Minecraft: Bedrock Edition Beta 1.17.0.54 includes many technical changes for the “Caves and Cliffs update”

Minecraft continues to walk the long road to the Caves and Cliffs update, which is now set to release in two separate parts later this year, with the release of Minecraft: Bedrock Edition Beta 1.17.0.54. The latest Minecraft: Bedrock Edition beta includes new tweaks and changes from the upcoming Caves and Cliffs update, but with a particular focus on technical updates.

Beta 1.17.0.54 includes upcoming changes and features both halves of the Caves and Cliffs update, so be sure to enable the “Experimental Features” toggle if you want to be on the front lines of Minecraft testing. There’s also something to watch out for if you’re a Minecraft creator.

Minecraft continues to grow at an exponential rate and recently announced that Minecraft has nearly 140 million monthly active users. If you’re one of those 140 million, you might consider buying something from our list of the best Minecraft products, toys, and gifts. In case you missed it, I also recently covered why Minecraft on Xbox Series X|S is disappointing for some users.

The full changelog for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition Beta 1.17.0.54 includes:

Experimental features

• Minecarts with chests can also spawn in mineshafts at -y
• Fortresses will be more hidden in larger caves
• Fixed a bug that prevented Shulkers from teleporting below y=0

Not experimental

Axolotls

• Axolotl can no longer move on its own while playing dead
• Axolotls no longer play dead on land

Powder

• Dispensers can now dispense a Powder Snow Block using a Powder Snow Bucket
• Skeletons no longer freeze when standing inside Powder Snow and turn into parasites after 45 seconds.
• Mobs can now correctly find their way over Powder Snow
• Vanilla Parity: Powder Snow can no longer support scaffolding
• Vanilla Parity: Powder Snow Block mining time now matches mining time in Java Edition
• Players can no longer jump onto powder to avoid sinking

azalea leaf

• Azalea and Blooming Azalea leaves now drop on their own when extracted with Silk Touch tools

Caves & cliffs

• Infested Deepslate variants can be found in the Extreme Hills biome
• Copper Block is now crafted with 9 Copper Ingots
• The copper block can be transformed into 9 copper ingots
• Copper Ore and Deepslate Copper now drop 2-3 Raw Copper
• Textures for raw iron, copper and gold items have been updated
• Rough iron, copper and gold block textures have been updated
• Compass and clock textures have been updated

spore flower

• Spore Blossom no longer survives in water

The copper

• Copper now has correct graphical and sound effects when waxing/dewaxing
• Undersides of leaves now display correctly when placed on copper slabs

shiny squid

• Squid and Glow Squid now make a specific sound when letting out ink
• Old signs no longer glow when dyed

Goat

• Increased the chance of getting a Screaming Goat when breeding a Screaming Goat with a non-Screaming Goat

Items

• Fixed an issue where flippant first person objects would render when zoomed in with the spyglass

Pointed drip edge

• Stalactites now drop water a little more often when filling cauldrons

raw gold

• Piglins now admires Block of Raw Gold
• Piglins now admires raw gold

rooted dirt

• Tiling rooted earth towers no longer instantly turns it into a block of farmland

Telescope

• Spyglass is now part of the “Equipment” category of the Creative inventory

Vanilla parity

• Falling blocks now break when landing on Shulkers

User interface

• Fixed controller slider sensitivity scaling
• Fixed a bug preventing users from reassigning the ‘E’ key in “Keyboard and Mouse” settings

Orders

• Fixed an issue where Minecart with command block was not affected by the CommandBlocksEnabled Rule of the game

Multiplayer

• the /kick the command works fine if cheats and command blocks are disabled, and it no longer uses target selectors

Technical updates

volumes

• Experimental feature
• Create volumes in your world: simply create a “volumes” folder in a saved world and place json files in it – 1 json file per volume
• Currently you can attach a fog – minecraft or your own custom fog – to a volume. When the player enters the volume, the fog will take effect

General

• Added AddVolumeEntityPacket which contains information about a volume entity, including its network ID and NBT containing information about the definition and components of the volume, which will be added to the client’s registry
• Added RemoveVolumeEntityPacket which contains the network ID of a volume entity to remove it from the client’s registry

Monster

• Added new optional flag use_simplified_breeding for minecraft:genetics making up. When this flag is set to true, offspring will never inherit hidden alleles from parents as primary and primary alleles as hidden alleles. This makes it easier to set up a simple breeding logic

GameTest framework

• Components
  • Deleted function setColor(color : Number)
  • property value : Number – Gets or sets the color of the entity
  • Added additional component interfaces. movement, navigation, healable, breathable, ageableand tameable components can be referenced via entity.getComponent(componentName : string).
  • minecraft:color
• Container – New interface for interacting with entity containers. Can be referenced via entity.getComponent("inventory").container
  • a function setItem(slot : Number, itemStack : ItemStack) – Adds itemStack to the container at the given location
  • a function getItem(slot : Number) : ItemStack – Get the itemStack at the given time slot
  • a function addItem(itemStack : ItemStack) – Add the given itemStack to the first available slot in the container
  • a function transferItem(fromSlot : Number, toSlot : Number, toContainer : Container) – Transfer a ItemStack from fromSlot from container to toSlot of toContainer
  • a function swapItems(slot : Number, otherSlot : Number, otherContainer : Container) – Trades ItemStacks between the container slot and otherSlot of otherContainer
  • a function worldLocation(relativeLocation : BlockLocation) – Transforms the coordinates of a given GameTest location into its corresponding global location
  • a function relativeLocation(worldLocation : BlockLocation) – Transforms the coordinates of a given world location into its corresponding GameTest location