Java Edition 20w06a

20w06a (labeled as Snapshot 20w06a in-game) is the first snapshot for Java Edition 1.16, released on February 5, 2020,^[1] which adds several new Nether Update features, like new biomes, the /locatebiome command, and fixes some bugs. This is the first snapshot released in 2020.

Ancient Debris

• Can be found throughout the Nether at any altitude, though it is much more common at lower levels.
• Can be refined into a netherite scrap by smelting in a furnace or blast furnace.
• Same blast resistance as obsidian.
• As an item, it floats on lava.
• Cannot burn in lava or fire.
• A diamond pickaxe or better is required to mine it.
• Always spawns covered by lava or blocks on all sides.

Basalt

• Makes up basalt pillars.
• Generates in soul sand valleys.
• Can be placed directionally, similarly to logs.

Block of Netherite

• Can be crafted with 9 netherite ingots.
• A decorative block.
• As an item, it floats on lava.
• Cannot burn in lava or fire.
• Same blast resistance as obsidian, but is movable with pistons.

Crimson and Warped Stems

• Comprise the trunks of huge fungi.
• Have animated textures.
• Have a top texture similar to regular log blocks.
• Can be placed directionally, similarly to logs.
• Does not burn.
• Have respective stripped variants.

Crimson and Warped Planks

• Don't burn.
• Crafted from the respective stem.
• Can be used to craft respective slabs, stairs, fences, fence gates, pressure plates, buttons, doors, and trapdoors.

Crimson and Warped Signs

• Work like normal wooden signs.
• Cannot be crafted in this snapshot.
• Currently unobtainable in Survival mode.

Crimson and Warped Fungi

• Generate in crimson and warped forests, respectively.
• Can be placed on dirt, coarse dirt, farmland, podzol, nylium, soul soil, and grass blocks.
• Bone meal can be used on fungi to grow it into the respective huge fungi when placed on nylium.
• Unlike mushrooms, fungi cannot spread.

Crimson and Warped Nylium

• Resemble grass blocks.
• Can be spread to netherrack by using bonemeal on a netherrack block next to a nylium block.

Crimson and Warped Roots

• Foliage that generates in both crimson and warped forest biomes, as well as soul sand valleys.

Nether Sprouts

• Foliage that generates in warped forests.

Shroomlight

• Emits a light level of 15, similarly to glowstone.
• Can be mined with any tool, but axes are the most efficient.
• Generates as a part of huge fungi.

Soul Fire

• Blue variant of fire.
• Fire lit on soul soil turns into soul fire regardless of dimension.
  • Burns forever, similar to regular fire on netherrack and magma blocks.
• Generates naturally in the soul sand valley biome in the Nether.
• Deals damage at a rate of 2HP per second as opposed to the 1HP per second of regular fire.
• Does not extinguish when in the rain.^[2]

Soul Fire Lantern

• Gives off a light level of 10.
• Crafted similarly to a normal lantern, using a soul fire torch instead of a normal torch.

Soul Fire Torch

• Gives off a light level of 10.
• Crafted similarly to a normal torch, with soul soil being placed under the stick.

Soul Soil

• Generates in the soul sand valley, alongside conventional soul sand.
• Fire lit on soul soil is soul fire.
• The player does not sink and is not slowed when walking on soul soil.

Warped Wart Block

• A variation of the nether wart block.
• Generates as a part of huge warped fungi. Sometimes generates in the ground replacing the warped nylium in warped forest biome.

Weeping Vines

• Generates in the crimson forest.
• Is placed on the bottom of a block and grows downward.

Netherite Boots, Chestplate, Helmet and Leggings

• Crafted with a netherite ingot and the respective diamond item.
• Don't burn in lava or fire as items or when worn (players equipping netherite armor, however, can still take fire damage).
• Float in lava.
• Grant one additional point of knockback resistance per item.
• Tougher than diamond armor.
• Have higher durability and enchantability than diamond.

