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With the new Minecraft snapshot 21w38a, it is pretty evident that the developers are keen on starting the snapshot process very soon. We got one last week and one this week as well, so get ready for some new and exciting Minecraft features every week from now on!
This week’s snapshot is building towards something better and more significant for next week’s snapshot. The snapshot 21w38a isn’t a massive one. It is mainly technical stuff and some new major rendering features that make the game better overall.
The snapshot took care of many bugs that were making the snapshots before unplayable for many players. You can read the changelog to get a detailed overview of the changes.
Simulation settings!
Before this snapshot, the only way to optimize the game was by decreasing the amounts of chunks that your system loads in the Minecraft world.
This worked fine, but the entities also cause many problems when you’re trying to keep the render distance to a minimum for smooth gameplay.
The simulation setting will now allow you to reduce simulating chunks, so in theory, you can go up on world generating chunks and reduce the simulating chunks. Reducing the simulating chunks is pretty simple; any entity outside the render distance will stop moving.
Ore distribution
The ore distribution has been tinkered with in this new snapshot. The copper ore now generates the way it was supposed till y level 95. For some reason, the feature wasn’t visible in earlier snapshots because of technical issues that plague the game.
Thre lapis lazuli ore will now generate in blobs of 4-6 blocks or even more. This is done to balance out the amount of lapis you get! The generation will be similar to the ore generation of iron and copper blocks.
Stronghold is back
Because of some technical issues, the devs had decided to remove the stronghold from the game entirely to focus more on the caves in the game. So basically, if you were playing the snapshots, you couldn’t access the end dimension.
But now, the devs have put the stronghold back, and they can be found throughout the Minecraft world. This is excellent news for those who were playing in a snapshot world.
Sprinting
Sprinting in Minecraft is known to everyone, but when you start sprinting while brushing by a wall, you stopped sprinting. The devs now take care of this, and you can run while brushing off the walls. This is a minor change but can significantly affect the gameplay for some players.
This is excellent news for those who build superfast highways using ice or soul sand. Most of the time, when you brush off against a wall, your speed reduces significantly, or you just stop in the middle of the track.
This fix will make sure this never happens again, granting the player more freedom to experiment.
New features next week?
This week’s snapshot wasn’t that great. To be honest, players look forward to these snapshots for updates on new and exciting Minecraft features. This is one of the reasons why Minecraft is still one of the best games out there. And the devs know this too.
When we receive a smaller snapshot like this, it is to prepare us for the next big one, which will be released the week after this.
So we should probably be getting new features next week or additional information on the new features announced for the game at the Minecon event back in 2020.
