Trial Chambers Are Minecraft’s BEST Structure | Level By Level

Trial Chambers Are Minecraft’s BEST Structure | Level By Level

It’s been nearly a year since the 1.21 Tricky Trials update was released. As the months go on, it seems like Mojang really wants to stick with their new drop system, which could mean that Tricky Trials will be the last major update we receive for a long time. While that is a bit sad, at the very least, I think they went out on a pretty good note here. Tricky Trials is one of my favorite updates ever added to the game, and that mostly comes down to one simple reason, the wind charge potion. No, I of course mean the update’s namesake, the Trial Chambers. Almost every feature in the update revolves around them in some way. After having the trial chambers for nearly a year now, I’m pretty comfortable saying that they are the single best design structure in all of Minecraft. Welcome to another episode of Levelby Level. Well, I say another, but for many of you guys, this is likely your first time in the series. This is a level analysis series I have on the channel, but most of the time I keep it to the Mario franchise. This is our first levelbylevel episode in Minecraft, and I think the trial chambers are a great place to start. One of my biggest sort of regrets is the fact that I wasn’t able to include the trial chambers in my Minecraft structure ranking since it came out before the update. Look, while I was writing this episode, I even got a comment about it. How did you know? While I don’t think it would place as number one in that video due to the criteria I used there, I do believe that the trial chambers are the best structures from a game design perspective. That is what I’m hoping to prove to you all today. If you enjoyed this video, please make sure to leave a like and subscribe to the channel, and let’s jump right in. I don’t really have a set structure for this episode like I do for the Mario 64 levelbylevel videos, but I do still want to start with the aesthetic of the trial chamber. The aesthetic of a structure is very important to evaluate in Minecraft, especially because this game is all about building. The blocks you see in any structure can be stolen and used for other builds. I didn’t even have to do that. There’s a tree right there. The trial chambers have a pretty interesting block palette, mostly being made up of copper blocks and tough blocks. At the moment, no other structure uses either of these block families, which makes the trial chamber stand out in a great way. That’s especially helped with how distinct the orange and green of copper is. The colors mix extremely well together, and I think it gives the trial chamber a perfect dungeon look. It was also great as it allowed them to use a lot of the new blocks introduced in this update. Copper grates and doors line the hallways, and a lot of the walls are built entirely out of the new tough variants. I also love how copper bulbs are used to light the rooms. If you didn’t know, the more oxidized they become, the less light they give off. So, whenever you enter a trial chamber, the light level will be pretty eerie, as many of the bulbs will be fully oxidized. That can add a bit of gameplay, though, as you scrape the bulbs as you walk through, which brightens the area and acts as a mark of where you’ve been. That’s especially important due to just how massive these structures can be. Each of them generate with several rooms, and that really adds to how grand the structure feels. But most importantly, as I said before, the fact that these are so massive makes trial chambers a great source of copper and tough if you need them for a build. Copper especially could be somewhat annoying to get in large quantities before as the only options we had were mining ores in drowns. And something tells me you’re not getting much from drowns. Spend an afternoon mining the floor in one of these though, you’ll end up with a ton of blocks to use. So, not only is the aesthetic unique for this underground dungeon, but it’s also extremely practical for builders to harvest resources from. But now that we’ve got the looks out of the way, what is the actual main point of the structure? I mean, don’t get me wrong, mining copper is great, but um not the most exciting activity. Well, the trial chamber is all about combat, which is the case for most structures, but here especially. So, within most of the rooms, you’ll find trial spawners, which are able to spawn a wide variety of mobs. These spawners are actually randomized a bit, being split into four different categories. When a trial chamber room generates, it will always have spawners from the same category, but what mob it chooses from that category will be random. You’ll be able to tell which mob the spawner is based on the blocks placed around it, which I think is a great visual indicator. In the melee category are zombies, husks, and spiders. The small melee category has slime, silverfish, baby zombies, and cave spiders. The range category has strays, skeletons, and bogs. And finally, the fourth category belongs to the breeze, which is the main exclusive mob of the structure. That means that a breeze spawner will always be present in a room that can spawn them, which I think is good since, like I said, this structure is the only place you’ll be able to find the breeze. I love that these are randomized as it makes going through multiple chambers a unique experience each time. And