Its been a bit since we've updated you all on what's to come with Mojang Studio's next update for Java Edition, this is the first part of a three-part news dump to catch up with the latest news.

• Tools are now sorted based on material in the creative inventory

SPAWNPOINT & SETWORLDSPAWN

Added angle parameter for setting the default facing angle of a respawning player.
Syntax: spawnpoint [targets] [pos] [angle]
Syntax: setworldspawn [pos] [angle]
New parameters:

• angle - Floating point angle in degrees. Supports the relative ~ modifier

• worldgen/noise_settings can now contain noise configurations

• MC-194464 - “large_oak_foliage_placer” incorrectly serializes to “blob_foliage_placer”
• MC-194298 - Bone meal can’t create flowers
• MC-194257 - Several instances of “snowy” being spelled as “snovy” in the vanilla_worldgen configuration
• MC-194220 - Totems of Undying give you Fire Resistance II instead of the maximum Fire Resistance I
• MC-194200 - Birch trees are not generated correctly in the Birch Forest and Birch Forest Hills biomes
• MC-194173 - Hitboxes are rendered offset while picking up items or experience on graphics settings Fast and Fancy
• MC-193662 - Player flying in creative slightly above blocks while sneaking and jumping are restrained to that block
• MC-193560 - Enchantment Glint doesn’t render on elytra in specific circumstances
• MC-192021 - Enchantment Glint effect on transparent blocks not properly rendered on Fabulous graphic
• MC-191623 - Ender dragon battle music does not stop after ender dragon has been defeated
• MC-191031 - Players in spectator mode can interact with boats
• MC-190559 - Baby Striders don’t die when it’s raining and they are in lava
• MC-189788 - Certain mobs in boats sometimes take drowning damage while the boat is moving
• MC-185019 - Worldgen settings with the empty structures parameter causes all structures to generate extremely frequently
• MC-176836 - Unarmed vindicators raise their arm in offensive way when attacking
• MC-176778 - Camera is reset when a block reappears due to high server latency
• MC-166718 - Mobs no longer suffocate inside of soul sand, farmland or grass paths
• MC-158735 - Pillagers without crossbows hold their arm up in an offensive way
• MC-153230 - Players in spectator mode can stop minecarts

• Modified how respawn positions are chosen for beds and respawn anchors
• Lanterns can now be waterlogged
• Soul Lanterns can now be waterlogged
• Tweaked the Bastion Remnant chest loot
• Chests in Bastion Remnants are now more likely to be located on top of gilded blackstone

RESPAWN BLOCK POSITIONS

• Respawn anchors will prioritize cardinal directions over corners
• Beds will prioritize the side of the bed the player entered from and then spaces circling around the foot of the bed up to the head of the bed
• Respawning players will now face the block that they respawned at
• Placing players onto dangerous blocks is now avoided when possible

• The sign edit screen will now initialize from existing sign text (should have no noticeable impact on vanilla)
• Tags can now have optional entries

OPTIONAL TAG ENTRIES

Entries in tags can now be marked as optional. Failure to resolve optional entries does not prevent the whole tag from loading.

Example:

{
  "replace": false,
  "values": [
    "#minecraft:beds", // existing syntax
    { "id":"#missing:tag", "required": false }, // optional sub-tag entry

    "minecraft:anvil", // existing syntax
    { "id":"minecraft:stone_button", "required": true }, // new syntax for required tags
    { "id":"missing:block", "required": false } // optional single-element entry
  ]
}

• MC-35765 - Viewing text in Right-to-Left language while in another language renders backward and non-connected
• MC-57869 - Some item tooltips use § for coloring, rendering them incorrect in right-to-left languages
• MC-116857 - Advancement descriptions use unnecessary capitalization on generic resource names
• MC-148447 - Villagers often get stuck while trying to go through a door at the same time
• MC-149060 - Villagers “spam” doors by opening and closing them really fast
• MC-153195 - Mobs can drop items with duplicate enchantments
• MC-181925 - Unarmed vexes raise their arms in an offensive way when attacking
• MC-187344 - Fast graphics tooltip has incorrect ‘tree-leaves’ spelling
• MC-187379 - Text for pack.incompatible.confirm.new makes no sense
• MC-187380 - Incorrect grammar in en_us translation of pack.dropConfirm
• MC-188389 - Several minor errors in datapackFailure.title
• MC-188390 - Comma splices in four strings
• MC-188392 - Death message for getting shot by a skull is not grammatically correct in all situations
• MC-188621 - Mojang “Production Manager” credit is indented further than other credits
• MC-188880 - Baby zombified Piglins riding on chickens aren’t positioned properly
• MC-189918 - Multiplayer warning uses “Mojang” instead of “Mojang Studios”
• MC-190102 - Some UI strings are not consistently capitalized
• MC-190288 - Fabulous and Fancy graphics tooltips have missing commas
• MC-191441 - Right-to-left text is rendered bottom-up in some cases
• MC-191562 - “Cancel” button overlaps “Done” button when uploading a world to Realms, making users unable to upload world
• MC-192296 - Spider Jockey from a spawner minecart crashes with"java.lang.IllegalStateException: Entity is already tracked"
• MC-193276 - Player floats slightly above strider while riding it
• MC-193339 - NullPointerException during shutdown when rcon enabled with no password
• MC-194263 - Large End Cities do not generate correctly/get cut off
• MC-194273 - Save data of new Nether biomes is lost when upgrading a world to 20w28a or above
• MC-194350 - Some feature configurations don’t load in a datapack (java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: value already present: clh@77f95e19)
• MC-195052 - “angle” argument in spawnpoint command doesn’t use “minecraft:rotation” parser
• MC-195582 - Typing a colon twice or after a slash in chat when specifying a function/item/block/etc. in a command crashes the game

