Want to make friends with Minecraft’s Allay mob? They’re super helpful and adorable little creatures who love music and collecting items, and they may even be able to help automate some of your projects if you know how to use them. That’s based on what we know about the Allay so far, at least, which is still a little sparse.
It will be a while before we can meet the Allay properly, as the mob is arriving in Minecraft in 2022 along with the new the mangrove tree swamps and the new frog mob that lives there. In the meantime, here’s how the Allay works, what they can do, and what you might want to use them for.
Which update is the Allay in?
The Allay will be joining Minecraft in the 1.19 Wild Update coming in 2022.
It was voted in by players as a new Minecraft mob during the Minecraft Live show in October 2021. The Allay won out over two other proposed mobs for the Wild Update: the Glare and the Iron Golem.
What does the Allay do?
The Allay is a helper mob who loves to collect items. “This could be a collectible, something you’ve crafted, or a block you mined,” Mojang says. You’ll be able to hand the Allay an item and it will fly about picking up and collecting any of the same item that it finds lying on the ground. It won’t mine blocks on its own, though. So it can’t run off to collect ores for you. What it will do is pick up item entities it finds and bring them back to you.
The Allay also loves music, and you can use that to your advantage as well. If you place a Note Block on the ground and play it, the Allay will instead bring and deposit its found item stacks there.
“We imagine that players can maybe use this to make the Allay help you with sorting items or clearing up areas,” Mojang explained during Minecraft Live. It sounds like the Allay may still have some other abilities planned that we haven’t heard about just yet.
What don’t we know?
Mojang has only made a very quick introduction to the Allay so far. Right now, we’ve only seen it in a cute teaser animation. We don’t actually know exactly what it looks like in game yet, even. We may have to wait for Mojang to begin releasing snapshot builds of version 1.19 before we see what it looks like floating around our worlds.
Here are a few other open questions we still have about the Allay:
- Where do you find the Allay?
- Can you tame the Allay?
- How far will the Allay travel to find items?
- Is the Allay ever hostile?
We’ll let you know more about the Allay and its abilities when Mojang starts sharing more about our new little helper mob next year.