Minecraft's Latest Crafting Addition is 15 Years in the…

Despite being added to Minecraft back in 2010 as one of its most essential items, players have had to wait fifteen years for Mojang to finally reveal an official crafting recipe for its saddles. While there have always been various items and blocks that players weren't able to craft themselves, these were typically limited to things that either weren't integral to Minecraft's gameplay or were found in abundance throughout the game. However, ever since its introduction to Minecraft over a decade ago, players have only been able to loot or trade for saddles, regardless of how useful the item was for mounting several mobs.

Fortunately, though, Mojang appears to be resolving this oversight by adding a new recipe that will allow Minecraft's players to craft their own saddles alongside other new items such as Happy Ghast harnesses. While it might still beg the question of why it took so long to update one of Minecraft's most useful items and make them craftable, the new saddle recipe is still invaluable as Mojang refines the game through its new content drops. Notably, such an important, albeit small, change to saddles after fifteen years could also be a sign of Mojang's plans to revisit Minecraft's oldest or overlooked features.

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By Martin Wood

Minecraft's Saddle Recipe is Long Overdue

Before Mojang's upcoming update, players could only obtain saddles by looting structures, trading with Villagers, or fishing for treasure, even though the item's uses continued to expand with new mobs, like 1.16's striders and 1.20's camels. Ultimately, however, it wasn't necessarily an outlier given that several other key items couldn't be crafted in vanilla Minecraft, such as tridents, certain types of horse armor, or name tags. Therefore, while frustrating enough to prompt player-made mods to add their own saddle recipes, Minecraft has gone fifteen years without making saddles craftable until now.

Minecraft's Happy Ghasts Could Be Responsible For Craftable Saddles

Yet despite more than a decade without allowing players to craft saddles, Mojang's seemingly sudden change of mind about saddles could be due to its next drop's more eye-catching additions: the latest reveal of Happy Ghasts as one of Minecraft's most unusual mounts. More specifically, a saddle crafting recipe was likely added to maintain consistency with the upcoming addition of harnesses for Happy Ghasts, as being able to craft one and not the other could have frustrated players further.

With A Saddle Recipe, Mojang Will Need To Rebalance Minecraft's Loot, Trades, And More

At its core, Minecraft has been able to manage the value of items like saddles, Netherite, and more in various ways, such as changing how rare or elusive its crafting resources are or by making them unobtainable via crafting altogether. Since the latter will no longer be the case and the recipe to make saddles in Minecraft only requires common resources like leather and iron, Mojang's change could have a significant impact on its loot and trading systems. For example, if players can readily craft their own saddles, then their value may no longer be seen as balanced for a Master-level Leatherworker trade or rare fishing reward.

This could be why Mojang has been fielding input from its player community about experimental changes to Minecraft's Villager trades, something which could factor in the saddle's new recipe and updated value. However, for many years, this same player community has also called for a saddle crafting recipe, so it would be wise for Mojang to consider both recent and longstanding feedback regarding updates to Minecraft's oldest or overlooked items. Minecraft's saddles could be the first of many items to get overdue crafting recipes in future content drops: