What’s New in Minecraft Snapshot 21w40a? World Generation Tweaks! New Biome Names!

Ladies and gentlemen here is the fourth snapshot  for Minecraft 1.18 called 21w40a with another   round of tweaks to world generation, new  biome names, mob spawning changes and more.   My name is slicedlime as always at your  service with the news on this snapshot.  

Let’s dive in to world generation to begin with.  The biome layout has been further tweaked in   this snapshot – biomes are now closer to the 1.17  state in their relative sizes to one another. This   means for instance that if a swamp was generally  smaller than a plains biome in 1.17, that ratio  

Will now be more similar in 1.18 as well. In addition, the average size of most biomes   has been increased. Of course, this means that  all the biomes have moved around so don’t expect   snapshot worlds to look the same. Another change  to biome layout is that non-cave biomes are now  

Laid out in 2D – so as you go up or down in  elevation, the only change you will see to the   biome is if you enter or leave a cave biome. This  fixes a number of issues relating to things like  

Grass and leaf colors changing with height and  has also reduced the amount of microbiomes.   A bunch of biomes have been renamed!  Stone Shore is now called Stony Shore.   Jungle Edge is now called Sparse Jungle.  Snowy Tundra is now called Snowy Plains.  

Giant Tree Taiga has been renamed to Old Growth  Pine Taiga and in a similar vein Giant Spruce   Taiga is now Old Growth Spruce Taiga and Tall  Birch Forest is now Old Growth Birch Forest.   The old Mountains biome is now called  Windswept Hills, Wooded Mountains has  

Turned into Windswept Forest and Gravelly  Mountains into Windswept Gravelly Hills.   Shattered Savanna is now Windswept Savanna. Wooded Badlands Plateau is now simply called   Wooded Badlands and finally a few of the  new mountain biomes have also been renamed.   Snowcapped Peaks is now Frozen Peaks  and Lofty Peaks is now Jagged Peaks.  

In addition to all the renames, a bunch of biomes  that were now the same as other biomes have been   removed – this applies to many of the hills  and edge type biomes that only differed in   their setup with regards to terrain shape. Villages are now slightly more spread out  

Than before, and water lake  features no longer generate.   They’ve been removed since surface aquifers  now provide local areas of water instead.   A couple of feature-related fixes have also  been done to fix the enormous amount of   sweet berries generating in taigas and the  far too sparse blue orchids in swamps.  

If we turn our attention underground there  are more world generation changes to be   had. The amount of dungeons have been  increased, with them especially being   more prevalent below height 0. Blobs of  gravel now also generate below height 0.   The frequency of underwater magma has been  increased, and some aquifer-related issues  

Have been fixed. As a side effect of  this, expect aquifers to have moved   around compared to the previous snapshot. A few fixes to cave vines have also been done:   Cave vines would generate without their  tip if they generated in tight spaces,  

And they’d also generate down into water. Both  those bugs have been fixed in this snapshot.   Finally, the random pattern of the bedrock  layer near the bottom of the world and   top of the nether are now dependent on the  world seed. That pattern used to be the same  

For the same position every world. This snapshot also brings even more   tweaks to the ore distribution. The purpose of  this round of tweaking is to make branch mining   deep down in the world more rewarding. There are now more diamonds to be found  

From height 16 and down, the lower you go the  more you’ll find. All the diamonds added in   this snapshot compared to the previous one are  hidden and the blob size is somewhere in between   the large and small types from before. Iron in mountains can now be found lower down,  

Starting to generate at height 80 with more iron  generating the higher you go. This distribution   of iron previously started at height 112. Copper now also generates over a wider span,   from -16 to 112 which used to be 0 to  95. A new, extra, uniform distribution  

Of gold ore can now be found in the lowest  reaches of the world below height -48.   And emerald ore can now generate lower in the  world, down to -16. Previously emerald could   only generate from height +32. More  emerald also generates in total.  

And that’s it for the ore distribution changes.  Let’s move on to Blocks and Items but stay with   the topic of ores and a change to copper ore. The  drop rate of raw copper from copper ore has been  

Increased. The default drop is now between  2 and 5 items, up from between 2 and 3.   In addition to this a change has been  made to all the stonecutter recipes,   where cutting one block of copper in the stone  cutter now yields 4 cut copper blocks.  

Before we move on to mob changes, let  me ask you to please take a moment to   give the like button a whack – it helps  YouTube show this video to more viewers,   so I would really appreciate that, thank you. Now let’s talk about Mob changes. To begin with,  

The previous snapshot introduced a bug where mobs  would headbang if you held an item they liked.   That bug has been fixed in this version. In addition to this there are a number of   mob spawning changes in this version.  Axolotls now only spawn in water and above  

Clay blocks in lush caves. Glowsquids now only  spawn in water blocks, under height 30.   Aquatic creature spawning has changed too,  with Cod, Salmon, Pufferfish, Tropical Fish,   Squid and Dolphins now only spawning  in water between heights 50 and 64,  

With the exception of Tropical Fish that now  also spawn at any height in lush caves.   In the previous snapshot, dripstone caves  were changed to no longer spawn Zombies but   instead spawn Drowned. A part  of this change has been removed,  

But not all of it – Drowned can still spawn in  Aquifers in Dripstone Caves, but Zombies can   once again spawn in Dripstone Caves as well. Finally, Goats no longer spawn in stony peaks.   An update to an advancement in this  snapshot as well: The old biomes that  

Didn’t generate anymore which I previously  mentioned had been removed are no longer   required for the “Adventuring Time” advancement For visual changes in this version, a couple of   bug fixes. Banners without any patterns now  once again render properly and treasure maps   once again have the water outline. In performance and stability news,  

A number of fixes to improve stability have been  done, including a fix for random chunks being   re-generated when opening a world from Minecraft  1.12.2 or earlier. In addition, optimizations   have been done to reduce the performance impact of  having large amounts of Axolotls, Goats, Hoglins,  

Zoglins, Piglins, Piglin Brutes or Villagers And that’s that for 21w40a. Thank you to you   top notch viewers who stayed through  the entire video – I appreciate it.   And if you liked this video, I encourage you  try to another one of my videos – like this one.