Minecraft Trails and Tales guide

The Trails and Tales update was Minecraft 1.20, released on 7 June 2023. It added archaeology, the sniffer, the camel and armour trims, along with new building blocks. It is part of the game today, so any current server has it. This guide covers what it added and how to start with each part.

Checked against the Minecraft Java Edition 1.20 release notes and Minecraft 26.3, October 2026.

What it added

• Archaeology, with the brush, suspicious sand and gravel, and pottery sherds.
• The sniffer, torchflowers and pitcher plants.
• The camel.
• Smithing templates and armour trims, and a changed recipe for netherite gear.
• The cherry grove biome and cherry wood, and bamboo wood.
• The chiseled bookshelf, hanging signs and the calibrated sculk sensor.

Archaeology

Craft a brush from a feather, a copper ingot and a stick in a single column. Use it on suspicious sand or suspicious gravel to dig out what is buried there.

• Suspicious sand is in desert pyramids, desert wells and warm ocean ruins.
• Suspicious gravel is in cold ocean ruins and trail ruins.
• Trail ruins are buried structures in taigas, snowy taigas, old growth forests and jungles. An operator can find the nearest with /locate structure minecraft:trail_ruins.

Pottery sherds carry pictures and cannot be crafted, only brushed up. The update added 20 sherds across five sites, and later updates added more. Four sherds or bricks, in any mix, make a decorated pot with a picture on each side where a sherd was used. Smash the pot with a pickaxe or other block-breaking tool to get the sherds back.

Get a sniffer in Minecraft covers brushing in more detail.

Sniffer, torchflower and pitcher plant

The sniffer digs up torchflower seeds and pitcher pods. Plant them on farmland. A torchflower crafts into orange dye and a pitcher plant crafts into cyan dye.

Camel

Camels spawn in desert villages. Saddle one and up to two players can ride it. Camels walk over fences and walls, and they breed when fed cactus. A saddled camel can sprint or dash forward, but a dash costs stamina.

Armour trims and netherite

Smithing templates let you add patterns to armour at a smithing table, and netherite gear now needs its own template. Armour trims and unique armour in Minecraft lists where each pattern comes from.

Building blocks

• Cherry grove: a biome on mountains, in the same kind of places as meadows. Find one with /locate biome minecraft:cherry_grove.
• Bamboo wood: nine bamboo make a block of bamboo, and one block makes two planks.
• Chiseled bookshelf: three planks, three wooden slabs and three planks in rows.
• Hanging signs: six stripped logs and two chains make six hanging signs. The chain is called an iron chain from 1.21.9.

On your server

The update's features are in every version from 1.20 on. Mojang folded the "Update 1.20" experimental pack into the game at release, so there is no pack to switch on. Commands such as /locate need an operator, and Whitelist players and set operators shows how to give someone that role. To run the original 1.20 on your server, pick it in the JAR Manager tab, but never move an existing world back to an older version. Change your Minecraft version or mod loader explains why.