Now a new Minecraft update is on the horizon, we’ve started getting weekly snapshots through again. However, things aren’t quite as they seem. Although 1.20 is the new major update that’s being worked towards, this snapshot also includes a lot of the features intended for the minor 1.19.3 update coming soon. In another post, the development team outlined that they plan to start releasing these minor updates more often, usually while they’re building the major ones.
We’ll run through everything that’s in this snapshot, you so can dive right in and start playing around on Minecraft Java Edition.
Experimental features
Part of the new update process is that 1.20 features will be mixed in with the 1.19.3 features. To make the process easier for the developers, they’ve added a new toggle in the menu called “experimental features”. These will let both you and the devs turn incomplete features on and off from the “data pack” menu when creating a new world letting people test potentially incomplete features without having to later remove them for official updates.
1.20 features
At Minecraft Live, all of the major features for update 1.20 were announced. This includes camels, chiseled bookshelves, bamboo wood, and hanging signs. All of these are in this snapshot, ready to be tested. If you want a more in-depth look into each of them, you can check out our summary of the Minecraft Live announcement.
Creative inventory changes
The creative inventory can be a little confusing if you don’t have in-depth knowledge of every item in Minecraft. This update looks to make things a little nicer. The various tabs have been redesigned, keeping the same categories of blocks together. For example, rather than listing every type of wood log, then every wood plank, it will now list every “oak” item, then “birch”, and so on.
Additionally, items that fit into multiple categories will now appear in multiple tabs, rather than being weirdly forced into just one. Of course, if you still don’t want to both with any of that, the search bar is still there.
New wood sounds
A nice little touch has been added to all of the different types of wood, as they will now make different sounds when they are placed, broken, or stepped on. They’ve been organized into three categories: overworld, nether, and bamboo. This goes a step further to differentiate different wood types and add a bit of audio variety to the Minecraft world.
Bundles
This feature, which was originally planned for The Wild Update is finally back as an experimental feature. These simple storage solutions let you carry items of different types in a single inventory slot, with up to 64 items fitting inside. It doesn’t make your inventory bigger, but it doesn’t let you organize it better and collect items you only carry a few of in a single slot. We’ve heard very little about this feature since it was shelved, but now it’s finally back, you just have to toggle it on in-game.
Written by Ryan Woodrow on behalf of GLHF.
