Minecraft 1.20.5 update patch notes: Armadillo, wolf armor, wolf variants, and more 

After months of waiting, Minecraft has finally released version 1.20.5 for Java Edition called the Armored Paws update. With this, Mojang has introduced the winner of Mob Vote 2023 - the armadillo!

Along with the armadillo, developers have made sure to pack the update with many other exciting features like wolf armor and eight new wolf variants. Many fans were more excited about the Minecraft 1.20.5 update compared to the major 1.21 update, as it brought some of the most demanded Minecraft features.

Players have been asking for wolf armor and new wolf variants ever since the addition of wolves over a decade ago. Let's look at what new features and changes have arrived in the Minecraft 1.20.5 update.

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Minecraft 1.20.5 update patch notes

New features

• Added Armadillo and Armadillo Scutes
• Added Wolf Armor
• Added Wolf variants

Armadillo

The Armadillo in Minecraft is a new passive mob

• Armadillos drop Armadillo Scutes periodically, and when brushed
• Armadillos spawn in Savannas and Badlands
• The Armadillo's favorite food is the Spider Eye
• Armadillos are tempted by Spider Eyes
• Feeding two adult Armadillos Spider Eyes makes them breed
• Feeding a baby Armadillo a Spider Eye makes it grow up quicker
• The Armadillo rolls up when it detects a threat such as:
• A player sprinting, riding a mount, or riding a vehicle
• Undead mobs
• A mob or a player it has recently been attacked by
• The Armadillo does not roll up when:
• Fleeing, in water, in the air, or when on a Lead
• When an Armadillo is rolled up:
• It does not walk, cannot eat, and will not be tempted by food
• Its shell will protect it, reducing damage taken, even allowing it to fully resist weak attacks
• It will continue to scan for threats, occasionally peeking to check the surroundings
• If no threats are detected for 4 seconds, it will unroll
• Spiders and Cave Spiders will run away from Armadillos that are not in a rolled up state

Armadillo scutes

• Armadillo Scutes are dropped by Armadillos periodically or when an Armadillo is brushed
• Armadillo Scutes can be used to craft Wolf Armor
• Dispensers can be used to brush Armadillo Scutes off Armadillos

Wolf armor

Wolf Armor can be crafted with Armadillo Scutes and can be dyed in a similar fashion to Leather Armor

• The Wolf Armor will protect the Wolf from most damage sources until the armor loses all durability and breaks
• Wolf Armor shows signs of breakage as durability goes down
• Using Armadillo Scutes on the Wolf Armor while it is equipped on the Wolf will repair it
• Using Shears on a Wolf that is wearing armor will drop the armor
• Wolf Armor can only be equipped on a tame adult Wolf
• Only the Wolf's owner can equip, repair, and shear Wolf Armor
• Dispensers cannot equip nor remove Wolf Armor

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Wolf variants

New Minecraft Wolf variants have been added. The variant is determined by the biome they spawn in. Wolves spawn in packs, with a default pack size of 4.

• Pale Wolf - The Wolf we're all familiar with. This variant spawns in the Taiga biome
• Woods Wolf - A variant that spawns in the Forest biome. This will be the dominant Wolf variant that you will be able to find in the Overworld, since the Forest biome is very common
• Ashen Wolf - A variant that spawns in the Snowy Taiga biome
• Black Wolf - A variant that spawns in the Old Growth Pine Taiga biome, in smaller packs of 2-4
• Chestnut Wolf - A variant that spawns in the Old Growth Spruce Taiga biome, in smaller packs of 2-4
• Rusty Wolf - A variant that spawns in a new location for Wolves - the Sparse Jungle biome, in smaller packs of 2-4
• Spotted Wolf - A variant that spawns in a new location for Wolves - the Savanna Plateau biome, in larger packs of 4-8
• Striped Wolf - A variant that spawns in a new location for Wolves - the Wooded Badlands biome, in larger packs of 4-8
• Snowy Wolf - A variant that spawns in the Grove biome. This lone Wolf is a rare type, as it always walks alone

When summoned in other ways (e.g. using the Spawn Egg or using the summon command), the variant selection follows the natural spawning biome rules with the following extensions:

• Rusty Wolf: will be selected in all Jungle-like biomes, including Jungle and Bamboo Jungle Biomes
• Spotted Wolf: will be selected in all Savanna-like biomes, including Savanna and Windswept Savanna Biomes
• Striped Wolf: will be selected in all Badlands-like biomes, including Badlands and Eroded Badlands Biomes

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Advancements

Added four new Minecraft 1.20.5 advancements:

