Mojang has recently gone on a spree retexturing and giving more variants to Minecraft (mobs, villagers, wolves, cows, pigs, etc.), and I thought why not zombies?

The classic Zombie is based off of Steve, so why not have variants of the base zombie based off the new "Vanilla" character skins? At the very minimum, Alex deserves her own zombie variant. This would spice up the game a good bit.

Implementation

The Classic Zombie (Steve based) would still spawn overwhelmingly, keeping the iconic look most players are used to. The Alex Zombie could possibly spawn occasionally as a common secondary variant, giving us the male/female (I know that they're gender neutral, but they're a duo!) parity we already have with player skins.

The other 7 Vanilla skins (Zuri, Kai, Sunny, Efe, Noor, Makena, Ari etc.) would have a rarer chance of spawning as Zombie Leaders, that currently don't have a unique skin and are stronger, which has been requested I'm sure.

Minecraft Wiki

Leader zombies are a special type of zombie that spawn with an added 50-75% chance to spawn reinforcements. The chance of a leader zombie spawning increases with clamped regional difficulty, up to a 5% chance of spawning. This means your game won't be saturated with new zombie skins!

Overall

I think it fits in perfectly with Mojang's recent variant trend (cows, pigs, wolves, villagers, etc.) and makes sense.

It costs almost nothing to implement since the character models already exist; it's purely a texture pass using a consistent zombification formula which is how I created my models!

It adds visual variety to annoying mob encounters (why can't we tell who a Zombie Leader is).

Everything here is gated behind the Hard difficulty, more likely, Hardcore mode, or a toggleable game rule, so it's fully optional.

Torches Burn Out

Regular torches extinguish and need to be relit with flint and steel. Reintroduces the old 2.0 April Fools date feature.

Soul Torches and Redstone Torches Stay Lit

Soul torches never burn out, giving players a real reason to venture into the Nether for permanent lighting. Redstone torches also stay lit, but mobs can still spawn around them since their light level is low.

Other Light Sources

Lanterns, jack o' lanterns, campfires, and candles, etc. can all burn out and need manual relighting. Some light sources like Glowstone, Shroomlights, Froglights, Sea Lanterns, and Glow Lichen stay permanently lit since they don't rely on flame, but are harder to attain.

Sulfur Torches

Combine sulfur with a regular torch to craft a Torch that burns significantly longer than a standard one.

Allays

Give an Allay a Flint and Steel and it becomes your personal lamp lighter, flying around your base relighting torches and lanterns as they burn out. Craft/find an Enchanted Flint and Steel and any torch the Allay lights becomes permanent. Allays can also be given a lantern to carry, lighting the way as they follow you through dark caves!

Thoughts?

PSA: I avoided dynamic lighting suggestions.

Cinnabar Crystals/Custom Enchantment Sheens!

A new pair of crystal formations to complement Sulfur Spikes (unlike those who suggested Cinnabar Stalactites, which do not exist much IRL). Cinnabar and Amethyst could replace diamond in firework star recipes alongside amethyst, giving us more color variety in fireworks.

Combine amethyst, cinnabar crystal, or lapis to swap out the default purple glint for red, blue, or blended combos personalizing your enchanted gear.

Suspicious Red Gravel

A new gravel variant crafted from cinnabar plus regular gravel, or found naturally in the Badlands, Sulfur Caves, and possibly the Nether alongside Suspicious Red Gravel. Ties into a Sniffer suggestion I've posted previously.

Cinnabar Pots/Colored Pots

Inspired by ancient Chinese art, they used cinnabar for pottery! While we're at it, why not add a full range of colored decorated pots. Cinnabar Shards would generate inside Suspicious Red Gravel, allowing you to make Cinnabar Pots!

Molten Sulfur/Lava

A brand-new visual fluid. Molten sulfur appears as a deep bluish purple "lava" in Sulfur Caves when lava is on top or adjacent to sulfur blocks. I can totally see players mining up all the sulfur for cool lava effects in their base!

Ghost-Faced Bats/Bats

Ghost-Faced Bats are a new brownish bat variant that's drawn to the smell of sulfur (and IRL!) and will lead players toward Sulfur Caves. They're insectivores, so you feed them spider eyes for them to lead you.

