Minecraft finally adds saddles as a crafting item, and it’s only been 15 years

In the Minecraft universe, saddles were essentially an ancient technology whose recipe was lost to time. Nobody knew how to craft them. However, that’s all about to change with craftable saddles added into Minecraft’s upcoming Summer Drop 2025. They can be experienced now in Minecraft’s test realms (Java snapshot and Bedrock’s beta and preview). Just a simple three leather and one iron ingot recipe is ushering in a new, more easily accessible era of mounts.

The history of saddles in Minecraft goes back to 2010, when they were introduced as a means to ride pigs. Over time, the uses of saddles increased beyond just pigs with rideable horses, donkeys, mules, striders, and camels. But while the demand for saddles increased, their supply did not. Players looking to foster a bond with a noble steed relied on gifts from the RNG gods. To find a saddle, players would have to find one in a dungeon chest or a villager chest, fish one out of the water, loot one off rare spawning mobs, or trade a villager for one. In some runs, this could take less than a couple of minutes, if you’re lucky to find one in the closest village. In others, it could be a frustrating, repetitive process.

A common complaint with saddles, and mounts by extension, is that they are most useful in the early and midgame when they are hardest to find. Traveling on a mount doesn’t eat up hunger, and they’re great for traversing the overworld without having to jump for every one-block vertical change. Beyond that, having a noble steed chilling in diamond armor at your home bases’ stables is just cool. Turning saddles into a simple recipe, while also allowing shears to take saddles off mounts without inventories (like pigs), means that more rides than ever will be taken — giddyup!