Minecraft has come a long way from its humble beginnings, adding in tons of new mobs, blocks, biomes, features, and items, forcing players to find new ways to play the game, and keeping them engaged and entertained for over a decade. The constant updates that go into Minecraft bring the best out of the game and allow Mojang to improve both versions of the game, Minecraft Java and Minecraft Bedrock. In recent times, Minecraft Bedrock has been getting some extremely useful updates that add features that were previously only available on the Java edition, slowly merging both versions of the game to ensure that there are no disparities between them.
These updates where Minecraft includes features that already exist, but only on one version are known as Parity updates, and this is what Minecraft’s Bedrock update 1.19.40 aims to do. Focused on adding in certain features that have been proven on the Java edition so that players on the Bedrock can get the same experience from their game. Along with these parity updates, 1.19.40 also fixes a few issues from gameplay to mobile controls to ensure that the game continues to run smoothly on all platforms.
Parity Updates
Update 1.19.40 added in quite a few parity updates to Bedrock edition from Java edition, from changes to the Ravager mob to death messages that display on the screen. Now, on the Bedrock edition, players that are killed with a renamed weapon will have that weapon name displayed in the kill message. Another big addition to Minecraft Bedrock was that no mobs will be able to spawn within Ancient Cities, which would make the game a lot easier for players who are exploring these deep places for the first time.
Ravagers were matched up with their Java counterparts to include similar collision boxes as well as speed, and now Evokers can take damage from Ravager fangs in Minecraft Bedrock edition. Several issues with Mud blocks were fixed as well, including the screen getting covered if a player swam above one of these blocks. Finally, update 1.19.40 added a few changes to Spectator Mode, including removing XP orbs when a mob is killed, removing sounds from bubble columns, and spectators being invisible to normal players, a great feature for streaming or multiplayer.
1.19.40 Fixes
Along with the changes to match Bedrock edition up with Java edition, Update 1.19.40 also added a ton of fixes to gameplay, mobs, blocks, items, realms, and even mobile controls. The update added a few fixes to avoid crashes including crashes caused by explosions, exiting a split screen session, and using spawn eggs. The update also added a feature that allows players using a keyboard to now sprint diagonally, which is a great addition that can help many players who either need to get somewhere quickly or get out of danger.
Certain mob interactions were also fixed, such as baby villagers accepting flowers from Iron golems, allowing tamed mobs to follow players through End portals, and preventing long-ranged mobs from hitting players through walls. Several other fixes include preventing falling blocks from breaking, beacons disappearing, arrows and tridents stopping, username changes, and texts that display when uploading worlds. Mobile control bugs were also fixed including ones that prevented players from removing items from the Hotbar, auto-jump allows players to jump out of the water, allows for scrolling in the villager trade list, and improvements to the Pocket UI.
While Minecraft 1.19.40 is not nearly as flashy as the main updates, such as the Caves & Cliffs, and the most recent Wild Update, it is a step to give Bedrock edition players a similar experience as the Java edition players. There are many other changes including technical changes and additions of new commands that can be found on the Minecraft website. As Minecraft continues to release Parity changes, there is a real chance that in the future, Bedrock and Java players will be able to experience the same game with all the same features, including snapshots, and bug fixes to streamline the process, both for Mojang and the player.
Minecraft is available now for Mobile, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