Feed regular bats a sweet berry or glowberry and it'll lead you back out of the caves.

We know villagers can actually talk since Lava Chicken (the music disc) is sung in Villager and was clearly meant to be understood.

Villager quests

Villagers can give miscellaneous quests, small repeatable ones that pull you out of the village. Fight off illagers at a nearby outpost, explore a ruin, bring back a specific item. The more quests you complete for a villager, the better your relationship with them, which feeds into the existing gossip and price mechanics.

Rumors

Villagers gossip about each other ("Did you hear what Villager #3 said...?") and about the world around them. Different professions know different things, cartographers hint at structures, clerics warn about spawners, etc. Maybe they can even talk about other players!

Recognition

Major accomplishments get acknowledged. Kill the Ender Dragon or the Wither and villagers know, they greet you differently. Enslave them in a Villager Hall, and they may say some negative things!

Villager icons

Each villager gets a profession icon in the dialogue UI, the same icons first shown at MINECON, which were beautifully designed IMO!

Wandering Trader tips

Since wandering traders are well-traveled, they share things a normal villager wouldn't know, the non-obvious quirks of Minecraft. Wear a carved pumpkin and Endermen won't aggro. Waxing copper locks its oxidation.

The audio

While a villager is "speaking" to you, you'd hear the classic hrrr... hrrhr... hmmm... villager noises looping underneath the dialogue box, the same sounds they already make in-game. The text on the screen is the "translation," and the mumbling is what's actually coming out of their mouth. Keeps it funny.

Example dialogue

The villager quest text in my mockup is written in the quirky style of Villager News.

I've always wondered why mud is locked to mangrove swamps and why it's so tedious to get elsewhere. You can already farm it with water bottles, so expanding it wouldn't hurt the mangrove swamp's identity. It always felt strange that lakes and rivers have no mud under them. Vanilla mud's texture is too dark to just drop under plains water; it only really fits the mangrove. So, the solution is new biome-dependent variants!

World generation

Mud now has biome-dependent variants, including a lighter brown that blends naturally with plains and forests. It generates under the water in lakes, ponds, and rivers.

Mobs

Pigs can now spawn muddy, and dried-off muddy pigs will actively seek out water to re-muddy themselves. Rabbits that dig up your carrots can get a muddy texture as a visual!

Environment

Muddy water appears in high-concentration areas, forming muddy pools. When it rains, normal paths turn into muddy paths.

Credits

Mob textures are from the Minecraft Earth Wiki (plus the muddy water block). Everything else is mine!

IRL Cinnabar changes from bright red to dark red to brownish to near black when exposed to sunlight.

People have been split between the original Minecon cinnabar color and the new one. Why not have both? Let cinnabar darken through four stages like copper oxidation and wax it to lock the color you want which is how the Romans preserved their cinnabar walls.

My visualization might not be perfect, but I trust Mojang to nail the colors!

Partial Reupload: I had to verify Cinnabar toxicity for the Sniffer! Solid cinnabar is stable and non-toxic to touch, which is why miners were okay IRL.

Cinnabar is mercury sulfide. Mercury preserves organic material which is why ancient civilizations packed their dead in cinnabar. Seeds trapped in cinnabar veins for millions of years would be perfectly mummified. The Sniffer detects them through and pulls out extinct plant seeds giving another use for Sniffers!

The Scale Tree

The new rare seed grows into the Lepidodendron, meaning "Scale Tree" in Greek. A real extinct tree from millions of years ago. This is a new wood type known as Scaled/Scale/Scaletree Wood.

This is also the first green wood type (Bamboo does NOT count). Scale (Scaletree?) logs, planks, doors, fences. Green wood has been requested for years. The diamond-scale bark pattern on the log would be also be really unique!

Bouncy Piston

The Bouncy Piston launches entities, players, and some blocks away from the piston head instead of just pushing them one space. Player launchers, mob farm kill chambers, TNT cannons.

Sulfur Core

Dropped from Sulfur Cubes, the Sulfur Core (The Core of the Sulfur Block Mob) is a new block that only sticks to other Sulfur Cores. A third option alongside Slime and Honey that won't interfere with either.

