Ancient Rituals of the Warden | Minecraft Deep Dive

It's finally time. The Warden is easily one of the most bizarre and difficult to understand Minecraft mobs - and things only get worse when you look at the ancient cities as well. So what is the Warden? What are the ancient cities for? Join me for the biggest Deep Dive episode ever created as we try to find out.

Music by RetroGamingNow:
"Warden Overture"
"Gaze"

0:00 Part 0: The Introduction
1:36 Part I: The Sculk
9:26 Part II: The Warden
14:12 Part III: The Ancient City
23:54 Part IV: The Ritual

[RetroGamingNow]

Join me for a dive beneath the caves...

[vroiz]

So interesting to hear a theory about the ancient city that doesn’t include another dimension. The most prevalent theory till now has seemed to be that the city center is some sort of portal, and while at first glance it seems like the most likely solution, the way that he connected all of the weirder aspects of the deep dark to suggest another purpose to the city center is fascinating.

[hellfirecannon]

Imagine being an Ancient Builder watching the player from some sort of afterlife, expecting them to have to do a whole Warden ritual to enchant but they just pull out a few books in a little table and suddenly have loads of enchants

[NLT]

Here's another theory: maybe the fact that the warden bypasses enchantments and armor is because it attacks the soul itself, not the body

[LeeGutsy]

Theories like this make minecraft so much more creepy.

[HKGNCat]

Now here’s the real question: what came first, the catalyst or the warden?

[deathawakener]

If you start a 15 second timer and play disc 5, 11 and 13 at their respective seconds (5=5 seconds in, 11=11 seconds and 13=13seconds) it sounds like a story of a wanderer finding an ancient city, triggering a warden, attempting to escape and failing. It's eerie.

[Justjustinp]

When you realize your family friendly Minecraft world might contain one of the most terrifying stories of dark magic leading to societal collapse in gaming.

[sockomo]

Watching this back again I’m starting to realize that XP is not the same as souls, it’s literally knowledge in a raw form. It’s still energy but also knowledge that’s dropped by mobs that have existed for a while. It’s why you spawn with 0 and it’s not the player score count either. When the warden is formed it needs souls and a bit of combined knowledge to function on its own. It’s why all skulk drops XP. It truly is a living hive mind.

[BlazeSLK]

“It had a ceremonial purpose.” Spoken like a true anthropologist 😂

[vvcreative]

I feel that the disc has a very important role in the lore as it is the first disc to be obtained in pieces, almost as if it was to be never found.

[ihearttoast]

Saying this again, these videos are unironically better than the movies with a massive budget being made.

[ProGremlinPlayer]

the mere existence of the Recovery Compass and its function implies that dying and respawning is like, a diegetic phenomena within the Minecraft universe and not just a gameplay feature. Although the recovery compass has to be crafted manually so this might not mean anything, but it's something to think about I guess.

[ClockworkGearhead]

It's possible the Warden was an attempt to conquer, or overcome an issue stemming from, The End, as Endermen have a sensitivity to being seen, while the Warden blocks sight.

Edit: They weren't trying to _open_ the reinforced deepslate portal, they were trying to lock it closed, and the succeeded.

[lasercraft]

One other observation, Sculk appears to be either moss-like or fleshy (based on early concept art and the bone-like structure of the shriekers, I'm going to guess the latter) which is why it sounds so squishy. That also explains why it drops EXP.... because its alive. When you kill things they drop EXP, so Sculk drops EXP when you break it.

[kirankashyap]

The recovery compass implies that they could respawn, so anybody may be wondering how they turned into zombies and skeletons. My theory is that after dying to the warden many times, it sucked all of their soul out, causing them to become stuck as undead mobs forever.

[joewipat]

Can't wait for this 37 minute long adventure!

[edchamon]

Now that I think of it the Flint and steel lightings from disc 5 most people think it's lighting the portal but this video might suggest with the tech catalyst the reinforced deepslate block and the ritual maybe it's lighting the souls and for the ritual since if they light them in the moment maybe not that much energy is lost and can all be absorbed and running as in to lure and perform the ritual maybe idk theory.

[lemondropcentral]

I never even considered that Illagers had repaired the ancient cities! When the snapshot with the dark oak wood sections of the city came out I was really confused. I felt like it didn't the established architecture of the city and that dark oak is such a valuable resource, how would the original builders have access to it down that far? But Illagers bringing it down on excavations and using it as a repair material makes more sense given that they build their outposts out of dark oak too even though the outposts are often far away from dark oak forests.

[totallynotrippin]

I kinda had a small theory after watching this. Because it seemed like whatever ancient civilization intentionally summoned wardens for their enchantments... maybe the reason it's abandoned now is because they got over-run by wardens? Like a summoning gone wrong and they couldn't fight back. Just some food for thought

Edit: do you think the warden is suffering? While it's calm it always sounds like it is whimpering and is always just frowning