From now on, you should mostly see bugs being fixed. In addition to that, pre-releases doesn't follow the regular snapshot cadence of releasing on Wednesdays, so keep an eye out!
Addtionally, based on feedback from the community, we have decided to include candles in part 1 of Caves & Cliffs again. Candles will become available in Bedrock shortly after the release of part 1.
New Features in 1.17 Pre-release 1
Added new advancements
Advancements
Added "Whatever Floats Your Goat!" for floating in a boat with a goat
Added "Wax on" for applying wax to a Copper block!
Added "Wax off" for scraping wax off a Copper block!
Added "The Cutest Predator" for catching an axolotl in a bucket!
Added "The Healing Power of Friendship!" for teaming up with an axolotl and winning a fight
Added "Glow and Behold" for making a sign glow
Added "Light as a Rabbit" for walking on powder snow with leather boots
Added "Surge Protector!" for having a lightning strike a lightning rod near a villager without setting the area on fire
Added "Is it a Bird?" for looking at a parrot through a spyglass
Added "Is it a Balloon?" for looking at a ghast through a spyglass
Added "Is it a Plane?" for looking at a dragon through a spyglass
Changes in 1.17 Pre-release 1
Candles have been added back to the creative inventory
Recipes for crafting and dying candles are once again available
Candles now have a different texture when lit
Glowing text on signs now has an outer glow, making text in dark colors more visible in the dark
Holding down the space bar now increases the scroll speed in the credits
Added started_riding, lightning_strike and using_item advancement triggers
Added source condition to effects_changed trigger
Added lightning_bolt sub-predicate
Added passenger, stepping_on and lightning_bolt properties to entity predicate
Added looking_at condition to player sub-predicate
Expanded item field on item predicate to items
Expanded block field on block predicate to blocks
Added F3+L shortcut to generate and persist performance metrics from in-game
F3+L on single-player worlds will also include reports for the integrated server
Removed debug report command (use perf start/stop for server performance measurement)
perf start/stop command on dedicated servers will now generate and persist server performance metrics
Advancements
New triggers
started_riding
Triggered when player starts riding a vehicle or entity starts riding vehicle currently ridden by player
Conditions:
player - either a player that started riding or one of boat passengers
lightning_strike
Triggered when lighting finishes (i.e. entity disappears)
Triggers for any player on server
Conditions
player - player for which this trigger runs
lightning - predicate for lightning entity
bystander - predicate for one of the entities in certain area around strike not hurt by it
using_item
Triggered for every tick of using items (like crossbows, spyglass, fishing rods, etc)
Conditions
player - players that uses item
item - item being used
Changed triggers
effects_changed
Added source triggers that matches entity that triggered the change
Might be empty when:
there is no entity (for example, effect gained from beacon)
the effect is self-applied
effect is removed
Changed predicates
Item predicate
item field expended to items, now accepting array of item types
Block predicate
block field expended to blocks, now accepting array of block types
Entity predicate
passenger - new sub-predicate for passenger directly riding this vehicle (if present, must match one or more)
stepping_on - location predicate for block entity is currently standing on
lightning_bolt - sub-predicate valid only for lightning bolt entity
Player predicate
looking_at - entity currently viewed by player
uses same line-of-sight rules as attacking mobs
actual detection radius might be changed in future
Lightning bolt
blocks_set_on_fire - range check for of blocks set on fire by this entity
entity_struck - predicate for entities struck by this lightning (if present, must match one or more)
Performance metrics reporting
These will be saved to a zip file in debug/profiling/<yyyy-MM-dd_HH.mm.ss-[levelname]-[version]>.zip and could be used for performance regression analysis if included in bug reports.
The exact metrics, output format, and names are susceptible to change between versions. Our plan is to continue iterating on which metrics to capture.
Client F3+L shortcut
Pressing F3+L while in the game will start a recording for 10 seconds capturing metrics such as tick durations, used heap sizes and other more detailed stats.
Pressing F3+L before the 10-second limit will end the recording early.
This shortcut is always available to clients, even on multi-player servers where it will record client-side performance.
Dedicated Server perf start/stop command
perf start will start a recording for 10 seconds capturing metrics such as tick durations, used heap sizes and other more detailed stats.
perf stop before the 10-second limit will end the recording early.
Bugs fixed in 1.17 Pre-release 1
MC-19690 Reducing maxHealth / max_health can cause fake death
MC-65587 Lag spike while loading player head textures/player skins
MC-104897 End crystals placed on exit portals generated before 1.9 do not respawn the ender dragon
MC-189336 Shifting around servers in the server list crashes the game (ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException)
MC-192889 When placing certain heads or putting them in entities' head slot the game stutters
MC-197942 Leaves change to stone near Lava Pool (Recurrence of MC-48340)
MC-198957 End Portal Frames change to Stone near Lava Pool
MC-202249 Angering passive mobs in new nether chunks very far away from previously generated chunks, then entering a nether portal causes server to completely freeze
MC-203131 Setting the weight in Template Pool to high values will lag world and can cause out of memory error.
MC-225978 Non-waxed weathered copper blocks appear twice in needs_stone_tool.json
MC-226192 Crash upon attempting to create a new scoreboard objective: java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke "String.toLowerCase(java.util.Locale)" because "☃" is null