• Isn't It Scute? - Get Armadillo Scutes from an Armadillo using a Brush
• Shear Brilliance - Remove Wolf Armor from a Wolf using Shears
• Good as New - Repair a damaged Wolf Armor using Armadillo Scutes
• The Whole Pack - Tame one of each Wolf variant

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Changes

• The UI has been updated with a fresher look
• Decreased the default size of the spawn chunks and made the value configurable
• Updated the health and damage dealt by Tamed Wolves
• Adjusted spawning conditions for Wolves, allowing them to spawn on Coarse Dirt and Podzol blocks
• Adjusted the texture of the Wolf Collar layer to be more consistent with the new Wolf Armor
• Adjusted passive mobs spawning in Grove biome to only include Rabbits, Foxes and Wolves
• Minor tweaks to existing Blocks, Items and Entities
• Added option to use Japanese variants of CJK characters
• Added support for Viossa language
• When entities leave or enter The End, the area they arrive in will now stay loaded for 15 seconds, matching the behavior of Nether Portals
• Improvements to the Game's Performance
• Improved handling of errors during saving and loading

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UI updates

The UI has been updated to sport a fresher look and to be more consistent when it comes to the layout of different UI elements, all while retaining the essence and feel of the old screens.

• The menu background dirt texture has been replaced by a darkened background
• The dirt background can be restored by using the built-in Programmer Art Resource Pack
• Outside the game, the main menu panorama is displayed behind all screens
• In the game, the world will be visible behind all screens
• Paired with the darkened background is a blur
• The strength of the blur can be configured in Video Settings and Accessibility Settings
• In-game screens such as containers and books are not affected by these changes
• Screen elements such as titles and buttons are positioned more consistently across different screens
• The World Backups screen and the Players screen in the Realms menu have been updated
• Lists now have clearer borders at the top and bottom
• Button tooltips will no longer appear when hovering outside the containing element
• After defeating the Ender Dragon and entering the End Portal, the End Poem and credits are now displayed with a background based on the animated End Portal effect
• The animated Nether Portal texture is displayed when changing dimension to or from The Nether
• The animated End Portal effect is displayed when changing dimension to or from The End

Spawn chunk changes

• The size of the spawn chunks changed from a radius of 10 (19x19 entity-ticking chunks) to a radius of 2 (3x3 entity-ticking chunks)
• This was done to reduce loading times, as well as memory and CPU usage
• We opted to not fully remove spawn chunks to allow players who currently utilize this functionality to continue to do so
• Added a new gamerule spawnChunkRadius to set the size of the spawn chunks
• Possible values are 0 to 32, where 0 completely disables the spawn chunks and 10 is equivalent to the functionality before this change
• Default value is 2, equivalent to 3x3 entity ticking chunks
• Note that setting this to a high value might require allocating more memory for the game in the Launcher

Tamed wolves health and damage

• Tamed Wolves now have 40 health points (20 hearts) instead of 20 health points (10 hearts)
• They no longer take half of the damage from most environmental sources like they used to do
• In most cases, this change will make no difference given the health boost, but they can now withstand more damage from players and arrows
• Feeding a Wolf now heals twice as many health points

Minor tweaks to blocks, items and entitites

• Renamed scutes that drop from Turtles to Turtle Scutes
• Added unique sounds for Cobwebs
• Enchantments on Items are now always listed in the same order in tooltips, regardless of how they were added to those items
• Adjusted flying behaviour for Bees and Parrot to keep them from overshooting their position when flying up and down
• Llamas and Shulkers are no longer able to destroy Armor Stands
• Status effect particle colors are no longer blended into one particle color
• All active visible status effect particles are now rendered separately
• Ctrl+Picking a renamed block (such as a Chest) in Creative Mode will now give a renamed item
• Ctrl+Picking a block no longer lists "(+NBT)" in the item tooltip

Accessibility

• The default focus is now always set when entering or exiting any menu while navigating using tab or arrow keys
• Added a new accessibility option to control the strength of the background blur when a menu is open

Japanese font variants

• A new option has been added to select Japanese variants for some CJK characters
• Replacement glyphs come from the Japanese version of the Unifont font
• The new option is included in a new "Font Settings" menu, accessible from the "Language" menu
• The default value of this option is based on the system locale language setting
• The "Force Unicode" button has been moved to "Font Settings"

Performance improvements

• Improved Hopper performance
• Hoppers will no longer try to pick up item entities if there is a full block placed above it
• Beehives and Bee Nests are exempt from this
• This does not affect Minecarts with Hoppers
• Reduced time needed to generate Explorer Maps to Buried Treasures