that’s on top of what rooms are even in the structure being random, too. I also want to note that within the trial chambers, natural mob spawning outside of spawners is disabled. I think that was a very smart addition to make the combat purely focused on what’s coming from the trial spawners. Once you’re aware of what you’re fighting, it’s time to actually fight them. Trial spawners work a bit differently than normal spawners, though. Instead of just spawning mobs infinitely until it hits the mob cap, trial spawners have a set count of mobs they can spawn. In single player, each one will spawn a total of six mobs with the breeze spawner only doing two. While that may seem like a bad thing since it could hurt farming potential, defeating all the mobs from a spawner will give the player a reward. This can be one of six different items. Swiftness potions, regen potions, baked potatoes, cooked chicken, bread, and most importantly, trial keys. While the others can all help while taking down the trial chambers, the key is the main reason you’ll want to go through the combat. Luckily, it does spawn 50% of the time, so it’s probably what you’ll end up getting. Once you receive the key, you’ll be able to open one of the structures many trial vaults. This is a sort of special kind of chest, as putting a key inside will shoot out a wide variety of different items, many of which are exclusive to the trial chambers. Here’s the whole chart of possible loot from a standard vault taken from the Minecraft wiki. Some of the most notable pieces of loot is diamond equipment, trident, good, let’s just make them more useless, ominous bottles, which we’ll get to later, wind charges, and of course, the three things exclusive to standard vaults, the bolt armor trim, the guster banner pattern, and the precipice music desk. That is already quite a lot of notable loot. And since each vault can only dispense out so much, it makes it both fun and worth it to collect as many keys as possible to open a ton of vaults. Once a player opens a vault, they won’t be able to reopen it. But luckily, each trial chamber has tons of vaults lying around. and that gives the combat here a great sense of purpose since in a lot of other structures you can just ignore the combat and run straight to the chest. I also love how this can encourage exploration a bit as keys can also be found in some of the pots lying around the structure. They’re not super common, but it makes running by and smashing pots a lot of fun too. Sort of reminding me of Zelda in a way. That’s on top of the pots themselves also having exclusive loot like the creator music box record disc and a few pottery shirts. Oh yeah, before I get comments again, yes, they’re shards. But all right, we’ve established that the combat is well implemented to lead us to the trial chamber’s rewards. But how do the rooms themselves cater toward this combat? Well, luckily the trial chamber has some of the most variety in rooms out of all the structures. Probably only getting beaten out by the woodland mansion, but unlike that structure, this one’s good. I won’t go through every possible room super in-depth, but I just want to highlight how much variety there is here. Each trial chamber will spawn with an entrance room, which just gives a nice bit of breathing room away from the spawners. Eventually though, they’ll bring you down into a corridor, and from there, it splits off into several different rooms. The corridors themselves have a ton of randomized elements which include the spawners in the room and some art on the wall depicting several of the chambers mobs. I like how the bog one looks like Herobrine. From the corridors, there are so many different rooms you can encounter, each with several different randomized elements. You’re never guaranteed to get any of these in a trial chamber, which I think is a great thing to make each one more unique. You get a few that fall on the more basic side, like this one featuring the breeze. I think it’s nice to have an open space to fight the structur’s main new enemy, though, as it allows the mob to both show off its ability to jump around and shoot wind charges, which are able to activate the dispensers dotted around the room. That’s a similar case for the assembly chamber, which has a lot of trap doors to be flipped from the breeze’s attacks. Outside of just featuring the breeze, though, there are some more unique rooms, like this vertical section, which always spawns a type of skeleton. And due to the density of the spawners in this room, it can be quite challenging. There’s even some more special rooms, like this one with the floor filled with powdered snow, or the circular room that has magma blocks and a water dispenser up top. I also like the several robes that act like mazes, which can make fighting the mobs scary as they possibly corner you. This isn’t even all the rooms that can spawn, but it shows just how much variety there can be. Each room provides a different challenge and way of going about the combat. On top of the randomized elements within the rooms themselves, you’re never going to find two trial chambers that are exactly alike. Now, up until this point, all of that content sounds great, but not necessarily the best designed structure in the game. What do I really think sets the trial chamber apart from other structures outside of just the well done combat mechanics? Well, I think it comes down to three things that other structures