Minecraft 1.20.5 snapshot 24w03a patch notes: Armadillo textures updated, experimental changes, and more

Minecraft Java Edition has just received the first snapshot of 2024. The developers finally returned from their break to deliver a boatload of new changes and fixes for the features arriving in the upcoming 1.20.5 update. Some notable alterations in the latest patch notes include new textures for armadillos, wolf armor, and a tiny visual change to the wolf's collar.

This snapshot also sees some interesting changes made to breeze-and-villager-trading rebalancing, which can be found under experimental features in the patch notes. With the developers releasing 24w03a, Minecraft's 1.20.5 update has now received its third snapshot. Let's take a look at the features and changes introduced in Minecraft snapshot 24w03a.

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Minecraft snapshot 24w03a patch notes

Minecraft snapshow 24w03a is here (Image via Mojang)

New features

Armadillo

After gathering feedback from the community, Mojang has brought new visual changes for armadillo, armadillo scutes, and wolf armor.

• Armadillos now also spawn in Badlands

Armadillo rolling up behavior

• Spiders and Cave Spiders will run away from Armadillos not in a rolled up state

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Changes

• Adjusted the texture of the Wolf Collar layer to be more consistent with the new Wolf Armor

Accessibility

• The default focus is now always set when entering or exiting any menu while navigating using tab or arrow keys

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Experimental features

Breeze

• Breeze now deflects all projectiles
• Deflected projectiles now deflect in the direction of the shooter

Trade Rebalance

• In the Trade Rebalance Experiment, Villagers who buy armor now ignore durability and can buy damaged armor

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Technical Changes

• The Data Pack version is now 28
• The Resource Pack version is now 24
• Custom Villager trades can be configured to accept items that have different tags from the expected item byadding ignoreTags: true in the trade's NBT
• 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
• Added transfer packets
• Added cookie packets
• Decreased the default size of the spawn chunks and made the value configurable

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 authentication with a new flag

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 are persisted 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

Spawn chunk changes

• The size of the spawn chunks changed from radius 10 (19x19 entity ticking chunks) to radius 2 (3x3 entity ticking chunks)
• This was done to reduce memory usage, loading times 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

Data pack version 28

• The minecraft:sweeping enchantment has been renamed to minecraft:sweeping_edge
• Added Advancement Criteria trigger default_block_use which triggers due to the default interaction of a block by a player, such as opening a door
• Added Advancement Criteria trigger any_block_use which triggers due to any type of interaction with a block by a player, such as using an item on the block or its default usage

Besides these, tons of other interesting bug fixes and other technical changes are available in Minecraft snapshot 24w03a. Interested players can check the official patch notes here to learn about everything new in the latest snapshot.

Coming as a surprise to most players, Mojang seems to be releasing armadillo alongside wolf armor in the 1.20.5 update for Java Edition. Initially, these features were supposed to be released with Minecraft 1.21 as a result of armadillo winning the Mob Vote 2023. Fortunately, fans won't have to wait for the launch of the 1.21 patch to get their hands on cute armadillos and wolf armor.