Netherite Sword, Axe, Pickaxe, Shovel, and Hoe

• Crafted with a netherite ingot and the respective diamond item.
• Float in lava.
• Cannot burn in lava or fire.
• Have higher durability, mining level, breaking multiplier, and enchantability than diamond.
• All items, except the hoe, deal 1 more damage than their diamond counterparts.

Netherite Ingot

• Crafted with 4 gold ingots and 4 netherite scraps.
• Can be used to upgrade diamond tools, swords, and armor.
• Floats in lava.
• Cannot burn in lava or fire.

Netherite Scrap

• Obtained by smelting ancient debris in a furnace.
• Used to create netherite ingots.
• Floats in lava.
• Cannot burn in lava or fire.

Spawn eggs

• Hoglin spawn egg
  • Spawns hoglins.

Hoglins

• Spawn in crimson forests.
• Drop rotten flesh.
• Currently have the same hitbox as pigs.
• Legs and ears spasm wildly when moved or attacked.

Biomes

• Crimson forest
  • A dense forest with huge crimson fungi. Nether fungi are found in patches on the ground and weeping vines are found under the huge fungi.
  • Zombie pigmen and hoglins may spawn here.
• Soul sand valley
  • A vast grotto composed of uncovered nether fossils, soul sand, soul soil, large pillars made of basalt, and soul fire.
  • Skeletons, ghasts, and endermen may spawn here.
• Warped forest
  • A color variation of the crimson forest, but with somewhat different vegetation, particles, and fog effects.
  • Only endermen may spawn here.

Structures

• Nether fossils
  • Generate in the soul sand valley.
  • They are different from the Overworld fossils and generate random pieces of basalt instead of coal ore.

Features

• Basalt pillar
  • Floor to ceiling pillars of basalt that generate in soul sand valleys.
• Huge crimson and warped fungi
  • New structure resembling trees found in crimson and warped forests, respectively.
  • Made of crimson and warped stem blocks as well as red nether wart blocks and warped wart blocks.
  • Can be grown from their respective Nether fungi.

/locatebiome

• Used to locate specific biomes.

Sounds

• New sounds for most of the newly added blocks.​^{[more information needed]}

Particles

• Added ash, crimson_spore, soul_fire_flame, warped_spore.

Tags

• Added block tag fire.
  • Contains fire and soul fire.
  • Controls what blocks can burn entities.
• Added block tag nylium.
  • Contains crimson nylium and warped nylium.
• Added crimson_stems block and item tags.
  • Contains crimson stem and stripped crimson stem.
• Added warped_stems block and item tags.
  • Contains warped stem and stripped warped stem.
• Added block tag wart_blocks.
  • Contains nether wart block and warped wart block.

Bamboo Shoot

• Renamed from "Bamboo Saplings".

Bone Blocks

• Generate as part of nether fossils in soul sand valleys.

Redstone Comparators

• Changed the way to calculate the input signal.
  • First, if there is an adjacent container behind, it detects the signal from the container. If not, it detects the signal from redstone components.
  • Then, if it is not less than 15, the detected signal becomes the input signal. Otherwise, it also gets a signal from item frame and container behind separated by a redstone conductor block from the comparator, and take the maximum of the three as the input signal.

Flower Pots

• Has a bottom texture when empty.

Gravel and Soul Sand

• Generate in the new soul sand valley biomes.

Netherrack

• Using bone meal on netherrack adjacent to nylium converts it into nylium.
  • If two nylium blocks of different types are present, it chooses the type at random based on how many blocks of each type are around it.

Nether Wart Blocks

• Texture changed from .
• Generate as a part of huge crimson fungi. Sometimes generates in the ground replacing the crimson nylium in crimson forest biome.

Pistons and Sticky Pistons

• Hardness has been increased to 1.5.
• Pickaxes are now more efficient on pistons.^[3]
• Pistons can now support non-solid blocks on its top face without them popping off when the piston retracts.^[4]

Redstone Dust

• Has a bottom texture.

Smooth Quartz Block

• Renamed from "Smooth Quartz".

