Horse armor: Is this an Oblivion tribute — or just Minecraft being weird again?

Minecraft has already enjoyed a few pretty substantial updates in 2025, but there's at least one more slated for launch before the end of the year — and it's all about everyone's least favorite metallic ore, copper.

Well, the point of this Game Drop is to make copper less hated by making it more useful, and we already have a good idea of the new mechanics and features this update will include. As of the latest Minecraft Preview build, we now know one more feature coming in this as-yet-unnamed release.

I usually may not dedicate an entire article to one relatively modest feature entering testing with the Minecraft community, but I just rolled the credits on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, and after over 100 hours poured into this classic RPG, it makes sense that Minecraft adding new horse armor would amuse me a little.

So, let's go over what Mojang Studios has begun testing today, and I'll recap what we know of this upcoming Game Drop while we're at it.

Yay, horse armor!

Minecraft has had horses (and horse armor) for years now, but your options have been limited — and I feel like most people don't bother with horses anyway. This addition... isn't going to change anyone's mind, actually.

Keeping in theme with the rest of the upcoming Game Drop, Mojang Studios is adding copper horse armor to the game. You still can't craft it (boo, but at least we got craftable saddles in the last update), but it'll have the same chance of appearing in lootable chests as iron horse armor, and it has a protective value of 4.

It's so unexciting to me that it's funny, and I find it especially amusing that the screenshot Mojang Studios provided to highlight the new feature addition puts the armor-adorned horse in the background — because it's the rest of the update that actually matters.

Copper Golems, copper chests, copper tools, copper—

Likely to arrive either at the end of Summer or the beginning of Autumn, the next Minecraft update definitely has a consistent theme. The headlining feature is absolutely the resurrection of the Copper Golem, one of the fated losers of a past Minecraft Live Mob Vote.

Copper Golems are adorable, friendly little guys, but they also have some unique mechanics. For one, Copper Golems provide a way to sort your storage, as they'll take items automatically and stacks out of the new copper chests and move them to nearby standard chests that already contain those items (or put them in an empty chest if there's no better option).

They also oxidize like other copper blocks and can even be turned into decorative statues (don't worry, you can always bring them back to life).

Speaking of copper, Mojang Studios is also adding a new complete set of armor, weapons, and tools, which sits somewhere between stone and iron as a nice middle ground for the early game.

Finally, we're getting new shelves. These shelves can display up to three item stacks (like a much more advanced item frame), but also have a redstone interaction — power up to three shelves, and you can swap your hotbar with those items and vice versa in a moment's time. Yeah, it's effectively a way to build different loadouts.

Now we can add horse armor to that list. I have a feeling we're not going to see any more features added to this update before its release, but I'd love to be surprised by another copper addition that plays into redstone engineering.

If you want to learn more about the latest Minecraft preview build, which includes all of these features in testing (including the copper horse armor), you can read more at Minecraft.net.