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The makers of Minecraft have announced that the new Caves & Cliffs update will be released in two parts.

The news was shared in a special announcement video by Minecraft's Game Director Agnes Larsson, and Henrik Kniberg, a coach and developer at Mojang.

The Caves & Cliffs update was first announced at the Minecraft Live event last year, where they initially said it would be released in Summer 2021.

Agnes said that part one of the new update would still be released this summer, but that a second part would be released later in the winter.

"This was not an easy decision" said the team in a blog post "and we're also disappointed that some really exciting features are only coming later. Still, it's the best possible choice to keep our team healthy, happy, and able to deliver awesome updates for many years to come."

The team at Mojang said there were three main reasons why they were splitting the update into two parts.

Quality: The team said that the new update was their "most ambitious one" yet, and they didn't want to rush to get the update and have the quality not be very good and there be lots of bugs.

"We want this update to be an amazing experience, not wreak havoc on your meticulously crafted worlds" said the team in a blog post.

Technical challenges: As the new update is so big, the team have shared that this has caused them some technical challenges whilst making it which has slowed them down. This includes big changes to the way that worlds are made in the game.

"With this feature, we are completely reshaping the Overworld, including the build height. Not only do we have to consider every effect this can have on the world but also how it will affect performance. Basically, having more stuff in the game also slows it down and we want to avoid that" said the makers.

Team health and wellbeing: In order to make these big changes to the game, it will mean a lot of extra work for the team who make it, and they wanted to put the team's health and wellbeing first.

"We've come to realize that to ship all the features in the summer we would've had to work very long hours; and even then, there would've been no guarantee that everything would be finished on time" said the makers.

Like many people, the team have been working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic, and they said this has meant that the way they work together has been a bit slower.

According to the team, the new update will be bringing "cute and fun mobs, cool items, and new blocks" to the game!

In the part one update, mobs such as Goats, Axolotl and Glow Squids will be coming.

New blocks and items such as Crystals, Geodes, Copper, Glow Ink, Powder Snow, Lush Cave Blocks, Dripstone Cave Blocks, Deepslate, Ore Variants, and Glow Lichen will also be on their way in the summer update.

As well as this players will be able to craft new items like the Spyglass, Tinted Glass and Lightning Rods.

"There's lots to look forward to and we're working as hard as we can to bring you the full Caves & Cliffs experience we announced at Minecraft Live in 2020. " said the makers.