Java Edition 1.18.1

1.18.1 is a minor update to, released on December 10, 2021, which makes minor changes related to fog and fixes bugs. It is compatible with 1.18 servers.

Most importantly, this version fixes a zero-day security vulnerability in the Log4j library that could be used to perform a remote code execution exploit. As a result, players were urged to secure their clients and servers.

While this wasn't the last update to 1.18, it was the last one before the development versions of 1.19 started.

General

 * Fog
 * World fog now starts further away from the player, to make distant terrain more visible.
 * Instead of applying fog as a spherical volume, it is now applied as a cylindrical volume.

Fixes

 * Other
 * Fixed an issue that would cause players on low-bandwidth connections to get timeout errors when connecting to a server.
 * Fixed a critical security issue in which attackers are able to execute code on others' devices (RCE exploit) via in-game messaging or other methods where the game logs a certain exploitable string formatted as, due to an upstream vulnerability in log4j2.

Trivia

 * This is the first minor update to feature a third release candidate.
 * This was the last full version to be released in 2021.
 * 1.18.1 was released exactly 2 years after 1.15.

Videos
Videos made by slicedlime: