Good things come to those who wait, and we believe you've waited long enough. The first Caves & Cliffs snapshot is finally here and ready to enter the Java Edition of Minecraft! We hope that you're as excited about this as we are, because this snapshot brings you a variety of features, some changes to existing features, and a few technical changes. All of it is listed in this blog post, and we can't wait to see you experiment with it all.

Happy mining!

New Features in 20w45a

• Added bundles!
• Added candle!
• Added lava cauldron!
• Added copper!
• Added amethyst!
• Added lightning rod!
• Added spyglass!
• Added tinted glass!
• A shulker hitting a shulker with a shulker bullet can make a new shulker.

Amethyst

Amethyst Blocks

• Amethyst comes in block form inside the geodes in two ways: block of amethyst and budding amethyst.
• All types of Amethyst blocks (clusters included) create beautiful sounds when you walk on them, break them, place them, or hit them with a projectile – go make some music!

Amethyst Clusters

• Amethyst clusters grow from budding amethyst, which can be found inside geodes.
• Clusters have four growth stages: small amethyst bud, medium amethyst bud, large amethyst bud, and amethyst cluster.
• Clusters can only grow when they are placed on budding amethyst blocks.
• Fully-grown amethyst clusters drop four amethyst shards (or more with Fortune) when an iron pickaxe or higher is used, and drop nothing otherwise when broken.
• Clusters can be silk touched at any stage.

Amethyst Geodes

• These huge geodes can be found anywhere underground in the Overworld.
• Amethyst geodes have an outer layer of a new stone called tuff.
• Amethyst geodes have a second layer of another new block called calcite.
• Amethyst geodes have an inner layer of various amethyst blocks.

Amethyst Shards

• Amethyst clusters drop four amethyst shards (or more with Fortune).

Budding Amethys

• On any side of a budding amethyst block where there is air or a water source block, a small amethyst bud will eventually grow.
• Amethyst Buds can only grow when attached to budding amethyst and will grow until they become amethyst clusters.

Bundles

• Bundles are items that hold other items.
• A bundle can hold a mixture of items, but only one stack’s worth. For example, a bundle could fit:
  • 64 dirt
  • 32 dirt + 32 stone
  • 32 dirt + 8 ender pearls
  • One of every color of wool, concrete, carpet and terracotta (64 blocks in total)
  • Or one diamond helmet
• Use right-click to put an item into a bundle.
• Right-click a bundle to empty it.
• Wrap a present in a bundle and give it to your friend!

Candles

• Candles come in all 16 colors + one uncolored variant.
• Up to four can be placed in one block.
• Candles allow you to properly wish someone a happy birthday.
• Waterloggable! (But you cannot light them underwater, silly).
• Wish anybody a happy birthday with a candle cake!

Cauldrons

• Cauldrons can now be filled with buckets of lava!
• Filled lava cauldrons give off a redstone signal of strength 1.

Copper

Copper blocks

• Craft nine copper ingots to a copper block.
• Craft cut copper, cut copper stairs and cut copper slabs.
• Use honeycomb to craft waxed copper blocks.

Copper ore

• Copper ore can be found in ore blobs across Overworld, similar to iron and coal (this is not the final generation for copper…)
• Smelt copper ore to get a copper ingot.

Lightning Rod

• The lightning rod is crafted from three copper ingots.
• Keep your builds safe (well, as long as the closest area around the lightning rod is fireproof) during thunderstorms!
• The lightning rod will protect an area of 4 * 16 blocks around it from the, sometimes devastating, lightning strikes!
• Lightning rods give off a redstone signal when struck by lightning

Oxidation

• Copper will oxidize over time
• There are for stages: copper, lightly weathered copper, semi-weathered copper, and weathered copper.
• It takes 50-82 Minecraft days (in loaded chunks) for a copper block to oxidize one stage.
• Waxed copper blocks will not oxidize.
• You can wax any oxidation stage – how lovely that means you can keep that pretty lightly weathered copper block in it’s lightly weathered stage forever!

Spyglass

• You can use your spyglass to see faraway things.
• Pretend to be a sea captain, or catch your neighbor in the act as they dye your sheep lime green.
• The spyglass is crafted from two copper ingots and one amethyst shard.

Tinted Glass

• Tinted glass is a type of glass that does not allow light to pass through.
• Tinted glass is crafted by putting a glass block in the middle of four amethyst shards.
• Tinted glass can be obtained without silk touch; it does not shatter like normal glass.

Changes in 20w45a

• Experience orbs now sometimes merge when in large quantities to improve performance. This does not change the rate at which the player can absorb them – it simply limits the amount of separate orbs floating around in the world. Orbs that merge will gain the lifetime of the most recently created one.
• Particles now appear when pistons break blocks.
• Simple firework rockets with one gunpowder can now be crafted using the recipe book.
• Dirt paths (formerly grass path) can now be made by using a shovel on dirt, podzol, mycelium, or course dirt (as well as grass).
• Minecarts and rails work in water.

