The next 1.20.3 snapshot also contains the first changes for 1.21! As revealed during Minecraft Live, in snapshot 23w42a. Mojang introduced a new tool known as “Crafter” that adds a new level of creativity to your gaming experience.
Experimental Features: The Crafter
The Crafter is a new block designed to enable crafting items and blocks using Redstone. When powered by a Redstone signal or pulse (note that it’s not continuous), the Crafter will release one crafted item at a time. Upon activation, it will eject the recipe result from its front face. If the outcome includes multiple item types, all the result items will be ejected simultaneously. What makes the Crafter truly versatile is its ability to be oriented in any direction when placed.
Crafter User Interface
The Crafter boasts a 3×3 interactable crafting grid. The slots on the Crafter’s crafting grid are toggleable, allowing players to modify a slot’s behavior by simply clicking or pressing it with an empty hand. A toggled slot cannot hold items and is thus immune to external item placement through devices like Hoppers and Droppers. Unlike the standard Crafting Table, the Crafter displays a preview of the item to be crafted, which will be automatically ejected on the next Redstone pulse. However, players cannot manually retrieve items from the Crafter.
The Crafter’s UI is shared among all players interacting with it, making it similar to Chests and Hoppers, allowing multiple players to engage with the Crafter simultaneously.
Crafter Interaction with Other Blocks
The signal strength from a Comparator ranges from 0 to 9, with each non-empty or toggled slot adding 1 strength. Hoppers can both insert and extract items from the Crafter, while Droppers can insert items into it. When items are moved in from another block, priority is given to filling slots following specific rules:
- Prioritize the first empty slot from left to right and top to bottom.
- If no empty slots are available, prioritize the smallest stack of the same item, selecting the first if multiple options exist.
- If a slot is toggled, it will be skipped, and the item will be placed into the container.
- If the item cannot be moved, it will be ejected into the world.
Mojang invites you to share your thoughts and suggestions in their dedicated feedback thread.
Other Changes
In addition to the Crafter, this snapshot introduces several other changes, including an accessibility option to hide the yellow splash texts in the main menu and a recovery screen for worlds with missing data, ensuring a smoother gameplay experience.
Technical Changes
For the tech-savvy players, the Data Pack version has been updated to 21, and the Resource Pack version is now at 19. There are also minor adjustments to chat component serialization.
