Ice caves, frostbite and brittle ice: what you can test right now

The last game drop of the year has a frozen theme, and a large share of it can already be played in test builds. The update adds a new cave type, a cold-weather mob and several building sets. It also brings two practical features: jukeboxes that play music discs one after another, and a quick way to turn water into ice. In a round-up on minecraft.net, Sofia Dankis says Mojang will keep adding each new test feature to the same post, so it works as a running checklist for the drop.

The first batch was covered in the Bedrock preview and beta changelog. A second wave has now arrived in a Java Edition snapshot and the latest Bedrock beta and preview at the same time. Here is everything in testing so far.

Ice caves and the frostbite

The main addition is the ice cave, an underground biome decorated with two new blocks: ice crystals and icicles. According to minecraft.net, ice crystals glow and look striking on cave ceilings. Icicles are sharp and fragile, so they can be knocked loose and will break easily. In the official clips, lava and ice sit side by side inside these caves without melting each other, which should give builders some unusual colour contrasts.

The caves also bring a threat. The frostbite is a frozen zombie variant that Mojang has now given its own name. It throws ice balls, and these projectiles fly fast enough to catch players off guard. Mojang also mentions a Freezing potion as a possible answer when a frostbite fight goes badly.

Brittle ice and crevasses

Brittle ice is a new block that fails under your weight. It does not break the moment you step on it. Once cracks start to form, though, they keep spreading until the block gives way. You can craft it by adding water to blue ice. In the wild it usually covers a crevasse, a narrow frozen ravine that leads down into the ice caves, so a careless step can drop you straight into the new biome.

Jukebox playlists and a new disc

Music fans get a long-requested quality-of-life change. Place a chest on top of a jukebox and fill it with music discs, and the jukebox will play through them in sequence. Mojang officially calls this a jukebox playlist. There is also a new disc to add to it. Hyper Potions composed the track, and players can find it in igloo basements.

New building sets

• Packed ice bricks: a full set with bricks, slabs, stairs, walls and a chiselled block, all in a blue tone that sets them apart from ordinary bricks.
• Snow bricks: a full family that finally lets builders use snow as an indoor material.
• Calcite bricks: available in plain and polished forms, with the usual slabs and stairs plus a pillar block.

Freezing water and new ambient sounds

Sulfur cubes have a new trick. If you feed one blue ice, it will instantly freeze any water it touches. Mojang jokes that this could make boats obsolete, but in practice it looks most useful for bridging and for shaping terrain.

The drop also adds new sounds. Ice crystals now give off an ambient noise, and so do ordinary ice blocks, but only under specific conditions. The block must sit in a frozen ocean or river, be surrounded by other ice, have water beneath it and have open air above it.

What players are saying

We had no creator videos or comment threads to draw on for this round-up, so we cannot yet report fairly on how the community is reacting. Mojang's own post is clearly aimed at gathering opinions, and it urges players to send suggestions through the official feedback site and report bugs on the Mojang bug tracker. The features most likely to get people talking are brittle ice, the frostbite's ice balls and the instant-freeze sulfur cube. We will update this section once testers have spent more time with the builds.

How to try it

Java Edition players can get the latest snapshot through the 9Minecraft wiki. Bedrock players can download the current beta or preview from the links on this page, which include the Android APK, iOS and Windows GDK builds, as well as patched versions. Mojang also notes that anyone with an active Realms subscription can set up a free testing Realm to try the features with friends.

As always, test builds can crash or corrupt saves. Back up your worlds before you start, or keep the test version in a separate folder from your main worlds.