A minor update for the Bedrock editions of Minecraft, 1.16.200, has just been released, adding a few small features – but there's some interesting features lurking beneath that facade.
One minor feature added in this update is a few new unique death messages for being killed by various mobs. These messages include "player was sniped by Shulker", "player was fireballed by Blaze" (or Ghast), "player was impaled to death by killer" (for trident kills), and "player was spitballed by Llama". This allows you to know exactly how your friends died in-game, and subsequently laugh at them for being killed by a llama.
The other minor additions are a message that appears on the game's loading screen alerting you if you have outdated graphics drivers (be sure to update them if you see this) and more sound options in the menu.
A big feature in this update many players have been waiting for is RTX raytracing for Windows 10 users, which has had public beta tests since April.
Raytracing allows for realistic beams of light to interact naturally with the Minecraft world, producing amazing-looking gameplay. It is only available on computers with RTX graphics cards due to the huge computing power needing to produce these real-time effects.
However, lurking underneath this update is a couple of features from the upcoming 1.17 Caves & Cliffs update – goats and powder snow.
These features were announced at this years' Minecraft Live event (the replacement to Minecon) and have been available for Bedrock users to play in the betas for 1.16.200.
Goats are fun little creatures that enjoy ramming into other mobs. If they accidentally run into a tree, they drop one of the horns, which the player can pick up and use. When blown, the horn makes the sound heard by illagers during a raid on a village – an interesting expansion to the game's lore.
Powder snow is half solid, half liquid – it allows mobs to walk over it if they are wearing leather boots, but fall in through it otherwise. When inside powder snow, mobs will slowly freeze to death, so get out while you still can.
Note that these features have been hidden in the full release of this version, so you won't be able to explore Caves & Cliffs until 1.17 betas begin for Bedrock.
View the full 1.16.200 changelog at the Minecraft Feedback website. For more information about using raytracing in this version, see the Minecraft.net article.