Java Edition 15w38a

15w38a is the twenty-fourth snapshot for Java Edition 1.9, released on September 16, 2015,^[1] which adds skeleton horsemen.

Skeleton horsemen

• Added "skeleton trap" horses. When a player approaches to within 10 blocks, the following happens:
  • The SkeletonTrap flag is cleared.
  • Lightning strikes the horse.
  • The horse becomes skeletal if it isn't already.
  • The horse becomes tamed.
  • The horse becomes fully grown (if a baby) and the breeding cooldown is reset.
  • A skeleton is spawned riding the horse.
    • If on Peaceful, the skeleton doesn't spawn, while the horse does.
    • The skeleton has damage immunity for 3 seconds.
    • The skeleton doesn't despawn, since it has the tag PersistenceRequired set to true.
    • The skeleton is wearing an iron helmet, unless it randomly spawned with some other headgear.
    • The skeleton's bow and helmet are enchanted as if on an enchantment table at level 5–22.
      • The level is higher depending on regional difficulty; on Easy it is always a level-5 enchantment.
  • Three additional skeletal horses with riders are spawned in the vicinity.

NBT format

• SkeletonTrap (byte): Indicates whether the horse is a skeleton trap (i.e. whether or not the horse will spawn 4 undead horsemen in its place when a player gets within 10 blocks of it).
  • /summon EntityHorse ~ ~1 ~10 {SkeletonTrap:1b}.
• SkeletonTrapTime (integer), incremented each tick when SkeletonTrap is set to 1. The mob automatically de-spawns when it reaches 18000 (15 minutes). This will prevent the hostile horses from overflowing the world, similar to chicken jockeys.
  • /summon EntityHorse ~ ~1 ~10 {SkeletonTrap:1b,SkeletonTrapTime:17980}.

Statistics

• Added "Times Slept in a Bed" (stat.sleepInBed) to track the amount of times a player has used a bed.

All sloped rail types

• Hitbox heights are decreased from 10 pixels of block to about 2.5 pixels of a block.

Crops

• Improved drop chances for seeds (average 1 ⁵⁄₇ per crop harvested instead of 1 ³⁄₅), potatoes and carrots (average 2 ⁵⁄₇ per crop harvested instead of 2 ³⁄₅), and beetroot seeds (average 2 per crop harvested instead of ⁴⁄₅).

End rod

• The player can no longer step up onto an end rod as if it was a slab or stairs.

Fire

• Goes out less often under the rain.
  • The chance of going out each fire tick is reduced from 100% to 0–45%, depending on the age property.

General

• Improvements to mob AI.

Skeletons

• Have new idle sounds.
• 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 also sprint toward the player when very far away.
• Now can spawn riding "skeletal horses" through the new "skeleton trap" horse.

Tamed ocelots & wolves

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

Villagers

• Now pick up and plant beetroot seeds.
• Now pick up beetroot and use it in the same way as they do carrots and potatoes.

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.

29 issues fixed

From released versions before 1.9

• MC-1230 – Players and mobs can fall through extending/retracting pistons.
• MC-1635 – Hitboxes for some blocks are broken.
• MC-1720 – Dropped items bounce on stairs, cauldrons, carpets, and full/locked hoppers.
• MC-32850 – Server GUI text box is empty (.exe only).
• MC-69652 – Mobs de-aggro after punching them.
• MC-73302 – Block collision box issues (mobs glitch through blocks and more).
• MC-77972 – No large red mushrooms in mushroom biomes 1.8.2 onwards.
• MC-78759 – Hopper splitting items into "Minecart with chest"s next to each other.
• MC-79995 – Too many banners items (in chests) will become invisible after 6-7 chests.
• MC-81738 – Crash: IndexOutOfBoundsException on Tesselating block in world.
• MC-88101 – Retracting blocks don't move/bounce entities correctly.
• MC-88480 – Minecarts accept items from hopper 2 blocks above.

From the 1.9 development versions

• MC-83002 – Villagers don't pick up beetroots or beetroot seeds.
• MC-83266 – Beetroot farming non-sustainable.
• MC-86253 – In multiplayer, when a player is blocking with a shield, other players see the shield as the normal state.
• MC-86845 – Minecart command blocks kick players from servers.
• MC-87802 – Excessive banners (as blocks) do not render.
• MC-87946 – Monsters can see the player through walls.

From the previous development version

• MC-88357 – Crash when going outside height limit or into the void with F3.
• MC-88365 – Shift-clicking combined shields+banners moves the whole banner stack to the inventory, but only removes one banner from the crafting grid, duplicating the rest.
• MC-88377 – Crash when crafting an empty shield with a banner.
• MC-88396 – Pistons do not move unextended pistons.
• MC-88428 – Pistons can push obsidian.
• MC-88438 – Vines cannot be placed on blocks in Creative or Survival mode.
• MC-88446 – Unconditional impulse command blocks interact unexpectedly with conditionMet.
• MC-88470 – Joining a multiplayer game within render distance of player causes "invisibility".
• MC-88499 – Breaking top vine growing ON jungle tree stem removes all lower vines.
• MC-88812 – Hopper: java.lang.NullPointerException: Rendering screen.
• MC-88815 – Can't place paintings bigger than 2x2.

• 15w38a was previously removed from the launcher for some time, but was added back in September 2018.