1.9, the first release of the Combat Update,^[1] is a major update to Minecraft (Java Edition) that was released on February 29, 2016.^[2] This update completely revamped combat by adding a timed attack system, dual wielding, spectral and tipped arrows, and shields. The End was revamped with an updated ender dragon boss fight sequence, an expanse of additional End islands with chorus plants, end cities, end ships, purpur blocks, shulkers, as well as elytra, which a player can wear to glide through the air.

Additions

Blocks

Chorus flowers

• Spawn on the top of the chorus trees.
• Break if the supporting block below is broken.
  • It drops only when mined directly.
• Can be planted only on end stone in any dimension.
• It will show a different texture when it stops growing.

Chorus plants

• Generate in the End.
• Can be grown using chorus flowers.
• Break in quick succession if the supporting chorus plant below is broken.
• Drop chorus fruit.

Dragon head

• While a player wears the head and moves, the head's mouth opens and closes repeatedly.
• When powered with redstone while placed on a solid block, the jaw starts to open and close.
  • It will keep the mouth position of the exact moment it was unpowered.
• It generates on the bows of end ships.

End gateways

• Portal blocks used to transport the player to the new outer regions of the End.
  • The destination of the teleport can be customized using NBT tags.
• The player cannot use pick block or /give to obtain it.
  • It can be set only by using /setblock.
• Naturally generate inside the end gateway structures after killing the dragon and traveling someplace new in the end with it.
  • Show purple beacon beams when created and yellow beams when used.
• Their texture does not get deformed due to perspective, but rather it displays the same texture as the end portal block on all its footprint, independent of angle.

End rods

• Generate in the end city dungeons.
• Can be crafted using a popped chorus fruit in the bottom and a blaze rod on top, yielding four end rods.
• Placeable horizontally and vertically.
  • The model has a little base that is oriented against the block it was placed.
    • If it is placed on top of another rod, it will have the opposite orientation.
• Produces white particles.
• Used as a lighting source with the same brightness as torches.
• Unlike torches, they have a collision box.

End stone bricks

• Generate in the end city dungeons.
• Can be crafted with 4 blocks of end stone, yielding 4 blocks of end stone brick, like regular stone bricks.

Frosted ice

• Created when using "Frost Walker" enchantment.
• Cannot be obtained in the inventory, neither with silk touch nor with commands. (Can be placed only via /setblock)
• Breaks after a few seconds when in sufficient light (including daylight).
  • Breaking takes place in four breaking stages (blockstates: age:0, age:1, age:2, age:3). Still decay with randomTickSpeed set to 0, but a higher number will make them decay faster.

Grass paths

• They are ¹⁵⁄₁₆ of a block (15 pixels) tall.
• Obtainable by using a shovel on a grass block.
  • This drains the shovel's durability.
  • Its texture is very similar to that of a grass block.
• Always drop dirt, even when using Silk Touch.
• It isn't available in the creative inventory screen.
  • Pick block functions normally with it.

Purpur blocks

• Generate in the end city dungeons.
• Can be crafted with popped chorus fruits.

Purpur pillars

• Generates in the end city dungeons.
• Can be crafted with purpur slabs.

Purpur stairs

• Generates in the end city dungeons.
• Can be crafted with purpur blocks.

Purpur slabs

• Generates in the end city dungeons.
• Can be crafted with purpur blocks.

Structure blocks

• Placeable only via /setblock, but unusable.
• It has 4 different modes: save, load, corner and data.
• It has an "S" on the texture in save mode, "L" in load mode, "C" in corner mode and "D" in data mode.

Items

Beetroot

• Restores 1 ().
• Spawns naturally in villages.
• Can be used to craft beetroot soup.
• Can also be used to craft rose red dye.
• Previously a pocket edition exclusive.

Beetroot soup

• Restores 6 ().
• Crafted from 6 beetroots and a bowl.
• Previously a pocket edition exclusive.

Beetroot seeds

• Used to grow beetroots.
• Drop chances for beetroot seeds average 2 per crop harvested.
• Previously a Pocket Edition exclusive.

Chorus fruits

• Obtained from chorus plants.
• Can be eaten even if the player is not hungry, similar to golden apples.
  • Teleport the player to a random nearby location when eaten (like an enderman).
  • Does not heal hunger points if the hunger bar is full.
    • Otherwise it will heal 4 ().
• Can be cooked in the furnace to obtain Popped Chorus Fruits.
• They have a cool down time for consuming, like ender pearls.
  • It is visible in the item icon through a "rolling curtain" animation.
• Stacks to 64.

Dragon's breath

• Shot by the ender dragon at the player as an attack.
  • Leaves a patch of purple particles that deal damage when stood on top.
    • Also spawn upon impact of an "ender acid" charge.
  • Can be collected only by right clicking an empty bottle in the middle of the cloud.
• Found in the brewery section of the creative inventory.
• Can be used to brew lingering potions with dragon's breath as the ingredient and a splash potion.
• Stacks to 64.

Elytra

• They function according to hang glider aerodynamics.
  • The player doesn't receive fall damage, if they fall from a small height while flying slowly (not nose-diving).
  • Still receive fall damage if the player nose-dives directly into the ground.
  • Receive damage from horizontal collisions, new death message: "Player experienced kinetic energy".
• Have to be equipped in the "chestplate" slot in order to work.
• Will activate when the Jump key is pressed while in mid-air and falling.
• Have 431 uses (over 7 minutes of flying) and can be repaired on an anvil, using 4 leather to repair it totally.
• Can be given the Unbreaking enchantment using an anvil or commands.
• Legs will make a "walking movement" animation when the player is stalling in the air.
• Similar to the Wing Cap item from Super Mario 64.
• Found on End Ships within an item frame.
• Wings fold while not gliding.
• The elytron texture defaults to the cape texture if the player owns a cape.
  • The cape does not display while wearing.
  • The Cape option in the Skin Customization menu will synchronize with the elytron texture.
• Takes damage at a rate of 1/s.

End crystals

• Can be crafted using an eye of ender in the middle, a ghast tear on the bottom and 7 glass blocks on the remaining squares.
• Can be placed only on obsidian and bedrock blocks.
  • Cannot be placed in adventure mode.
• Has no bottom plate like "normal" end crystals.
• Used on the exit portal in the end to respawn the dragon.
• The end crystal can't be destroyed by explosions (except Wither)

Lingering potions

• Thrown like a splash potion.
  • Leaves a patch of the potion particle effect on impact.
    • Entities that walk into it get the effect.
• Has all the potion types, and works with potions whose effect are instant.
• Brewed with dragon's breath and a splash potion.
• Cloud duration can be controlled through a data tag.
• Does not stack, just like other potions.
• Travels with the same speed as splash potions when shot through dispensers.

Water splash potions

• Can extinguish any fire block that it's thrown at, as well as a maximum of five of them in the vicinity.

Popped chorus fruits

• Obtained from cooking chorus fruit.
• Used to craft purpur blocks.
• Cannot be eaten.

Potions of Luck

• Gives the Luck effect for 5 minutes
• Also comes in splash and lingering potion forms as well as for tipped arrows ("Arrow of Luck").

Shields

• Crafted using 6 planks and one iron ingot.
  • The default texture looks like wood.
• New tool used for blocking incoming attacks.
  • If the player holds right click while being attacked, the damage inflicted is reduced, and the shield loses durability.
    • This works when the shield is either in the main hand or in the offhand.
      • The player can hold 2 shields at once, but it does not affect the damage taken.
  • When an attack is blocked by a shield, the attacker may be knocked back.
• The player cannot attack while blocking.
• Can be combined with banners to transfer its pattern to it.
  • The banner is consumed on use.
  • Can be combined with banners only if no pattern was previously applied.
• Can be repaired on the anvil only.
  • Requires planks to repair it.
• They cannot be enchanted directly.
  • Can receive the Unbreaking enchantment through an enchanted book
    • Some other enchantments applied via commands will still function, such as Thorns or Protection.
• Arrows can ricochet off a shield to hit other entities.
• Hitting a shield with an axe has a chance to disable the shield for 5 seconds.
  • It is shown in the item icon as a "rolling curtain" animation.
  • 25% base chance, plus 5 percentage points for each level of Efficiency on the axe, plus 75 percentage points if sprinting.

Shulker spawn eggs

• Used to spawn a shulker.
• Purple with darker purple spots.

Spectral arrows

• A new type of arrow.
• The tip is gold colored in both the item and the entity model.
• Shows mob and player outlines in their respective team color when hit (even when invisible).
• NBT tags can be used to both disable and force outlines.
  • The glowing is a status effect.
• Crafted by surrounding an arrow with 4 glowstone dust.
  • Yields 2 spectral arrows.
• The duration of the effect when the arrow strikes its target can be customized using NBT data.

Tipped arrows

• A new type of arrow that can be tipped with potions.
• 15 new arrow types in total.
• Each differently tipped arrow is available in the creative menu, just like enchanted books or potions.
  • Except for the "splashing arrow" that corresponds to the new water splash potion.
• Corresponding status effect is applied upon impact to mobs and players.
• Tipped arrows can be customized with commands.
• Exist for empty bottles, water bottles, mundane potions, thick potions and awkward potions
• Crafted by 8 arrows surrounding a lingering potion of that type, yielding 8 of them.
• For effects with duration, the duration is ¹⁄₈ that of the corresponding potion.

Uncraftable potions

• Has no effect, unknown use.
• Cannot be obtained in survival.
• Has tag Potion:"minecraft:empty".

Mobs

Shulkers

• Short for "Shell Lurker".^[3]
• Hostile mobs with the appearance and some behavior of a solid purple block.
  • Spawn only on the ground or walls of end cities when they first generate.
  • Do not despawn in Peaceful difficulty, but will not attack or target players.
• When attacking, it opens its shell on a spinning animation revealing the creature inhabiting.
  • Looks like a little white cube with big eyes.
  • Its attack consists of shooting projectiles with the appearance of white sea urchins.
    • The projectiles chase the player until the player is out of range.
      • It does not chase a spectator.
    • They can move along only one of the three grid axes at a time and on integer steps.
      • This means they move through taxicab geometry.
    • They can be knocked away by attacking them.
    • Getting hit by a projectile causes 2 of damage and inflicts the levitation status effect.
    • Shulkers take more damage if they are attacked while their shell is open.
• It has an idle animation where it opens its shells a little to peek through.
• It can be pushed by pistons and resists being placed on any position that isn't 3 integers (except if they are riding minecarts).
• It has a chance of teleporting like an enderman or dragon egg while being attacked.
  • It always teleports on the following circumstances:
    • Removing its support block.
    • Pushing it into a non-air block (except piston heads).
    • Pushing a non-air block into its position (except piston heads).
• It's one of the few entities (apart from boats and minecarts) that can be stood on.
  • It even displaces the player properly during its attacking and idle animations.
• Has various NBT tags associated with it, which can control its animation, block attached, location and target location of projectile.

