So I looked at the new 1.9 snapshots..

I think they're found in the end ships.
Good fun? I'd say that's an understatement
Have you tried flying around with it in a world with amplified terrain yet? In my opinion it's very exciting and fun. And if you have a computer that can afford a render distance of more than four chunks you might even see some pretty scenery while flying about.
I really like how it works. It's intuitive, not quirky, but still challenging.
Also, my friend born_ego found out a way to fly infinitely: knockback arrows! If you aim up while flying, it's pretty easy to hit yourself. And with a knockback I or II enchantment on your bow you'll fly higher!

I like the wings, but I hope they aren't just random finds, like horse armor, because they have durability. If they're rare, or hard to get, they'll be somewhat pointless, since they'd wear out. Elytra is the hard shell of a beetle, so I'm wondering if they come from drops, from something in the end?

From what I read so far these wings can be found in End structures as well as End ships. Not sure about the randomness factor though. I should probably create a new world so that my End world also gets reset, that way I can take a look at the new End ships (mine still have the beacons in them).

Yeah, they wear out but you can apply the Unbreaking enchantment on them. And well, your message gave me an idea and what do you know... You can actually repair these. Since you mentioned that shell I figured that it might be build from something like that or similar, so I started experimenting. And what do you know:

Considering that the voters armor is leather I now can't help dream about a voters Elytra I dunno, gained at a voting streak of 500 or such?

PS (edit): always keep an eye out on durability before taking to the air. If it wears out while you're up there then you're in for a hard landing

I want this so badly



Hm, seems I should have capitalized the letters but meh, you guys get the drift here, right?

In case you're wondering: I made that using a command block. The 1.9 update also added some changes to command blocks and that actually triggered me to study these a bit more. I'm decent with Minecraft commands, have some feeling for NBT tags but I was still lacking experience with command blocks (hardly used them). I caught up (I'll share some of my findings soon enough) and yah.. after my last post I figured that I should try and make my own "voter wings"

For the record: yes, those purple letters should be yellow (&6), non-italic plus bold and underlined. The only way to do that as far as I know is to use an NBT editor (can't do it in-game) and that went a little too far for me.

hmm, voter wings

NBT editor <3

Frost Walker I Enchantment:
Turns water near you to ice (only y coordinate you are on) (6x6 square with 1 block from each corner taken out)
Frost Walker II Enchantment:
Turns water near you to ice (only y coordinate you are on) (8x8 square with 3 blocks taken from each corner)

Mending Enchantment:
Exp repairs things you carry
#AddThisToOreBuster

I'm dubbing 1.9 "The Pretty Drastic Update"

I can take the Elytra as a addition, but mending enchant. they have to be joking. this is just , well you know...
PS:i know this was done with bad grammar. just as bad as mending, he he

A new snapshot and new things to discover... Tuqueque already mentioned it, they've added a new cost to brewing:

So apart from the ingredients to brew things you'll now also need to supply some blaze powder which seems to act as some kind of "filter" (not sure). The good news though is that one blaze powder seems to last quite long. In this picture I just brewed 3 potions of fire resistance 8:00 (so used netherwart, magma cream and redstone), so it seems that you'll easily be able to brew 9 - 15 potions with one blaze powder. The bad news is obviously that we're likely going to be more depending on blaze rods, and I'm not too sure I like that. It seems to me that the only reason they added this was to make brewing harder on us. Even though it can already be extremely hard, especially if you can't manage to find a nether fortress.

Still, it doesn't seem to be as bad as enchanting has become in 1.8 (IMO obviously; I just don't like the "place item & get fixed enchants" approach).

Next, they changed some of the enchantments. Enchantments which have only one single level are now mentioned without the level. So: 'Flame I' is now shown as: "Flame". 'Infiity I' is now "Infinity". And so on...

Frost walker does just that: it turns water into ice, but only as long as you're standing on a solid block:

So basically this allows you to quickly cross water. And the fun part is that the ice doesn't stay, after only 5 - 10 seconds you'll see cracks appear in the ice, those cracks will get larger and eventually the ice disappears as if it melted or got crushed or such:

Watch the edges of the ice here and you'll see what I mean with 'cracks'.

