Minecraft 1.18 Experimental Snapshot 5 for Java Edition: Full list of changes revealed 

A new week brings a new Minecraft experimental snapshot. Mojang has released the fifth experimental snapshot for the upcoming 1.18 update. As usual, the snapshot tweaks the new cave and mountain generation.

Minecraft 1.18 update is part two of the much-awaited Caves and Cliffs update. The beautiful cave and mountain biomes were delayed because of technical challenges faced by developers. Nonetheless, these features are finally coming to Minecraft.

Before shipping the new world generation to regular snapshots, developers released experimental snapshots to receive feedback from the Minecraft community and improve. In the latest experimental snapshot, developers have changed the natural generation of mountains, swamps, cave carvers, and mob spawning.

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Minecraft 1.18 Experimental Snapshot 5: List of changes

The peaks in this new snapshot look gorgeous. DO give it a shot and give us feedback! https://t.co/VbToJOlqaP

— kingbdogz (@kingbdogz) August 25, 2021

• Peakier peaks! In some areas, mountains have jagged peaks, as in Minecraft bedrock beta.
• Mountain areas and peak biomes are made slightly larger on average.
• Average mountain height was raised to fix an unintentional change in experimental snapshot 4.
• Fossils above deepslate level won't have diamond ores.
• Moved swamps slightly more inland.
• Cave carvers can now carve through red sand and calcite.
• River depths and the steepness of river banks are tweaked, making them less likely to be super deep or get choked off in flat areas.
• Small lakes features are no longer placed in dry and hot biomes (desert, savanna, badlands). Reduced the number of lake feature placements in other biomes.
• Small hills and overhangs (3d noise in tech speak) generate more often in flat areas, like in snapshot 3.
• Reduced the amount of shattered terrain and shattered savanna biome, replacing some of that space with flatter beaches instead.
• Water springs can generate in more blocks such as dirt and snow, increasing the likelihood of small mountain streams and waterfalls. Also added springs to lush caves.
• Fixed an indent in the code. Doesn't matter at all so I don't know why I'm mentioning it here.
• Made badlands slightly smaller on average. Just a bit. But don't worry, they still tend to be quite big.
• Re-added jungle edge biome.
• Tweaked mushroom fields biome, so it matches the shape of the islands better.
• Dripstone caves biome place stone surface instead of grass surface when leaking out of cave entrances.
• Removed the height-based spawning change that was made in snapshot 3.

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