Non-mob entities

Area effect clouds

• Apply potion effects to mobs and players within its radius during a specific duration.
• Used for lingering potions and the ender dragon's breath.
• Various attributes can be configured using NBT data (see above).

World generation

Chorus trees

• Generate on the outer islands of the End.
• Tree-like arrangements of the new chorus plant and chorus flower blocks.
• The whole structure is destroyed when the bottom-most block is destroyed, like cacti.
• Can be farmed by planting the chorus fruit flowers that come from the top of the plants, on top of end stone.
  • Unlike cacti, chorus plants do not require the supporting block to be below it, but rather adjacent.
    • This allows the structure to grow around obstacles, like other chorus trees.

The End

• Generates many islands in every direction from the main island, though separated by a gap of about 1,000 blocks.
  • Mini islands generate between the center and main islands.
  • End islands and mini end islands (except for the main one) will have chorus trees spread throughout them, as well as end cities with end ships.

End cities

• Generate on the new outer end islands.
• Dungeon-type structure fashioned like a branching tower made of end stone and many of the new blocks.
  • Resembles a tree house.
• Contains loot inside of chests.
• Generates with shulkers in it.

End gateways

• Generate in a radius around the main portal each time the dragon is killed.
  • Up to 20 gateways can be generated this way.
  • It is the usual way of traveling to the outer end islands, without having to build or fly all the way over there.
  • It consists of the gateway block in the middle and two little bulbs of bedrock on the top and bottom.
    • Since the bulbs of bedrock leave a one block slit on the horizontal plane, it is accessible only by throwing ender pearls at it, or by riding pigs, boats or minecarts.
    • When used, it generates another gateway at the player's destination.
      • The gateways are linked so the player has a way back.

End ship

• Sometimes generates up in the air next to the end city dungeon.
  • Always appears to sail away from what appears to be a pier.
  • Composed of many of the same materials as the End City.
• Generates with shulkers in it.
• Has a dragon head, a brewing stand with potions of healing, a pair of elytra within an item frame, and other various loot.

Igloos

• Spawn randomly in ice plains and cold taiga (but not the Hills variant).
  • Spawning parameters are shared with desert temples, jungle temples, and witch huts: the fact of a structure spawn is decided, then the biome determines which structure (if any) is spawned.
• An igloo contains: 9 white carpets, 3 light gray carpets, 2 blocks of ice, a redstone torch, furnace, bed and a crafting table.
• Some igloos have a stone brick basement, with a cauldron, 2 red carpets, a brewing stand, 3 spruce stairs, a cobweb and loot chest, along with a villager priest and zombie villager priest in iron bars. A trapdoor with ladders leads down, into the mossy brick basement, cracked and stone brick also available, with 2 torches.
  • In the loot chest there is a golden apple, hinting that the player needs to cure the zombie.
  • Always spawns with a splash potion of weakness hinting the player to use these on the zombie to turn it into a villager, like the one next to it.
  • The zombie has the PersistenceRequired tag which makes it not despawn.
  • Silverfish spawn in some stone brick blocks.

Superflat

• New preset: The Void
  • Spawns the player on a stone platform. No other terrain generates.
  • The Void is now a biome with an ID of 127.

Gameplay

Combat

• New "attack strength" combat mechanic.
  • A meter shows up after switching items or attacking.
    • Damage done depends on the fullness of the meter, with a quadratic reduction (attack does 20%–100% of normal damage as the meter fills).
    • Fills at different rates depending on the new attack speed attribute (see table on the changes to gameplay section for a complete list).
      • The haste effect will cause the meter to fill faster
    • Can be displayed next to the hotbar (left or right based on the player's main hand), under the crosshair or turned off.
      • Looks like the icon for the strength effect on the side of the hotbar, or like a dagger under the crosshair.
      • This is controlled in video settings.
  • A cooldown animation is displayed of the tool slowly being lifted up, when first switching to it.
• Play sounds when attacked strongly, weakly, and parried.

Dual wielding

• Players can now use both hands to perform different actions using the left and right mouse buttons.
  • For example, if a player has a pickaxe in their main hand and a torch in their other hand, right clicking will place the torch.
    • This happens because a pickaxe lacks a right click use, and therefore the game tries to then treat the other item as if it's being right clicked.
      • The player cannot click both buttons at the same time.
  • This is achieved through an extra inventory slot called the "offhand" slot.
    • Pressing F (by default) will switch whatever item is selected in the hotbar with the item in the offhand (including no item).
    • The offhand slot is displayed next to the hotbar when it's not empty (left for right-hand players and vice versa).
    • It's available on all iterations of the inventory screen.
      • It is distinguished by an outline of a shield like symbol.
    • The player can hear an item switching sound, only for other players.
      • The player cannot hear their own items switching.
• Only the main hand can be used for physical attacks.
• Bows choose their arrow type based on the offhand.
  • Arrows in the offhand take priority over arrows in any other slot.
  • If there are multiple arrow types and none in the offhand or selected hotbar slot, the arrow that is in the lowest numbered slot will get fired.
• The offhand model is invisible in first person view while it's empty.
• Some attributes and enchantments will apply to the offhand item, if specified through a new tag.

Enchanting

• "Treasure" enchantments
  • Can be obtained only from chest loot, fishing, or trading for enchanted books.
• New "treasure" enchantment: Frost Walker
  • Turns water into meltable ice which decays in multiple stages.
    • Does not work on flowing water.
  • Different tiers:
    • Level I creates a circle of frosted ice around the player with a radius of 2 blocks.
    • Each additional level adds 1 to that radius.
      • Maximum radius is 16 blocks
        • Levels over 14 don't increase the range
  • Will not turn water into frosted ice if an entity is in that spot.
  • The water must have an air block above in order to be turned into frosted ice.
  • Works as long as the player is with in one block above a block.
  • Cannot be combined with Depth Strider enchantment.
• New "treasure" enchantment: Mending
  • Any experience collected while holding the item repairs it instead of going to the experience bar.
    • Mainhand, offhand, and armor slots all count as held.
    • If multiple held items have the enchantment, one will be chosen at random for each experience orb collected.
    • Repairs at a rate of 2 durability per experience.
    • If the amount of repair needed is less than the value of the experience orb, the extra experience will go to the experience bar.

Status effects

• Glowing:
  • Received when players or mobs are hit by spectral arrows.
  • Makes player's outline glow, even through non-transparent blocks.
  • Listed as a negative effect because it prevents players from hiding from other players.
  • It becomes colored differently if the player is part of a team to match its team color.
• Levitation:
  • Received when the player or mobs is hit by shulker projectiles.
  • Makes player involuntarily float high into the air.
    • Can be used to get to higher places.
  • Listed as a negative effect due to the potential to kill from fall damage.
  • Higher levels of levitation result in faster floating.
    • Effect levels 128-254 result in floating downward at a constant speed, with level 128 being the fastest and level 254 the slowest (one block per second).
    • Effect level 255 disables falling and jumping altogether, to an effect not entirely unlike flying in creative mode. Gaining or losing elevation is impossible without using pistons.
• Luck and Bad Luck
  • Increases/Decreases the luck attribute by ±1 per level.

Transportation

• The player can now glide using elytra
• The player can also use the new "Elytra Control" option.

Command format

Commands

• /time
  • /time query now accepts the value day, which returns the in-game day number.
• /gamerule
  • disableElytraMovementCheck
    • Setting to true will cause the server to skip checking whether the player is cheating by moving too fast, when the player is wearing elytra.
    • Defaults to false
  • spectatorsGenerateChunks
    • Determines whether players in spectator mode should generate chunks.
    • Defaults to true.
  • spawnRadius
    • Controls how far from the world spawn point players can spawn.
    • Defaults to 10.

