Minecraft Update Adds New Blocks And More For Java PC Version

Update: The RTX open beta for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition is now live. It is not supported in the Java version.

Original story follows:

The Java Edition of Minecraft, which is really just the PC version of the game that launched in 2009, has a brand-new update that adds some new features, including music by the composer of Celeste.

The update introduces the new Bastion Remnants, a series of structures that house both the piglins and hoglins. These can be found in all Nether biomes except the Basalt Deltas, and there are four types of structures that contain loot and various other goodies. The livestock may not be too friendly, though.

A new music disc has been added to Minecraft: Java Edition as well, and it comes from Celeste composer Lena Raine. The track, "Pigstep," can only be found in the new Bastion Remnants and follows three other tracks Raine worked on for Minecraft proper with the latest Nether update.

Players will also see Ruined Portals littered throughout both the Nether and Overworld. They can be found hidden underground, buried in sand, or under the sea and may teleport you to a chest or somewhere else entirely. The update also adds some new blocks, addresses a variety of bugs, implements additional monitoring tools, and more.

In other Minecraft news, the game's RTX version will go into open beta on April 16. Nvidia has released its new Game Ready Driver, which includes support for Minecraft RTX. This should give you the best performance if you're getting into ray-tracing technology.

Minecraft: Java Edition 20W16A Update Patch Notes

New Features in 20W16A

• Added bastion remnants
• Added ruined portals
• Added chain blocks
• Added a new music disc titled "Pigstep" by Lena Raine which can only be found in bastions

Bastion Remnants

• What's made of blackstone and full of Piglins and Hoglins? Bastion remnants!
• ​Added 4 separate bastion remnant types: bridge, Hoglin stable, housing units, and treasure room
• You can find these sizable structures in all biomes in the Nether except the treacherous ash-dusted towers of basalt deltas
• Explore, loot, and conquer a bastion remnant to call it your home... but beware, Piglins don't take kindly to intruders stealing their things

Ruined Portals

• Shattered remains of ancient nether portals. Wonder who built them?​
• They can be found in any overworld or nether biome.
• Some are hidden underground, under the sea, or buried in sand.

Changes in 20W16A

• Increased the amount of lava pools to make the deltas more "deltary."
• The Piglin banner pattern can now be found in bastions.

Techincal Changes in 20W16A

• Added a button in the GUI that generates a jigsaw structure starting from the jigsaw block, using given generation depth.
• Expanded the max size per axis of Structure Blocks from 32 to 48.
• Added a JMX MBean to monitor dedicated server tick times.

JMX Monitoring

• It is now possible to monitor the server tick times through JMX.
• The rationale for this is that JMX is a well-known and supported monitoring technology with existing integrations and tools.
• This enables server admins to hook alerts and graphing tools using ordinary JMX clients and dashboards.

Enabling JMX Monitoring

• A new flag enable-JMX-monitoring has been added to the server.properties file which if set to true will expose an MBean with the Object name net.minecraft.server:type=Server and two attributes averageTickTime and tickTimes exposing the tick times in milliseconds.
• In order for enabling JMX on the Java runtime you also need to add a couple of JVM flags to the startup as documented here.

Fixed Bugs in 20W16A

• MC-37557 - Sometimes a minecart sound plays/subtitle shown when loading a world.
• MC-91163 - Certain subtitles show up when the player is too far away to hear the sound.
• MC-154617 - Server hangs on stop due to rcon.
• MC-171020 - New nether biomes don’t work properly in buffet worlds.
• MC-175919 - Villagers sometimes stop farming.
• MC-177136 - All compasses and lodestone compasses point to the same target, regardless of what type of compass it is.
• MC-177238 - Windows symbolic link in saves/ is no longer followed as of 20w14a.
• MC-177253 - Running a set_attributes function throws java.lang.NullPointerException if it contains an undefined attribute.
• MC-177316 - Lodestone compass in item frame does not update after turning.
• MC-178368 - When rotating a lodestone compass is put in the item frame the compass don't work.

Get the Snapshot

• Snapshots are available for Minecraft: Java Edition. To install the snapshot, open up the Minecraft Launcher and enable snapshots in the "Installations" tab.
• Snapshots can corrupt your world, so please backup and/or run them in a different folder from your main worlds.