine having a mob stronger than the Ender Dragon and the Wither in Minecraft, only for it to drop a sculk block on dying. Feels rather odd, doesn’t it? Well, it gets worse. The mob we are talking about is the Warden from the Minecraft 1.19 update, and it drops sculk catalyst, which you can find anyway, and mine in the Deep Dark biome using the silk touch enchantment. Something smells fishy, right? That’s not all. The location where the Warden spawns is the same spot as the ancient city portal in Minecraft. At least, that’s what the community feels about that structure. Now, to put an end to all the rumors and theories, we are here to uncover everything around Minecraft’s ancient city portal and the likely addition of a new dimension.

Ancient City Portal: New Dimension, New Boss, and Release Date

Our guide reviews various sources and speculations about the portal-like structure in the Minecraft ancient city. We also discredit rumors that don’t make sense or are just plain unreliable.

Is There a Portal in the Ancient City?

The ancient city that spawns in Minecraft’s deep, dark biome has multiple smaller structures. Some structures look like temples, whereas others include hallways, ruined structures, and gateways. But what stands out the most to Minecraft players is the huge hollow structure that looks like a portal and a window in the center of the ancient city.

Moreover, this structure’s window area comprises reinforced deep slate blocks. Similar to the blocks that make the End portal in the game, you can’t mine and get the reinforced deep slate blocks.

If you try to break the block, it takes over 80 seconds, making it 10 times stronger than the strongest block in the game, i.e., obsidian. Following the trend, obsidian is also a portal block, which you can use to make the Nether portal in Minecraft. Portal or not, these properties definitely point towards an ampler purpose of reinforced deep slate blocks.

Minecraft Ancient City Portal: Speculations

Reference to Portal in Snapshots

The Minecraft snapshot 22W13A was the first beta release to bring Ancient cities to the game. Interestingly, the Ancient city in that snapshot also had a mini version of the city center structure. It was an exact replica of this structure, just much smaller in size.

The most suspicious part of this release was that the game officially called the structure “small portal statue,” which indicates that the bigger structure is a portal of some sort. But before you start looking for hints of this in the official 1.19 update, this structure’s name was changed in the subsequent snapshots.

Music Disc 5: Mysterious Sounds!?

Almost all Minecraft music discs are made up of in-game sounds or general music. However, the new music disc five added to the Minecraft 1.19 update is slightly different. It begins with the sound of static. Then, you can hear the sound of someone walking, blocks being broken, the Warden, and susurrating in quick succession. These sounds are followed by a loud metallic click, similar to flint & steel used to light the Nether portal in Minecraft.

After that, you can hear squealing, metallic footsteps, and a fading music sound. Things seem to calm down after that as soft music plays in your ears, but it stops abruptly, and what follows is a bunch of scary noises, including heavy footsteps and extending to monstrous screams before the disc stops. You can give the music disc 5 in Minecraft 1.19 a listen right here:

The most suspicious sounds in the disc can be heard in the 12th and 13th seconds of the audio clip. What you hear sounds like flint and steel lighting a fire (possibly the soul fire; more on this below) followed by a Minecraft portal opening (possibly the Ancient City one). But until the developers reveal the story or the concept behind this disc, the mystery will prevail.

According to some speculations, instead of a portal to another world, this music disc sounds like an entrance that leads a monstrous boss into our world. And seeing the side of the portal, I surely don’t want to find out what can come out of it.

Warden Mob is a Guard

The term “warden” literally means “guard” or “protector.” So, it would make sense that the presence of the newly added mob Warden in the Ancient city means it is there to protect something. To be fair, the loot in the Ancient city is amazing. But the Warden is not a boss mob and is still stronger than existing boss mobs in the game. Such power isn’t justified for the kind of loot you find in these cities.

Also, as mentioned earlier, if you defeat the Warden, the mob only drops the sculk catalyst, which is one of the many types of sculk blocks in Minecraft 1.19. However, you can obtain the sculk blocks easily with the silk touch enchantment. So yes, killing the Warden feels useless at the end of the day.

But if the Warden drops something interesting like a portal opener in the future, its presence would certainly fit better within the game.

The Aether Dimension

Brandon Pearce, aka Kingbdoz, is a popular Minecraft Gameplay Developer at Mojang. But before he joined their team in 2020, he was the face behind the popular Aether mod. This mod added a new dimension to the game. And it became so famous that people started trying to make Aether portal even in the vanilla game, assuming it to be an actual feature.

So, if the developer plans to use Pearce’s skills in mod development, a dimension could definitely be on the cards and would make the most sense. However, it’s worth noting that he hasn’t said anything about the new update. But his mysterious tweets keep coming.

Will We Get a New Dimension in Minecraft 1.21.5 Update?

The last time Minecraft’s developers officially talked about a new dimension, they claimed to improve existing biomes and dimensions in the game first. With revamped biomes finally making their way to the game, we don’t think that the chances of a new dimension are high in the next Minecraft update. But you can use our linked guide to find other speculated features that might actually make it into the game.

However, once the biome revamps are complete, the only thing that would make sense is adding a new dimension to the game. This will allow developers to bring brand-new mechanics to Minecraft, similar to flying with Elytra from the End dimension. If we are lucky, this new update should be included in the Minecraft 1.21.5 update this year.

Is Minecraft Getting a New Dimension?

Well, that’s pretty much it. You now know most of the theories regarding Minecraft’s Ancient city portal, along with the logic behind them. Having said that, if you have yet to witness the new structure yourself, feel free to use our list of the best Ancient city seeds to do so.

You can use the best Minecraft mods to get a new dimension and a lot more in the game right away. As for the speculations, there’s no evident end to them. What more ideas do you have? Drop them in the comments section!