Saving and loading improvements

• In Singleplayer, when errors occur during loading or saving of chunks, a warning will be shown in a toast
• Trying to join a Singleplayer world with less than 64 MB free disk space will show a warning screen
• Additionally, a warning toast will be shown periodically while in game

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Technical changes

• The Data Pack version is now 41
• The Resource Pack version is now 32
• The game now requires Java 21
• The game now requires a 64-bit Operating System
• The included Java distribution is now the Microsoft build of OpenJDK 21.0.3
• Added transfer and cookie packets for custom servers
• Added an option to use a faster region file compression algorithm on dedicated servers
• Added a reserved region file compression id for third-party servers to use for custom compression implementations
• Changes to optimizing worlds
• Improved server TPS debug chart
• Allowed server operators to view dedicated server TPS debug chart
• Added JFR (Java Flight Recorder) events for individual chunk reads (minecraft.ChunkRegionRead) and writes (minecraft.ChunkRegionWrite)

Network Protocol

• Reduced amount of data sent by the server during login by reusing parts of the vanilla data pack
• Client chat state is now preserved by default when entering configuration phase
• Invalid data in packets sent from a server will now cause the game client to disconnect
• To ease the transition period, modded servers can opt out by setting the appropriate field in the handshake/game_profile packet
• This option will be removed in the next release
• The chat_command_signed packet has been split from chat_command
• Commands that do not accept any signed arguments will use the unsigned packet, and will not pass any 'last seen' chat updates

Transfer packets

• Custom servers can now request that clients connect to another server with a new packet
• When a client is transferred, it will connect to the target server with a new transfer intent (id 3)
• By default, servers will not accept incoming transfers and will disconnect the client
• This can be changed by setting the accepts-transfers property to true in the server.properties file
• Resource packs are maintained across transfers
• In the case of a transfer, custom servers can skip authenticating again with a new flag in the clientbound hello packet

Cookie packets

• Cookie packets allow custom servers to request and store data on a client
• Each cookie may be up to 5 KiB in size
• Cookies may be requested during login, configuration and play phases — but only stored during the configuration and play phases
• Cookies persist across server transfers but are not persisted when the player disconnects
• This allows servers to pass along information such as authentication or custom game data to the new server

Region file compression algorithm

• Added a dedicated server configuration property region-file-compression with 3 possible values:
• deflate, the default option. Uses the old algorithm
• lz4 uses LZ4 algorithm, which requires less CPU time to compress and decompress but uses more disk space
• none does not compress the data
• This consumes significantly more space and requires significant time to read and write, even though CPU is used less
• Might make sense together with filesystem level compression
• Changing the compression algorithm will not automatically recompress the world
• New or updated chunks will use the newly configured algorithm, but the old ones will stay in the previous format

Resereved compression ID for third-party servers

• Compression id 127 can now be used for custom implementations of region file compression
• When used, the version id must be followed by a namespaced string representing the custom algorithm used

World optimizing changes

• Optimizing singleplayer worlds and running a dedicated server with the forceUpgrade option now also upgrades contentsof entities and poi directories of the world
• Added a new recreateRegionFiles dedicated server startup parameter
• It will trigger world optimization similar to forceUpgrade, but will also rewrite all the chunks independentlyof whether they have been upgraded
• This will create fresh and defragmented region files
• Using this parameter after changing the region-file-compression server property will recompress all region filesin the new format

Improved server TPS debug chart

• As before, it is accessible by pressing F3 + 2
• The bottom dark red section of the chart displays the time spent during the main logic of the server tick
• This is equivalent to the value displayed in the old chart
• The light brown section displays time spent running scheduled tasks
• The purple section displays time spent executing all other code during the tick
• The top light green (or yellow or red depending on lag) section displays time spent idling, waiting for next tick
• The min, avg, max aggregate values are based on the sum of the first 3 sections
• Server operators can now view the TPS debug chart while connected to their dedicated server

Chat

• Client chat state (on-screen messages and chat input history) is now preserved by client when entering and exiting configuration phase
• Message signature chain handling remains unchanged - going into configuration phase starts a new session
• If the client has a message delay configured, any pending messages will be delivered immediately before leaving the world
• The server can clear chat state by sending a reset_chat packet in configuration phase

There have been tons of changes to the data pack version in Minecraft 1.20.5. During the development cycle of this version, the data pack version was upgraded from 27 to 41. Interested players can check the list of all changes in the official patch notes.