have not really attempted to perfect, but I think are very important. The first of these is difficulty. More specifically, the ability to change difficulty. Yes, you can change the difficulty in game settings, but that’s not what I mean. When talking about loot earlier, I mentioned the ominous bottle, which actually allows you to change the difficulty within the chamber. Upon drinking it, you’ll be given the trial potion effect, and any spawner you walk past will reactivate with blue flames. Now, the mobs that spawn will be much stronger than before. They’ll now be able to spawn in with better armor and weapons, which even includes diamond gear. That makes these extremely difficult to take down without the absolute perfect armor, and even then, you can sometimes get caught off guard. And in case you thought you could just steal these mobs gear, they won’t be able to drop any of the armor or tools they spawn with, which I think is a good idea to prevent people from getting easy access to diamond armor and weapons. Not that it’s hard anyway, but that’s an issue for a different day. On top of stronger mobs, the spawner itself will actually be able to attack you a bit, too. It’ll be able to spawn in projectiles like arrows, fire charges, wind charges, and potions. These potions can have both positive and negative effects since they can both hit you or the trial spawner mobs. I also like that it features all four of the new potion effects from this update, even if some aren’t that useful. Now, that’s cool and all, but why would you want to make something harder on yourself like this? I mean, you could just walk in without armor if you really had a death wish. Well, throughout the trial chamber, you may have noticed these, which are known as ominous vaults. They’re a lot less common than the normal vaults and can’t be opened with the regular keys. Instead, you need an ominous key, which are only dropped from trial spawners with the trial omen effect. Every time you clear out all the mobs, you have a 30% chance to get an ominous key, and using it on these vaults can give you an entirely different loot table. In general, the stuff here is a lot better compared to the normal vault. Not only can you get enchanted golden apples and diamond gear, but there’s also a ton of exclusive stuff here. This includes the flow armor trim, the flow banner pattern, and my favorite record disc in the entire game, creator. But what’s definitely the biggest rewards you can get from these are the heavy core and the wind burst enchantment, both of which are part of the mace. The mace is one of the most fun items in the entire game with its very unique falling based combat. For most people, the mace is the main reason to come to these trial chambers as it’s the only place to get the weapon in the entire game. Lucky get behind the ominous bottle was also very smart as it gives the best reward to those who are able to complete the hardest challenge. The mace is also certainly the hardest main weapon to use, so that fits pretty well, too. What I also love about this difficulty, though, is that even if you can’t do the ominous mode, there’s still plenty of rewards you can get in a standard vault. In fact, most of the stuff worth getting in a standard vault can’t be found in the ominous vault, giving reason to go through both difficulty levels. I think this is truly a genius way to implement difficulty into a structure, and I really hope more structures use the ominous bottle in the future. With that being said, there’s one thing I kind of skimmed over with a heavy core. It only has a 7.5 chance to spawn from a vault. If you’re looking for wind burst, that only has a 5.5% chance. That means you are likely going to have to go through not only multiple vaults, but maybe multiple trial chambers as well. Luckily, this is where I believe the second main point that sets the trial chambers apart from the other structures comes up. Replay-ability. I already mentioned that there’s a ton of variety in how these generate, which by itself is able to help a lot with making each playthrough fun. What I didn’t mention is the fact that the trial spawners are actually able to reset. 30 minutes after clearing out all the mobs from a spawner, they completely regenerate and are able to start spawning again. You can even still get loot for defeating them all, which means more keys. This is a great feature to include for a number of reasons. For one, even if the vaults don’t regenerate, this lets you get all the keys you need to open everything within a structure in case you got unlucky with the key spawns before. Secondly, this allows you to get more loot from the mobs, especially the breeze. Since they’re the only source of wind charges, a very fun projectile and useful tool for the maze, it’s important that they can be farmed infinitely. In addition to the cooldown, drinking an ominous bottle will instantly regenerate the spawners you walk past in case the 30 minutes is too long. Honestly though, due to the size of these structures, I find 30 minutes to be a perfect amount of time. One other element that helps with the replay-ability is the fact that villagers can trade trial chamber explorer maps. Like I said, you may need to travel to several different chambers, so having a way to find them is essential. Yeah, you can always use the locate command if you have the seed if you’re a dirty cheater. But having an inorld survival option is great, especially