Minecraft Tricky Trials: New Mace, Mobs & Combat Chambers!

Last Updated: October 28, 2025

The familiar rhythm of combat in Minecraft has been fundamentally transformed. Mojang's major 1.21 update, "Tricky Trials," which launched on June 13, 2024, has injected a profound new strategic depth into every encounter. Players are now wielding a revolutionary new weapon, facing cunning new hostile mobs, and conquering the sprawling Trial Chambers—a massive new structure designed to test the skills of even the most seasoned veterans.

With the Tricky Trials update, Mojang delivered a dramatic evolution of Minecraft's survival experience. This update is squarely focused on enriching the game's PVE (Player versus Environment) mechanics, offering fresh challenges for players who felt the nightly onslaught of mobs had become too predictable. The update introduced three core pillars of change: a versatile new weapon, formidable new enemies, and the dynamic Trial Chambers that house them.

The Mace: A Heavy-Hitter with a Devastating Twist

The centerpiece of the Tricky Trials arsenal is the Mace. This powerful new heavy weapon introduces a dynamic damage mechanic previously unseen in Minecraft's weapon sandbox. The damage dealt by the Mace scales directly with the distance the player falls before striking a target. This single feature has massive implications for gameplay, effectively turning a daring plunge from a high ledge into a devastating, area-of-effect smash attack that can obliterate groups of enemies.

This mechanic encourages a highly mobile and tactical playstyle, rewarding verticality and positioning. While the sword offers rapid strikes and the axe provides high single-target damage, the Mace fills a unique niche for high-risk, high-reward burst damage. To craft this game-changing weapon, players must brave the new Trial Chambers to defeat the Breeze mob and obtain a Breeze Rod, which is then combined with a Heavy Core—a rare piece of loot also found within the chambers.

Confronting New Challengers: The Breeze and the Bogged

The Tricky Trials update introduced two brand-new hostile mobs that demand new strategies. The first is the Breeze, a whirlwind-like elemental that zips around combat arenas, firing projectiles of wind energy that knock back players and interact with certain blocks. Agile and chaotic, the Breeze forces players to stay on their toes.

Joining the Breeze is the Bogged, a new skeleton variant found in swamps and mangrove swamps, as well as lurking within the Trial Chambers. These moss-covered skeletons fire poison-tipped arrows, adding a dangerous damage-over-time effect to their attacks that can quickly overwhelm unprepared adventurers.

Evolving Threats: The Trial Chambers Gauntlet

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the update is the introduction of Trial Chambers. These sprawling, procedurally generated structures are made of copper and tuff blocks and are hidden deep underground. They serve as a new combat-focused dungeon, filled with traps, puzzles, and a new block called the Trial Spawner.

Unlike regular spawners, Trial Spawners adjust the number of mobs they summon based on the number of players nearby, ensuring a consistent challenge for both solo adventurers and coordinated teams. They spawn waves of various mobs, including the new Breeze and Bogged, before going on cooldown and ejecting valuable loot. These chambers fulfill the promise of more dynamic enemy encounters, forcing players to adapt their tactics on the fly to survive a true combat gauntlet.

With its release in June 2024, the Tricky Trials update successfully refreshed a core aspect of Minecraft that had remained largely unchanged for years. The combination of the high-flying Mace, the cunning new mobs, and the challenging Trial Chambers ensures that survival in Minecraft continues to be a thrilling and ever-evolving adventure.