1.4.6^[1] is an update to Minecraft (Java Edition) that was released on December 20, 2012.^[2] It introduced fireworks, enchanted books and the Thorns enchantment. It also added a warning for users playing on soon-to-be unsupported systems (PowerPC and Java 5). While it was not the last update to 1.4, it was the last one before the snapshots of 1.5 started.

A pre-release version of 1.4.6 was released on December 17, 2012;^[3] this pre-release version was later re-uploaded to fix an issue with mobs spinning.^[4][5] The release version of 1.4.6 differs from the reuploaded pre-release by fixing a crash issue.^[6]

Additions

Blocks

Nether brick slabs

• Crafted using nether bricks.

Items

Enchanted books

• Enchant books to receive a single enchantment on them.
• Can be applied to items using anvils, consuming the book.
  • Enchants can be applied to any item in Creative mode.
• Sold by villagers and found in dungeon and village chests.
• Can now be found in loot chests and by trading with villagers.
• Unbreaking can be applied to anything with durability.
• Efficiency and Silk Touch can be applied to shears, allowing the harvesting of cobwebs.
• Sharpness, Smite, and Bane of Arthropods can be applied to axes.

Firework star

• Used to create firework rockets.
• Combine gunpowder with dyes to get a firework star with those colors used for the sparkles.
• Add Glowstone Dust, a fire charge, a diamond, a gold nugget, feather, or a mob head to make the firework twinkling, big, trailing, star-shaped, bursting, or creeper-shaped, respectively.
• Craft a firework star with dye to change the color that the sparkles fade to.

Firework rocket

• Non-destructive, rise up in the air, and create colorful patterns when shot by dispensers or placed by players.
• Combine paper with gunpowder to craft a firework rocket.
• Add a firework star to add effects, or gunpowder to increase the flight duration.

Gameplay

Thorns

• A new armor enchantment.
• Deals damage depending on tier to attackers.
• Wears armor out faster.

Changes

Blocks

Monster spawners

• Can now spawn differently configured mobs with different spawn chances

Items

Bows

• A high pitched sound is now played when a player hits another player from far away with a bow.^{[note 1]}

Mobs

Ghasts

• Fireballs' blast radius can now be customized

Skeletons, zombies, and zombie pigmen

• The armor and enchants they spawn with now are even harder on harder difficulties.

Non-mob entities

Arrows

• Now render from farther away.

Items and item frame entities

• Now render in 3D when using fancy graphics.

World generation

Dungeons and Villages

• Now have a random chance to have enchanted books in their chests.

Gameplay

Inventory

• Items can now be dragged and dropped.
  • Long pressing will halve the stack before dragging.

Hotbar

• Items now show their name when switching in the hotbar.
  • Can be disabled by changing heldItemTooltips to false in options.txt.
• Dropping items while holding ctrl now drops the whole stack.

Enchantments

• Fire Protection now extinguishes fire more quickly.
• Blast Protection now reduces explosion recoil.
• Protection is not as protective as it used to be in order to make specific enchantments more worthwhile.

Sneaking

• Pressing use while sneaking now uses the held item instead of the currently selected block.

Death messages

• Now appear in server log files.

General

Display

• Added a default resolution setting to options.txt: overrideWidth:0 and overrideHeight:0.

Options

• Added an option to toggle touchscreen mode.^{[note 1]}

Removals

General

Distance effects

• Falling block behavior has changed - they are no longer capable of infinitely producing dropped items at high coordinate values.

Fixes

28 issues fixed

From 1.4.2

• MC-133 – Mobs walking slow when you hit them.
• MC-255 – Graphical issue with trading.
• MC-256 – Mobs can still revert farmlands to dirt even if mobGriefing gamerule is set on false.
• MC-312 – Item textures of spawn eggs and firework stars not aligned properly when stacked.
• MC-498 – Setting an enderman on fire with flint and steel or lava will not make it teleport away.
• MC-674 – Items that are different only in damage cannot be swapped.
• MC-721 – Animals on fire do not flee.
• MC-1140 – Boats always get placed in the same direction and not based on how they get placed.
• MC-1240 – Endermen are set on fire when trying to dodge arrows on fire.
• MC-1311 – When you enter the Nether, the game auto-selects the first item on the toolbar.
• MC-1626 – Z-fighting in beacon block's bottom.
• MC-1847 – Leaves have an incorrect tooltip.
• MC-1969 – Minecarts cannot travel through nether portals.
• MC-2145 – Drowning in creative.

