Mojang and Minecraft have improved a lot over the years, and fans are excited about what’s coming next. Minecraft 22w18a is here, bringing another snapshot update to preview upcoming changes for users. There are a few small changes in the patch, but a few big ones as well. Here’s what we know about this upcoming patch.

The game has been introducing a bunch of new features via these updates, and that trend continues. With the impending launch of the Wild update, there’s a lot more coming to the game than ever before. The launch of Minecraft 22w18a means that Mojang is adding a few loose bits to prepare for that update. These new additions include elements like the place command and cryptographically signed chat commands.

The biggest addition in this snapshot is the place command, allowing much more precise usage for spawning elements within the game world. The core of this feature is built around the idea that you can call namespaces and IDs from within the game code to place structures and other assets at a server level. This command replaces placefeature and can place features, jigsaws and structures.  The syntax is explained in the patch notes below, but it’s very easy to use if you’re used to object-oriented languages in programming, which you should be with Java. By calling various pieces and giving them a position modifier, you can construct some pretty complex builds.

You can see the full patch notes down below if you wish.

CHANGES IN 22W18A

• Allays now follow their liked player even if they can’t see them
• Allays will only lose track of a player if they are more than 64 blocks away
• The texture of the sonic boom particle has been updated
• Vibration listeners such as Sculk Sensors, Sculk Shriekers and Wardens now listen to the closest vibration instead of the first vibration in the tick

TECHNICAL CHANGES IN 22W18A

• Banner patterns available in the Loom can now be controlled with tags (banner_pattern/no_item_required for no pattern item and banner_pattern/pattern_item/* for specific banner pattern items)
• Servers can now define different chat style formats for clients
• Removed the placefeature command
• Added the place command
• The bundled Java runtime has been upgraded to 17.0.3
• Removed loot table function set_goat_horn_sound
• Added loot table function set_instrument
• Chat from the /say, /msg, /teammsg, and /me commands are now all also cryptographically signed

CHAT TYPES

• Different chat style formats can now be controlled by the server through the chat_type registry
  • These are synchronized to clients when they join the server
  • The translation key or translation format can be defined, like chat.type.text or %s says: “%s”
    • Chat can be similarly optionally narrated with a custom translation key or format
  • The entire message can have formatting applied, such as italics or a specific color (but currently not click or hover events)

PLACE COMMAND

New command that replaces placefeature and can place features, jigsaws and structures at a given location. Syntax:

place feature <feature> [pos]
place jigsaw <pool> <start> <depth> [pos]
place structure <structure> [pos]

• feature: The namespaced id of a feature to try to place
• structure: The namespaced id of a structure to try to generate
• pool: The namespaced id of a template pool to start generating
• start: The namespaced id name of a jigsaw to use as the starting anchor
• depth: The maximum number of jigsaw connections to traverse during placement
• pos: The position to use as the origin for the generation (if omitted, ~ ~ ~ is used)

LOOT TABLES

NEW FUNCTIONS

SET_INSTRUMENT

Sets item tags needed for instrument items to a random value selected from a tag.

Parameters:

• options – a tag reference specifying the instrument options to randomly pick from

FIXED BUGS IN 22W18A

• MC-207935 – Simultaneous vibrations don’t trigger as expected
• MC-232009 – Minecraft does not resolve SRV records correctly
• MC-249021 – The invitation and news buttons aren’t consistently displayed within the realms menu
• MC-249129 – The walking animation of frogs doesn’t change in relation to their movement speed
• MC-249175 – Only one sculk vein drops when using a Silk Touch hoe on multiple in a single block space
• MC-249454 – Sculk Catalysts will spread sculk if a baby mob that does not drop experience dies around it
• MC-249732 – Allays lose picked up items on world restart
• MC-249740 – Allays leashed to a fence do not move and refuse to pick up items
• MC-249784 – Ancient Cities can be submerged in aquifers
• MC-249857 – Parity Issue: Allays don’t follow the player / note blocks as closely on Java
• MC-250139 – Snow layers cannot be placed on top of mud
• MC-250143 – Improper advancement description for “Sneak 100”
• MC-250144 – “Sneak 100” advancement includes sculk shriekers as a block that can “hear” the player
• MC-250145 – Warden/frogs continue animations when the game is paused
• MC-250163 – Warden can still detect things after it dies
• MC-250183 – Warden continues to roar when angered by an ignited creeper
• MC-250198 – Warden continues to roar when the target of the enraged warden suffers an unnatural death
• MC-250207 – Warden continues to roar at disconnected players
• MC-250216 – Warden continues to roar at targets in unloaded chunks
• MC-250218 – Warden continues to roar at despawned target
• MC-250244 – Warden continues to roar when the target enters the nether portal, end portal or end gateway
• MC-250245 – Warden sonic boom attacks can hit player even if the player has entered another dimension
• MC-250292 – Wardens can sometimes freeze when overwhelmed with enemies/attacks/sounds
• MC-250506 – Mangrove leaves can appear at a higher altitude when grown below y = 0
• MC-250557 – Allay permanently stuck trying to pick up item stack if its slots contain stack of the same type with differing NBT (and vice versa)
• MC-250864 – Game fails to load worldgen settings when .DS_Store files are present in datapack
• MC-250926 – There is a goat horn in the creative Destroy Item slot / all tabs within the creative inventory contain goat horns
• MC-250937 – User skins don’t load in singleplayer
• MC-250939 – Game crashes when a goat horn with an invalid sound variant is used / java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: Index <index> out of bounds for length 8
• MC-250954 – Player is assigned a new UUID in singleplayer
• MC-250974 – MinecraftClientHttpException when opening/creating a world