Minecraft Update 1.5

• Added Weather.
• Added Statistics and Achievements.
• New Items (Detector rail, Powered Rail, Birch and Pine/Spruce Saplings).
• New Item Web. Cannot be found naturally.
• SHIFT-clicking on something in a chest will immediately move the selected item(s) into your inventory and vice-versa.
• Birch and Pine/Spruce trees now drop Birch and Pine/Spruce saplings, respectively.
• Huge performance improvements for old and slow computers.
• Crafting a ladder now produces 2 ladders.
• If lightning strikes a pig, it becomes a Zombie Pigman.
• If lightning strikes a Creeper, it becomes electrified and will have a much more powerful explosion.
• New settings in options:
  • Ability to change GUI size (Small, Normal, Large, Auto).
  • Advanced OpenGL (Occlusion Culling: doesn't render blocks that the player can't "see", helps performance in cards that support it).
• Items can now be smelted with Saplings with the same smelting power as Sticks.
• Dropped items in flowing water move faster than before.
• Pigs that die by burning now drop cooked porkchops upon death.
• Redstone dust can be placed on snow.
• Wolves are more common, even in non-taiga/forest biomes.
• Unarmed damage was increased from to .
• Pressing tab will switch between input boxes.

Bug Fixes:

• You are only 'on' a ladder (can climb it/fall slowly) if your lower half is in the ladder block, rather than any part of you. It is no longer possible to climb a one-block gap in a ladder, or a ladder that starts at eye level.
• On fancy graphics, the sides of grass blocks are now biome-specific and match the shade on the top.
• You can now move through flowing water at previous speed.
• Wolves have a better understanding of doors. They will go through doors most of the time, but will sometimes get stuck on the 3 pixel thickness of the door. They will eventually back up for another go at the opened door.
• The lighting on portals and ice has been fixed (previously had triangles on the blocks) when using Smooth Lighting.
• Stairs are no longer transparent.
• On SMP, the health of wolves are now synchronized between server and client, causing wolves to only whimper when low on health, opposed to all of the time.
• Redstone in off state is red again.
• Crops hit with water now drop seeds and wheat, as opposed to just wheat.
• Moving minecarts will continue to move if the world is closed.
• The Mojang logo is the correct size when Minecraft is maximized.(Not on a mac)
• The exploit to make chests three or more side by side by placing a water source and placing a chest in that source has been fixed.
• Shift + F2 doesn't create massive screenshots (more than 1 gigabyte in size) anymore.
• Sugar can can no longer be placed on any block which is not dirt.

New Bugs:

• Occlusion Culling (Advanced OpenGL) Seems to be toggleable without Hardware OpenGL 2.0 Support.
• Sleeping in Bed will reset the timer for rain/snow and thunderstorms. This means, if you sleep every night the chance to get rain is very very small.
• Sneaking can rarely make it so you can place blocks on the block you're standing on.
• Creepers can make noises of other mobs.
• Repetitively putting items able to be smelted in the furnace counts as a crafting statistic.
• Achievements only work in SMP if you have already completed first achievement in Single Player.
• Achievements will sometimes disappear when you close and re-open the game and can sometimes be restored by closing and re-opening the game again.
• FPS counter shows Chunk Updates instead of FPS, usually while generating new chunks.
• The game will crash if Detector Rails are placed beside normal rails.
  • A crash will also occur if a normal rail is placed next to a Detector Rail that is connected to another rail.
• Blocks can't be placed on snow.
• If you change Advanced OpenGL to on and then back again, giant holes will appear that you can see through.
• Jumping off a fence in SMP triggers an anti-flight kick.
• Rain will fall through transparent blocks and stairs, acting as if there is no block there.
• When hitting a grass block the destroying animation is darker on the side than the animation on top of the grass block, though only on fancy graphics.
• Flowing water no longer pushes empty minecarts or activated TNT that fall into it.
• GUI: create new world input boxes misaligned under small and normal settings.
• Sometimes you might not get an achievement even if you do what it requires to get. This can usually be fixed by doing it in another world.
• In Singleplayer, game resumes when 'Achievements' is clicked on the pause menu, instead of remaining paused.
• Riding in a minecart from the south into a corner going from north to west (so it's not connected to the current track) will crash the game. Possibly also true for other directions, yet if you're going in the same corner coming from the east, it will work as usual.
• Weather ambience will stop playing while using fast graphics.
• Destroying a pine or birch sapling releases the particles of a 'normal' sapling.
• Sometimes closing and re-opening the game will reset some or all of your settings to default.
• When jumping from a fence to another fence above the fence you jumped from in SMP, you may be kicked for flying if the server uses a specific plugin.
• If you resize the window (not fullscreen) after typing in the world name and the seed, they both will be reset to "New World" and a blank seed. (with all GUI-scale settings)
• Mob Spawn rates seem to be set detrimentally high. Anecdotal evidence suggests an approximate 10x increase. [25]
• Burning animation may remain on furnace even though all fuel is consumed, all items able to be smelted are used or the output-field is full.
• Game may crash by doing anything except moving or opening your inventory.
• Mobs that are near a bed may interrupt a player's sleep even if they cannot reach the bed. Most noticeably, beds that were previously safe (could not be reached by mobs) may now allow mobs to spawn into rooms in which they could not normally spawn. [26]
  • May be related to Wolf path-finding, "understanding of doors" fix. [27]
• If Smooth Lighting is turned off, the middle of new stair blocks appears black. [28]
• When you open your achievements tree, the sky turns white (Most noticeable at night). (?)
• In SMP, deaths are not counted towards statistics.
• When in long underground tunnels, you can see the current sky near the vanishing point of the tunnel. This includes the sun, moon and stars as they move across the sky. [29]
• When you are in a bed, you can control particles orientation (portal particles, torch fire, etc...) by moving the mouse.