Just wanted to inform the reddit community on a slight armor change for the next snapshot.

In 1.9, damage is calculated as "damage / (final armor value / 25)" (for a while armor was divided by 30, but we changed it back to the 1.8 ratio).

The "final armor value" is the armor points of all the item pieces you are wearing (shown as "+X Armor" in the tooltip), minus half the damage amount of the incoming attack. This makes hard-hitting attacks bypassing armor to a greater degree than weak attacks.

The new thing now is that the "half of the damage" is a ratio determined by the items' "armor toughness". Diamond armor pieces will add to the toughness value, which means that diamond armor will be better at protecting against hard-hitting enemies. Currently full diamond armor will change "damage * 0.5" down to "damage * 0.25".

This may sound a bit confusing, but the point is to make it worth the investment to create diamond armor instead of iron armor.

This post will be updated in sync with Minecraft Forum's FAQ Thread. Please do not ask for tech support here; use #minecrafthelp IRC Chat for that.

1. Downgrading

As always, downgrading is not, was never and will never be officially supported! Please do not run 1.9 worlds in 1.8.

2. Intel Integrated GPU and random crashing

Some people with Intel integrated GPUs may see the game crashing from memory access violations. The crash log looks like this:

# A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment: # # EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x00007ffb84b1172c, pid=7928, tid=9892 # # JRE version: Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (8.0_25-b18) (build 1.8.0_25-b18) # Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (25.25-b02 mixed mode windows-amd64 compressed oops) # Problematic frame: # C [ig8icd64.dll+0x60172c] # # Failed to write core dump. Minidumps are not enabled by default on client versions of Windows # # If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit: # http://ift.tt/19dgsTD # The crash happened outside the Java Virtual Machine in native code. # See problematic frame for where to report the bug. # 

This is because of a memory leak caused by Intel's drivers. This mainly affects 6th generation Intel Core Processors (6xxx) with Intel HD Graphics 500 series, and select Intel CPUs carrying Intel HD Graphics 4400 and 4600.

To work around this issue, make sure you have the latest drivers installed and set VBO and VSync to On in the Graphics Settings. Additionally, try allocating more RAM to Minecraft.

3. OpenGL Requirements

The OpenGL requirement for 1.9 stays at OpenGL 1.3 (according to internal sources). Please report back if you have a OpenGL 1.3 only system that refuses to run Minecraft even at very low graphics settings.

So I was just on my realm, and I logged out for a sec to invite someone. However, when I tried to click the settings it said there was an error and didn't let me. So I quit out of minecraft and restarted it, and now it says I don't have a realm at all. I go to the realms page, and all it shows me is the "buy realms" popup. How can I fix this?

Seems like a great way to confuse people and make them wonder why they suddenly can't kill anything.