# 1.21.5 Update (Spring to Life)

In this article, we will talk about the changes in the 1.21.5 update, what that means for our plugins and how we will benefit from the Paper hardfork.

# Changes in 1.21.5

# New Animal Variants

Pigs, Cows, and Chickens now have warm and cold variants, determined by the biome they spawn in.

• Warm Variants: Found in deserts, jungles, badlands, etc.
• Cold Variants: Found in snowy and End biomes.
• Chickens lay new Blue (cold) and Brown (warm) eggs.
• Sheep now spawn with wool color based on the biome's temperature:
  • Cold: Mostly black
  • Warm: Mostly brown
  • Temperate: Mostly white

# New Wolf Sound Personalities

Wolves now randomly get one of seven unique sound sets:

• Classic
• Big
• Cute
• Puglin
• Angry
• Grumpy
• Sad

Each variant has distinct ambient, growl, pant, whine, hurt, and death sounds.

# Spawn Egg Visual Overhaul

Spawn Eggs now visually reflect the mob's personality and size, improving readability and accessibility.

# New World Generation Features

Fallen Trees

• Found in most forested biomes.
• Come in oak, birch, jungle, and spruce variants.
• Sometimes decorated with mushrooms or vines.

Firefly Bush

• Grows near water in Swamps, Badlands, and Mangrove Swamps.
• Emits light and glowing particles at night.
• Can be bonemealed to spread.

Leaf Litter

• Found in Forests and Dark Forests.
• Placed in up to 4 layers per block.
• Tinted based on biome and usable as fuel or compost.

Wildflowers

• Found in Birch Forests, Meadows.
• Stackable flowers that can be bonemealed.
• Craftable into Yellow Dye.

Bushes

• Appear in patches in Windswept, Birch, and River biomes.
• Collectable with shears or Silk Touch.

Dry Grass

• Short and Tall variants now generate in deserts and badlands.
• Bonemealable and compostable.
• Eaten by Sheep.

Cactus Flowers

• Grow on Cactus blocks.
• Used for Pink Dye or compost.
• Require open space on all sides.

# Falling Leaf Particles

All Leaf blocks now randomly emit gentle falling leaf particles for added ambience.

# New Ambient Sounds

• Desert and Badlands blocks like sand and terracotta now emit subtle ambient sounds.
• Dead Bushes can also trigger audio ambiance when placed on terracotta or sand.

# Visual & Gameplay Tweaks

• New main menu panorama for Spring to Life.
• Beacon beams now render up to 2048 blocks high and are thicker at long distances.
• Lodestones have a new crafting recipe and spawn in Ruined Portals.
• Updated textures for Cows, Mooshrooms, and Sheep.

# Cartographer & Wandering Trader Updates

Cartographer

• Sells 7 new maps pointing to structures in different biomes.
• Village-specific map offerings and colored banners.

Wandering Trader

• Now buys basic supplies like water bottles, hay bales.
• Offers new trades including logs, potions, and enchanted tools.

# Mob Spawning & Biomes

• Camels now spawn in Deserts.
• Cows, Pigs, Chickens, and Sheep can spawn in Badlands.
• Woodland Mansions can generate in the Pale Garden biome.
• Meadows have slightly sparser short grass.

# Technical & Gameplay Improvements

• Game Tests are now accessible via datapacks using the /test command.
• Simulation distance improvements: tick behavior for crops, snow, and cauldrons extended to all loaded chunks.
• Various networking, UI, and tooltip enhancements.
• Sound rebalancing and expanded Iron block sound types.

# Dev Features & Fixes

• New --renderDebugLabels argument for developers.
• Enhanced Game Test automation with new command-line tools.
• Reverted fix to sprint slowdown mechanics to improve parkour experience.
• Minor fixes to items, sounds, and Realms uploads.

# And yes, as always...

Removed Herobrine.

# Packet changes

Little has changed in the packet system.

Removed packets

• ClientboundAddExperienceOrb

Added packets

• ClientboundTestInstanceBlocksStatus
• ServerboundSetTestBlock
• ServerboundTestInstanceBlockAction

# Changes in the plugins

# FancyNpcs

FancyNpcs now supports 1.21.5. Update to version 2.5.0 to get the new features and changes.

New Attributes:

# FancyHolograms

FancyHolograms now supports 1.21.5. Update to version 2.5.0 to get the new features and changes.

There are no other changes in FancyHolograms.

# Paper Hardfork

You can read about the reasons and changes in this article on the PaperMC forum: The future of Paper - Hard fork. It basically allows the Paper team to work on adding support for new versions after without having to wait on Spigot to update. This means that Paper is able to also update to snapshots, pre-releases and release candidates.

This is perfect for us, because we can as well update our plugins faster to new versions and snapshots faster. Once the Paper team has updated to a new version (realase or snapshot), we can immediately start working on updating our plugins.

# Conclusion

We are excited about the new changes and the Paper hardfork. We are looking forward to updating our plugins to the new version and snapshots faster than before.

Read the full release notes of the 1.21.5 update here.