The final development update for 2020 of Minecraft's Caves & Cliffs update, 20w51a, has just been released by Mojang Studios for Java Edition, adding two much-anticipated new features.
The first is a feature players have been excited for ever since the showcase of Caves & Cliffs at the live Minecon event back in October: the axolotl.
These fun little critters look cute on the surface, but place one in water and it will soon become a bloodbath. Axolotls will seek out and kill any fish or squid they come across, leaving rivers and other bodies of water full of dead fish and squid ink.
When given a tropical fish to eat, axolotls will be motivated to also kill drowned zombies and the guardians found in the large ocean monuments.
If you taking a liking to them, you can collect them simply by picking them up with a water bucket, and have your own little fish-killing army.
This update also adds the long-wanted feature of being able to control how many players need to sleep in a bed in order to pass the night.
By default, all players on a server must sleep for night to be passed, like before. However, this can be changed using a game rule when cheats are enabled.
Game rule playersSleepingPercentage can be set to any positive integer, which sets the minimum percentage of sleeping players needed before night is skipped.
When set to 0, night is skipped immediately, and when set to a number above 100 night can never be skipped. Any number in between requires that percentage or higher of players asleep before night is skipped.
This update also makes minor changes to the sculk sensors added in the previous update. These blocks detect any vibrations, including sound, within an eight-block range. These changes include the removal of beginning to eat as a vibration type and having water silence a sensor.
As usual, this update fixes a couple of bugs added in previous updates, such as duplication of candles on cakes and game stalling issues.
Watch a showcase of this update in video form below: