Java Edition Beta 1.8

Beta 1.8 is the first release of the Adventure Update. It introduced features that focused on fighting, exploration, and adventuring, as well as other aspects.

Blocks

 * Stone Bricks.png Stone Bricks
 * Cracked Stone Bricks.png Cracked Stone Bricks
 * Mossy Stone Bricks.png Mossy Stone Bricks
 * Stone Brick Slab.png Stone Brick Slab
 * Stone Brick Stairs.png Stone Brick Stairs
 * Brick Slab.png Brick Slab
 * Brick Stairs.png Brick Stairs
 * Oak Fence Gate Revision 1.png Fence Gate
 * Glass Pane.png Glass Pane
 * Iron Bars.png Iron Bars
 * Melon.png Melon

Items

 * Food
 * Melons
 * Raw chicken
 * Raw beef
 * Cooked chicken
 * Steak, which has cooked porkchop's old texture. Cooked porkchops' new texture is a tan shade of the same sprite
 * Ender pearls, which didn't do anything at the time, and had uncentered icon
 * New seeds for farming: pumpkin seeds and melon seeds that produce pumpkins and melons respectively. Pumpkin seeds cannot yet be obtained from a pumpkin, but only from the new abandoned mineshaft chests, melon seeds can be produced from melon slices, but can only be found originally from abandoned mineshaft chests.

Mobs

 * Enderman
 * As a placeholder, endermen used zombie sounds.
 * Silverfish
 * Cave spiders

World generation

 * Generated structures
 * Villages
 * Strongholds
 * Abandoned mineshafts
 * Ravines
 * New, fractal-based biome code; added and removed some biomes while making all of them more vast than before.
 * Rivers flowing through/in between biomes.
 * Ocean biomes, that are deeper and much more vast than before.
 * Mountain biome
 * Swamp
 * Snow in taiga and tundra biomes do not generate for technical reasons.
 * Far Lands
 * New ocean floor; random mix of sand, dirt, and clay.
 * Due to this, clay is much more common.

General

 * A new achievement: "Kill a skeleton with an arrow at 50 meters".
 * New Creative game mode.
 * New Mojang logo splash screen
 * New particle effects.
 * Performing a critical hit on any mob will cause 'sparks' to fly.
 * Explosion particles are now shockwaves instead of smoke.
 * Tiny stationary bubble particles can be seen when underwater.
 * Fog is now thicker and darker deep underground, and gives off particles. Due to this, the void appears black.

Gameplay

 * New combat mechanics.
 * Hold-to-charge bows.
 * Critical hits.
 * Players can parry with a sword by holding
 * Hostile mobs perform attack animations.
 * Mobs killed by players drop tiny flashing experience orbs that add to your experience bar.
 * New food system.
 * There is now a food meter.
 * Food no longer heals directly, but indirectly: if the food meter is above 90%, heals every 4 seconds.
 * All food (except mushroom stew) are now stackable.
 * Food takes 1.6 seconds to consume, accompanied with an animation.
 * Added sprinting

Blocks

 * Both Wooden and Stone pressure plates can now be placed on fences.
 * New texture for mossy cobblestone.
 * Improved chest model with a 3D lock.
 * Improved model for torches placed on walls.
 * User-placed leaf blocks no longer decay.

Items

 * Eating any raw food or rotten flesh has a chance to give the player food poisoning which makes the hunger bar decrease three times as fast.
 * Shears can now collect tall grass and vines

Mobs

 * Passive mobs will randomly flee if attacked by the player or other mobs (such as wolves).
 * Zombies drop rotten flesh instead of feathers.
 * The snout on pigs now protrude from their head.
 * Skeletons now hold full-size bows.
 * Player-to-mob damage decreased by half a heart.
 * Arrows that hit a mob visually "stick" into the mob rather than just disappear.
 * Skeleton arrows originate from about their eyes to the bow, instead of above the head.
 * Animals no longer despawn which makes it possible to capture them.

Gameplay

 * Improved lighting
 * Day/night cycles no longer require chunk updates and is a smooth transition
 * The lighting on a block is given a tint based on the most prominent source of light
 * Reddish from artificial light sources
 * Blue from Moonlight
 * Total darkness keeps the same black tint
 * Sunlight gives the same white tint
 * Artificial light now gives a very subtle 'flicker'.
 * Improved sunrise and sunset.
 * Clouds change color during sunrise and sunset to match the sky color.
 * Horizon, specifically haze changes color more vividly during sunset and sunrise.
 * Cloud height raised to the top of the map, so clouds can no longer phase through blocks.
 * Cloud movement syncs with the game's time.
 * Rain and snow both render faster
 * Armor bar moved to above hearts, due to food bar.
 * Holding the left mouse button with a weapon will now only swing once.
 * Holding the right mouse button to place blocks is slightly slower than before.
 * +Clicking the output item in a crafting square will craft all the items at once, and automatically places them in the inventory.
 * Farming changed to be less volatile. Farmland no longer un-tills when stepped on and only now when jumped on.
 * The player can now jump four blocks horizontally by sprinting.
 * Unarmed damage was decreased from to  (reverting to the behavior from before Beta 1.5).

General

 * Changes with debug-view
 * Mobs are no longer visibly labeled with their entity ID
 * The world's numeric seed is displayed in a field below player position.
 * Changing fog by hotkey now requires debug-view to be open in addition with pressing.
 * The version tag appears in-game again.
 * The 'Multiplayer join screen' has been improved, mainly with a server list.
 * Main menu/options changes
 * The main menu's background is now an animated scene.
 * The version tag is now displayed on the bottom-left rather than the top-left
 * New sliders for Field of View and Brightness
 * 4 new entries in control list
 * "Attack", "Use Item", and "Pick Block" can now be remapped.
 * Player list in multiplayer, defaults to.
 * The game's coding now allows for mods to more easily change the (map) height.
 * Operators can switch back and forth between survival and creative mode.

Removals

 * Removed old terrain.
 * Removed the far lands.
 * Removed the human mob as an entity, leaving only its AI.

Fixes
9 bugs fixed


 * The + Click crash bug from 1.8-pre2 is fixed.
 * Fixed Redstone circuits not working after  glitch is now fixed in multiplayer.
 * Destroying boats and minecarts now creates particles.
 * Ghast attack sounds are fixed multiplayer.
 * The Far Lands have been removed; there is now only void.
 * Fixed cactus and trapdoor items being too big
 * Fixed the "smart farms" glitch where the hitbox of a fence would extend past the hitbox of tilled soil and prevent it from reverting to dirt when walked on.
 * Fixed several crash bugs relating to pistons.
 * Increased the z-buffer from 8-bit to 24-bit, fixing graphical issues with AMD graphics cards.