The quickest way to determine whether a player cares about the aesthetics of their builds in Minecraft is to examine the quality of lighting in their home.
The walls are adorned with torches, and you can even spot a couple of light fixtures on the floor that date back to before our era. Turn around, step outside, and vow not to return until the homeowner replaces those torches with something more efficient, modern, and stylish. If he’s short on ideas, I’d be happy to assist him; this week’s topic is lanterns! The first mention of adding lanterns to Minecraft occurred in October 2010. Initially, the developers intended for lanterns to have the advantage of burning continuously, while torches required periodic relighting. However, this news didn’t garner the expected interest from players, leading to its postponement. Instead, other lighting options were introduced into the game—redstone and glowstone.
Let’s travel back to the year 2018. In her Twitter account, one of the developers of Minecraft Bedrock, Agnes, once again brings up the topic of lanterns. Eventually, they made their way into the game with the update “Village & Pillage“, which also introduced bamboo, foxes, berries, and pillagers.
As obvious as it may seem, lanterns emit light. They have a light level of 15, which is slightly higher than torches, and are on par with glowstone, campfires, redstone lamps, and Jack o’lanterns.
Creating lanterns is quite simple. Place a torch in the center of the crafting grid and surround it with iron nuggets. Additionally, you can discover lanterns naturally occurring in villages located in snowy tundras and within the ruins of bastions. In the latest version of Minecraft, which features an update for the Nether, a new type of lantern has been introduced—the soul lantern. The crafting process is similar to the standard one, except that instead of a regular torch, a soul torch is used.
Soul lanterns not only have a different flame color (they emit blue light instead of orange), but they also provide significantly less illumination—only 10 compared to the 15 offered by a regular lantern. While this may be somewhat disappointing, if you find yourself living in a snowy biome, you might appreciate the charm of soul lanterns.
Why? A light level of 10 is sufficient to deter monsters, yet it remains inadequate for melting snow and ice. You can illuminate your icy fortress or palace without any issues. Anytime, Ice King. In the real world, people have been using lanterns since at least Roman times. Most of them were simple boxes containing candles, although some utilized oil and wicks.
During the Middle Ages, watchmen began patrolling city streets with lanterns in hand to prevent crime. It wasn’t until the 1500s that public spaces started to be illuminated. This significantly transformed urban life, as citizens could remain outdoors after dark instead of retreating to their homes.
It is possible that this has altered our sleep patterns. Historian A. Roger Ekirch suggests that in the past, adults would sleep in two distinct phases. They would awaken for about an hour in the middle of the night to reflect and interpret their dreams, pray, or even visit neighbors on occasion. The presence of light extended their waking hours, leading people to go to bed later, which ultimately merged the two sleep sessions into one.
If you ever find yourself awake in the middle of the night, don’t be alarmed—it could be completely normal. However, I wouldn’t recommend visiting neighbors during such times; it might not be received well in today’s world.
