Minecraft: Java Edition releases first ‘Caves and Cliffs Update’ snapshot of the year, adds glow squid

Minecraft: Java Edition is starting today right with the very first Caves and Cliffs Update snapshot of 2021. Snapshot 21w03a is now available for Minecrafters to test, and adds a handful of experimental Caves and Cliffs Update features such as the glow squid. In case you forgot, the glow squid won the mob vote at Minecraft Live, and now you can sneak a peek in Minecraft’s latest snapshot.

The Caves and Cliffs Update, on the other hand, is the absolutely massive update slated for release sometime in Summer 2021, and will add a ton of new features, changes, and improvements to, well, Minecraft’s caves and cliffs. We’ve seen some features be tested and teased, but now it seems things are finally in full swing.

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The full changelog for Minecraft: Java Edition snapshot 21w03a includes:

New features

• Added glow lichen!
• Added glow squid!

Glow Lichen

• A dim light source that generates in caves
• Use shears to pick it up
• Use bonemeal to spread it along block surfaces

Glow Squid

• Glow squids have been added, but do not yet spawn naturally. You can find spawn eggs for them in the creative inventory
• Glow Squids are well-lit and can be seen from even far distances!
• When killed, glow squids drop glow ink sacs
• Glow ink sacs can be used on signs to make the text super visible, even at night! Works with colors!
• Craft a glow item frame by combining a glow ink sac with an item frame in a crafting table. Any item in a glow item frame is perfectly illuminated, even at night!
• Use an Ink Sac on a sign to remove the glow effect
• Axolotls will attack any glow squids they see, so…be careful

Changes

• Dripstone blocks can be crafted from 4 pointed dripstone

Bug fixes

• Mobs suffocate / go through blocks when growing up near a solid block
• Spawner with weight 0 crashes game
• Shulker rendering position desync and generates ghost shulker when destroying shulker-ridden boat or minecart
• Players can’t tempt animals with food while other players are closer to the animal
• Setting Json text value to null throws exceptions and crashes
• Shulkers in boats and minecarts do not sit up if previousely attached to blocks sideways
• Shulkers can’t be pushed back
• Using a monster spawner to spawn shulkers spawns white shulkers
• Shulkers cannot be pushed inside non-solid blocks
• Random transparent line in shulker box GUI texture
• Gaps in an animation’s used frames throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException
• Shulkers do not teleport correctly when going through a portal
• Shulker boxes cannot be opened if next to a shulker mob
• Shulkers teleport with original dimension coordinates after passing through portals
• Shulkers are afraid of being next to another shulker
• Shulkers open into blocks when unable to teleport
• Shulkers aren’t aligned to the grid for a split second after being spawned in
• Boats don’t try dismounting you on land
• Server is unable to prevent a player from dismounting a vehicle, causing a desync
• Shulker bullet subtitles are not capitalized correctly
• Right-clicking an empty bundle sometimes plays hand animation
• Bundle use stat never increases
• Game mode selection is ordered differently
• “type” in loot table number providers is not optional anymore
• Game crashes when trying to shift-click a chest into the inventory of a donkey whose chest is being removed
• block.pointed_dripstone.drip_[liquid/cauldron] has no subtitles
• Pointed dripstone can be placed atop each other, even if a player would be inside the hitbox of the lower dripstone
• Dripstone subtitles are not capitalized properly
• Dripstone caves biome name is not properly capitalized
• Dripstone caves generate merging dripstones in impossible ways
• Dripstone generated in dripstone caves can replace lava sources which looks weird
• Mobs cannot spawn in Dripstone Caves
• Issues with chunk rendering when height limit is large
• Summoning dust or dust_color_transition particles kicks nearby players when on a server
• player sub-predicate of entity_properties predicate only passes if game mode is specified
• Shulkerboxes / bundles duplicate items when destroyed by two fire blocks simultaneously
• Shulker boxes and bundles drop their items twice when thrown into a lava cauldron