Walls

• Walls in the middle of a row longer have pillars when stacked vertically.
  • Block state now uses none, low, and tall for east, west, north, and south directional values.

Clay Ball

• Renamed from "Clay".

Endermen

• Now spawn in soul sand valleys and warped forests.

Ghasts

• Sounds are now heard at a shorter range.
• Now spawn in soul sand valleys.

Skeletons

• Now spawn in soul sand valleys.

Zombie Pigmen

• Now spawn in crimson forests.
• No longer have sounds.

Biomes

• Biomes in the Nether may now differ based on altitude.

Ceiling

• Alongside mushrooms, huge crimson and warped fungi can generate over Y=128 in the Nether.

Nether biome

• The old "Nether" biome is now called "Nether Wastes".

Structures

• Shipwrecks and ocean ruins are now less common.

General

• The message shown when running an unknown/incomplete command has changed.

Advancements

• The description of the "Sky's the Limit" advancement has changed from "Find Elytra" to "Find elytra."

Knockback resistance

• Is now a scale of the amount of knockback taken instead of a probability to take no knockback.

Patrols

• No longer spawn when the player is close to any intact village.

Recipe book

• The cartography table recipe now unlocks with paper instead of string.

Sounds

• Updated block sounds for bone blocks, netherrack, soul sand, nether wart blocks, nether bricks (and variants), and nether quartz ore.

Spawn

• Players can reset their spawn point using a bed when monsters are near, although players still cannot sleep when mobs are near.

Debug menu

• When outside the world's vertical area, the debug menu no longer lists 'minecraft:the_void' as the biome.
  • Instead, it simply hides the biome information.

Saved toolbars

• Renamed to "Saved Hotbars"

Options

• Renamed "Scale" to "Chat Text Size" in chat settings.

Materials

• Added new nether wood material.
  • Uses the wood material color.
  • Uses default properties.

Rendering

• Improved entity shadows to the ground.

Tags

• Added crimson and warped wooden items to the planks, standing_signs, wall_signs, wooden_buttons, wooden_doors, wooden_fences, wooden_pressure_plates, wooden_slabs, wooden_stairs, and wooden_trapdoors block tags.
• Added crimson and warped wooden items to the planks, signs, wooden_buttons, wooden_doors, wooden_fences, wooden_pressure_plates, wooden_slabs, wooden_stairs, and wooden_trapdoors item tags.
• The slabs block and item tags now use the respective wooden_slabs tag.