NBT tags

• All entities
  • Glowing (byte): Controls whether or not an entity is affected by the new glowing status effect.
    • e.g. /summon Creeper ~ ~1 ~ {Glowing:1} will summon a glowing creeper.
    • Note this does not work on all entities, such as snowballs.
    • Armor Stands with Marker tag do not show the outline of the Armor Stand itself, only its equipment.
  • Tags (list): Contains a list of string values that can be used with the "tag" selector parameter.
    • The /scoreboard command can assign tags itself.
    • /summon Creeper ~ ~1 ~ {Tags:["tag1","tag2"]}
  • Passengers (list): Replaces the original "Riding" compound tag. It has the ability to specify multiple passengers at equal depths, unlike "Riding". Instead of the deepest-nested "Riding" entity being the bottom-most in the stack of riding entities, the entity at the root of the data is at the bottom of the stack.
    • For example, the armor stand in the following command is at the bottom of the stack while the cow and pig are at the same depth:
      • /summon ArmorStand ~ ~1 ~ {Passengers:[{id:"Cow"},{id:"Pig"}]}
    • One may also summon entities in stacks instead of the same height and with specific NBT tags attached to it:
      • /summon Sheep ~ ~1 ~ {Passengers:[{id:"Sheep",Color:5,Passengers:[{id:"Sheep",CustomName:"test",CustomNameVisible:1}]}]}
• All mobs
  • HandItems (lists): Defines what item is within the main hand and offhand.
    • It manages this by using two records, for the main hand and the offhand in that order.
    • e.g. /summon Zombie ~ ~1 ~ {HandItems:[{id:"minecraft:stone"},{id:"minecraft:cobblestone"}]}
  • ArmorItems (lists): Used to specify the armor worn by the mob.
    • Contains four records: feet, legs, chest and head in that order.
    • e.g. /summon Zombie ~ ~1 ~ {ArmorItems:[{id:"minecraft:leather_boots"},{id:"minecraft:leather_leggings"},{id:"minecraft:leather_chestplate"},{id:"minecraft:leather_helmet"}]}
  • LeftHanded (byte): Boolean tag that controls the dominant hand of mobs.
    • Set to 1 for left handed mobs and 0 for right handed.
    • e.g. /summon Zombie ~ ~1 ~ {LeftHanded:1,HandItems:[{id:"minecraft:stone"}]}
  • ArmorDropChances & HandDropChances (lists): Used to specify the dropping chances of worn armor and held items of specific mobs respectively.
    • e.g. /summon Zombie ~ ~1 ~ {HandDropChances:[1.0f,1.0f],HandItems:[{id:"minecraft:stone"},{id:"minecraft:cobblestone"}]}
    • e.g. /summon Zombie ~ ~1 ~ {ArmorDropChances:[2.0f,2.0f,2.0f,2.0f],ArmorItems:[{id:"minecraft:leather_boots"},{id:"minecraft:leather_leggings"},{id:"minecraft:leather_chestplate"},{id:"minecraft:leather_helmet"}]}
  • DeathLootTable (string): Determines which loot table will be used when the mob is killed.
    • e.g. /summon Creeper ~ ~1 ~ {DeathLootTable:"minecraft:chests/simple_dungeon"}
  • DeathLootTableSeed (long): The deterministic seed for grabbing data from the loot table. Used in vanilla survival to replicate chest content in new worlds with same seeds. Must not be 0.
    • e.g. /summon Creeper ~ ~1 ~ {DeathLootTable:"minecraft:chests/simple_dungeon",DeathLootTableSeed:123l}
• All items
  • Slot string tag within AttributeModifiers (string): Determines which slot the item has to be, for the modifier to be applied.
    • Available slots are: "mainhand", "offhand", "feet", "legs", "chest", "head".
    • e.g. /give @p minecraft:leather_chestplate 1 0 {AttributeModifiers:[{AttributeName:"generic.maxHealth",Name:"Test",Amount:10.0,Operation:0,UUIDLeast:1l,UUIDMost:1l,Slot:"chest"}]}
• Players
  • DataVersion (integer): Numerical value that states which version the player is playing within.
    • It cannot be changed via commands, but it can be tested for.
    • /scoreboard players set @a OBJ 1 {DataVersion:104}
  • RootVehicle
    • With the introduction of the "Passengers" tag, this new compound holds a copy of the entity the player is currently riding. "AttachLeast" and "AttachMost" are the UUIDLeast and UUIDMost of that entity, while "Entity" holds the actual data.
    • /testfor @a {RootVehicle:{AttachLeast:1l,AttachMost:1l,Entity:{id:"Boat",CustomName:"Test"}}}
• Items: Potion
  • Potion (string)
    • Used to determine the type of potion it is using new name IDs.
    • e.g. /give @p minecraft:lingering_potion 1 0 {Potion:"minecraft:long_invisibility"}
• Entity: ThrownPotion
  • Potion (compound)
    • Holds the item data for the potion thrown.
    • e.g. /summon ThrownPotion ~ ~1 ~ {Lingering:1,Potion:{id:"minecraft:lingering_potion",Count:1,tag:{Potion:"minecraft:long_invisibility"}}}
• Entity: Arrow
  • Potion (string): States the default potion ID of the arrow, same values as when used with potion items. See the potion article for a list of default IDs.
    • e.g. /summon Arrow ~ ~1 ~ {Potion:"minecraft:long_swiftness"}
  • CustomPotionEffects (list): Multiple effects using global effect IDs, same structure as when used with potion items. See the status effect article for a list of global IDs.
    • e.g. /summon Arrow ~ ~1 ~ {CustomPotionEffects:[{Id:14,Duration:100}]}
• Entity: SpectralArrow
  • Duration (integer): Specifies how long the effect will last when the arrow strikes the target.
    • e.g. /summon SpectralArrow ~ ~5 ~ {Duration:200}
• Entity: Shulker
  • Peek (byte): Percentage to indicate the progress of its idle and attacking animations, so the height of its shell is correctly updated.
  • AttachFace (byte): Determines the direction the shulker has attached to a block face.
    • Summoning shulkers will make them attach to the ground by default.
  • APX, APY, APZ (int): Set of integer coordinates that the shulker should be located at.
    • These coordinates will be obtained from the coordinates entered by a /summon command through a truncation function.
• Entity: ShulkerBullet
  • Used to track the target location of shulker projectiles.
  • Relevant NBT structure: {Steps:1,TXD:0.0,TYD:0.0,TZD:0.0,Dir:0,Owner:{X:0,Y:0,Z:0,L:1L,M:1L},Target:{X:0,Y:0,Z:0,L:1L,M:1L}}
• Tile: Chest / Tile: Hopper / Entity: MinecartChest / Entity: MinecartHopper
  • LootTable (string): Loot table to be used to fill the chest when it is next opened or destroyed. When the chest is part of a double chest, only the half corresponding to the tagged single-chest is affected.
    • e.g. /setblock ~ ~1 ~ minecraft:chest 0 replace {LootTable:"minecraft:chests/simple_dungeon"}
  • LootTableSeed (long): Seed for generating the loot table. Used in vanilla survival to replicate chest content in new worlds with same seeds. 0 or omitted will use a random seed.
    • /setblock x y z minecraft:chest 0 replace {LootTable:"chests/simple_dungeon",LootTableSeed:12345}
• Entity: MinecartHopper
  • Enabled (byte): Determines whether or not the minecart hopper will pick up items into its inventory.
    • e.g. /summon MinecartHopper ~ ~1 ~ {Enabled:1b}
• Entity: EnderCrystal
  • BeamTarget (compound): Used to assign a custom target to the beam.
    • e.g. /summon EnderCrystal ~ ~1 ~ {BeamTarget:{X:1,Y:2,Z:3}}
  • ShowBottom (byte): Boolean tag that, when applied, hides the small bedrock slate appearing below the ender crystal.
    • e.g. /summon EnderCrystal ~ ~1 ~ {ShowBottom:1b}
• Entity: EnderDragon
  • DragonPhase (integer): determines the current action the dragon will complete.
    • e.g. /summon EnderDragon ~ ~1 ~ {DragonPhase:7}
• Entity: EntityHorse
  • SkeletonTrap (byte): Indicates whether the horse is a skeleton trap.
    • If it is, the horse will spawn 4 skeleton horses, ridden by skeletons and a lightning bolt in its place when a player gets within 10 blocks of it.
    • e.g. /summon EntityHorse ~ ~1 ~10 {SkeletonTrap:1b}
  • SkeletonTrapTime (integer), incremented each tick when SkeletonTrap is set to 1. The mob automatically despawns when it reaches 18000 (15 minutes). This will prevent the hostile horses from overflowing the world, similar to chicken jockeys.
    • e.g. /summon EntityHorse ~ ~1 ~10 {SkeletonTrap:1b,SkeletonTrapTime:17980}
• Entity: Boat
  • Type (string): Determines the wood material of the boat that is displayed. Values are: oak, spruce, birch, jungle, acacia, dark_oak.
  • e.g. /summon Boat ~ ~1 ~ {Type:"acacia"}
• Entity: AreaEffectCloud
  • New entity that is the result of lingering potions, applying an effect to entities that step within its radius. It has the following tags
  • Particle (string): The name of what particle they play. Defaults to "mobspell".
  • ReapplicationDelay (integer): Every this number of ticks, a person standing in the radius gets the effect applied to them. Defaults to 20.
  • Radius (float): Specifies the radius in meters that the effect applies in. Changes over time.
  • RadiusPerTick (float): How much the radius increases/decreases each tick. Can also be made positive to have the effect grow. Defaults to -0.005f.
  • RadiusOnUse (float): How much the radius increase/decreases when applied to an entity. Defaults to -0.5f.
  • Duration (integer): How long the linger effect lasts in ticks. When the entity's age exceeds this number, it is removed.
  • DurationOnUse (float): How much the duration increase/decreases when applied to an entity. Defaults to 0.0f.
  • Effects (list): Potion effects that the AreaEffectCloud applies.
  • Potion (string): States the default potion ID of the AreaEffectCloud, same values as when used with potion items.
  • Color (integer): Integer representing the color of potion effect particles. Uses Red<<16 + Green<<8 + Blue, so the number from leather armor color code calculators will work.
  • Age (integer): Number of ticks the entity has been alive. Defaults to 0.
  • WaitTime (integer): Until the potion AreaEffectCloud's Age hits this number, it is small and does not apply potion effects. Likely used, so the player can throw a lingering potion and get a small distance away before the effects start. Defaults to 10.
  • OwnerUUIDLeast (long): UUIDLeast of the thrower.
  • OwnerUUIDMost (long): UUIDMost of the thrower.
    • e.g. a deadly smoke that grows with each sacrifice: /summon AreaEffectCloud ~ ~ ~ {Particle:"largesmoke",ReapplicationDelay:20,Radius:2f,‌RadiusPerTick:-0.002f,RadiusOnUse:0.5f,‌Duration:600000,DurationOnUse:0.0f,‌Effects:[{Id:7b,Duration:2400,Amplifier:10b}]}
• Entity: Zombie
  • VillagerProfession (integer): tag for zombie villagers is used to determine what profession the zombie is represented as, as well as what profession it will become when cured.
  • The appearance of the zombie will match the assigned profession.
  • This tag is preserved during the villager's transformation to a zombie and vice versa.
    • e.g. /summon Zombie ~ ~1 ~ {IsVillager:1b,VillagerProfession:3}
• Tile: Command Blocks
  • auto (byte): When set to 1, the command block will no longer require a redstone signal in order to activate.
    • When applied to an impulse mode block, its command activates only once, right after finishing writing the command.
    • When applied to a repeat mode block, it will constantly activate every tick.
    • When applied to a chain mode block, it will always be available to activate its signal when called.
    • e.g. /blockdata X Y Z {auto:1b}
  • ConditionMet (byte): States whether or not the command block behind the conditional command block was successful in output. Will be 1 if that block is successful and 0 if unsuccessful.
    • Non-conditional command blocks will always be 1.
    • e.g. /testforblock X Y Z minecraft:command_block -1 {conditionMet:1b}
• Tile: Command blocks & note blocks
  • powered (byte): now have the "powered" tag associated with them, stating whether or not the block is currently receiving a redstone signal.
    • They can be edited through block data so the block are activating even though no redstone is adjacent.
      • Changing a command block through the "always active" toggle, effectively makes that command block to always have a 1 powered state, even when the block is updated.
    • e.g. /blockdata X Y Z {powered:1b}
• Tile: Brewing stands
  • Fuel (byte): Stores how much fuel is remaining in a brewing stand
    • e.g. /setblock ~ ~1 ~ minecraft:brewing_stand 0 replace {Fuel:127b}
• Tile: End gateway portal (minecraft:end_gateway)
  • ExitPortal (compound): Holds a set of X/Y/Z coordinates to determine the general location the player will be "safely" teleported to when entering.
  • ExactTeleport (byte): When set to 1, it will teleport entities to the specified coordinates exactly instead of at a safer location around those coordinates.
  • Age (long): Determines how long the end gateway has existed.
    • When lower than 200, the block will emit a purple beam.
      • This is to easily locate the gateway when it first spawns.
    • e.g. /setblock ~ ~1 ~ minecraft:end_gateway 0 replace {Age:180,ExactTeleport:1,ExitPortal:{X:1,Y:2,Z:3}}