since it’s an underground structure. So, for those reasons, I think the trial chamber opens itself for replay-ability far better than the other structures, which makes the grind to get all the rare loot a lot more fun. But now, we have what I think is the most important distinction that sets the trial chamber above the rest of the game structures. The fact that it actually takes multiplayer into account. I know you guys don’t have friends, but most of my playtime in Minecraft is on a survival server. For that reason, it’s made me notice how multiplayer has been sort of neglected when it comes to the structures. That’s especially the case when it comes to loot like the elytra or the netherite upgrade template. If someone enters a structure and takes that loot before you get there, then you can be left without some of the most crucial items in the game. The trial chambers, though, completely solve that issue along with many other problems that come with multiplayer. Vaults are only able to be opened once per person. So, if I open an ominous vault, I can’t do it again, but my friend is able to just fine. That means that everyone is able to get loot from a trial chamber, and it automatically scales based on how many players are in there. And if you’re worried that it might be a bit too grindy to get all of your friends keys, even the drops from the trial spawners are based on the player count. So if you’re lucky enough to get the key drop, it will always dispense out one key for every player in the area. This was a brilliant way to fix an issue that pretty much every structure is faced since the start of the game. While I don’t think every structure needs vaults, I would love to see them in structures like end cities and bastions to give players items like elytras and upgrade templates. What I also love about vaults and trial spawners is just the fact that they take forever to mine. I’m sure there are some people out there who would want to break these to stop others from getting loot. But due to how long it takes, they likely won’t go through the effort of breaking every single one they can find. And on top of the vault mechanics, the spawners actually change based on the player count as well. Since having more players could make the combat too easy, the amount of mobs spawn changes based on player count. For a normal spawner, two additional mobs will need to be defeated to get the loot per player. So, it goes from having to defeat six mobs in single player to eight mobs when two players are around. I think this was a smart decision, and it makes the trial chambers remain just as fun and intense when playing with friends. No other structure in the game went through the effort of considering multiplayer like this, even though it’s a massive part of what makes Minecraft so successful. So, in the end, those are my reasons for why I believe the Trial Chamber is the best design structure in the game. Not only does it provide fantastic loot for those willing to challenge themselves, but also builders looking for a source of copper and tough. Even a year later, the structure has been able to remain fun by having a ton of variety and replay value. And of course, it’s the only structure in the game to truly take multiplayer into its design philosophy. If any structure can learn one thing from the Trial Chambers, it should be considering multiplayer. and also having good loot. Again, sorry, wood mansion fans. If this is the direction Mojang plans to go for future structures, I’m really looking forward to seeing what they come up with. But as of right now, I think the trial chambers are definitely my favorite structure in Minecraft. But anyways, that’s it for this video. Do you love crossbows and hate me for not mentioning them as the best loot? Let me know in the comments. I had a lot of fun doing this episode, and I hope you all enjoyed me taking the level by level series to Minecraft. I do have another Minecraft levelby planned for the future, but it’s a long way off. So, if you all have any other suggestions, feel free to let me know. It’s hard with Minecraft due to it being a randomly generated world, but I think at least this episode turned out to be pretty solid. But before I go, I’ve got to thank my members being The Chicken Man, Sethson Sunson, Volano, Luma, Blast Tiger, Made Z2, Yanni the Duck, Wyatt Derpy, Trader Mo, Means 2001, Nuclear, Kid Trunks 15, Catty Shrew, Miss Jades a Lot, Enchanted Skull, SMA, B Major 2003, Arson the Raboot, Sir Musty, Belandor, Puggles are Fun, Diluted Color, Cinder CC, Jade Avery, Prunt Clone, Thicky, Raiki, Unenot, CW, McCain, Tibby, Jube Tube, Tesseract, Mr. McMahon 572, Hippopotonomous, Jameus and Pages, Wilbur, Golden/15, Zrost, Stuffy Ant Justex, Conan Keep, and Christian Flattery sequel edition. But anyways, dry bones for Smash and I’ll see you guys next time. [Applause]

The Minecraft 1.21 update otherwise known as tricky trials has been out for nearly a year now! Since its release it has gone down, at least to me, as one of the best updates minecraft has ever received. A LARGE part of that comes down to the new introduced Trial Chambers! These are massive dungeons that focus on combat, are great with multiplayer, and give amazing exclusive loot like the mace. In all honesty, I think the Trial Chambers are minecraft’s best designed structure. So for this episode of Level By Level I’m going to prove just that!

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