Experience Orb

Experience orbs are a speculated new item that might come out in beta 1.8. They might look like golden/yellow balls, as seen in the picture. The orb wasn't officially confirmed by Notch, but he did confirm that a hidden clue of something that will be added to beta 1.7 is in the picture of the new lighting and the blurred 1.8 change-list. It is believed by some to be this orb.

Evidence for the inclusion of the orb


In the lighting system photo a small yellow spherical shape can be seen on the left side of the screen, but a day after the photo was published Notch claimed it had an "Error" and posted a new one without a yellow sphere. In a later tweet, Notch gave a picture of a 1.8 change-list. It was completely blurred out and was, at first, thought to be a joke, but then Notch said the pictures with the new lighting system and the change list had a secret in them.

On the Minecraft forums, it was discovered that the tabs at the top of the change list that were partly covered could be decoded based on the 1 pixel tall pattern available in the image.

After a user named "tmcaffeine" successfully decoded it, the tabs read: ExperienceOrb.java, changelist.txt, Level.java, Tile.java, HugeMushroomTile.jav(a?), HugeMushroomFeature.(java?), RandomLevelSource(cut)

It was thought that the yellow sphere might be related to the experience orb. As of now, Notch has neither confirmed nor denied this idea, but he did say that the answer was found.

Notch also referred to “testing experience and leveling to see if it’s fun”, which may be about the experience orbs.

As mentioned above together with experience orbs there were tabs about Huge Mushrooms, and the fact they were confirmed helps solidifing the experience orb theory.

Possible ways to debunk the evidence
Several theories have risen on what it could be other than a new item. Some of them are a yellow flower, an egg, a slime ball or a golden apple. The yellow flower theory is easily taken down because of the round shape of the item, and because a flower would be higher up. The egg, slime ball and golden apple theories are more solid, as they claim that the new lighting system makes the orb change its color because of a torch nearby. The egg theory hits a wall when comparing to the orb: the orb is too round to be an egg. The golden apple and the slime ball are also somewhat broken down: the shape is still not perfect, but they are close. Another problem is that the golden apple and the slime ball are different in color from the orb. This can be countered by saying that Beta 1.8 will make item colors dynamic, just like it will be for blocks, but nothing is known about the coloring of items in Beta 1.7. Another problem is the shading of the items (=the way the shadows form on the item), which in comparison to the orb is way off for them all. This can also be countered by saying that Beta 1.8 will make item shading dynamic as well, just like it will be for blocks, but nothing is known about the shading of items in 1.7.