Minecraft 1.10 The Frostburn Update

Yesterday saw the release of Minecraft 1.10, to so called Frostburn Update.

The pace of major version releases of Minecraft has always been a bit erratic, but the long stretches where 1.7 and then 1.8 were the current releases made me wonder if the release cycle was settling down to an approximate year-long interval between drops.  That would let mod makers and those maintaining their own versions of the server software to keep up.

And now we have version 1.10, after having gotten version 1.9 just at the end of February.  A lot of mods haven’t been updated to 1.9 yet and now we have a new version.  Life in development; everything you depend on is either updated too quickly or not at all.

This is the list of features that come with 1.10 (A more detailed list here):

• Many bug fixes
• Added Polar Bear
• Added Husk and Stray
• An auto-jump option
• Improvements to some commands
• Structure blocks for custom maps
• Underground fossils made from bone blocks
• Added Magma Block
• Added Nether Wart Block and Red Nether Bricks
• Some huge mushrooms can be even larger
• A rare chance to find lonely trees in plains
• Find abandoned mineshafts filled with gold in mesa biomes
• Villages generate better paths between the buildings
• More variations of villages, based on the biomes they are built in
• Endermen have been spotted in the Nether
• Removed Herobrine

We all like the “many bug fixes” part I bet… unless we were doing something that depended on a bug to operate.

I got to take a peek at Minecraft 1.10 as our server was upgraded right away.  Among the options you give up when hosting on Minecraft Realms is the ability to choose what version your world runs on.  You are always running on the latest stable release.  So when I logged in last night it was, hey presto, new version installed and running.

When I logged in the first thing I noticed was auto-jump, which is on by default.  This is a feature from Minecraft: Pocket Edition (which I have on the iPad and will write about some day) that manifests itself largely by not requiring the player to jump (space bar) when climbing a block.

I got used to that pretty quickly, though now I have to wonder if there is any advantage to putting in stairs any more.

Then I ran off to see what else I might find from the new release.

One disadvantage of having a world that already has a large explored area is that to get some of the new things, they have to be generated post-patch.  So in order to see changes to villages or the promised new mesa biome abandoned mine somebody on the server has to go out exploring some more because old areas don’t regenerate, you have to find new ones.

And if I find another mesa biome, I’ll probably end up building a rail line to it.

But the new mobs can spawn even in old areas, so I could potentially find a polar bear, a husk, or a stray.  Given the latter two are, respectively, a new type of zombie that spawns in desert areas and a new type of skeleton that spawns in icy areas, I though a polar bear might be the best option.  So I went to the nether and used the transport hub there to get to an icy biome.  After a couple of day cycles searching around, I found a polar bear.

Polar Bear time

Of course, once I found him I had to call my daughter over to see the polar bear.  Annoyed at me shouting across the house to her for some dumb Minecraft thing, she was immediately enamored with the polar bear and wanted to know if it could be tamed or ridden or what.

The power of cuteness… even blocky cuteness.

As far as I know though, the polar bear cannot be tamed, though you can apparently put it on a lead and tow it places.  Maybe I will bring one do a desert biome.

Anyway, Minecraft 1.10 is out there and our world has been upgraded.