Minecraft 1.20.3 snapshot 23w40a patch notes: Multiple shield fixes, nether portal improvement, and more

Just a few weeks after the Minecraft 1.20.2 update, Mojang Studios is already working hard on the 1.20.3 update. Today, the first snapshot for the 1.20.3 update has been released. Snapshot 23w40a primarily focuses on fixing bugs and making technical improvements, with a noteworthy change involving shields. Additionally, a couple of old shield-related bugs have also been addressed in this snapshot.

It appears that shields have been a significant focus for this update, or maybe Mojang is finally considering adding features from Minecraft's combat snapshot.

Another significant bug fix pertains to the generation of nether portals at large coordinates. Let's explore all the changes and fixes in Minecraft 1.20.3 snapshot 23w40a.

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Minecraft 1.20.3 snapshot 23w40a patch notes: All you need to know

Changes

When a player is blocking with a shield, the arm with the shield now follows the direction the player is looking at when viewed from a third-person perspective.

Technical Changes

• The Data Pack version is now 19
• A few minor changes to chat component serialization

Chat Components

Serialization:

• Plain-text chat components (text, no siblings, no stylings) are now always serialized as string instead of {"text': "blah"}
• Chat components now serialize to NBT when sent over a network
• Chat components now have an optional type value (allowed values: text, translatable, score, nbt, keybind) to speed up parsing and improve error-checking
• id field in show_entity hoverEvent style now also accepts UUID as an array of 4 ints
• Numeric and boolean arguments for the translate component are no longer converted to string
• The following JSON component representations are no longer accepted:
• null
• []
• Errors in the following style fields are no longer silently ignored:
• color
• clickEvent
• hoverEvent
• hoverEvent[action=show_entity].contents.name
• hoverEvent[action=show_item].contents.tag

Data Pack Version 19

Tags:

• Added can_breathe_under_water entity type tag, which disables drowning
• Added can_break_armor_stands damage type tag for damage types that can incrementally knock down armor stands

Fixed bugs in Minecraft snapshot 23w40a

Here are all the bugs fixed in snapshot 23w40a:

• Barrier particles aren't shown if particles are set to minimal
• Slime mob spawners spawn slimes only in slime chunks
• (Marker) Armor stands create bubbles in water
• Shields do not block damage while the player faces straight up
• Area effect cloud applies effect to dying mob
• Fire texture renders according to the player's rotation in the player inventory
• Light particles aren't shown if particles are set to minimal
• Beehives and bee nests do not rotate/mirror correctly in structure blocks
• Shield attack vector is normalized incorrectly
• Bells don't rotate correctly when loaded by structure/jigsaw blocks
• An operator can kick a host of a LAN world
• Nether portal teleportation is inaccurate at large coordinate values
• Decorated pots have an unused "cracked" block state
• Mending incorrectly calculates overflow after full repair
• GLX._initGlfw Treats Pointer as a String
• Clocks and Compasses in Item Display Entities don't show the correct time/direction
• Sending resource pack during the play phase shows loading terrain screen for a long time
• The game minimizes when certain areas of the screen are clicked on Mac in fullscreen mode

These are all the changes and bug fixes in Minecraft snapshot 23w40a. Many players didn't expect to see a snapshot or beta/preview this week, as the developers are expected to be busy with Minecraft Live 2023. The next snapshot will probably come after the livestream happens on October 15.