Minecraft snapshot 15w31a let’s us in on upcoming Combat Update

Public testing for Minecraft's upcoming Combat Update is ready to begin rolling out. If you thought that the update might be focused on Combat, you were right (what gave it away?).

There's plenty of stuff coming with the update, but there are certain things from the update won't be on the public test realm. So, Mojang's Dinnerbone has let us in on " the things you should not expect to find in this super-alpha-development-preview-test-build-thing."

Fair warning: Signs and books are destroying things – don't use them until an updated snapshot releases tomorrow! Always back up your world before you update or run them through a different folder! Report bugs here!

Here's Minecraft snapshot 15w31a, a la Dinnerbone:

• Any balancing of any kind.
  • Seriously, expect things to be hilariously overpowered or underpowered.
• Melee combat changes.
  • Melee combat will change, just not in this snapshot.
• Shields.
  • They tie into the melee combat changes.
• The meaning of life.
  • That’s also for another snapshot.
• Hugs.
  • You can find those over here instead.
• Perfect respawn mechanics of the end.
  • You can respawn the dragon right now by drawing a creeper face with clay, but it won’t respawn everything yet. That’s temporary.
• Lots of new items/blocks which don’t exist yet.
  • That’s why you’re respawning the dragon like above.
• New potions or enchantments.
  • There will be new ones, just not right now!
• Subtitles support.
  • It’s still planned for 1.9!
• Proper offhand interaction support.
  • Right now it doesn’t entirely work as expected, we have to go through every interaction and decide what should happen each time.
• Lots of stuff, really.
  • We have a lot of things planned for 1.9, and this is just the first snapshot. Gotta keep some surprises!

Since Windows 10 has released, you can now officially grab the Minecraft Windows 10 Edition. If you own the Java version of Minecraft, you can grab this Java-less version for free here.