Another interesting thing to know is that this enchant won't work if you're standing in the water. It'll only work when standing on a solid block next to the water, otherwise your boots will act just like any other:

There is also the enchant "Mending". That enchantment will use xp orbs to repair items (when they've been used). So instead of increasing your overall XP it would increase the items durability. Note that I didn't discover this on my own; I was curious about it and looked it up

Finally... Some of you were curious how I made those "Voter Wings" which I showed above. It's really very easy.. First you'll need a command block (/give @p command_block), then simply paste the following code into the commandblock:

Code:

give @p elytra 1 0 {HideFlags:5,Unbreakable:1,display:{Name:"EMC Voters Wings", Lore:["Unbreakable","Soulbound","Final","Voting Reward"]},ench:[{id:34,lvl:5}]}

Add a button or something to the command block and you're all set.

The command above gives you the Elytra with the 'Unbreaking V' enchant. However, I only need the enchant to make it "glow" so the HideFlags property makes sure that no enchantments are mentioned. Next the item is also marked "Unbreakable" (this is a vanilla Minecraft feature) but because this is already displayed in the Lore section I also hid that property (HideFlags 4 + 1; 4 to hide Unbreakable and 1 to hide the enchants).

So yeah, get your own voters wings

Hm... are you able to feed into the blaze powder slot with a hopper?

Yes, you can. A hopper on top drops items catalysts (wart, item, dust, powder) into the top area. A hopper on one side, will feed into the bottom, for bottles and a hopper on the other fills the the blaze powder slot.

Changing topic to the Frost Walker enchant... They have some work to do on that, in my opinion. While my initial thought was "This is great", I quickly moved on to trying to see what kind of trouble it might cause and found a potential headache. It seems that the enchant hits any water block next to the block you're on. That's regardless of whether that block is calm or flowing. So, if you pour a bucket of water out near a ledge, you make ice blocks. Scoop your water, move out onto the ice, pour water again (flowing water at edges freezes as before). Scoop water, repeat. In my opinion, this could have a high potential for grief, if it's not addressed. It would be really easy to coat the entire waste with an ocean...

Here's a video I made showing it:
Video Link

Ooh, yes. Nicely demonstrated. I do think something should be done against that. I don't really think flowing water should get frozen, so they could fix it by checking only for stationary water.

Discovered something new again, and I'm not too sure I like it. Well, actually I do because it solves an issue I have with the game, but it's also a love/hate kind of thing...

I've stated this a few times now: if you manage to get a good base in single player which can supply you with enough food and you do plenty of mining then you can be settled pretty quickly. Even with iron armor you'll be able to withstand most issues. The only problem remaining is to find the end portal which could result in a bit of Enderman grinding.

However...

Today I found my first stronghold all on my own in the SMP2 wastelands (was one of those things I always wanted to do). In 1.8 there are is a maximum of 3 strongholds per world. In 1.9 this has been raised to 128, also see here. While it does makes things a little easier I now can't help wonder if its not becoming a bit too easy. Of course seeing is believing, I guess this is reason enough to try the snapshot again later this week.

Even so... In all fairness I do stand corrected on some of the things I said earlier.. Mojang does make fighting a bit harder in the new upcoming version, but on the other end it also seems to become a lot easier to find the end portal. Which IMO also counts for something.

Alas... Last task for this evening: stronghold exploration.

Do the different end portals all bring you to the same end location/dragon?

As it seems to me (and I may be wrong on this; and hope I am) it's like the only way to explore the end is to start from the area you find the dragon. So, unlike the nether, you can't just run to some new area in the over-world and create a new gateway to a new location. This was fine, when there was nothing else in the End, apart from the one island. but now it seems very limiting, when there's a near limitless End to explore.

All portals will bring you to the same location, so you're correct in saying that you need to start exploring from where you killed the dragon.

That's somewhat disappointing. Hopefully they change that around somehow. It'll get pretty boring running and building bridges, in hopes of finding more loot, further out.

Yes, but don't you think they increased the range too? Like, in the current stable version strongholds only have the chance to spawn near the center of the world. Perhaps strongholds are able to generate further out in 1.9. I don't know though; I haven't done tests, I'm just speculating.

End Crystals now drop from Skeleton Horses. (Bitter sweet)


Only placeable on bedrock and obsidian

Used to respawn enderdragon. (Above)

Doesn't show bedrock texture at bottom.

SWEET!!!

haha, nice, ninja'd by Sky (I know it's been a few days, details, details...).

Yeah, this evening I also dove into the snapshot and I can tell you guys that 1.9 is going to be awesome. There's still a few issues I think, the current snapshot version is playable but felt really sluggish at times (I couldn't even get into the End in survival mode because I would glitch through the obsidian platform) but according to Mojang we're near the end of the snapshot line...