Scoreboard

• Added /scoreboard players tag ...
  • The player can add and remove tags for any entity based on NBT tags of that entity/player.
    • e.g. /scoreboard players tag @a test {OnGround:0b} will add the tag "test" to all players that are in the air.
  • Tags can be accessed by using the parameters after the selector.
    • e.g. /give @a[tag=test] stone 1 will give 1 stone to all players that have the tag "test".
  • The player can use /scoreboard players tag <player> list to see what tags are on an entity.
  • Tags are stored in the playerdata file as strings, not in the scoreboard files.
    • This means that any tag the player binds has to be bound to an existing online player or an existing entity.
    • Unlike objectives, tags cannot be displayed anywhere on the HUD or inventory.
      • Only via the list sub-command can the player see which tags an entity has on the chat.
      • Through CommandStats it is possible to obtain the number of scoreboard tags an entity has via QueryResult.
• Added five new objective types: XP, hunger, oxygen, armor and level.
  • "xp" can be used to track the players exact amount of XP points.
  • "food" can be used to track the hunger level of the player (ranges from 0 to 20).
  • "air" can be used to see how long the player has been underwater.
    • Starts at 300 (out of water) and then decreases 1 per tick as long as the player´s head is underwater (resets when the player gets out of the water).
    • The water breathing status effect freezes the timer and the Respiration enchantment slows down the countdown from 300, each time more with each level.
  • "armor" can be used to track the armor bar, which in turn tracks the total amount of protection of all currently worn armor pieces.
  • "level" can be used to track the player's level directly, which is the number displayed above the experience bar.
    • It is not directly correlated to the experience points, since increasing levels each time takes more xp than before.
    • This could be tracked before, but it required some intermediate steps.
• Added collisionRule to the team options.
  • It controls whether or not players can push other players and whether or not is team dependent.
  • The modes are: always, never, pushOtherTeam, pushOwnTeam

Selector

• The gamemode selector m now supports both negation and literal gamemode values.
  • e.g. @p[m=!1], @p[m=creative], @p[m=c] and @p[m=!spectator]

General

Attributes

• generic.armor
  • Measures the amount of protection of armor.
  • Capped at 0 and 30.
• generic.attackSpeed
  • Measures fully-charged attacks per second.
  • The attack speed value is shown as a tooltip on the respective tool.
  • Base is 4.0, meaning the bar refills in 0.25s.
    • Swords have a modifier of -2.4, resulting in a default modifier of 1.6 (refilling in about 0.63s).
    • Pickaxes have a modifier of -2.8, resulting in a default modifier of 1.2 (refilling in about 0.83s).
    • Shovels have a modifier of -3, resulting in a default modifier of 1 (refilling in about 1s).
    • Axes have a modifier based on the tier.
      • Wooden and stone axes have a modifier of -3.2, resulting in a default modifier of 0.8 (refilling in about 1.25s).
      • Iron axes have a modifier of -3.1, resulting in a default modifier of 0.9 (refilling in about 1.11s).
      • Diamond and gold axes have a modifier of -3, resulting in a default modifier of 1 (refilling in about 1s).
    • Hoes have a modifier based on the tier.
      • Wooden and gold hoes have a modifier of -3, resulting in a default modifier of 1 (refilling in about 1s).
      • Stone hoes have a modifier of -2, resulting in a default modifier of 2 (refilling in about 0.5s).
      • Iron hoes have a modifier of -1, resulting in a default modifier of 3 (refilling in about 0.33s).
      • Diamond hoes have a modifier of 0, resulting in a default modifier of 4 (refilling in about 0.25s).
    • The Haste effect increases the attack speed by 10% per level, while Mining Fatigue decreases it by 10% per level.
• generic.luck, ranging from -1024 to 1024.
  • Used when processing loot tables along with the quality or bonus_rolls tag. Currently can be used for opening chests and chest minecarts, fishing, and player-killed mob drops, but by default it affects only fishing unless the loot tables are changed.
• The modifier of attributes can be changed using NBT tags.

Dominant hand option

• An option for players to change their dominant hand on their player model.
  • A toggle under "Skin Customization".
  • Also changes the orientation of the offhand slot in the hotbar (left for right-hand players and vice versa).
    • As well as the attack charge indicator, when set to the hotbar (on the opposite side of the offhand slot).

Language support

• Support for Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and probably other IME entered languages.
• The term "Air" is now translatable into other languages, used in the Superflat customization menu.

Loot tables

• All loot, from mobs, chests etc., is now based on loot tables, excluding block drops.
  • Can be changed by mapmakers by adding a json file within the "WORLD/data/loot_tables" folder.
  • For more specific information on the customization abilities of loot tables, see the article.

Options

• New volume slider labeled "Voice/Speech" under "Music & Sounds"
  • Intended for map makers; to be used for voice acting in custom maps ^[4]

Particles

• sweepAttack
  • Used for the defensive "swipe" sword attack.
• dragonBreath
  • Used for the new attack of the ender dragon of the same name.
• endRod
  • Produced by end rod blocks.
• damageIndicator
  • Produced by mobs when hurt.

Sound events

• A new sound event was added, however unused in the actual game.
  • entity.player.breath

Splash text

• "More Digital!"
• "doot doot"
• "Falling with style!"
• "There's no stopping the Trollmaso"
• "Throw yourself at the ground and miss"

Statistics

• sleepInBed: Tracks the number of times the player has slept in a bed.
• sneakTime: Tracks the amount of ticks the player has held the sneak key, regardless if the player was moving.
• pickup: Tracks the amount of items that are picked up into the inventory from the ground.
• drop: Tracks the amount of items that are dropped from the inventory to the ground.
• aviateOneCm: Tracks the distance a player has glided using elytra.

Keyboard shortcuts

• F3+N to toggle between creative and spectator mode, if the player is in either of them.
  • The player needs to have the ability to use /gamemode.

Subtitles

• Subtitles which display for each sound for the players with hearing impairment.
  • Mobs have individualized subtitles, for example "Creeper hissing".
  • "<" or ">" points in the direction in which the sound is coming from.

World selection

• Worlds now store (in the form of a data version) and display the version they were last played in, or will display "unknown" if the version was older than snapshot 15w32a.
  • The version number will display in red if it has been played in a newer version before.
• Now displays a thumbnail per world, showing a glimpse of the world (it takes a screenshot when the player has just created or opened it for the first time in the 15w32b snapshot or higher).
  • When the world hasn't been opened in snapshot 15w32b or before, or if the game couldn't make a screenshot thumbnail, there will be a gray-scale image.
  • The thumbnail will be saved in the world folder under .minecraft/saves with the name "icon.png".
    • This allows the player to modify it easily and safely.
  • An exclamation mark will appear on top of the thumbnail, indicating that the world has not been played in the current snapshot yet.
    • It displays the following message when hovered over: "Don't forget to backup this world before you load it in this snapshot."
    • It will also warn if a world was played in a newer version of Minecraft, telling the player that the world may corrupt if they open it in an older version.
• The player can now click the play arrow on the thumbnail to open the world, just like the server list.
• When edit world is clicked, the player has two new options:
  • Reset icon: This allows the player to reset the thumbnail without going into the folder.
  • Open folder: It will open the folder for the world, under .minecraft.

Changes

Blocks

Anvils

• Renaming an item does not increase the repair cost for a future repair/rename anymore.

Banners and signs

• Now replace replaceable blocks, instead of trying (and failing) to be placed on them.

Beacons

• Will now drop the items placed in them and will keep the item in the beacon after reloading the world.
• Will drop any contained item when exiting the GUI.
• Effect duration depends on pyramid levels, 9 seconds plus 2 seconds per level (formerly a constant 9 seconds).
• Now immediately activates when placed on valid pyramids.

Beds

• Added sound when placed.
• The player's body, hand and held item now shows while sleeping.

Bedrock

• Can no longer drop itself as an item.

Brewing stands

• Now require blaze powder to use
  • One piece of blaze powder allows for 20 ingredients to be brewed in the brewing stand (tag: Fuel:20b).
    • It removes 1 from fuel (1 blaze powder = 20 fuel) every time the player puts an ingredient in (if they take it out and put it back in, it takes another fuel).
  • Can be automated by putting a hopper feeding in the side of the block like water bottles.
• Added sound when the brewing finishes.

Buttons

• Changed sound when the wooden variant activates.
• The stone variant now breaks faster with pickaxes.
• The wooden variant now breaks faster with axes.

Cacti

• Will break if lava is adjacent.
• Cactus on sand will break if water or lava is in the block above.

Cauldrons

• Buckets can now be filled from a full cauldron.

Chests

• Changed sounds when opened and closed.

Cobwebs

• Will now drop itself when cut with shears, enchanted or not.

