We Were Right About the Nether!

Why does the Minecraft ghast always have tears streaming down its face?

• Balloon-like, jellyfish-ghost creatures that roam the Nether • Attack players by launching explosive fireballs • Possess strange and unusual appearance

Minecraft Live event revealed a new smiling variant of the ghast, prompting investigation into ghast lore and origins

• Understand why ghasts behave differently in the overworld • Explain why ghasts are sad in the Nether • Determine where ghasts fit in Minecraft lore

• Ghasts are angry ghosts haunting the Nether • Nether souls are absorbed into soul sand as energy, not flying around to haunt • Minecraft movie showed ghasts as fleshy hot air balloons, not ghostly entities

The achievement 'Uneasy Alliance' requires rescuing a ghast from the Nether and bringing it safely home to the overworld, suggesting the overworld is the ghast's true home

• No evidence of ghasts in the overworld through bones or item drops • Ghasts shoot fireballs, fitting the Nether better than the peaceful overworld • Timeline evidence shows ghasts existed in the Nether before cross-dimensional travel was possible

The word 'rescue' is key—we rescue ghasts by bringing them to safety, not returning them to their origin home

• Dried ghast block is small, grumpy, and resembles baby ghasts from Minecraft Dungeons • Found in soul sand valleys of the Nether

• Take dried ghast to the overworld and place in water • After 5 days in water, it becomes a living ghastling • Feed ghastlings snowballs to help them grow into full-size ghasts

Cold water and snowballs are essential to ghast survival, with ghastlings imprinting on the player who revives them

The Nether has no water—it evaporates due to extreme heat, yet ghasts require water to survive

• Basalt in the Nether can only form when lava meets soul soil and blue ice, proving ice once existed • Soul soil texture resembles rocks and soil marked by glaciers, suggesting water sources in the past

Ghasts spawn in basalt deltas and soul sand valleys—areas where water once existed, keeping them hydrated and cool

• Piglins industrialized and built weapons, armor, and bastions • Their activities created greenhouse gases, heating the atmosphere • Climate change turned the Nether into a torched, barren wasteland

Ghasts cry because their home was taken away—ice melted, water dried up, leaving them suffering in a hostile environment instead of being relocated from their true home

Dried ghast blocks are found inside fossil structures, which match the bones of ancient giant sniffers that existed before the ancient builders

Baby ghasts were found inside sniffer bodies as food—they became prey for carnivorous sniffers when the environment dried up

• Some ancient sniffers moved to the warped forest to find new food sources as vegetation disappeared • Others stayed in soul sand valleys and evolved to become carnivorous, like the Thylacaleo marsupial lion example • They began hunting baby ghasts, which were already struggling to survive the harsh climate

Baby ghasts became dehydrated blocks after being hunted, eventually entombed inside decaying sniffer bodies where they remain waiting for rescue

Ghasts were once docile creatures living peacefully in the frozen Nether during the ice age with abundant water and cool climate

• Piglins' industrialization caused greenhouse gases and climate change • Ice melted and water dried up, leaving ghasts in a barren wasteland • Sniffers evolved to hunt ghasts as a new food source • Ghasts became dehydrated and weak, barely surviving

Ghasts attack players as threats to their survival and cry because they've run out of tears—water is too valuable to waste on crying

By bringing ghasts to the overworld and placing them in water, we rescue them from suffering and allow them to thrive in a forgiving climate, ultimately using their tears to create potions of regeneration