Announced today during Minecraft Live, Mojang is adding the first new dimension to the blocky sandbox game in more than a decade and a half.
The Sift is an ethereal-looking fourth dimension that was first marketed for Minecraft Dungeons 2, and it’s now been confirmed that it’s coming to the base game in 2027.
The Sift is a major new addition for Minecraft, marking the first new dimension since 2011’s The End, where players go to fight the Ender Dragon in the end game. Speaking to GameSpot, Minecraft Dungeons 2 creative director Mans Olson explained that the team wanted to make sure that The Sift felt distinct from the Nether and The End rather than becoming another hostile environment.
“We wanted to make sure that it was different. That it doesn’t feel like the ones that already exist in the game,” he confirmed.
Unlike the Nether and The End, where the environments feel immediately hostile thanks to dangerous environmental hazards and angry mobs, the developers wanted it to feel like somewhere players could potentially live.
“We thought of it more as a, kind of, different Overworld … it’s this idea that it should be a place where you could see yourself living, a place that’s a bit peaceful, sometimes maybe even serene,” Olson explained. “We already have two dimensions that clearly scream, ‘I’m evil!'”
That doesn’t mean that The Sift will necessarily always be completely safe. In Minecraft Dungeons 2, the dimension is under threat from the Illagers, leaving its ecosystem in danger.
“We wanted to make sure that, although it is dangerous, it doesn’t feel as hostile or as imposing as the Nether and The End,” Olson said. “But rather just be an ecosystem of its own, to be rich and lush and vibrant, and provide a new color palette that’s pretty different from what we’ve seen already.”
The Sift was originally created because Minecraft Dungeons 2 needed a new dimension for its story, but the developers have been working closely with the vanilla Minecraft team throughout its development.
“When we do something new, we always look at, like, is there something there that we can reuse, or modify, or change that will suit the purpose? If there isn’t, the new thing that we do, could it be added to [vanilla] Minecraft?” explained Olson. “That doesn’t mean that it will or that it has to, but we want to make sure that everything could theoretically fit in there.”
In terms of visuals, The Sift is a vibrant landscape made of red and orange stone, green vegetation, sculk-like elements, and pools of a hazardous liquid called icor. You’ll enter the dimension either through mysterious rifts that are opening across the Overworld, in the case of Minecraft Dungeons 2, or via Ancient City portals, which seem the more likely access point for Minecraft, where players control their experience more closely.
While there are multiple new mobs in The Sift in Minecraft Dungeons 2, it’s not yet been confirmed which of those will be making an appearance in Minecraft. There are Sifters, Singers, Neesters, and Sprouts to name just a few.
The Sift will first appear in Minecraft Dungeons 2, which launches September 29. It will then make its way into vanilla Minecraft in 2027.