From 1.4.4

• MC-1959 – Placing double slabs ignore damage values.
• MC-2504 – Enchant cannot enchant with ID 0 (Protection).
• MC-4510 – Enchantments not showing in item frames.
• MC-4528 – Flaming arrows take a moment to burn.

From 1.4.5

• MC-3332 – The XP sound doesn't play after getting each 5th level.
• MC-3490 – Minecarts and falling entities flickering / jittering (updated 1.4.5).
• MC-3501 – Passive mob spawn eggs don't consume.
• MC-3565 – Endermen don't open their mouth when attacked by other mobs.
• MC-3593 – Lightning doesn't flash.
• MC-4024 – Chest glitch - Server/Client desynchronization.
• MC-4069 – Pressing F3+B displays hitboxes.. rendering invisibility potions useless.
• MC-4117 – Wither can sometimes destroy its own star due to the posthumous detonation of wither skulls.
• MC-4499 – Beacon tiers don't work at y=0.
• MC-4634 – Cannot remove XP bars from the /xp -1 command when between level 0 and 1.

Release fixes

These fixes occurred between the last snapshot for 1.4.6, 12w50b, and the full release of 1.4.6.

37 issues fixed

• MC-429 – Bats get stuck when flying through water.
• MC-678 – Water splash sound gets overriden by other sounds.
• MC-756 – Player not shown in actual location after breaking boat.
• MC-833 – Inventory items are lost.
• MC-971 – Mis-identified server version.
• MC-1005 – Fresh install of 1.4.2 on fresh install of OSX 10.6.8 hangs.
• MC-1347 – Items do not "update looks" when stacked on ground.
• MC-1348 – Dropped items only auto-stack when moving, not when going through portals.
• MC-1599 – File Handle leak in RegionFileCache (MCP).
• MC-1957 – Minecraft graphics messed up.
• MC-2442 – Bug with redstone's direction.
• MC-2568 – Ghost block bug.
• MC-2610 – Game freezes at the start of a previously saved game.
• MC-2622 – Cannot modify the render distance setting - stays at "Far" regardless of changes.
• MC-2673 – Shift-clicking smelted ores out of furnace cause minor visual bug.
• MC-2712 – Cannot look around while walking/sprinting unless jumping at first (happens on all gamemodes).
• MC-2873 – Minecarts disappearing.
• MC-2879 – Error 50% of the time when trying to join a server. Failed to login: Error.
• MC-2904 – Zombie pigman's knockback stunlocks iron golem's defeating their intended purpose.

From 1.4.4

• MC-1734 – Duplicating falling blocks (sand, gravel, dragon eggs...) still works with tweaks to an existing design.
• MC-1883 – Destroying a Jukebox NPE&Kick.
• MC-2747 – Minecraft client crashes when connection times out.
• MC-3122 – Cannot change texture packs.
• MC-3255 – Crash due to blaze fireballs.
• MC-3280 – Some textures appear as dark terrain.png images.
• MC-3346 – Minecraft crashing every time I get on for a little while.
• MC-3934 – Particle overload when returning from AFK.

From 1.4.5

• MC-3632 – Game only loads the chunk I'm currently standing on when I log in, and then freezes and crashes.
• MC-3860 – Client crashes when underground near a piston-and-redstone machine.
• MC-3899 – Skeletons will come close to attacker.
• MC-3988 – Slime audio bug.
• MC-4432 – Minecart goes off track and into walls.
• MC-4784 – Skeletons not retaliating to iron golems or wolves.
• MC-4792 – Minecraft crashed, exception world.
• MC-4829 – Game client gets stuck on 'building terrain' screen.

From the previous development version

• MC-4644 – Mobs running in circles and not jumping when chasing/running away.

From the current version, hotfixed

• MC-4872 – Crash when shot by skeleton.

Other fixes

• Fixed mouse wrongly positioned in fullscreen.

Trivia

• 1.4.6 is the first minor update to have snapshots.

Notes

References