Minecraft Java Edition 26.4 Snapshot 5 came out on October 20, 2026. It adds Packed Ice Bricks with four variants, a new advancement for killing a Frostbite with an Ice Ball, and sounds for frozen lakes. To play it, turn on snapshots in the Minecraft Launcher, and back up your world first: snapshots are test builds that can damage it.
Packed Ice Bricks and their variants
The ice caves drop now has building blocks of its own. Four Packed Ice in a 2×2 square make four Packed Ice Bricks, and the bricks lead to the rest of the set:
| Block | At a crafting table | At a Stonecutter, per block |
|---|---|---|
| Packed Ice Bricks | 4 Packed Ice → 4 | 1 (from Packed Ice) |
| Packed Ice Brick Slab | 3 bricks in a row → 6 | 2 |
| Packed Ice Brick Stairs | 6 bricks → 4 | 1 |
| Packed Ice Brick Wall | 6 bricks in two rows → 6 | 1 |
| Chiseled Packed Ice | 2 slabs stacked → 1 | 1 |
The Stonecutter cuts one Packed Ice or one Packed Ice Bricks at a time, and saves a third on stairs: one Packed Ice per stair, where the crafting table spends six bricks for four. Everything else costs the same, one Packed Ice per block or two slabs, but the Stonecutter skips the steps in between. Mojang also adds Packed Ice Bricks and Chiseled Packed Ice to the Sulfur Cube's Fast Sliding archetype.
The game doesn't translate the five new names yet: they show in English in every language until a later build.
A new advancement: What Goes Around Comes Around
The new Adventure advancement asks you to kill a Frostbite with an Ice Ball. Frostbites throw ice balls at you and drop them when they die, and you can throw them too, like snowballs: the game files of Snapshot 5 give the Ice Ball the same throwing code. Keep the ice balls the first Frostbite leaves you, and send them back at the next one. In the advancement tree, it comes after Monster Hunter.
