Minecraft Snapshot 25w20a: Saddles Finally Craftable After Years of Waiting

Since Minecraft's early days, saddles have been one of those items that players couldn't craft, forcing them to find them in chests, trade with villagers, or fish them up as rare treasures. This limitation has been a point of frustration for many players, especially those who wanted to ride horses, pigs, or striders but couldn't find a saddle.

With snapshot 25w20a, this long-standing limitation is finally gone. The recipe is refreshingly simple and intuitive:

• 3 Leather - Arranged in a "Y" shape in the top row and middle column
• 1 Iron Ingot - In the center of the crafting grid

The recipe automatically unlocks when a player picks up their first piece of leather, making it accessible very early in the game. This change dramatically improves the early-game experience, especially for players who enjoy exploring on horseback.

Historical Context: Why This Matters

To understand why this change is so significant, we need to look at Minecraft's history. Saddles were added to the game in June 2010 during the Infdev phase, long before horses were even implemented. For nearly 15 years, they've been non-craftable items that players had to find through exploration or trading.

The Minecraft community has been requesting craftable saddles for over a decade, with countless forum posts, Reddit threads, and suggestion videos dedicated to the topic. Now, after all this time, Mojang has finally listened and implemented this highly requested feature.

Another significant quality-of-life improvement in this snapshot is the ability to remove saddles, horse armor, harnesses, and carpets from mobs using shears. This addresses another long-standing frustration where players had to kill their mounts to retrieve valuable equipment.

There are some limitations to this feature:

• Equipment cannot be removed while the mob has a rider
• Equipment cannot be removed while the player is crouching
• Saddles cannot be removed from Ravagers using shears
• Dispensers with shears cannot remove equipment from mobs

This change makes it much easier to swap equipment between different mounts or recover valuable items like diamond horse armor without having to resort to killing your trusty steed.

Snapshot 25w20a introduces a wealth of new music to the game, composed by Amos Roddy:

New Music Disc: "Tears"

A new music disc called "Tears" has been added to the game. Players can obtain this disc when a Ghast is killed by a fireball that was deflected by a player. This adds another collectible disc to the game and provides a rewarding challenge for players who master the art of deflecting Ghast fireballs.

New Biome Music

Several biomes have received new ambient music tracks by Amos Roddy:

• Below and Above - For Cherry Groves
• Broken Clocks - For Forests
• Fireflies - For Deserts
• Lilypad - For Groves
• O's Piano - For Lush Caves

These same tracks have also been added to the menu music rotation, providing fresh sounds for players both in-game and while navigating menus.

Music UI Improvements

The snapshot also adds some nice quality-of-life features for music:

• Music now plays even when the game is paused
• Players can adjust how frequently music plays in game worlds
• An optional music toast can show whenever a song starts playing
• The currently playing song can be displayed in the top left corner of the pause menu

With saddles now being craftable, Mojang has adjusted various loot tables to balance the game. Saddles have been removed from several chest loot tables and replaced with 1-5 leather:

• Monster Room chests
• Ancient City chests
• Desert Pyramid chests
• Jungle Pyramid chests
• Stronghold altar chests

This change makes sense from a game balance perspective. Since players can now craft saddles, finding the raw materials (leather) in chests is more useful than finding pre-made saddles. It also encourages players to engage with the new crafting recipe rather than relying solely on exploration to find saddles.

The snapshot includes several other improvements and changes:

• Fog is now applied to 3D HUD elements such as first-person player hands and items
• Rain and thunder weather is somewhat less foggy now
• Rain fog affects interiors less
• The Dried Ghast Block no longer breaks if water flows into it
• Updated the main screen panorama
• Added the Realms logo to Realms loading screens
• Added region information when connecting to a Realm

There are also numerous technical changes for datapack creators and developers, including:

• The Data Pack version is now 77
• The Resource Pack version is now 61
• Added a way to display simple dialogs to users
• Added a new click_event action type for text components
• Ghasts now have a flying_speed attribute that affects their flying speed

To try out these exciting new features, you'll need to install the 25w20a snapshot. Here's how:

1. Open the Minecraft Launcher
2. Click on the "Installations" tab at the top
3. Enable the "Snapshots" checkbox in the top-right
4. Click the "New installation" button
5. Select "snapshot 25w20a" from the version dropdown
6. Give your installation a name (like "25w20a Saddles")
7. Click "Create" to save the installation
8. Go back to the "Play" tab and select your new installation from the dropdown
9. Click "Play" to launch the snapshot

Remember that snapshots are development versions and may contain bugs. It's always a good idea to create a new world specifically for testing snapshot features, or at least make a backup of any existing worlds before loading them in a snapshot.

Snapshot 25w20a represents a significant milestone for Minecraft, finally addressing one of the community's longest-standing requests by making saddles craftable. Along with the new music tracks and the ability to remove equipment from mobs, this snapshot brings welcome quality-of-life improvements that will enhance the gameplay experience for all players.

These changes show that Mojang continues to listen to player feedback, even if some features take years to implement. The craftable saddle recipe is simple, intuitive, and will make early-game exploration much more accessible for new and veteran players alike.

What do you think about these changes? Are you excited to finally craft your own saddles? Let us know in the comments below!