Ancient Rituals of the Warden | Minecraft Deep Dive

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

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.

Theories like this make minecraft so much more creepy.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The recovery compass implies that the ancient builders could respawn, so they wouldn’t take the casualties from the warden that seriously. They might have made the city out of sheer curiosity. They could always respawn if they got killed in the process.

Can't wait for this 37 minute long adventure!

Going deeper with the Illagers you could realise that Evokers can summon Vexes, and they also drop Totems of Undying, therefore suggesting that they found out how to harness the power of soul energy. You could also see this by the rare Vindicator or Pillager with enchanted weapons. The leader of an outpost can curse people when they die, so when a player enters a village, an army of pillagers would attack. The ravager drops the most experience dropped by a non-boss mob (counting the warden as a boss as it has to be summoned), and this suggests that not only emeralds, but even soul energy from the deep dark biome.