68 issues fixed

From released versions before 1.16

• MC-2591 – Walking over the corner of lava deals damage.
• MC-10727 – Player and entity shadows experience z-fighting with redstone.
• MC-17431 – Shift-clicking stacked items with a data tag into the enchanting table GUI removes data tags from the moved item.
• MC-44192 – generic.knockbackResistance is percentage chance to ignore knockback, rather than being scaled.
• MC-45619 – Water, signs, vines, torches, etc. in the same block as item frame break item frame's redstone signal.
• MC-52178 – Cape does not move down while sneaking and detaches from body while sneaking.
• MC-59363 – Items in item frames are deleted if both mouse buttons are used simultaneously.
• MC-82235 – Baby pigs turn into adult zombie pigmen when struck by lightning.
• MC-85527 – Shulkers opening into blocks.
• MC-92889 – Mending does not always consume experience if the player wears items with mending that are already fully repaired.
• MC-93198 – Throwing potions or throwable projectiles cause both hands to bob up and down.
• MC-93477 – Shulkers opening into shulker.
• MC-93631 – Pistons pop off blocks attached to their back when retracting.
• MC-96436 – Eggs, snowballs, and experience bottles break instantly when thrown while riding a horse.
• MC-97958 – Small slime has no jump or squish sound.
• MC-101084 – Held items/blocks appear to bob down and up when opening horse's inventory
• MC-103655 – Cats do not stand up when using right-click on them while they are sitting on chests or beds.
• MC-109370 – Bottom face of column blocks is rotated 180 degrees.
• MC-109844 – en_us.json contains unused strings.
• MC-109850 – Redstone wire does not have a bottom texture.
• MC-111133 – Piston pushing opened shulker makes said shulker glitch.
• MC-112630 – Carrot on a stick cannot be broken.
• MC-113381 – Falling dust particles of anvil and concrete powder blocks are black.
• MC-114304 – Retracting piston pushes entities standing behind the back of it.
• MC-120335 – Flower pot bottom texture is not rendered because of incorrect uv values in the model file.
• MC-122187 – Teleported to coordinates wrong when teleporting entities relatively.
• MC-122335 – Projectiles go through an entity if it is close to a player or a snow golem.
• MC-122715 – /teleport command no longer prevents teleporting to invalid coordinates.
• MC-131440 – The message for trying to sleep at the wrong time implies that players can only sleep at night during a thunderstorm.
• MC-131770 – Rain particles appear one block below the water or lava surface.
• MC-132607 – Splitting slimes and magma cubes do not copy NoAI value.
• MC-134162 – Item entities can break turtle eggs.
• MC-134481 – Typo in en_us.json: "Status requst has been handled".
• MC-135151 – Typo in en_us.json: "An error occured!".
• MC-136868 – Ignited TNT, arrow or trident turns black when it falls on soul sand or snow layers.
• MC-138402 – Waterlogged walls "connect" to water source blocks above.
• MC-138600 – Cats do not bring gifts if they have already decided to sit on the user's bed.
• MC-140544 – Pickaxes do not speed up piston breaking.
• MC-148474 – Sloped powered detector rails break when pushed or pulled by a piston.
• MC-149052 – Stonecutter recipe list does not show item tooltips.
• MC-149776 – Cartography table requires string for the recipe to show up in the recipe book.
• MC-150020 – Composter is in the "Miscellaneous" category instead of "Decoration" like the other workstation blocks.
• MC-154867 – Tamed cats remain sitting if the world is reloaded while the cat is sitting on a chest.
• MC-158807 – Players can remove cursed enchantments on items by repairing them in inventory.
• MC-159300 – Villagers that have been infected by a zombie can despawn, even if they have been traded with.
• MC-159773 – Shulkers can teleport to non-solid faces, and do not teleport to some solid faces.
• MC-159918 – Foxes do not run from polar bears.
• MC-159963 – Minecarts can break turtle eggs.
• MC-160897 – Dropping an item using the drop key displays the hand animation but dropping items from within the inventory does not.
• MC-161259 – Using the carrot on a stick while riding a pig plays no hand animation.
• MC-163286 – /setblock ~ ~ ~ air destroy does not destroy liquids.
• MC-164184 – Breaking a shulker box with contents in Creative mode drops the block at an incorrect location.

From the 1.15.x releases

• MC-160902 – Arm swings when right-clicking on a full minecart.
• MC-161156 – Silverfish and endermites appear black on soul sand.
• MC-162881 – Composter does not display particles when being fed composting items through a hopper.
• MC-164158 – Lava doesn't emit smoke during rainfall.
• MC-164948 – Entity shadow renders through transparent blocks.
• MC-167077 – Foxes sleep on top of honey blocks, even in broad daylight.
• MC-167447 – Wrong RenderStateShard name.
• MC-167512 – Glass in the hand is rendered differently depending on the "Clouds" setting.
• MC-167989 – Spawn point is not set when monsters are nearby.
• MC-168540 – Threads created by net.minecraft.Util.backgroundExecutor() have misleading names.
• MC-168772 – Experience orbs can crush turtle eggs.
• MC-169679 – Composters do not make sounds when fed by hoppers.
• MC-169692 – Entity shadow floats slightly above the ground.
• MC-169832 – Transparent item models have inconsistent rendering when a glowing entity is present.
• MC-170128 – Cannot build an EntityType without a datafixer due to an IllegalArgumentException.
• MC-182914 – Arrows, and Tridents stuck in midair on door.