Powder Snow

Powder snow is a trap block that, $$, can be obtained from cauldrons.

Natural generation
$$, powder snow naturally generates in mountain groves and snowy slopes.

Cauldrons
$$, a cauldron in a snowy biome fills with powder snow when it is snowing. Powder snow can then be picked up from this cauldron with an empty bucket.

Bucket
Using a powder snow bucket places powder snow. Placed powder snow can be picked up again with an empty bucket.

Breaking
Powder snow does not drop anything when mined, even with Silk Touch, and tools do not speed up mining.

Powder snow is broken by water or lava.

Usage
Entities (except rabbits, endermites, silverfish, shulkers, vexes and foxes ) fall through powder snow without taking fall damage and move much slower in it, similar to cobwebs. Powder snow does not cause suffocation damage.

Mobs, armor stands or players wearing leather boots do not fall through powder snow. In this case the snow behaves as scaffolding when the player sneaks or crouches while on the block and jumps while inside of the block. In addition, fall damage is taken when falling on powder snow from a large height.

If an entity that is on fire touches powder snow, the powder snow melts.

Being fully inside a block causes a thick fog effect around the point of view.

Freezing
When an entity is inside a powder snow block, they begin to freeze, taking damage.

A player submerged in powder snow sees a frosty vignette slowly fade in at the sides of the screen and the FOV slowly decreases. After seven seconds (140 game ticks), the player's hearts change to a cyan frosty texture, and the player begins taking damage at a rate of HP every two seconds (40 game ticks). If the player leaves the powder snow block, the vignette slowly fades away. A frozen player moves slower than usual until the vignette fully fades away. This is controlled by the "TicksFrozen" data tag, which increases by 1 every tick (to a maximum of 300) for an entity within the powder snow block. It decreases at a rate of 2 per tick after the entity leaves the powder snow block. This is currently not a separate effect when used with commands such as, and does not have its own unique art, particles, or potion.

Wearing any piece of leather armor stops the freezing effect and damage. This applies to entities that can wear humanoid-oriented armor, such as zombies. Horses wearing leather horse armor also don’t take damage from freezing.

Snow golems, strays and polar bears are immune to freezing damage. On the other hand, fire related mobs like striders, magma cubes and blazes take extra damage from freezing.

ID




Trivia

 * The block was announced as “Snowier Snow” at MINECON Live 2019, and is still often called that by Mojang.