Minecarts

Minecarts and rails work in water

• All rails can be waterlogged (works with a dispenser & water bucket too).
• Flowing water doesn’t break rails.
• Minecarts can pass through water, but get slowed down more than usual.

Technical Changes in 20w45a

• Entities are now saved separately from terrain chunks.
• Added loot table function set_banner_pattern
• Pack format in version.json has been split into data and resource versions
• Servers can now require custom resource packs to be accepted

Custom server resource packs

A dedicated server can enforce custom resource packs by setting require-resource-pack in server.properties. When this option is used, players will be prompted for a response and will be disconnected if they decline the required pack.

Entity storage

Entities have been extracted from main (terrain) chunks and are now stored in a separate entities directory (similar to POI storage).
Those new files are still region files with NBT.

Loot tables

New functions

set_banner_pattern

Sets tags needed for banner patterns.
Parameters:

• patterns - list of pattern objects:
  • pattern - name of pattern (square_bottom_left, bricks, etc.)
  • color - name of color (light_gray, etc.)
• append - if true, new elements will be appended to existing ones instead of replacing

Fixed bugs in 20w45a

• MC-98219 - Experience orbs follow dead players
• MC-108469 - Chunk-wise entity lists often don’t get updated correctly (Entities disappear)
• MC-112147 - Lava burning items or XP orbs sound muted when “Friendly Creatures” slider is turned off
• MC-127201 - /replaceitem makes quite an obnoxious sound, which is not heard by the person whose items are being replaced.
• MC-127692 - Experience build up in furnace when using a hopper which can cause severe lag
• MC-130449 - Cartographer villager freezes or crashes the game when unlocking explorer maps
• MC-130584 - When a structure loads, water sources in the structure spread into waterloggable blocks
• MC-133691 - Blocks can’t be placed normally on a full cauldron
• MC-135552 - Dead Entities are saved to chunk
• MC-136497 - XP orbs causing severe lag
• MC-141034 - taiga_fisher_cottage_1 is filled with water
  
• MC-169900 - Incorrect jigsaw setting in snowy_small_house_8
• MC-169945 - Skeletons don’t burn in minecarts while being exposed to daylight
• MC-171852 - Putting item in a spectator’s hand plays sound “Gear equips” for other players
• MC-174685 - Drowned arm texture is reversed by the model
• MC-175959 - One door is open in taiga_shepherds_house_1
• MC-177622 - One log in taiga_butcher_shop_1 seems to be misrotated - causing the side roof to look asymmetrical
• MC-177624 - Entrance in snowy_medium_house_2 is asymmetrical
• MC-181889 - Equipping sound plays when mobs picking up non-armor items
• MC-185357 - Removing a plant from a flower pot still plays generic armor equipping sound/shows Gear equips in subtitles
• MC-185359 - Using a bucket in Survival mode still plays generic armor equipping sound/shows Gear equips in subtitles
• MC-185360 - Milking a mooshroom for stew still plays armor equip sound/shows Gear equips subtitle
• MC-189565 - Some entities do not render inside of spawners and producing error log spam in console, potentially causing lag
• MC-190896 - Lag when opening a shipwreck chest containing buried treasure map
• MC-192594 - plains_stable_1 misplaced blocks
• MC-192629 - plains_stable_2 misplaced blocks
• MC-192876 - Misplaced trapdoor on taiga_decoration_6
• MC-192879 - Wall incorrectly placed on certain taiga houses
• MC-192930 - Zombies picking up items play the gear equipping sound and subtitle
• MC-193071 - Eating food items that return empty containers still play gear equipping sound
• MC-195125 - plains_animal_pen_1 misplaced block
• MC-195126 - plains_animal_pen_3 misplaced blocks
• MC-195351 - Comparator in compare mode can schedule unneeded tileticks
• MC-196542 - Small cleanup for skylight propagation code
• MC-197009 - Referencing empty item tag in recipe can crash client
• MC-197140 - Jack o’Lantern doesn’t come after Carved Pumpkin in Creative Inventory
• MC-197179 - Baby piglins that pick up leather don’t despawn, cluttering the Nether with unnecessary baby piglins
• MC-197524 - Border chunks do not enforce neighbors to be loaded, causing light updates to get stuck
• MC-198129 - ReplaceBlobsFeature changed from 1.16.1 to 1.16.2, affecting Basalt Delta generation
• MC-198414 - if the angle in /spawnpoint is set to ±infinity, and the player dies, it will kick the player, and upon rejoin will crash the game
• MC-198807 - Making piglins and piglin brutes angry at certain entities (like dropped items) crashes the game
• MC-202246 - Drowned navigation causes memory leak/performance degredation

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.

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

Cross-platform server jar:

• Minecraft server jar

Report bugs here:

• Minecraft issue tracker!

Want to give feedback?

• Head over to our feedback website or come chat with us about it on the official Minecraft Discord.