The first Minecraft Snapshot of 2024 is here, and it’s already looking like a pretty good year for the sandbox game.
This Snapshot, which is 24W03A, was released on Jan. 17, and directly addresses some player concerns about the Armadillo, includes some updates to the hostile Breeze mob, features some accessibility improvements, and a whole lot of bug fixes.
The highly controversial Armadillo has received a total redesign in the 24W03A Snapshot. This mob won in the annual Minecraft mob vote for 2023, but over 500,000 players didn’t even want it and still don’t seem to be happy with it, which might be part of the reason Mojang has completely reworked how this creature looks.
In the notes for this Minecraft Snapshot, the devs said they “gathered feedback from the first Armadillo Snapshot” when redesigning how this creature looks. Considering how controversial the mob vote was and the massive petition calling for an official end to it, this is probably a smart move as many players are still completely against the Armadillo.
As of this Snapshot, the Armadillo will also spawn in the badlands biome in addition to the savanna, which means you can load up the Snapshot and use coordinates to track down this mob in either biome. The Wolf armor that can be made by obtaining a Scute from the Armadillo has also been adjusted and all Spiders will now flee from Armadillos who are not in a rolled-up state.
Outside of the massive Armadillo overhaul, the 24W03A Snapshot modified a couple of the Breeze’s behaviors. This hostile mob now deflects all projectiles away and also directly shoots them back toward the shooter.
Spawn chunks now have a new game rule that you can edit to potentially help Minecraft run better for your specific setup and enhance your overall game performance. This new feature can be modified using a new command, which is spawnChunkRadius.
There are also a ton of bug fixes like stopping Armadillos from being afraid of players in Spectator Mode and fixing Wolf armor turning red when a Wolf takes damage. All of the other bug fixes are listed in Mojang’s 24W03A Snapshot notes.
The 24W03A Snapshot is the third one for Minecraft 1.20.5, which means we are slowly but surely getting closer to the highly anticipated 1.21 update, which will completely change crafting and combat as we know it. We don’t know exactly when the next update is, so for now, you’ll just have to enjoy the experimental features through the Snapshot system.