Command blocks

• New "repeat" and "chain" variants of command blocks.
  • Have a blue and green texture respectively.
  • The old orange variant is now called "impulse" (see the below section on changes to command blocks, for more info).
• New textures that now vary depending on what direction they are placed from, similar to dispensers and pistons.
  • It consists of a front, a back and a side texture (looks like arrows), so the orientation can be easily determined.
  • The texture is animated - the colored "buttons" in the middle change color.
  • The middle panel texture has a black outline.
  • Impulse mode (orange): Command is run once on rising edge.
    • Same behavior and color as previous versions.
  • Repeat mode (blue): Command is run every game tick while powered.
    • Like a minecart with command block but faster.
  • Chain mode (green): Command is run whenever another command block pointing into it executes, and the chain command block itself is powered.
    • The chain signal is forwarded until the blocks get out of loaded chunks.
    • The signal is independent of the powered state of any block in the chain, as well as the command (or lack thereof) inside.
  • Each new mode has its own block id and is obtainable with /give and pick block.
• Power received is now a data tag, allowing command blocks to have such a state under control, independent of any nearby redstone signal.
• "Unconditional" and "Conditional" toggle.
  • Defaults to unconditional (previous behavior).
  • The back of the arrow texture is curved when the command block is set to conditional.
  • When conditional is set, the command block runs only if the command in the block of the "back" side was successful.
• "Needs Redstone" and "Always Active" toggle.
  • Needs redstone is the previous behavior (default).
  • Always active causes the command block to behave as if it was powered, even if it is updated.
• Supports tab auto-completion.
• Command block contraptions from earlier versions will still work.
• The "Done" button is now always available to press, even when the command line is empty.

Crops

• Slightly improved drop chances for seeds (average 1 ⁵⁄₇ per crop harvested instead of 1 ³⁄₅).
• Slightly improved drop chances for potatoes and carrots (average 2 ⁵⁄₇ per crop harvested instead of 2 ³⁄₅).
• Hitbox now changes as the plant grows.

Daylight sensors

• No longer emit a signal at night when sufficiently shaded.

Dead bushes

• Now drop 0–2 sticks when broken without shears.

Dispensers

• Now equip pumpkins on the heads of players, mobs and armor stands.

Doors

• Changed the shading on acacia, birch, dark oak and jungle doors.
• Are now placed facing left/right depending on which half of the block the player clicks on, unless neighboring doors cause them to place a certain way.
• Added sounds when placed.
  • Has a different sound between Wooden and Iron.
• Changed sounds when opened and closed.
  • Has a different sound between Wooden and Iron.

End portal block

• Hitbox height changed to 0.75 (was 0.0625).

Farmland

• Now has an inventory icon.
• Mobs smaller than 0.512 cubic blocks can no longer turn farmland to dirt by jumping or falling on it.
  • This includes rabbits, chickens, bats, ocelots, wolves, cave spiders, endermites, silverfish, all current baby mobs, small slimes, and small magma cubes.
• Changed sound when tilled with a hoe.

Fence gates

• Changed sounds when opened and closed.

Fire

• The block states flip and alt were removed, and the integer state upper was re-implemented as the byte state up.
  • This reduced the number of states representing fire from 3072 to 512.
• Fire goes out less often under the rain.
  • The chance of going out each fire tick is reduced from 100% to 20–65%, depending on the age property.

Furnaces

• Added sound when smelting items.

Glass panes

• Glass panes without any connecting blocks are now 2x2 pixels in footprint.
  • This is compared to the big cross configuration that was default.

Grass blocks

• New side texture on top of grass blocks

Hay bales

• Falling onto a hay bale inflicts 20% of normal fall damage.
  • The furthest the player can fall, and live, without armor, is 100.27 blocks.
  • The furthest the player can fall with feather falling is 169.19 blocks.

Ice

• Water produced by melting ice now flows.

Iron bars

• Iron bars without any connecting blocks are now 2x2 pixels in footprint.
• Their sides now include an edge texture.

Lily pads

• Can be placed on ice and frosted ice.
• Collision box was raised from ¹⁄₄ of a pixel to 1 pixel in height.
• Added sound when placed.

Nether wart

• Hitbox now changes as the plant grows.

Note block

• Their powered state is now controlled through the powered tag (like command blocks), so it can now be activated independent of any nearby redstone signal.

Pistons

• Unextended pistons, downward-facing pistons, and upward-facing piston extensions are now considered to have a solid top surface, like upside-down stairs and top slabs.
  • Among other things, this means mobs can now spawn on them.

Cross shaped plants

• UV flips on the back side

Pressure plates

• Now have a slightly thinner item model.
• Changed sounds for the iron, gold and wooden variants when activated.

Redstone

• Hitbox for redstone is now smaller based on the connections, similarly to fences.

Redstone blocks

• Will now update adjacent blocks' power state correctly.

Redstone comparators

• Side inputs now take power from redstone blocks.

Stairs

• Are now rotated 90° in the inventory.

Sugar canes

• No longer breaks if water adjacent to it is turned into frosted ice.

TNT

• The texture is no longer randomly rotated.
• Explosion damage decreased to (impact×impact+impact)×7×power+1.

Trapdoors

• No longer require supporting blocks.
  • Therefore, they can be moved by pistons freely.
• An open trapdoor may be climbed like a ladder if it is directly above a ladder and on the same side of the block.
• Changed sounds when opened and closed.
  • Has a different sound per material.

Trapped chests

• Now appears in the Redstone tab of the Creative inventory instead of Decoration Blocks.
• Changed sounds when opened and closed.
• Crafting recipe is now shapeless.

Tripwire and tripwire hooks

• Removed the distinction between "suspended" and "non-suspended": formerly, tripwire would work only if the whole stretch and both hooks were all above solid blocks or all not above solid blocks.

Water

• No longer shows the flowing animation when directly adjacent to glass.

Items

Armor

• Now show armor points in tooltips.
  • Can be edited using generic.armor attribute.
• Armor protects less overall:
  • Armor points count for less as the attack strength increases: each 2 done by the attack reduces the effective defense points by 1 (), but not below 20% of the armor points.
• Added sound when equipped.
  • Has a different sound per material.

Axes

• New offensive axe attack:
  • Hitting another player who is blocking with a shield has a chance to disable the player's shield for 5 seconds.
    • 25% base chance, plus 5 percentage points for each level of Efficiency on the axe, plus 75 percentage points if sprinting.

Boats

• Added Spruce, Birch, Jungle, Acacia, Dark Oak variants.
  • The previous "Boat" is now called "Oak Boat".
    • Has a new texture, with a paddle on it.
  • Crafted from 5 same variant wood planks, with the shape just as it was before.

Bottles

• Added sound when filling water in it.

Bows

• Now show an animation for drawing back an arrow in the hotbar/inventory.
• Arrows in the off hand are prioritized over arrows in the rest of the inventory slots.

Buckets

• Filled buckets now replace single snow layers when used on the top, instead of placing the water or lava in the air above the snow layer.
• Added sounds when filling and emptying water and lava.

Enchanted golden apples

• Now have Regeneration II for 20 seconds (heal 16 × 8 in total) and Absorption IV for 2 minutes (providing 16 × 8 points of absorption health).
• Can no longer be crafted.

Ender pearls

• Can now be thrown in creative mode.
• Have a cool down time every time they are used.
  • This is visible in the item icon, through a "rolling curtain" animation (similar to chorus fruit or a stunned shield).

Fishing rods

• Casting fishing rods now has an animation in the hotbar/inventory.
• Can now hook on entities without causing knockback or pseudo-damage.

Hoes

• Now take damage while attacking with them.

Maps

• Now display as a mini map when held in the off hand, or if the offhand slot is occupied.
  • The (old) large version is visible only when held in the dominant hand with both hands free.
• Added sound when made.

Potions

• Mixed potions' colors now blend.
• An NBT Potion tag is used instead of numeric metadata to differentiate the types of potions.
  • e.g. /give <target> minecraft:potion 1 0 {Potion:"minecraft:swiftness"}.
• Added Mundane, Thick and Awkward potions to the creative inventory.
• Glowstone dust or redstone can no longer be added to extended or tier-II potions respectively.
• Most recipes for the potion of weakness were removed (see: brewing for all the removed recipes).
• Extended potion of poison, extended potion of regeneration and potion of poison II had their durations reduced.
• Potion of strength changed from 130% bonus damage to 3, i.e. an absolute bonus rather than a relative one.
• Potion of weakness changed from 0.5 ( × ¹⁄₄) reduction to damage to 4.
• Now travel much faster (like other projectiles) when being shot from dispensers.
• Now have a separate data value and ID name from regular potions.

Shears

• Are no longer be able to be enchanted with Silk Touch.^[5]
• Now lose durability when used to break any block (formerly lost durability on leaves, web, grass, vines, tripwire, and wool).
• Now cutting a cobweb block will always drop a cobweb rather than string.

Swords

• Can no longer be used for blocking.
  • Function replaced by shields.
• New defensive sword "sweep" attack when swinging the sword while crouching or standing.
  • Mobs near the one hit (bounding box expanded by 1 block horizontally and 0.25 vertically) and within 3 blocks of the attacker are knocked back and receive 1 damage.
  • The knockback inflicted is 80% of that done by the knockback I enchantment.
    • Using the knockback enchantment affects only the mobs/players that were hit.
  • Creates a sweep attack particle.
  • Plays sound when sweeped.

Mobs

All mobs

• Have a 5% chance to spawn left-handed.
  • Mobs able to hold items will hold them according to their dominant hand.
  • Mobs have both main hand and offhand slots, both of which can be edited independently.
• Give off brown heart particles when hurt.
  • The amount of particles depends on the damage dealt.
• Mobs no longer reset their AI when hit.
• Mobs now avoid cacti and fire (except blazes which do not avoid fire).
• Entities bunched up in a 1x1 hole together no longer push away entities touching adjacent corners
• Improved path finding
• Most mobs (zombies, zombie pigmen, slimes, magma cubes, wither skeletons, spiders, cave spiders, silverfish and endermites) now fight back when hit by other mobs.
• Knockback no longer changes the Y-axis speed of flying and falling mobs.

Passive mobs

• When following a player holding food, will now path around water if possible.
• When panicking and on fire, will try to get to a water block within ±5 blocks horizontally and ±4 blocks vertically.

Cows and mooshrooms

• Are slightly taller (1.4 blocks tall rather than 1.3).

