It is time to stop waiting and start playing. A pre-release of Minecraft 1.9 is now available. We are very excited to enter the final stage before the new version is released.
First the answer to the most asked question: We are currently planning to release the final version of Minecraft 1.9 next week, on Thursday, 25th of February 2016.
And now to the usual release notes. Once we release the final Minecraft 1.9 update, we will also provide a complete list of changes between Minecraft 1.8 and Minecraft 1.9.
Notable changes:
Bugs fixed
Increased durability of shields
Some crystals in the end are protected by cages again
Witches! Make sure you’re avoiding the splash potions they’re throwing at you! They can make you move slower or even poison you. Spooky stuff!
Armour dying. Tired of the usual look? Why not try the other 10 000 000 colours? Put your pants in the cauldron together with a dye and enjoy the new design!
Item frames. Show off your adventurous loot or put up one of your maps to remember the endless journeys.
Pumpkin and mob head hats. I know it is a bit early for Halloween, but at least now you can prepare properly! :)
And numerous bugs has been squashed, and unfortunately some have probably been sneaking in as well.
Witches! Make sure you’re avoiding the splash potions they’re throwing at you! They can make you move slower or even poison you. Spooky stuff!
Armour dying. Tired of the usual look? Why not try the other 10 000 000 colours? Put your pants in the cauldron together with a dye and enjoy the new design!
Item frames. Show off your adventurous loot or put up one of your maps to remember the endless journeys.
Pumpkin and mob head hats. I know it is a bit early for Halloween, but at least now you can prepare properly! :)
And numerous bugs has been squashed, and unfortunately some have probably been sneaking in as well.
Some bugs in the game are more annoying than others. So we decided to take care of some of the bugs that were good candidates for winning a “most popular bugs” contest. We are very sorry for closing tickets with a large fan base. These issues will be missed, but we are relatively sure that their fans will find other interesting bugs to follow.
We are also getting very close to the first 1.9 pre-release. Please make sure you vote on the most severe bugs in the bug tracker if you want to make sure we look at them before releasing 1.9.
Notable changes:
Better riding mechanics for boats, horses, minecarts and saddled pigs
The elytra texture now defaults to the cape texture if no custom texture is uploaded and the player owns a cape
Some sounds are sounding better now
Some sounds are sounding different now
Most sounds are still sounding exactly as before
Most entities in the game should now move much smoother
Villagers are not making fun of players anymore when nobody is around
Cobalt is available to download for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Steam for Windows. It costs $19.99 / £15:99 / €19.99. Stop reading this and download it right now!
Update: Minecraft snapshot version 16w05b is now available in the launcher.
This weeks snapshot contains only few fixed for bugs reported on the bug tracker. We started looking at the Realms integration to make sure everything is up to date with the changes that were introduced during the lifetime of the 1.8.x versions.
We also started automating more of our internal workflows. It doesn’t make much sense to mention that here, because it’s nothing you can see in the game and it only makes our lives easier as developers, but for the sake of having a slighly longer post this week I decided to keep it in here.
Notable changes:
Fixed some bugs
Tweaked boats a bit more
Hidden a small recipe change
Endermites or now 2.44% more happy than before, especially in boats
Yet another week has passed, lots of bugs have been inspected, turned around and hopefully fixed. We’re inching ever closer to 1.9 and our focus is on stability, performance and the remaining polish.
This week’s snapshot is all about boats! We did another iteration on them so please have a swim with them (watch it, they can sink!).
As always we’d like to thank everyone who is reporting bugs, testing the snapshots and sending us feedback on our changes. While we get closer to 1.9 this will become more and more important. Please continue doing it and thanks to you all!
: minecraft 
