Version 2026.9.14 – The giants update: a colossus, a sandworm and the sand sea 🐛🏜️

September 24, 2026

The idea came from our school club: animals as tall as a high-rise. 🏙️ The kids wanted a giant four-legged beast – and a sandworm that lives deep in the sand, hears every step and suddenly bursts out of the dunes. Here they are! The worm got a whole new kind of planet, the sand sea 🏜️: half of the world is a sea of deep, soft sand – wide dunes, no caves beneath, never flooded. Around it every world rolls its own coast: mountains, canyons, table mountains, lava fields or open water. And here and there rock islands rise out of the sand – on rock you are safe.

Because the sandworm hears you through the sand. 🐛 Walking, mining, drilling, a blast, a hard landing or a speeder – the sand carries all of it a long way. Sneaking is almost silent, and on rock, a landing pad or a floor you built it hears nothing at all. When it comes, you get a warning: the sand ripples and rumbles, and VEGA calls you onto the rock. Then it bursts out of the dunes in an arc – or rears up like a tower and strikes exactly where it heard you. Every world has its own worm, with its own length, colours, armour plates and jaws – and its own temper. It is very, very tough, and you can only hit it while it is out of the sand. If you would rather bring it to you: build a thumper 🥁 at the workshop, set it down on the sand – and the worm comes and swallows it in one gulp.

The colossus 🦣 is a four-legged giant forty to sixty blocks tall, and no two are alike: some wander peacefully and nibble at treetops, shy ones get out of your way, some fight back when you bother them – and a few come looking for you. On their backs they carry armour plates, spikes, glowing crystals or even a small forest. You will only find a colossus on the flattest, lightest moons, and even there only on one in three. Before it stomps, a dark ring marks the spot – get out, or get under a roof or into a cave, where its foot cannot reach. You bump into its legs, your hits land where you aim, and with plenty of stamina (and friends) you can defeat it – there is an achievement for each giant. 🏆 Want to try one out? As an admin, call /giant colossus or /giant sandworm.

What else? 🌸 The flowerling finally shows its face – it had been hidden inside its head all along. Now it grins at you, and when you dig in front of it the petals flush red, its jaw drops open and the teeth flash. It means it now, too: it really comes running from sixteen blocks away, and at night it wakes up when you dig right beside it. ⏱️ Worlds load much faster: an ordinary world in about six seconds instead of fourteen, the city world in about three instead of twenty-three – and the loading bar now shows what is really happening. 🧱 Buildings stay the way you leave them: a wall you knock down in a village or the city no longer simply stands there again after a restart. The city's doors all hang straight now, the browser version no longer has a white floor you can fall through, and Noah and Daimien are now spelled correctly in the credits. 🙏 The sand sea and the giants come in new worlds; your existing worlds and saves stay as they are, and the network protocol stays at 6. Have fun – and tread softly on the sand! 🐛