Minecraft 25w02a

25w02a opened the 1.21.5 cycle on January 8, 2025, and it was the first snapshot of the year. A lot of it is about making the forest floor look less bare. Leaf litter now lies around in forests, dark forests and wooded badlands, and you can make your own by smelting any leaves block. Wildflowers do the same for birch forests and meadows, and they craft into yellow dye. Both blocks can hold several pieces in one block space and face four directions.

Pigs got variants based on the biome they spawn in. When players breed them, the baby takes the variant of one of its parents instead, so moving a herd to another biome won't change the next generation. Bees are drawn to wildflowers and can be bred with them, farm animals can now spawn in badlands, and creakings can be named with a name tag.

Two small changes matter more than they look. The lodestone recipe swapped its netherite ingot for an iron ingot, which made lodestones renewable, and lodestones can now turn up in ruined portal chests. And holding two movement keys to walk diagonally no longer makes you faster than walking straight. Elytra flight now also stops when you glide into a ladder, vines or scaffolding.

The pale garden takes up more of the space that used to be dark forest, and woodland mansions can generate inside it. Creaking hearts show a dormant texture during the day. For command users, text components in commands like /tellraw and /title are now written in SNBT instead of JSON. The snapshot fixed 78 bugs.