Minecraft snapshot 22w42a has landed, kicking off a new era of Minecraft updates with an early look at several new features set for 1.20, plus a big revamp to the creative inventory.
If you're not familiar with Minecraft snapshots, these are essentially beta versions of upcoming Minecraft updates, provided to players early so they can give feedback on new features before they hit the game proper. If you want to download the new snapshot for yourself, you can do so from the launcher for Minecraft: Java Edition.
Snapshot 22w42a previews update 1.19.3 with one particularly notable change: the creative inventory has been completely reordered, moving blocks and items around so that they're in more logical spots and easier to find. As an example in the patch notes, the devs say that "all Oak blocks and variants are now next to each other." You'll now be able to find some items in more than one tab, and the tab groupings have been changed, too.
Four of the big features coming in update 1.20 - chiseled bookshelves, bamboo crafting, hanging signs, and the "very graceful, but grumpy" camel mob - are also available in this snapshot. Ah, I hear you asking 'why would 1.20 features be available in a 1.19.3 snapshot?' Mojang plans to include features from major updates behind an experimental feature toggle within smaller updates like this one.
While new features and quality of life improvements are certainly big, the biggest change might actually be a fix for a long-standing bug. First reported by players way back in 2013, Minecraft has an issue where creatures dangling from leads continue to build up fall damage while dangling in mid-air - meaning that they can die from a fall of just a few blocks. Now, over nine years later, that bug has finally been fixed.
Think you've seen some impressive video game creations? Take a look at the entire universe rebuilt in Minecraft.