Creepers, skeletons, and zombies

• Must be closer to notice players wearing the corresponding mob head.
  • Specifically, their detection range is reduced to be half of the normal range.
    • This reduction stacks with the reductions from sneaking and invisibility.

Tamed ocelots & wolves

• Deaths (and killers) are now announced to their owners in chat, even if unnamed.

Bats

• No longer fly away from creative gamemode players.

Chickens

• Can be led and bred with melon, pumpkin, and beetroot seeds, in addition to regular seeds.

Cows

• Added sound when milked.

Creepers

• Are slightly shorter (1.7 blocks tall rather than 1.8).
• No longer drop music discs if the game rule doMobLoot is false.
• Explosion damage decreased to (impact×impact+impact)×7×power+1.

Elder guardians

• Drop chances for raw fish and prismarine crystals changed again. Now it's a 50% chance of fish and a 33% chance of crystals with the amount increased by Looting. Formerly it was a 33% chance of raw fish with a 33% chance of crystals only if the raw fish drop failed, with Looting increasing the chances but not the amount.

Ender dragons

• Can be respawned by placing one End Crystal on each side of the exit portal at any one of the three blocks of that side.
  • While respawning, beams shoot out of these crystals, that will reset all the pillars and when done they blow up and spawn the dragon.
  • Subsequent dragons will spawn new gateways up to a total of 20, but do not create new dragon eggs and drop 500 experience.
  • When the dragon is respawned, the circle of pillars and the crystals reappear.
    • Explosion particles appear on the tops of the pillars as they are being rebuilt.
• The fight has been changed to be more similar to the one on the console edition.
• No longer take damage from snowballs, eggs or fishing rods.
• Its attacks have been changed:
  • The "charge" attack has been given a great amount of knockback.
  • Breathes fire/purple particles (called "dragon breath") while on top of the portal.
    • During the attack, it knockbacks and damages all players on all angles in the vicinity (as if hitting with other body parts).
      • Immediately charges the player right after.
    • Right clicking the dragon's breath cloud with an empty bottle will turn in into dragon breath.
      • It is used to transform splash potions into lingering potions
  • Shoots special projectiles at the player called "ender acid".
    • These produce a dragon breath cloud on impact and light the ground on fire.
  • While on top of the portal arrows will bounce back and be set on fire.
• NBT tags can determine the dragon's phase.
• Its AI was changed:
  • It sometimes returns to the center of the island to "perch" on top of the portal and shoot dragon breath.
    • It charges right after.
  • Defends the obsidian pillars more, the further the fight progresses.
  • Flies back to the portal once it gets killed, to complete its animation.
• No longer teleports through Nether portals or End portals.
• Can no longer ride anything.
• Can no longer have status effects.
• Summoning it with /summon will now stay in the same position no matter what.
  • Unlike summoning a dragon with {NoAI:1b}, it will still flap its wings.
  • These dragons do not show their boss health bar, nor do they take damage from any attack other than /kill.

Endermen

• Remain aggravated toward the player despite being in contact with water.
• Drop the block they were holding when killed.
• Can no longer pick blocks from behind walls.
• Avoids water
• Have a punch animation identical to the Pocket Edition.

Guardians

• Drop chances for raw fish and prismarine crystals changed. Now it's a 40% chance of fish and a 40% chance of crystals, with the amount increased by Looting. Formerly it was a 33% chance of raw fish with a 33% chance of crystals only if the raw fish drop failed, with Looting increasing the chances but not the amount.
• Added sound when attacked with the thorns.

Horses

• Added "skeleton trap" horses. When a player approaches to within 10 blocks, the following will happen:
  • The SkeletonTrap flag is cleared.
  • Lightning strikes the horse.
  • The horse will become skeletal if it isn't already.
  • The horse becomes tame.
  • The horse becomes fully grown (if a baby) and the breeding cooldown is reset.
  • A skeleton is spawned riding the horse.
    • The skeleton has damage immunity for 3 seconds.
    • The skeleton will not despawn (PersistenceRequired is set).
    • The skeleton will be wearing an iron helmet, unless it randomly spawned with some other headgear.
    • The skeleton's bow and helmet will be enchanted as if on an enchantment table at level 5–22.
      • The level is higher depending on regional difficulty; on Easy it will always be a level-5 enchantment.
  • Three additional skeletal horses with riders will be spawned in the vicinity.
• Now rotates with the player.
• Added sound when fed.
• Added sound when donkeys are chested.
• Are less wide (now 1.3964844 blocks instead of 1.4).

Iron golems

• Are slightly shorter (2.7 blocks tall rather than 2.9).
• All newly spawned iron golems have 100% knockback resistance.

The killer bunny

• Added sound for when it attacks.

Magma cubes

• Changed sound when jumping

Ocelots

• No longer run away from creative gamemode players.

Pigs

• Can be led and bred with potatoes and beetroots, in addition to carrots.

Rabbits

• Smaller than before.
• Chance to drop the rare drop, rabbit's foot, is 4× what it was before.
• Now spawn in deserts, flower forests, taiga, mega taiga, cold taiga, ice plains, ice mountains, ice plains spikes, and "hills" and "M" variants of these biomes. Even in these biomes, spawn chance is somewhat reduced (weight 4 out of 44–52 rather than 10 out of 50–58).
  • Can now spawn on sand.
• Rabbits are faster when panicking.
• Rabbits no longer prefer begging for food to mating.
• Non-killer rabbits now avoid players within 8 blocks and most hostile mobs within 4 blocks (except slimes, magma cubes, and ghasts), and move faster when doing so. Also, avoidance range for wolves was reduced from 16 to 10 blocks.
  • No longer run away from creative gamemode players.
• Health reduced to 3.
• Naturally-spawned rabbit's skin depends on the biome. When breeding rabbits, there is a 5% chance the baby will match the biome rather than either parent.
  • In a snowy biome, 80% white and 20% black & white.
  • In a desert or desert hills, 100% gold.
  • Otherwise, 50% brown, 40% salt & pepper, 10% black.
• MoreCarrotTicks no longer has any effect.
  • When destroying crops, MoreCarrotTicks is set to 40 rather than 100.
• Destroying carrot crops now reduces the growth stage by 1 level, removing the crop block entirely if the growth stage was 0.

Silverfish

• No longer enter into blocks if the game rule mobGriefing is false.

Skeletons

• Added more sounds when idling.
• Have an animation for lifting up and drawing back their bow when becoming hostile.
• Skeletons can now walk, strafe and shoot at the same time.
  • They walk away from players that are too close and toward players that are too far.
    • They will also sprint toward the player when very far away.
• Now can spawn riding "skeletal horses" through the new "skeleton trap" horse.
• Are slightly taller (1.99 blocks tall rather than 1.95).
• No longer find shade to hide under if equipped with a helmet.

Slimes

• Added sound when attacking.

Snow golems

• No longer leave a trail of snow if the game rule mobGriefing is false.
• Added sounds when they die, and get damaged.
• Pocket Edition derpy version dubbed "derp mode".
  • Using shears on a snow golem will remove the pumpkin head.
  • Takes 1 durability of the shear.
  • The pumpkin is not dropped.

Squid

• Are slightly smaller (0.8 blocks square rather than 0.95).
• Added sounds when they idle, die, and get damaged.

Villagers

• Farmer villagers now harvest beetroot.
• Are slightly taller (1.95 blocks tall rather than 1.8).

Witches

• Added sounds when they idle, die, drink potions, get damaged and throw potions.

Withers

• No longer teleports through Nether portals or End portals.

Wither skeletons

• Are slightly smaller (2.4 blocks tall and 0.7 blocks wide rather than 2.535 blocks tall and 0.72 blocks wide).

Wolves

• Are slightly taller (0.85 blocks tall rather than 0.8).
• Collar when tamed is now red, as it had been in releases before 1.8, rather than orange.

Zombies

• Now lift their arms slightly when becoming hostile.
• Zombie villagers now have different textures based on the profession and career of the original villager.
  • The profession is restored once cured but not its trades.

Zombie pigmen

• Now lift their arms slightly when becoming hostile, like regular zombies.
• Now attack in groups when fighting other mobs.

Non-mob entities

Armor stands

• Can now be summoned to dual wield with commands.
• Wobbles slightly when being hit.
• Added sounds when placed, fallen, hit and broken.

Arrows

• Now bounce off of creative mode players, whereas before they would pass straight through.
• Now take the thrower's motion into account. For example, if the player is falling, an arrow fired upward will travel slower than if the player was standing still, and an arrow fired downward will fly faster.
• Arrows that bounce off a target (e.g. a shield or a sitting dragon) and may be retrieved will become dropped items if near zero momentum after being bounced.

Minecarts with command blocks

• Now have the new impulse command block variant texture.
• The "Done" button is now always available to press, even if the command line is empty.

Boats

• Boats for all types of wood types were added: oak, spruce, birch, jungle, acacia, dark oak.
  • Craftable using the same recipe as before, but all the wood must match.
  • It drops wood planks of its corresponding wood type when killed by fall damage.
• Changed how player movement is sent and processed by the server, reducing client-server desync.
• Faster, and no longer will crash and break on the shore, when in the water.
• Paddles are now attached onto the boat, which the player rows.
• Using the left and right keys will now turn the boat.
  • Using the mouse will no longer turn the boat.
  • Using the mouse, the player can look fully 90 degrees to the left or to the right, but not behind.
  • Holding the sprint keys no longer have any effect.
• The player cannot use or attack with items in hand while the boat is in motion.
  • The player's hand (and items) will disappear after the boat starts moving, and reappear after it stops.
• The player will now be dismounted onto land if possible.
• Mobs (except the ender dragon) and armor stands can go into boats, with a maximum of two (including the player).
• Now sink when there's water above it, or if it's sitting in a current, instead of floating upward.
• Riding a boat no longer subjects water-sensitive mobs to being damaged by water, and no longer protects sunlight-sensitive mobs from being damaged by sunlight.
• Water is no longer visually seen inside a boat.
• Added sounds for boats being placed.
• They now travel extremely fast on ice and packed ice.

Item frames

• Added sounds when placed, broken, added item, removed item, and rotated item.

Leads

• Added sounds when leashed and taken from a fence.

