Original Post — Direct link

Time for an advanced snapshot! In this snapshot, you can also open worlds from previous versions again - with one big warning! The blending technology we intend to introduce for Caves & Cliffs: Part II is not yet available. If you open an old world in this snapshot it will be upgraded with air under the current bottom of the world and visible chunk borders to new areas.

We highly recommend backing up your world before loading it in this snapshot.

This update can also be found on minecraft.net.

If you find any bugs, please report them on the official Minecraft Issue Tracker. You can also leave feedback on the Feedback site.

New Features in 21w39a

  • Added Caves & Cliffs: Part II Advancements

Advancements

  • Added "Caves & Cliffs" for falling from top to bottom of the Overworld
  • Added "Feels like home" for riding strider on lava for 50 blocks in the Overworld
  • Added "Star Trader" for trading with a villager at the build height limit
  • Added "Sound of Music" for playing music with a jukebox in a Meadow biome

Changes in 21w39a

  • Tweaked peaks to make small mountains look more like proper jagged mountain peaks instead of flat hilly mounds
  • The lone trees in Meadows now always contain a bee nest
  • Drowned can spawn in aquifers inside dripstone caves
  • Zombies don't spawn in dripstone caves
  • Buried treasure chests can now contain water breathing potions
  • Changed default brightness to 50
  • Redesigned how effects look in the inventory screen, to allow them to show even with recipe book open
  • The AI is now using less CPU time to contemplate life choices

Effects

  • Your list of effects are now shown to the right of your inventory, instead of the left side
  • When the inventory effects list is visible, it will be hidden from the game view to reduce screen clutter
  • There's now two modes of seeing the effect list: compact and classic
    • Classic is the pre-existing list of effects, one after another
    • Compact is a single icon for each effect, suitable for small screen estate
  • The game will automatically switch between the two looks to suit the available screen estate (including having the recipe book open)

Technical Changes in 21w39a

  • Added fall_from_height and ride_entity_distance advancement triggers
  • Changed nether_travel to match other similar triggers
  • Added new loot table function set_potion
  • Changes to the on-disk chunk format
  • Resource pack format has been increased to 8
  • Standalone server.jar now bundles contains individual libraries instead of being flat archive

Advancements

New triggers

fall_from_height

  • Triggered when a player lands after falling
  • Conditions:
    • player - a player for which this trigger runs
    • start_position - location predicate for last position before falling started
    • distance - predicate for distance between start_position and player

ride_entity_in_lava

  • Triggered for every tick when player rides in lava
  • Conditions
    • player - a player for which this trigger runs
    • start_position - position where riding started (first tick on lava)
    • distance - predicate for distance between start_position and player

Changed triggers

nether_travel

  • entered condition renamed to start_position
  • exited has been removed, since it was identical to player.location

Loot Tables

New functions

set_potion

Sets Potion tag on any item

Parameters:
  • id - potion id

World Data: Chunk Format

  • Chunk's Level.Sections[].BlockStates & Level.Sections[].Palette have moved to a container structure in Level.Sections[].block_states
  • Chunk's Level.Biomes are now paletted and live in a similar container structure in Level.Sections[].biomes
  • Chunk's Level.CarvingMasks[] is now long[] instead of byte[]

Resource Pack format

  • minecraft/textures/gui/container/inventory.png now contains an extra sprite for a thin-layout version of the effect list in the inventory

Server bundling

  • server.jar now bundles individual libraries instead of merging all the files into single archive
  • This change is meant to solve certain problems related to Java modules
  • On startup, server.jar will unpack libraries into directory configured by bundlerRepoDir (default: working directory)
  • To run different main class than server, use bundlerMainClass property (for example java -DbundlerMainClass=net.minecraft.data.Main -jar server.jar --reports) or unpack jar manually and use contents of META-INF/classpath-joined for command line

Bugs fixed in 21w39a

  • MC-116359 - Status effects aren't displayed in inventory when recipe book is open
  • MC-149822 - Bottom border on status effect displays in the inventory is missing
  • MC-193348 - Status effect bars shift the player's inventory in creative mode
  • MC-196723 - Potion effects obtained in creative mode while in inventory do not show up until reopening inventory
  • MC-214894 - Bamboo generates in caves under jungles
  • MC-214959 - Sugar cane generated in cave
  • MC-218167 - Chatting causes lag to occur
  • MC-236755 - "Feature Placement" Crash / java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index 0 out of bounds for length 0
  • MC-236903 - Naturally generated cave vines have an age between 17-25
  • MC-237505 - Certain Biome Builder debug values do not change

Get the Snapshot

Snapshots are available for Minecraft Java Edition. To install the snapshot, open up the Minecraft Launcher and enable snapshots in the "Installations" tab.

Testing versions can corrupt your world, please backup and/or run them in a different folder from your main worlds.

Cross-platform server jar:

What else is new?

