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Minecraft Beta 1.5 Is Out
The additions of weather, achievements, and stats should soften the blow of all your mods breaking again.
Storms will occasionally roll through your worlds, freshening up your Minecrafting with rain, lightning, and/or snow depending on the biome. Snow accumulates on the ground now, and water will freeze into ice if it's cold enough.
Notch's take on achievements is a great fit for Minecraft. They don't require grinding or anything – there's no "mine 1,000 blocks" award, for example. Instead, they lead players toward experiencing the many things Minecraft has to offer. Newbies are encouraged to punch trees and create the basic tools of advanced crafting. Advanced players should have more to gun for later, but for now you can pick up achievements for building minecart tracks and obtaining the elusive pig saddle.
Stats are…stats. Were you ever curious about how many kilometers you've walked in aggregate? Now you can know, and be terrified.
Two additions to minecart operations have been added as well, the detector rail and booster rail. I need to experiment with them before having anything useful to say, but I'm glad to see minecarts getting some love. The jankiness of minecart physics has always bothered me, as much as I love the idea of building track networks.
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