Red Sand

Red Sand can now be crafted by combining Cinnabar with Sand.

Red Gravel

Red Gravel is a new block, previously seen in Minecraft Story Mode, crafted from Gravel and Cinnabar. It generates naturally in both the Badlands and Sulfur Caves, and potentially the Nether.

Underwater TNT

Underwater TNT can now be crafted using Sulfur, bringing an Education Edition feature into survival.

Thoughts?

Sulfur pool water meeting lava should generate deepslate instead of cobblestone, finally giving players a renewable deepslate generator!

Edit: It took a while for moderators to approve this; it isn't a repost of the one on r/minecraft but posted simultaneously!

u/-PepeArown- previously mentioned that Mimics are too mainstream, and don't fit the vibe of Minecraft. I pondered and agreed!

The Sham

Definition: It's a fake bed (definition 1) that looks like a real one using a pillow as its face (definition 2).

The Sham is a new hostile mob disguised as a bed, previously seen in various Minecraft media. They look identical to normal beds until you try to sleep in one, at which point they attack. Shams have an extremely low chance of spawning in place of a regular bed in abandoned villages, woodland mansions, and other generated structures. Most beds are still just beds. But every now and then, one isn't. They can drop wool or possibly feathers!

Cats refuse to sit on beds that are Shams! You can also try to break the bed, which will prompt them to attack!

Mansion Tweak

While we're at it, the Mansion has been updated, and actual Blue Beds have replaced!

Bed of Insomnia/Cursed Bed

A rare drop or possibly recipe that can be acquired from Shams! Unlike a normal bed, sleeping in a Bed of Insomnia/Cursed Bed during the day skips time to night instead of morning!

Gold Chests (Previously Added in an April Fools Update!)

Gold Chests replace wooden chests in Bastions, fitting the Piglin aesthetic. Functionally, Copper Golems ignore them, preventing all your storage from being automated, for things you want to manually sort. Piglins no longer care about wooden chests being opened, but they will attack if you touch a Gold Chest.

For lockable storage, there are two possible directions. Either a new enchantment that prevents other players from opening or breaking your Gold Chest or keys that pair with chests, meaning only players holding the matching key can open it. Either way, lockable chests are long overdue.

Trapped Copper Chests

Trapped Copper Chests emit different Redstone signal strengths depending on their oxidation level, and Copper Golems can interact with them to trigger contraptions.

Mimics

Mimics are a new hostile mob disguised as chests, inspired by Dungeons and Dragons and seen in Terraria and the Aether mod. They look identical to normal chests until you try to open one, at which point they attack. Found lurking in Strongholds and Mineshafts. Maybe you can get a "Mimic" head and wear a chest for a head!

Java Parity

Pistons can now move chests in Java, matching Bedrock behavior.

Other Suggestions

There have been a lot of suggestions for wood variant chests and Stone Chests like the ones seen in the Deep Dark Concept Art, so I've left those out. Food for thought.

Thoughts?

Firework Star: Amethyst Shards should replace Diamonds in some firework star recipes. Diamonds are too rare blowing up in the sky, and Amethyst is abundant, renewable through geodes, and barely used outside of a few niche recipes. While we're here, can we have Firework charges be available in the Creative mode inventory?

Custom Enchantment Colors/Sheens: Combine a dye, a piece of enchanted armor, and an Amethyst Shard on a Smithing Table to change the color of your enchantment sheen. This gives Amethyst another practical use and lets players customize their gear's look further.

Glowing Mushroom(s)

Originally seen in Minecraft Story Mode, two new mushroom variants light sources can now be found rarely growing in caves at deeper layers, with large and small versions.

The Glowing Mushroom is the cyan variant. It emits light naturally, works as a food source (mushroom stew), and can be brewed into a Potion of Glowing, making the Glowing effect accessible in survival for Bedrock and letting players see nearby mobs through walls. Glowing Mushrooms can be dyed any color, adding a customizable light source for builders.

Possibly: The dark blue variant inflicts Blindness when eaten and can be brewed into a Potion of Blindness. Mojang has talked about adding a poisonous mushroom before, and this is a happy medium. Dangerous, but still useful.

Both potions have splash, lingering, and tipped arrow variants.

Thoughts?