Java Edition 1.4.6

1.4.6 introduced fireworks, enchanted books and the Thorns enchantment. It also added a warning for users playing on soon unsupported systems (PowerPC and Java 5). While it was not the last update to 1.4, it was the last one before the snapshots of 1.5 started.

Blocks

 * Nether brick slabs
 * Crafted much like other slabs, using nether brick

Items

 * Enchanted books
 * Enchant books to receive a single enchant on them
 * Can be applied to items using anvils, consuming the book – Enchants can be applied to any item in Creative
 * Sold by villagers and found in dungeon and village chests
 * Can now be found in loot chests and by trading with villagers
 * Unbreaking can be applied to anything with durability
 * Efficiency and Silk Touch can be applied to shears, allowing the harvesting of cobwebs
 * Sharpness, Smite, and Bane of Arthropods can be applied to axes
 * Firework star
 * Used to create firework rockets
 * Combine gunpowder with dyes to get a firework star with those colors used for the sparkles
 * Also add glowstone, a fire charge, a diamond, a gold nugget, feather, or a mob head to make the firework twinkling, big, trailing, star-shaped, bursting, or creeper-shaped
 * Craft a firework star with dye to change the color the sparkles fade to
 * Firework rocket
 * Non-destructive, rise up in the air, and create colorful patterns when shot by dispensers or placed by players
 * Combine paper with gunpowder to get a firework rocket
 * Also add a firework star to add effects or gunpowder to increase the flight duration

Gameplay

 * Thorns enchantment
 * Armor enchantment
 * Deals damage depending on tier to attackers
 * Wears armor out more quickly.

Blocks

 * Monster spawners
 * Can now spawn differently configured mobs with different spawn chances

Items

 * Bow
 * A sound indicates when you hit a player with an arrow
 * Arrows now render from farther away

Mobs

 * Ghasts
 * Fireballs' blast radius can now be customized
 * Skeletons, zombies, and zombie pigmen
 * The armor and enchants they spawn with now are even harder on harder difficulties

World generation

 * Dungeons and villages
 * Now have a random chance to have enchanted books in their chests.

Gameplay

 * Inventory
 * You can drag and drop items – Press long to halve the stack before dragging
 * Enchantments
 * Fire Protection now extinguishes fire more quickly
 * Blast Protection now reduces explosion recoil
 * Protection is not as protective as it used to be in order to make specific enchantments more worthwhile
 * Minor improvements
 * Made item drops and framed items render in 3D when using fancy graphics
 * Items now show their name when switching in the hotbar
 * Can be disabled by changing  to false in options.txt
 * Right-clicking while sneaking now uses the held item instead of the selected block
 * Dropping items while holding now drops the whole stack
 * Death messages now appear in server log files

General

 * Display
 * Added a default resolution setting –  and

Fixes
64 bugs fixed
 * – [1-9]-clicking an item out of a furnace does not give XP
 * – Mobs walking slow when you hit them
 * – Graphical issue with trading
 * – Mobs can still revert farmlands to dirt even if mobGriefing gamerule is set on false
 * – Item textures of spawn eggs and firework stars not aligned properly when stacked
 * – Bats get stuck when flying through water
 * – Setting an enderman on fire with flint and steel or lava will not make it teleport away
 * – Items that are different only in damage cannot be swapped
 * – Water splash sound gets overridden by other sounds
 * – Animals on fire do not flee
 * – Player not shown in actual location after breaking boat
 * – Inventory items are lost
 * – Mis-identified server version
 * – Fresh install of 1.4.2 on fresh install of OSX 10.6.8 hangs
 * – Boats always get placed in the same direction and not based on how they get placed
 * – Endermen are set on fire when trying to dodge arrows on fire
 * – When you enter the Nether, the game auto-selects the first item on the toolbar
 * – Items do not "update looks" when stacked on ground
 * – Dropped items only auto-stack when moving, not when going through portals
 * – File Handle leak in RegionFileCache (MCP)
 * – Z-fighting in beacon block's bottom.
 * – Duplicating falling blocks (sand, gravel, dragon eggs...) still works with tweaks to an existing design
 * – Leaves have an incorrect tooltip
 * – Destroying a Jukebox NPE&Kick
 * – Minecraft graphics messed up
 * – Placing double slabs ignore damage values
 * – Minecarts cannot travel through nether portals
 * – "Drowning" in creative
 * – Bug with redstone's direction
 * – Enchant cannot enchant with ID 0 (Protection)
 * – Ghost block bug
 * – Game freezes at the start of a previously saved game
 * – Cannot modify the render distance setting - stays at "Far" regardless of changes.
 * – Shift-clicking smelted ores out of furnace cause minor visual bug
 * – Cannot look around while walking/sprinting unless jumping at first (happens on all gamemodes)
 * – Minecraft client crashes when connection times out
 * – Minecarts disappearing
 * – Error 50% of the time when trying to join a server.
 * – Zombie pigman's knockback stunlocks iron golem's defeating their intended purpose
 * – Cannot change texture packs
 * – Crash due to blaze fireballs
 * – Some textures appear as dark terrain.png images
 * – The XP sound doesn't play after getting each 5th level
 * – Minecraft crashing every time I get on for a little while
 * – Minecarts and falling entities flickering / jittering (updated 1.4.5)
 * – Passsive mob spawn eggs don't consume
 * – Endermen don't open their mouth when attacked by other mobs
 * – Lightning doesn't flash
 * – Game only loads the chunk I'm currently standing on when I log in, and then freezes and crashes.
 * – Client crashes when underground near a piston-and-redstone machine
 * – Skeletons will come close to attacker
 * – Particle overload when returning from AFK
 * – Slime audio bug
 * – Chest glitch - Server/Client desynchronization
 * – Pressing F3+B displays hitboxes.. rendering invisibility potions useless
 * – Wither can sometimes destroy its own star due to the posthumous detonation of wither skulls
 * – Minecart goes off track and into walls
 * – Beacon tiers don't work at y=0
 * – Enchantments not showing in item frames
 * – Flaming arrows take a moment to burn
 * – Cannot remove XP bars from the command when between level 0 and 1
 * – Skeletons not retaliating to iron golems or wolves
 * – Minecraft crashed, exception world
 * – Game client gets stuck on 'building terrain' screen

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