Lightning

• Natural lightning strikes may spawn a "skeleton trap" style skeletal horses.
  • Chance is calculated from the regional difficulty score: 5% * raw regional difficulty score
    • 3.75–7.5% chance on Easy, 7.5–20% chance on Normal, 11.25–33.75% chance on hard.
• No longer destroys item frames, leash knots, paintings, and armor stands.

Paintings

• Added sounds when placed and broken.

Projectiles

• Slightly altered the path of projectiles.^[6]
• Now take the thrower's motion into account. For example, if the player is falling, a projectile fired upward will travel slower than if the player was standing still, and a projectile fired downward will fly faster.

Small Fireballs

• No longer damages (or angers) fire-immune entities.

World generation

Bonus chests

• Now pull loot from multiple pools, and their items were heavily rebalanced.
  • Added raw salmon.
  • Now always contain one wooden or stone axe, one wooden or stone pickaxe, some food, and some log.
    • Wood can now contain any type of it, rather than just acacia and oak.
  • Now contains more sticks and wood planks.
    • Wood planks can now contain any type of it, rather than just oak.

Desert temples

• Desert temple chests now pull loot from multiple pools, and their items were heavily rebalanced.
  • Added spider eyes, gunpowder, string, sand and golden apples.

Dungeons

• Dungeon chests now pull loot from multiple pools, and their items were heavily rebalanced.
  • Added bones, rotten flesh, gold ingots, coal, enchanted golden apples, melons, pumpkin and beetroot seeds.

The End

• A set amount of differently-sized obsidian pillars are arranged in a circular fashion.
  • The second and third shortest pillars have iron bars around their ender crystal to deflect projectiles.
• The exit portal is pre-generated at the center of the main island, but without the dragon egg and portal blocks.

End portals

• In the 0.0000000001% chance that all 12 frame blocks generate with eyes already present, the portal will now be active.

Jungle bush trees

• Leaves will no longer replace blocks other than air or leaves when generating the tree.

Mineshafts

• Mineshaft chests now pull loot from multiple pools, and their items were heavily rebalanced.
  • Added name tags, golden apples, torches and powered rails, detector rails and activator rails.
  • Removed saddles and iron horse armor.

Nether Fortresses

• Reduced nether fortress chest loot from 2–5 stacks to 2–4.

Ocean monuments

• Now require a 16 block square radius of deep ocean, not just a single deep ocean block at the center.

Strongholds

• Increased number of strongholds to 128 per world, rather than 3.
  • Strongholds will be generated in a ring form.
    • The 1st ring has 3 strongholds within 1408–2688 of the origin
    • The 2nd ring has 6 strongholds within 4480–5760 of the origin
    • The 3rd ring has 10 strongholds within 7552–8832 of the origin
    • The 4th ring has 15 strongholds within 10624–11904 of the origin
    • The 5th ring has 21 strongholds within 13696–14976 of the origin
    • The 6th ring has 28 strongholds within 16768–18048 of the origin
    • The 7th ring has 36 strongholds within 19840–21120 of the origin
    • The 8th ring has 9 strongholds within 22912–24192 of the origin
• Increased stronghold library chests loot from 1–4 stacks to 2–10.
• Changed enchanted books rate in stronghold library chests, from groups of 1–5 with weight 2, to single books with weight 10.

Trees

• Large oak trees now generate naturally in forest biomes again.

Villages

• Farms now include beetroot crops.

Witch huts

• Now always generates with a witch.

Gameplay

Achievements

• Overpowered
  • Description changed from "Build" to "Eat" an enchanted golden apple.

Combat

• Added sound when critical hitting a player or mob.

Difficulty

• Now controls the chance of a "skeleton trap" spawning on natural lightning strikes.
  • Chance is calculated from the regional difficulty score: 5% * raw regional difficulty score
    • 3.75–7.5% chance on Easy, 7.5–20% chance on Normal, 11.25–33.75% chance on hard.

Entities

• Most entities (except for items, ender crystals, paintings and xp orbs) can now be pushed by other entities.
  • The same class of entities are now "magnetic" to the bobber of the fishing rod and do not suffer knockback or take pseudo-damage from it.
  • Entities bunched up in a 1x1 hole together no longer push away entities touching adjacent corners.

Enchanting

• Sharpness and Protection enchantments have been nerfed.
  • Each sharpness level now adds 1 damage to the base damage at level I and an additional 0.5 ( × 0.25) for each additional level, down from a flat 1.25 × 0.625 per level.
  • Protection enchantment bonuses are now linear instead of quadratic.
• Enchantments with max 1 level will no longer display the level, e.g. "Infinity" rather than "Infinity I".
• When multiple pieces of Thorns armor are worn, one will now be chosen at random instead of always using the "bottommost" piece.
• Silk Touch can no longer be applied to shears in survival mode.
• Added sound when damaging players or mobs with Thorns.
• Added sound when knockback hitting a player or mob.

Experience

• Now is collected at the middle rather than at the head
  • This means that if a large amount of experience is collected, it will no longer block the player's view.
• Blocks no longer drop XP when the doTileDrops gamerule is set to false.

Fishing

• The Lure enchantment no longer affects the chances of catching things, only the delay.
• Fished junk will be less damaged (0%–90% durability remaining) while treasure will be more damaged (0%–25% durability remaining).
• Ink sacs will now be caught singly with weight 10 (formerly a stack of 10 with weight 1).
• Luck of the Sea and the new Luck effect affect fishing again, and effects stack. Each point increases the weight of treasure by 2, decreases the weight of fish by 1, and decreases the weight of junk by 2.

Hardcore

• Upon death The Text"You Cannot Respawn In hardcore Mode"Text is now Hidden/Removed, the player can now choose to respawn in spectator mode rather than the world being deleted Instead.

Health

• Health regenerates faster when saturation is not empty and the player is not hungry: 1 per half-second versus 1 per 4 seconds.
• Health regeneration increases exhaustion faster: now 4 exhaustion points (1 food point) per 1 instead of 3 (³⁄₄ food points).
• Sneaking now increases exhaustion by half as much as walking.

Jumping

• Player's jump height is increased from 1.125 blocks to 1.25 blocks.

Mob spawning

• Mobs can no longer spawn inside transparent full solid blocks containing glass and leaves.
• Mobs can no longer spawn inside non-solid blocks containing rails, powered rails, detector rails, or activator rails, buttons, tripwire hooks, pressure plates, levers, redstone torches, redstone repeaters, redstone comparators, and redstone dust.
• Pack spawning is less likely to spawn the full pack, and less likely to spread them out.
  • Previously, spawning a pack would start from the center three times and cumulatively adjust the coordinates four times by up to ±5 in X and Z, trying to spawn a mob each time, for a total of twelve spawn attempts (although it stops early if a full pack has spawned). Now that "four times" is a random number 1–4, meaning fewer total spawn attempts and less chance for the attempt coordinates to get far from the pack center.

Tools

• Damage done by tools has been rebalanced:
  • Axes are much stronger but slower, swords and pickaxes are slightly weaker, but swords are faster than axes, shovels are slightly stronger, hoes are the fastest but also the weakest and now take durability damage when attacking.

Tool	Attack speed					Attack damage					Damage/Second (DPS)
Sword	1.6					4	5	6	7	4	6.4	8	9.6	11.2	6.4
Shovel	1					2.5 × 1.25	3.5 × 1.75	4.5 × 2.25	5.5 × 2.75	2.5 × 1.25	2.5	3.5	4.5	5.5	2.5
Pickaxe	1.2					2	3	4	5	2	2.4	3.6	4.8	6	2.4
Axe	0.8	0.8	0.9	1	1	7	9	9	9	7	5.6	7.2	8.1	9	7
Hoe	1	2	3	4	1	1					1	2	3[note 1]	4[note 1]	1
Other	4					1					4[note 1]

Status effects

• Status effect icons are now displayed on the HUD on the right hand corner instead of just in the inventory (similar to the pocket edition).
  • They are ordered by the time of infliction from right to left.
  • Positive effects are on the top row and negative effects on the bottom row.
  • Effects that are about to run out blink.
    • They blink faster when they are closer to running out and start fading away.
• Health Boost effect now shows multiple red hearts instead of the one similar to Regeneration.
• Absorption effect now shows a single red heart with a yellow outline around it.
• Nausea effect will now stop instantly when cleared using Milk or with commands.

Trading

• Clerics now sell ender pearls (for 4–7 emeralds) instead of Eyes of Ender.
• Librarians charge double for books with "treasure" enchantments.

Traveling

• Added sound when traveling between the nether and overworld.
• Made players invulnerable during dimension changes.

Weather

• Changed sound when raining.

Command format

Commands

• /enchant
  • Can now be used on all entities.
• /gamemode
  • Now displays in chat the gamemode the player switched to.
• Tab-completed coordinate arguments now become tildes if no block is in focus.
• /gamerule
  • doMobLoot now drops player's XP when set to false.
  • Setting a gamerule will now report the change: "Game rule <gamerule> has been updated to <value>."
• /help
  • Now randomly shows some texts which starts from "Searge says:", when run in a command block. Full list:
    • "Searge says: Ask for help on twitter"
    • "Searge says: Contack helpdesk for help"
    • "Searge says: Have you tried turning it off and on again?"
    • "Searge says: Oh my god, it's full of stats"
    • "Searge says: Scoreboard deleted, commands blocked"
    • "Searge says: Sorry, no help today"
    • "Searge says: Yolo"
    • "Searge says: /achievement take achievement.understandCommands @p"
    • "Searge says: /deop @p"
    • "Searge says: /kill @p[name=!Searge]"
    • "Searge says: /testfornoob @p"
    • "Searge says: /trigger warning"
• /particle
  • Now has a player parameter to control which players should view this particle instead of everyone in the viewing range of the particle.
  • Now has a params parameter to specify particle parameters (for iconcrack_, …).
    • params is can used to specify blocks and items for blockdust, iconcrack, and blockcrack.
    • For blockdust and blockcrack, params parameter means (id+(data*4096)).
      • For example, to specify pink wool for these particles, we need to add 24611 at the end of command as a params.
    • For iconcrack, params has two values(id data).
      • For example, /particle iconcrack ~ ~ ~ 1 1 1 0.5 100 force @a 35 6 shows iconcrack particles of pink wool.
• /playsound
  • Now auto-completes itself when pressing TAB.
  • Now has a <source> parameter to specify which sound source to be played as.