• New accessibility settings have been added to help with visual comfort

• Distortion effects such as nausea and the Nether portal overlay can now be reduced
• At lower values, the nausea effect is replaced with a green overlay as an alternative visualization
• Field of view effects shown after speed modifiers are applied can now be reduced

• Chains can now be placed in all orientations
• Endermen will no longer place their held blocks onto bedrock blocks
• Piglins now become angry with players who open or destroy a Chest Minecart
• Villagers now lose their job sites when changing dimension
• Chat delay has been added to the Chat Settings screen

• Custom world generation and dimension settings now use the same folder pattern in data packs as other resources (namespace/<type>/resource.json)

• MC-73884 - Throwable projectiles get destroyed on contact with non-solid blocks
• MC-125758 - Bubble column does not affect egg, snowball, ender pearl, splash potion, lingering potion, fireball, and shulker bullet
• MC-158987 - Raid still continues after a villager turns into a witch
• MC-163767 - Villagers get ejected from a minecart when converted to a zombie villager
• MC-167045 - Banners are rendered too dark in the inventory
• MC-170900 - New Nether plants can be picked up without shears/silk touch
• MC-174574 - Soul speed doesn’t work when slabs and blocks of similar height are placed above the soul sand block
• MC-176015 - Strider suffocates when player is saddled on and looking up with Warped Fungus on a Stick
• MC-176034 - You can walk on striders
• MC-177651 - Despite being cold outside of lava, striders don’t try to stay in lava
• MC-178061 - Chat Delay option doesn’t exist in Chat settings
• MC-182330 - Crossbow-wielding Piglins behave weirdly when they try to pursue invisible players
• MC-185490 - Separated trader llamas on leads cause TPS hit
• MC-187398 - Smithing table and stonecutter recipes are not unlocked when used
• MC-187904 - Data packs cannot replace settings of vanilla dimensions during world creation
• MC-189414 - Smithing table doesn’t calculate amount of output items correctly
• MC-189797 - Hoglins, Zoglins, melee Piglins, and Piglin Brutes do not properly attack invisible entities within normal range
• MC-191168 - Piglins that convert into Zombified Piglins while sitting on a minecart sometimes sink into blocks
• MC-192032 - Villagers don’t always try to claim the closest workstation and are sometimes focused on a non-existent one or one out of their reach
• MC-193213 - Leads are positioned incorrectly on players and wandering traders
• MC-194263 - Large End Cities do not generate correctly / get cut off
• MC-194299 - Template pools fail to load via datapack
• MC-194845 - Subspace Bubble advancement cannot be completed with 7 km distance
• MC-195062 - Raids often will not end in defeat when all villagers are dead if there are job sites in the village
• MC-195544 - Game crashes after killing a mob that is being ridden by a guardian while it is being ridden by a wither skeleton

• Crimson and Warped Roots no longer require shears when mined

EXECUTE COMMAND

• execute in now respects dimension scaling

• MC-69876 - Pistons at Y=1 do not push downwards / at Y=254 do not push upwards
• MC-124320 - Endermen can pick up and place snowless snowy grass blocks
• MC-130558 - Item frames cannot be emptied if gamerule doEntityDrops is set to false
• MC-134084 - If gamerule sendCommandFeedback is disabled, /msg or /tell don’t display the message to the sender
• MC-136553 - Dyes in creative inventory are in reverse order
• MC-152037 - Powered, activator and detector rails are deleted when pushed/pulled onto a block they cannot be placed on
• MC-187357 - Strongholds will not generate in floating_islands or caves preset
• MC-189736 - “distance” within predicate no longer works
• MC-190552 - Demo mode resets position and inventory upon launch
• MC-190859 - floating_islands or caves buffet worlds no longer generate strongholds and ender eyes do not locate previously generated strongholds after upgrading to 1.16
• MC-192136 - Lava damage works differently than in previous versions
• MC-192236 - Endermen can place blocks on top of item frames on the floor
• MC-192371 - Paintings in the same block space pop off when chunk loads
• MC-192845 - Block Event Lag in 1.16 is excessive
• MC-194217 - Lava sets nether vegetation on fire despite it being fire resistant
• MC-194867 - Minecarts come out the wrong side of a nether portal and lose momentum when coming back to overworld
• MC-194953 - Custom Biomes are not useable in Predicates
• MC-195803 - Mob kill statistics are formatted in reverse: “N killed you <mob> times”
• MC-195851 - “Hat” layer on helmets detaches from Piglins’ heads while bartering
• MC-196245 - Charged creeper does not always drop skull if zombie variants are nearby
• MC-196441 - Stonecutter/Smithing Table recipes are not given after crafting a stack of more than one
• MC-196469 - F1 hides the nausea green tint
• MC-196473 - Pufferfish gives Nausea II instead of the maximum of Nausea I
• MC-196653 - Creating multiple datapack dimensions which reference the same dimension_type string causes “unregistered dimension” crash
• MC-196743 - Custom/modified biomes don’t work in the overworld

• MC-105248 Wet wolves become nearly black in dark areas
• MC-107529 Marker:1 Armor Stands render themself and their equipment dark if inside solid blocks
• MC-167756 Wolf is rendered too dark when not directly affected by skylight
• MC-190103 Crash when using a nether portal: java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException: fromIndex < 0: -2368549
• MC-191388 “No key position_predicate in MapLike” console spam
• MC-197053 Pressing F3+D clears the pending lines message, but doesn’t clear the pending messages
• MC-197152 Ghost Blocks can be generated in some piston setups
• MC-197218 Piston arm appears twice during retraction in some mechanisms