The next major Minecraft Summer Drop in 2025 is shaping up to be a major and exciting one, bringing long-awaited features to the game’s environment. There are new Ghast variants, thereby adding a new mode of transport. In addition, we will get a brand new Player Locator Bar, Vibrant Visuals for the Bedrock Edition, and new recipes for saddles, lead, and much more. With so many snapshots already introduced, we decided to sit down and list them out. So, with that, here are all the confirmed features coming in the Minecraft Summer Drop 2025.
1. New Ghast Variants
One of the biggest highlights of the Minecraft 1.21.6 update is undoubtedly the introduction of new mob variants. This is the first time we are getting a cute flying mob that can take us to the sky. The first Minecraft Live of 2025 announced this feature, and we can now find Dried Ghast blocks in the Nether Dimension.
You can either bring them or make one such Dried Ghast using 8 Ghast Tears and a Soul Sand block. Once done, submerge this grumpy creature in the water for 20 minutes, and it will turn into a smiling Ghastling! This cute mob takes another 20 minutes to grow up, or you can feed it snowballs to speed up the process.
Once that’s done, too, you have yourself a Happy Ghast. What’s so special about them? Well, you can put on a harness on these Minecraft mobs and ride them into the sky! The Happy Ghast can carry up to four players and is easily navigated. So if there’s anything to look forward to in the Minecraft Summer Drop 2025, this one is surely it!
2. Vibrant Visuals
Another brand-new feature disclosed in Minecraft Live is Vibrant Visuals for Minecraft Bedrock. While currently it is an experimental feature, you can still turn on Vibrant Visuals in Minecraft test builds.
This new visual overhaul completely transforms your blocky Minecraft world into something amazing. Vibrant Visuals in Minecraft bring better light-shadow interplay, better water reflections, clouds stretching up to the horizon, volumetric fog, glowy mob eyes, and much more.
Overall, this improves the quality of visuals in Minecraft 1.21.6 and somewhat resembles what you get when you use Shaders in Java edition. While Mojang is currently focused on introducing this feature to Bedrock, Java players will soon have Vibrant Visuals too.
3. Player Locator Bar
Coming up next on our list is the brand-new Minecraft Player Locator Bar. As its name suggests, you can now find all your friends on a multiplayer server with the help of colorful indicators visible at the bottom of your screen.
The player Locator bar overlays the XP bar once turned on, or when other players are active in the same world. However, when actively gaining XP points, the Locator bar disappears, and you can see your current XP level.
Furthermore, the server owner can customize the indicators according to their needs, allowing them to change the colors and even create teams for PvP scenarios or team battles.
Finally, if you don’t want yourself to be seen on the locator bar, try sneaking, wearing a mob head or a carved pumpkin, or consider using the Potion of Invisibility on yourself. This removes all your traces, and now you can sneak behind your friends and prank them.
4. Saddle Crafting Recipe
Next is one of the highly requested features by the Minecraft community: saddles. Previously, saddles could only be found in Loot chests or through trading with villagers.
However, in the latest Minecraft Snapshot 25W20A, we can finally craft a saddle using just 3 Leather pieces and 1 Iron Ingot. However, the loot chests found in Monster Rooms, Ancient Cities, Desert Pyramids, Jungle Pyramids, and Strongholds will no longer have saddles. Nonetheless, if you want to ride mobs like horses and donkeys, you can now craft the saddles in Minecraft.
5. New Harness
The harness is a brand-new item introduced solely for the Happy Ghasts. It can be easily crafted using 3 pieces of Leather, 2 Glass Blocks, and 1 Wool Block. Players can equip a harness on the Happy Ghast to take it to the sky. Furthermore, a single harness is enough for all four players.
Harness from Happy Ghasts can be removed using Shears. However, no player must be on it at the time. Dispensers with Shears cannot remove any items from the mobs. To customize your Ghast ride, use a Wool Block in any of Minecraft’s 16 available colors. If you don’t like a color, you can dye it to a different one.
6. Lead Changes
The recipe for crafting leads in the upcoming Minecraft 1.21.6 update has undergone a significant change, and now you will only require 5 pieces of String to craft two of them. Using strings rather than exploring the vast stretches of the world for a single Slimeball will now make the starting stages a lot easier than before.
In addition, you can now make a long trail of mobs like pigs, horses, and llamas using a leash, so it won’t form a clutter. Using the leads, you can attach boats with the Ghasts to transport a couple of villagers to your base or carry heavier animals like horses and sniffers. The leash has been made thicker, and the distance has been increased to 10-12 blocks to prevent accidental snapping.
7. New Music Tracks
With the upcoming Minecraft Summer Drop 2025, we’ll have 6 new music tracks made by Amos Roddy. These will be featured in various Minecraft biomes like cherry groves, forests, and deserts.
The tracks include Below and Above, Broken Clocks, Fireflies, Lilypad, O’s Piano, Tears, and more. Among them, you can now get the Tears track in the form of a Music Disc by completing a challenge. The challenge requires you to defeat a Ghast by deflecting its own fireball.
8. Other Minecraft 1.21.6 Changes
Besides all the amazing features the Minecraft 2025 Summer Drop is bringing, there are also some minor tweaks here and there. This includes overhauling the Realms configuration UI, which now has four tabs: World, Players, Subscription, and Settings, to help you give better control over it.
Now, Splash Potions scale with the impact distance, which means mobs closer to the potion hitbox will be affected more, and the effect decreases as the mobs go farther away. Projectiles like arrows will have better precision due to fixing the target tolerance margin.
These are all the new and confirmed features coming with the next Minecraft Summer Drop 2025. This update includes some quality-of-life changes and a new way of transport that will surely make the world feel more alive than ever. What do you think about the new additions? Let us know in the comments below!