NBT Tags

• All entities
  • Introduced a 1024 tag limit on the amount of strings an entity can have within the Tags tag.
    • If it's surpassed, then it displays an error message saying: "Cannot add more than 1024 tags to an entity."
  • Riding (compound): The "Riding" tag has been removed in favor of the new "Passengers" tag.
• All items
  • id tag used to convert numerical IDs to name IDs has been removed.
  • /summon Creeper ~ ~1 ~ {Team:"RED"} will summon a creeper that is in the red team.
• CustomNameVisible:true will make the name tag on mobs show in the same way as on players.
• All mobs
  • HealF tag was replaced by the Health tag, replacing the short-valued tag of that name.
    • e.g. /summon Creeper ~ ~1 ~ {Health:1.0f}
  • Team (string): Applied to mobs to make them be part of teams.
  • DropChances and Equipment (list) tags are no longer used and are replaced with ArmorItems, HandItems, ArmorDropChances and HandDropChances.
• BlockEntityTag (compound): Now works on shields in addition to banners, to allow for customization.
  • /give @p minecraft:shield 1 0 {BlockEntityTag:{Base:15,Patterns:[{Color:0,Pattern:moj}]}}
  • If the player uses the /give command to give themselves a shield, but doesn't specify the BlockEntityTag the shield will start with the default texture, but may change colors on entity updates to it if it has other tags.
• EntityTag (compound) and id (string): Can now be applied to spawn eggs.
  • The resulting mob will spawn with all of the tags.
    • e.g. /give @p minecraft:spawn_egg 1 0 {EntityTag:{id:"Creeper",Fuse:0}}
• Entity: ThrownPotion
  • The potion will be a lingering potion if the stored item has an ID of minecraft:lingering_potion.
    • e.g. /summon ThrownPotion ~ ~1 ~ {Potion:{id:"minecraft:lingering_potion",tag:{Potion:"minecraft:swiftness"}}}
• Tile: Mob spawners
  • id (string): Placed directly within the old SpawnData compound.
    • It's essentially the same as EntityId except at a different depth.
    • /setblock ~ ~1 ~ minecraft:mob_spawner 0 replace {SpawnData:{id:"Creeper"}}
  • Entity (compound): The original Properties tag has been replaced by the Entity tag. As well, to define which entity is used, the id tag within "Entity" states the ID.
    • /setblock ~ ~1 ~ minecraft:mob_spawner 0 replace {SpawnPotentials:[{Weight:1,Entity:{id:"Skeleton"}}]}
  • Removed the Type and Properties tags, deprecated the EntityId tag
• Tile: Sign
  • In order for a sign to accept text, all 4 tags ("Text1", "Text2", "Text3", and "Text4") must exist.
    • e.g. /setblock ~ ~1 ~ minecraft:standing_sign 0 replace {Text1:"[\"1\"]",Text2:"[\"2\"]",Text3:"[\"3\"]",Text4:"[\"4\"]"}
• CommandStats can be used to obtain the number of "scoreboard tags" an entity has via QueryResult
  • e.g. /scoreboard will return the number of scoreboard tags applied to the target.
    • If the target previously had 3 tags added, a score of "3" is returned upon running this command.
• Fireball, DragonFireball, SmallFireball and WitherSkull entities
  • direction (list/double): Now requires exactly 3 internal Doubles to be listed in order for the entity to be summoned.
  • power (list): New list of 3 Doubles that determine which direction to shoot in. Unlike "direction" however, the motion does not consider air resistance, causing the fireball to endlessly move in that specified direction. direction is still required, but can be set to 0.
    • /summon Fireball ~ ~1 ~ {power:[0.0,-0.01,0.0],direction:[0.0,0.0,0.0]}
• Entity: ArmorStand
  • DisabledSlots (integer): Original values have changed in nature
    • 1 << slot = disables all interaction
    • 1 << (slot + 8) = disables removing
    • 1 << (slot + 16) = disables placing

Selector

• The radius selector r now detects based on the position of the entity.
  • This means that r=0 selects only entities at the exact same position.

General

Bosses

• Proper support for multiple bosses' health bars, so they can show at the same time without obstructing each other.

Credits

• Thomas Guimbretière is now credited, under "Game design, programming and graphics".
• Samuel Åberg is now credited, under "Music and sound".
• Erik Broes is now credited under "Game design, programming and graphics", rather than "Programming".
• Leonard Gram is now credited under his current name, changed from Leonard Axelsson.
• A "Realms Development Team" section is added, now including Daniel Frisk, Leonard Gram, David Marby and Philip Vieira.
• A "Realms Content Manager" section is added, now including Marc Watson.

Crosshair

• No longer shows the crosshair in 3rd person view.

Damage tooltips

• Now reads "When in main hand:" for all tools by default.
• Now shows absolute damage instead of damage increase.

Death messages

• Will now be displayed on the player's death screen in gray as well as in the chat.

Debug screen

• Now indicates whether the current version is a snapshot in the top left.
  • e.g. Minecraft 16w05b (16w05b/vanilla/snapshot)
• Now shows more information.
  • F3 + Q gives help and shows all F3 + key combinations.
  • F3 + F now increases render distance by 1 (Minimum and Maximum are 2-32).
  • F3 + ⇧ Shift + F now decreases render distance by 1 (Min and Max are 2-32).
  • Shows if the pie chart and FPS chart are shown on screen.
  • Shows text in chat when the player reloads chunks, sounds, etc.
  • Does not open the debug screen when the player uses a specific key combination like F3 + N, F3 + B, etc.
  • Removed F3 + S, which previously reloaded sounds.
  • F3 + T now reloads all resource pack content, including sounds
• The debug screen now shows when the player's finger is released from F3, rather than when pushed.

Inventory

• Rearranged the survival inventory and the creative "survival tab" to accommodate for the new offhand slot.
• Unified the orientation of many items in the inventory.

Menu Screen

• Now indicates whether the current version is a snapshot in the bottom left.
  • e.g. Minecraft 16w05b/snapshot

Models

• Different models/textures can be used for each different damage value, item states, and whether the item is held in a different hand.
  • This works on compasses, clocks, and anything that can have a durability bar.
  • It also contains additional tags for bows and fishing rods.
• Models can be put together based on block state attributes, such as fences.
  • As a result, the vanilla set of block models has been reduced by almost 300.
• Block model JSON is now strict, meaning that comments and quote-less identifiers are not allowed.
• display tag defaults have changed, and the thirdperson and firstperson tags were replaced with thirdperson_righthand, thirdperson_lefthand, firstperson_righthand, and firstperson_lefthand.
• parent and elements tags can coexist now, but the top level elements tag overwrites all former ones.

Options

• Removed the Super Secret Settings button and the Alternate Blocks toggle from video settings.
• Twitch integration (along with the Broadcast Settings section in video settings) is removed.

Performance

• Optimized memory usage when connected to servers.
• Optimized mob AI (specially pathfinding).
• Optimized block ticking.
• Improved chunk generation, loading and sending.
  • Improved rendering "by building a chunk only once where it was rebuilt up to 5 times in worst case".
• Particles are no longer entities, reducing memory usage.
  • Throwing an egg or a snowball at an entity, produces particles.
• Redstone and piston contraptions visibly update much faster.
• Better performance on older computers.
• Riding entities such as boats, horses, minecarts and saddled pigs, are now run by the client instead by the server.

Pick block

• In survival, it now works on items outside the hotbar but inside the player's inventory.
• In creative, it respects the tags of items in item frames while holding Ctrl.

Player

• When crouching, players are 1.65 blocks tall (versus 1.8 blocks normally).
• When flying with elytra, players are now 0.6 blocks tall.

Resource packs

• Updated resource pack pack_formatto 2 as the following has changed:
  • Changes in the model system, such as item tags, multipart, and changes to display tags.

Skins

• Overlay layers (hat, jacket, sleeves, and pants) correctly render semitransparent pixels, instead of only fully opaque or only fully transparent pixels.

Sound events

• Sound events were renamed.

Spectator Mode

• A spectator is no longer able to open a chest where the loot has not been generated yet.
  • They are given the message: "Unable to open. Loot not generated yet."

Splash text

• Changed "0% sugar" to "1% sugar".
• Removed "SOPA means LOSER in Swedish!".

Statistics

• New column on the statistics items screen to accommodate for the new pickup and drop statistics.

Structure data

• Now comes from /assets/structures.

Fixes

Video

Video made by slicedlime:

Trivia

• This update is generally seen as the most controversial and infamous update to the game. While many people do like the new combat mechanics saying it makes it more intense, a lot of people do not, stating that it makes fighting mobs much more difficult.
  • As a result, many PVP servers either still had the option of 1.8 along with the latest version or only use versions prior to 1.9.
• This update has the longest wait for a major update to Minecraft, with 545 days having elapsed since the release of Java Edition 1.8 on September 2, 2014.
  • Until this point, the longest waits had been those between Java Edition 1.7.2 and Java Edition 1.8 (312 days), and between Java Edition 1.2.1 and Java Edition 1.3.1 (153 days).
  • Therefore, the year 2015 was the first and the only year where any major update to Minecraft wasn't released so far.
• This is now the longest development to a major update in the history of Minecraft, with development beginning around a month before the Bountiful Update was released and lasting 576 days.
• This was also the longest span of time between the release of a major update to Minecraft and a snapshot for the next major update, with 330 days having elapsed between the release of Java Edition 1.8 on September 2, 2014, and 15w31a on July 29, 2015.
  • Until this point, the longest waits had been those between Java Edition 1.7.2 and 14w02a (76 days), between Java Edition 1.4.2 and 13w01a (70 days), and between Java Edition 1.6.1 and 13w36a (66 days).
• This update has the most snapshots of any major update so far, at 56 snapshots.
  • Until this point, the updates with the most snapshots were 1.8 (52 snapshots), and 1.3.1 (19 snapshots).
• 1.9 is the second major update to be released on a leap day, 1.2 being the first.
• 1.9 is the first update with a snapshot released on the 51st week. The second is 1.17, the first part of the Caves & Cliffs update, which is 20w51a.
• It's also the first update to be released after Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang Studios.

References