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New Minecraft update makes combat much more rewarding, and easier from now on

The new Minecraft update makes very welcome improvements to projectile accuracy, as snapshot 25w19a goes live in Mojang's building game.

You don't want to take on a Creeper with a sword if you can help it. You're better off going into battle with a bow and arrow, creating distance between yourself and your target to ensure any residual damage doesn't wreck the world you've spent countless hours trying to perfect. This is one of the earliest lessons you learn in Minecraft, and with Mojang's latest snapshot, called 25w19a, it's about to get much easier to pull off those vital ranged shots.

Projectiles. Mojang's latest sandbox game's new update should now be more accurate, at least when you first release it. Before 25w19a, every single item you fired in Minecraft had a fixed 0.3 block target tolerance margin, making you slightly less accurate at shorter ranges. This is no longer the case.

As of right now, all projectiles in Minecraft start with no tolerance margin for the first two ticks (roughly 0.1 seconds). That increases by 0.05 per tick until it reaches the previous 0.3 blocks margin. This means your projectiles will stray much less during the early part of their flight, making your initial shots more accurate. "This allows for better precision close to the shooting player or entity, while still allowing for some collision leeway when the projectile is further away," Mojang writes.

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It's not just projectiles being changed in 25w19a, however, as Mojang has also made some alterations to fog. Not only will it now become foggier when it rains across your world, but fog has been tweaked to "improve atmospheric perspective." Mojang has also done a slew of bug fixes, if you always want an eye on what's being changed.

To take the new Minecraft snapshot for a test yourself, just go to the installations tab in the Java Edition of the game and enable the feature.

Make sure you check out all the Minecraft mods on PC right now, too, to properly enhance your time with the game.

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