How to download Minecraft 1.18 pre-release 8 for Java Edition

In less than a week, Mojang will release Minecraft 1.18, the biggest update in Minecraft's history. While working on the Caves and Cliffs update, developers faced many problems related to massive world generation changes. Anyway, all such issues have been overcome as the Minecraft 1.18 update is ready for its release.

Since the 1.18 update date was unveiled, developers have been releasing pre-releases almost every working day. Today, Mojang has released pre-release 8 for Minecraft 1.18, continuing to fix more crashes and bugs. Players can download pre-release 8 to get a further optimized experience.

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Download Minecraft 1.18 pre-release 8

Minecraft 1.18 update will revamp the entire Overworld by adding new caves and mountains. Due to massive changes, it will probably receive a lot more pre-releases compared to previous updates. Minecraft 1.18 pre-release eight fixes ravager parity issue, crashes, bug related to cats, and more.

Players interested in trying pre-release 8 can download it using the Minecraft launcher. If not already installed, download the launcher from here. Players can play pre-release 8 on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Follow these steps to download pre-release 8 for Minecraft 1.18 update:

1. Open the Minecraft launcher.
2. Switch from the Play tab to the Installation tab.
3. Players will have to enable the snapshots option available under VERSIONS.
4. Make a new profile by creating a fresh installation.
5. While creating the profile, select pre-release 8 as the version. If this doesn't show up, try restarting the launcher and see if the snapshots option is enabled or not.
6. After creating the profile, go back to the Play tab.
7. Select the name of the newly installed profile as the version and launch the game. The Minecraft launcher will automatically detect required files and download pre-release 8.

Like the last couple of pre-releases, pre-release 8 was also a pretty small one. This might mean that developers are running out of critical issues and bugs in Minecraft 1.18 update. Check out the list of fixed bugs in pre-release 8:

• A bug where eating while teleporting through the nether portal used to print error ;
• Crash: java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke “it.unimi.dsi.fastutil.objects.ObjectSet.remove(Object)” because “$$4” is null., has been fixed.
• Ravagers now won't attack baby villagers.
• Game crashes fixed when uploading 1.12.2 world to Minecraft 1.18. pre-releases
• Crash after respawning fixed.
• A bug where cats didn't scare phantoms away was fixed.

As the recent pre-releases feature only a handful of bug fixes, players can expect the release candidates to come out soon. If no critical bugs are found, Minecraft 1.18 will arrive smoothly on November 30, 2021.