Minecraft Preview 26.70.22 Adds Snow Bricks, Cold Sulfur Cube, and Projectile Damage Scaling

New Building Blocks: Full Snow Brick Set

Mojang has added a complete snow brick family in Preview 26.70.22. Players now have Snow Bricks, Snow Brick Stairs, Snow Brick Slabs, and Snow Brick Walls available in the creative inventory. The blocks use the existing snow texture but with a tighter, masonry-style pattern that works well for igloo villages, frozen fortresses, or any winter-themed build that needs more structural variety than packed ice or regular snow blocks provide.

Cold Sulfur Cube and Biome Interactions

A new Cold Sulfur Cube block appears in this preview. While the official notes are light on mechanics, early testing shows the cube behaves differently from standard sulfur when placed in cold biomes — it emits a faint particle effect and may interact with freezing mechanics introduced in earlier 1.26.x previews. The block is currently obtainable only via creative inventory or commands; survival acquisition methods have not been confirmed.

Adjustments to Existing Cold Features

Frostbites, Ice Crystals, and Packed Ice Bricks all received tweaks. Frostbite damage timing has been smoothed to prevent edge-case double-ticks when players move between water and ice. Ice Crystal growth rates were reduced slightly in non-snowy biomes to keep them from overtaking builds in marginal temperatures. Packed Ice Bricks now share a hardness value with standard packed ice, making them consistent for harvesting with Silk Touch.

Projectile Component: scale_damage_with_difficulty

For add-on creators, the headline change is a new field on the minecraft:projectile component. Entities using format version 1.26.70 or later can now set scale_damage_with_difficulty inside on_hit.impact_damage. When true (default), projectile impact damage scales with the world difficulty — easy, normal, hard — matching vanilla arrow behavior. When false, the raw damage value is applied regardless of difficulty. This gives mapmakers a clean way to balance custom ranged weapons for adventure maps without difficulty spikes.

Platform Availability and Known Issues

Preview 26.70.22 is available through the Minecraft Preview app on Windows, iOS, iPadOS, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. The parallel Beta build 26.70.22 ships to Android, ChromeOS, and Nintendo Switch 2 via the respective beta programs. Both builds share the same changelog.

A handful of bugs remain: Snow Brick Walls occasionally fail to connect to fences on the first placement attempt, and Cold Sulfur Cube particles persist after the block is broken in creative mode. Mojang expects these to be addressed in the next preview iteration, likely the week of November 4.