If you want to know what else is being added and changed in Part II of the Caves & Cliffs Update, check out the previous snapshot post.

External link →
about 3 years ago - /u/kingbdogz - Direct link

Originally posted by AndrewIsntCool

I honestly think they have been adding too many advancements in these past few update cycles. Like "wax on" and "wax off" achievements could easily be one.

There's a good reason they're two instead of one - it's good if advancements can be a teaching tool. Waxing a copper block uses honeycomb, and dewaxing uses an axe. Two completely different items. Conveying that to players who don't look at the wiki is really important.

That's why we have separate advancements with separate icons to indicate what item to use.

For C&C Part 2 we're going for more challenges, because they can be really fun too.

about 3 years ago - /u/kingbdogz - Direct link

Originally posted by yackbard

Wonder if this change is anything to do with zombies picking up items and not despawning like the glow squid ink pickup removal.

Nope I'd consider that a separate problem, we just thought it would be a really cool way to diversify the cave biomes and make Dripstone Caves more unique..

ALSO, it will potentially highlight the very cool interaction with tridents making pointed dripstone fall when they land on them! We're hoping some players might get hit by some dripstone if a Drowned misses and hits it from above ;)

about 3 years ago - /u/kingbdogz - Direct link

Originally posted by AndrewIsntCool

Thank you for the explanation. I guess I just felt like some of the new achievements were so specific compared to some of the older ones, like having three different achievements for looking at things through the spyglass, versus visiting 40+ biomes combined in one achievement.

Also, is there a specific reason why the "Wax on" and "wax off" achievements are combined in the Bedrock Edition? You say you want to have them separate, which I now understand why, but they are not separate in all versions of Minecraft

The spyglass one was definitely not teaching/onboarding and more just silly challenges. There's room for both, although realistically those sort of advancements feels more like what I'd consider "achievements".

Achievements are different in Bedrock with a different purpose, and if we can avoid having too many small achievements the better. They're generally meant to be challenges more than onboarding tools.

about 3 years ago - /u/kingbdogz - Direct link

Originally posted by TAway_Derp

Can we get some more tools to deal with the underground water? There's so much of it now. It's frustrating to dig into these huge aquifers. It's easy to get lost. And underwater lighting is expensive.

The way I understand the game, mining to get iron is an early game thing. But sponges and sea lanterns are more late game stuff. So there's not much in early game player can do with aquifers other than go around them.

Speaking of early game, mining just feels a lot slower than it used to be. I'm getting so much plain stone. And I'm only getting blobs of four iron ore blocks at a time when I do find any. This is on Y=16, which should be optimal for iron. How frequent are these new giant ore veins? Am I supposed to burn stone pickaxes until I find an ore vein?

So far, I'm not crazy about splitting up the ores to different levels. This makes mining more tedious. And it makes the emergent gameplay methods like "iron golem farms" more appealing. Seems counterintuitive.

Edit: It has come to my attention that you can use doors to create air pockets underwater. Thanks for that. So if you have this metagame knowledge, then aquifers at the right level actually become a benefit. Especially since ore spawning has changed to be reduced when touching air, but not water. Very interesting, but not intuitive.

Adding breathing potions to the treasure chests was one tool we gave this snapshot, but I think I agree with you right now it's not too easy to deal with early on.

about 3 years ago - /u/kingbdogz - Direct link

Originally posted by Shulzky

I hope my very large snapshot 21w06a world doesn't get too badly corrupted, I've had it for ages now. Sad to see the moody brightness not to be set to default, it really made the game a lovely challenge when caving, but I'll just change it back to moody brightness again. Absolutely loving what beauties of seeds I've found lately, they're amazing

We set the default to 50% because caves are now much bigger, and lighting things up is much more difficult to be able to reasonably see the game underground.

Trust me, I love moody, it's my preferred way to play too. But in 1.18, I think the default should be higher for the average player - especially new players who have never played before. It's quite intimidating to light up a big cave.

about 3 years ago - /u/kingbdogz - Direct link

Originally posted by The_Cardboard_Cookie

Are you accepting to be held accountable when this causes somebody to lose their Hardcore world?

(This is a joke)

yes

about 3 years ago - /u/kingbdogz - Direct link

Originally posted by U-Knighted

I don’t have a problem with the amount of advancements, but I think the advancement screen could use improving. There’s so many split paths that you usually have to drag up vertically to see them all, wasting all of the horizontal screen real estate.

No denying that, I think our UI could always use improvements. One step at a time :)

about 3 years ago - /u/kingbdogz - Direct link

Originally posted by Pingas9999

what exactly does "sound of music" teach/challenges the player other than it being a reference to classic?

As said, the C&C Part 2 ones aren't really teaching anything, they're more challenges. For Sound of Music, I'd say it's just teaching you that there even is a meadow biome. But it's not a very strong case for onboarding out of many examples.