I started a new world and build myself a new NetherEnd area to experiment in. Also: when all goes according to plan then Aya and me are most likely going to test the server version somewhere upcoming weekend. I can't wait to see how some things behave on a server (shooting each other with spectral arrows should be fun).

Anyway, there are still a lot of changes which I managed to spot during my session today.

First of all: command blocks. In case you're not familiar with them (they don't appear in the Creative inventory): command blocks are just what their name implies: blocks which can execute a command. Usually this is done by triggering them with redstone. However, this also means that in order to get the most out of commandblocks you'd also need to know some redstone basics. In the new version you can change the type of a commandblock so that they can trigger themselves and don't need redstone:

Here I have a small redstone circuit which uses a daylight sensor in reverse mode. So the darker it gets the stronger the signal I get. The commandblock you see here gets triggered when the sun is about to set. It'll add 11000 to the current time value, which makes it turn day again. The green commandblock is new: the green color indicates that the commandblock is in chain mode. Meaning that the moment when the main command block gets triggered it'll automatically trigger the one in front of it (see the arrow on the side):

Next: beetroot. You can find a new vegetable (or fruit?) in villager and end structures: beetroot. You can plant it on farmland and eventually harvest it after which it will drop both the beetroot itself and optionally some seeds (comparable to wheat):

You can eat beetroot by itself, but if you have 6 of them and a wooden bowl then you can also make beetroot soup. Finally we get some soup into Minecraft, seems like the first time for that

The debug screen now has an help screen and adds more options to check up on FPS and resource usage, with a bit of history:

And if you use the F3-q option (so press F3, keep it pressed, then press q) then you get to see this:

I think this is really helpful! Some of these commands have been eluding players for quite some time now. But there's more... If you press F3 while keeping shift, alt or both pressed then you'll get instant access to some resource usage charts:

You can clearly see that my FPS values are not what they should be.

End crystals already somewhat existed in Minecraft, but now they're being officially added to vanilla gameplay. If you kill a skeleton horse then there is a chance that it will drop an end crystal:

Now, I summoned this horse manually, but in vanilla play there is a chance that they will spawn in the woods during a thunderstorm. If they do then they're ridden by a skeleton. I think this is really an interesting dilemma: are you going to tame the horse so that you got a cool skeletal horse, or do you kill it and hope for a crystal?

And as Skydragon already showed above: if you collect 4 then you have enough to respawn the Enderdragon. And speaking of which... The Endermen will now also respond to the dragon and fight it sometimes, especially when they're above the end portal:

This was really bizarre; every time the dragon left this place I could find several enderpearls lying around. So far I assumed that the endermen were after me, but when the dragon looks at them they also get mad at it for doing that.

Also cool: the dragon egg can now teleport!



Here I hit the egg with my pickaxe and what do you know?



It ends up in a completely different location. So you no longer have to worry too much about losing the egg. If you hit it then it'll simply re-appear somewhere else. This makes it a lot easier to get the egg without risking it falling into the portal:



But even if it does fall into the portal then you still don't have to worry because you'll get them eventually. If you drop items into the end portal then those get transported to the overworld. So once you transport after them then you can pick them up. It does sometimes cause for some weird effects. Remember that command block circuit I build in the overworld?

This is what happened when I killed the dragon and dropped some stuff in the end portal:



The reason why this is so bizarre is because there is no time in the End... Some items dropped through the end portal which caused the overworld to load, and that triggered my command block as well..

Respawning the Enderdragon = danger!

This is really cool stuff...

If you place the crystals around the end portal then first they will regenerate all the other crystals on top of the obsidian pillars:



And then... It's as if you're spawning in the wither, because those crystals don't sit around; they'll go with a bang:



And voila... one more enderdragon.

This is dangerous stuff

And in case you're wondering... You can find Enderdragon heads on the bow of end ships:



Also... You can no longer spam-use enderpearls, they now got a timeout to consider:



I think the animation looks sloppy, but I suppose it does get the message across.

Now... this is speculation but it seems that end structures now spawn a whole lot less than before. In my previous world I ran into a few easily. In this world however... Well, I got into the "end island section" on coordinates: -757, 90, -1037 (just ignore the Y value). The first End structure I managed to find (including that end ship) was on: 784, 100, -3161. That's quite some distance!

Also new (I think): end structures now come with End banners:



And you can find good loot inside these structures. For example: iron armor with the Mending enchant (this will automatically repair the item whenever you gain any XP).

Shields can now be fully customized using a banner, and if you do so then it doesn't use up the banner:



And there you have it... My last look into the snapshot.