Adventure Update

The Minecraft "Adventure Update" was an immense update to Minecraft, similar to the Halloween Update. The Adventure Update was originally designated as Beta 1.7, but it was later postponed to Beta 1.8. It was split into three updates also including Beta versions 1.9 and 1.10 due to its size and unfinished status. For more updates related to this, see this link.

Features

Users from the Minecraft forums who were picked gave input on the new features. Players can play offline without premium, but they can't use all of the features, like multiplayer and items.

Mobs

Three New Mobs

• New Enderman mob:
  • They take damage from water.
  • They emit purple smoke particles the same as or very similar to portal particles.
  • They drop Ender Pearls.
  • They open their mouth when hostile/looked at.

• New Silverfish mob:
  • Will spawn from rarely generated blocks that look identical to stone or Stone Bricks.

• New Cave Spider mob:
  • They spawn in Abandoned Mine Shafts.
  • Their attacks are venomous and will turn a player's health yellow-green upon being poisoned (will not kill them but they may lose 4 health. If they are below 4 health, then it will bring them down to ). They cannot poison players on Easy difficulty.
  • Has a unique mob spawner.
  • They are smaller than regular spiders.
  • They are also blue in color.

New Blocks

Nine New Blocks

• Stone Brick
• Stone Brick Slabs
• Stone Brick Stairs
• Brick Slabs
• Brick Stairs
• Fence Gates
• Glass Panes
• Iron Bars
• Melons

Creative Mode Options

New Features to the Terrain Generator

• Optionally enable or disable generated structures
• NPC Villages that include buildings and farms.
  • Buildings include houses, "smithies", and wells: all of which are connected by a gravel path.
    • The naturally generated blocks found in villages are: Stairs, Fences, Glass and Glass Panes, Ladders, Wooden Doors, Crops and Farmland, Furnaces, Black Wool, Bookshelves, and Pressure Plates.
  • Will spawn only on flat areas.
• Strongholds, consisting of 4 new blocks: Stone Brick, Mossy Stone Brick, Cracked Stone Brick, and Iron Bars.
  • Will only spawn 3 times in a map.
• Abandoned Mine Shafts
  • Contains naturally generated Cobweb.
• Ravines including canyons on the surface and ledges to walk on.
• New, fractal-based biome code that spawns much larger versions of existing versions of biomes along with 5 new biomes.
  • Rivers flowing through/in between biomes.
  • Ocean Biomes that are deeper and much more vast than before.
  • Mountain biome
  • Swamp biome which is the only biome to generate vines on trees (before the update that introduced jungles). Mushrooms are more commonly generated here as well.
• Using Bonemeal on Mushrooms will generate Huge Mushrooms.
• Clay is now much more abundant.
• Snow in Taiga and Tundra biomes does not generate for technical reasons. They returned in Beta 1.9
• New combat Mechanics.
  • Hold-to-charge bows.
  • 3 different charged states; takes less than 1 second to fully charge.
  • Fully charged bows causes a player to walk slower.
• Critical hits.
  • When a player hits a mob while falling or if a player is above the mob.
  • When the mob is hit by a fully-charged arrow.
• Players can "parry" with a sword by holding the Right Mouse button.
• Hostile mobs perform attack animations.
• Mobs killed by players drop tiny flashing Experience Orbs that add to a player's experience bar.

Hunger System

Food Bar

• New Food System.
  • There is now a food meter.
  • Food no longer heals directly, but indirectly: if the food meter is above 80%, heals about every 5 seconds.
  • All food items (except Mushroom Stew) are now stack-able.
  • Food takes 1.6 seconds to consume accompanied with an animation.
  • Eating any raw food or Rotten Flesh has a chance to give a player food poisoning.

New Foods

Five New Foods

• Melon Slices
• Raw Chicken
• Raw Beef
• Cooked Chicken
• Steak (has Cooked Porkchop's old texture.) (Cooked Porkchops' new texture is a tan shade of the same sprite.)

New Farming Options

Farming Features

• New farming options:

1. Plant-able pumpkins and melons each with a central stem that grows to max size and spawns a fruit next to it.

• Melon Seeds
• Pumpkin Seeds

Achievement

• A new achievement: "Kill a skeleton with an arrow at 50 meters".

Sprinting

• Sprinting: By double pressing the forward button, a player will be able to move faster.
  • Sprinting is limitless, but will deplete one's hunger bar.
  • Hitting a mob while sprinting deals knock-back.
  • Jumping while sprinting boosts the jump to a length of about 4 blocks.
  • Sprinting makes particles come up from the ground.
  • While sprinting, the field of view slightly increases.

Mobs Behavior/Differences

Mob changes

• Passive mobs will randomly flee if attacked by a 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.

Tools

New Uses for Shears

• Obtaining Vines
• Obtaining Tall Grass

Graphic/Lighting Effects

Lighting

• New improved lighting
  • Day/night cycles no longer require chunk updates. Lighting is updated via a texture, whose coordinates are the block's sky light and block light levels.
  • The lighting on a block is given a tint based on the most prominent source of light
  • Reddish from Non-sunlight light sources
  • Blue from Moonlight
  • Total darkness keeps the same black tint
  • Sunlight gives the same white tint
  • Non-sky based 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.
  • Fog is now thicker and darker deep underground, and gives off particles. Due to this, the void appears black.
  • Cloud height raised to the top of the map, so clouds no longer phase through blocks.

• New texture for Moss Stone to match Cobblestone's.
• New particle effects.
  • Performing a critical hit on any mob will cause 'sparks' to fly.
  • Explosion particles are now shock waves instead of smoke.
  • Tiny stationary bubble particles can be seen when underwater.

Main Menu/Option

Main Menu/Options Changes

• The Main Menu's background is now an animated scene.
  • In the Main Menu, the version in the main menu is in the lower left, instead of the upper 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 SMP, defaults to Tab ⇆.
  • The 'Multiplayer join screen' has been improved, mainly with a server list.
  • Changes with debug-view (F3).

• 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 to pressing F.
• The version number plate displays ingame again.
• User-placed leaf blocks no longer decay.

Miscellaneous

Game-play Effects

• Rain and snow renders faster with caching.
• Armor bar moved to above hearts, due to the food bar.
• Both Wooden and Stone pressure plates can now be placed on fences.
• Improved chest model with a 3D lock and an open state/animation. They are also now slightly smaller than one full block, and cannot have a breakage texture applied to them.
• Players with the OP position on a server can switch back and forth between survival and creative mode.
• The game's base code now allows for mods to more easily change the(map) height.
• ⇧ Shift+Clicking the output item in a crafting square will craft all the items at once, and automatically places them in the inventory.
• 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.
• Animals no longer Despawn, which makes it possible to capture them.