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Minecraft snapshot 13w39a darkens skies, safens sailing, kills crashes

New red sand in the desert.

Whichever way you look at it, Minecraft’s latest snapshot means you don’t have to worry so much about crashing. Your boat will no longer break up when sailing over lily pads, for instance, or dole out fall damage when running aground under certain circumstances. And there are a few less cases in which you’ll need to certarl, alt, delete.

I suppose we can stretch that point even further, to cover the new changes to weather effects. The sky will now dull to an appropriate shade before a thunderstorm, so no claps, booms or crashes from above will catch you unawares. What’s more, rain will now produce the right particle effects and sounds in the recently-added extreme hills biome. You’ll need to keep an eye on these things, because flame arrows are now extinguishable by the wet stuff.

Villagers will have a better idea of what’s going on with the weather too – you’ll no longer find them stumbling around the desert, reacting to rain happening elsewhere in other biomes. And while we’re on the subject of deserts, let’s take a moment to appreciate the newly tweaked palette of the mesa biome, seen above. This new hardened clay environment, destined for 1.7, now has a touch of red sand colouring its cheeks.

Head to the Minecraft Reddit for a comprehensive changelog. To load up the snapshot version of the game, download these files and create a new profile for ‘snapshots’ in the 1.6 launcher. Tick the box named “Enable experimental developmental snapshots”, and you’re off. Remember: you can find stable, official release Minecraft again in the dropdown box in the bottom left-hand corner of the launcher.

What’s the biggest deal in this update for you? Are you sailer or hunter?