New Copper, Amethyst, Candles, Bundles & More! Minecraft 1.17 Caves and Cliffs Snapshot 20W45A

Hey everybody, it’s UnderMyCap and welcome back to another video! Today I am so excited to share this with you. This is the first ever Minecraft 1.17 snapshot and today I am going to be going through every single new feature they’ve added, what you can do with them, how to craft them, and a whole bunch more. I’m also going to try and make it a regular thing where every single snapshot that comes out, I’ll do a review covering all the features and changes, so if you want to stay up to date, make sure to subscribe!

If you’d prefer to watch the video version, you can check it out here: New Copper, Amethyst, Candles, Bundles & More! Minecraft 1.17 Snapshot 20W45A

🕯️ Candles

The first new addition to Minecraft in this snapshot is candles! Candles are a very cool light source for your Minecraft worlds — they’re very decorative, very fun to use, and they just generally look really cool. One thing I did notice about the candles is that they behave similarly to sea pickles. They share the same kind of texture and style, but the key difference is that the light source can actually be turned on and off. You light the candles by right-clicking with flint and steel, and to turn them off you simply right-click with your character. You’ll also notice that candles can be stacked from one to four, just like sea pickles, so you can have one, two, three, or four candles placed together.

Another addition with candles that I really love is that you can actually place candles in cake — so finally, you can have a birthday in Minecraft with your friends! All you have to do is place the cake down and right-click it with whatever candle you like. Do keep in mind that you can only place one candle on a cake. If you try to right-click it again, your character ends up eating the cake instead. One thing worth noting is that candles don’t produce a lot of light. They actually emit much less light than a redstone torch, so they’re more suited for creating a spooky or atmospheric environment rather than lighting up a cave. For caves, I’d still recommend using a torch.

To craft a candle, all you need is a honeycomb from a beehive and a piece of string. You don’t actually need a dye to craft a candle, but if you want a colourful candle you can simply place a dye next to it in the crafting grid and you’ll get a beautifully coloured candle that you can place almost anywhere.

🪨 Copper Ore

The next new addition is copper ore! Copper ore is a brand new ore introduced in this update and it can be used to craft a whole bunch of new items. Copper behaves like a standard ore — you need an iron pickaxe to mine it and you need to smelt it, just like iron. I’ll go through everything you can craft with copper below.

🟫 Copper Blocks & Weathering

The first thing you can craft with copper is the copper block. The copper block is a very special block that features a really exciting new mechanic called weathering. Essentially, when a copper block is exposed to the outdoors over a long period of time — not sitting in your inventory — it will slowly erode and change appearance. You can see the progression from a freshly crafted copper block all the way through to a fully eroded one. A really cool feature that wasn’t actually discussed at Minecon Live is that you can wax your copper blocks to stop them from eroding. This means you can let a copper block erode to whatever stage you like, then wax it to permanently lock in that look. It’s a fantastic feature for builders who want that aged copper aesthetic without it changing further.

I did try to run an experiment comparing a normal copper block against a waxed copper block by changing the game tick speed to speed up the weathering process, however nothing seemed to happen after about three minutes. This is likely either a bug or a feature that hasn’t been fully implemented in the snapshot yet. Either way, the waxed copper block is confirmed to stop the erosion process.

⚡ Lightning Rod

Another fantastic item you can craft from copper is the lightning rod! The lightning rod was introduced to redirect lightning bolts away from your builds to prevent fires. This is especially useful if you’ve built a wooden house or have wool structures nearby. During my testing it worked well for the most part, though I did notice that occasionally lightning still struck the surrounding area. This could be a bug or simply part of the implementation, but regardless it looks great and doesn’t stand out too much visually.

💎 Geodes & Amethyst

The next new feature is geodes! Geodes are small circular orb-like structures found underground throughout your world, and they are where amethyst spawns. When you break the amethyst blocks inside a geode, they make a really satisfying and pleasant sound which adds a lovely bit of vibrancy to the experience. Walking over amethyst also triggers sounds, which is a really nice touch. Geodes are covered in calcite and tuff, which are new blocks added to Minecraft. These blocks are designed to resemble a rough outer shell and help alert the player to the geode’s location so they don’t accidentally damage the amethyst generators inside.

There are two types of amethyst blocks inside a geode — ones that actually grow amethyst crystals, and ones that are purely decorative. When you destroy the amethyst-generating blocks, you’ll notice you can’t actually pick them up. This is by design — Mojang made geodes so that you can’t simply farm them up instantly. You need to return to the location to harvest the crystals over time. Amethyst crystals do emit a small amount of light, which is a nice touch for cave exploration, though they’re roughly the same brightness as candles so they’re not a replacement for torches.

You can also collect amethyst shards and craft them into amethyst blocks, which is great if you want those decorative blocks without having to go mining specifically for them.

🔭 Spyglass

Now you’re probably wondering what you can actually make with copper and amethyst crystals together — and the answer is the spyglass! Spyglasses work similarly to the zoom feature in Optifine, except they’re completely vanilla. You can use a spyglass to look at things in the distance, scout ahead, or check out mobs from afar. It’s worth noting that the spyglass doesn’t actually expand your render distance — it simply zooms in so you can see what’s already loaded in the distance more clearly. You can’t use it with a crossbow or bow, but you can hold it in your offhand alongside other tools such as swords, which means you can look into the distance while continuing to mine or fight at the same time. To craft a spyglass, all you need is two copper ingots and one amethyst shard.

🪟 Tinted Glass

The next new feature is tinted glass! Tinted glass is different from stained glass in a very important way — it does not let light through. When you swap out regular glass for tinted glass, the area inside goes completely pitch black because no light can pass through it. You can still see through tinted glass from the inside or outside, it just blocks all light from entering or exiting. This is a really useful feature for all sorts of builds and contraptions where you need to control lighting.

🎒 Bundles

The very last feature added in this snapshot is bundles! Bundles are a really cool new storage option that functions similarly to a backpack. They are crafted simply with rabbit hide and two pieces of string. Bundles work differently to most other storage in Minecraft — instead of opening a GUI, you right-click on items in your inventory to add them to the bundle one by one, and they slowly fill up. Bundles can hold up to 64 items total and cannot be filled beyond that. To empty a bundle, you simply right-click it and it dumps all of the stored items directly back into your inventory. It’s a very Minecraft-style solution and I can already see a whole bunch of great uses for bundles in the future, especially for managing inventory space more efficiently.

Final Thoughts

So that’s everything covered in the first Minecraft 1.17 Caves and Cliffs snapshot! Hopefully I haven’t missed anything — if I have, I’ll do my best to cover it in another video. If you enjoyed this, please leave a like and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel for plenty more Minecraft content as well as reviews on all the upcoming snapshots. I am also aware that goats are now available in Bedrock Edition and I have purchased Bedrock, so I’ll be doing more Bedrock tutorials soon once I figure out how to access the beta. Thank you so much for reading and I’ll see you in the next one!