If you've been playing Minecraft within the Java Edition's Snapshots that've showed off parts of the Caves & Cliffs update, you've no doubt been introduced to Copper, a new resource that'll be available for everyone once the big update is released. Copper's been tweaked here and there throughout the past couple of Snapshot releases, and in the latest release made available this week, both it and the Amethyst Clusters also included in Caves & Cliffs were updated again.

The latest Snapshot was released this week for all Java Edition players to try out if they want to do so. It provided Copper with some "new functionality" and adjusted the rate at which Amethyst Shards are dropped from mining Amethyst Clusters depending on how players are mining the resource.

You can see the full notes for the new features and changes in the 21W11A Snapshot below. If you want to see what bugs have been fixed in the latest release, you can do so by checking out the official patch notes.

New Features in 21W11A

Lightning rods can now, for the very first time ever, be waterlogged

New functionality for applying and removing wax from Copper

Bonemealing rooted dirt now grows hanging roots underneath

Waxing Copper and Oxidization

• Right-click with Honeycomb on Copper Blocks to wax them
• Use honeycomb in a dispenser to wax Copper Blocks
• Axes can scrape off wax and oxidation of Copper Blocks
• Lightning strike hitting Copper will clean its oxidation

Changes in 21W11A

• Waxed Copper Blocks can be crafted into 4 Copper Ingots
• Tweaked the cave sizes
• Slightly increased the frequency of Diamond Ore blobs
• Hanging roots block now renders randomly offset
• Breaking a Big Dripleaf stem now drops a Big Dripleaf Block
• Moss Blocks can be crafted with cobblestone or stone bricks to make the mossy versions of those blocks
• The facing direction of Small Dripleaf Blocks is now determined by which direction the player is facing when placing it
• Fully-grown Amethyst Clusters now drop 4 Amethyst Shards (or more with Fortune) when mined with a pickaxe, and drop 2 Amethyst Shards when broken by hand, piston, or other means

Technical Changes in 21W11A

• Added F3+L shortcut to generate and persist performance metrics from in-game