Minecraft 26.3 Release Candidate 3: The Sprint-Attack Fix Server Owners Actually Wanted
Key Points
- 26.3 Release Candidate 3 is out, and it's the third attempt at locking down this update before full release.
- The headline fix stops sprint-attacking from accidentally slowing down the attacker instead of (or alongside) the target.
- Two separate VSync bugs got patched, both letting the setting flip on or off without the player actually touching it.
- Server owners finally get a fix for the Server Resource Packs option resetting itself when editing server settings.
- All of this is prep work for the Wilderness Bound game drop, which is close enough to release that Mojang is just mopping up now.
Third time's the charm, according to Mojang's own post announcing Release Candidate 3 for 26.3. That's their words, not ours, but honestly it fits. RC3 isn't flashy. There's no new mob, no new block, no surprise mechanic. It's four bug fixes, and that's exactly what a release candidate is supposed to be at this stage: small, boring, and focused on not breaking anything else on the way out the door.
The combat fix nobody was talking about enough
Buried in the list is MC-311799, which fixed sprint-attacking another player so it no longer slows down the attacker. If you've played any kind of PvP server in the last few weeks, you've probably felt this without knowing what it was. Sprint-attack is supposed to be an aggressive move. Instead it was quietly punishing the person throwing the hit, which is the opposite of what anyone wants in a fight.
This matters more for PvP-focused servers than vanilla survival worlds. Anyone running UHC, factions, or skywars-style combat has players who live and die by movement speed during a fight. A bug that penalizes the attacker for being aggressive messes with the whole rhythm of combat, and players notice that kind of thing fast even if they can't articulate exactly what feels wrong.
Sprint-attacking another player no longer slows down the attacker.
VSync keeps doing its own thing
Two of the four fixes in this RC deal with VSync toggling itself without permission. MC-311456 covers VSync getting disabled when the option says it shouldn't be, and MC-311586 is the mirror image, VSync turning on when it's supposed to stay off. Neither one is game-breaking. Both are the kind of thing that quietly annoys players who tune their settings for a reason, whether that's chasing higher FPS or avoiding screen tearing.
It's a little funny that it took two separate tickets to cover both directions of the same bug. Settings bugs like this tend to be more annoying than dangerous, but they erode trust in the options menu. If VSync can flip itself, what else is quietly ignoring your settings? Good on Mojang for catching both sides before full release instead of patching one and leaving the other for a future update.
A real win for server owners
MC-311477 is the one server admins should actually care about. Changes made to the Server Resource Packs option while editing a server's settings weren't saving. Picture setting up a custom resource pack for your community, confirming it, closing the menu, and coming back to find your change just didn't stick. That's a frustrating loop for anyone managing a server list with multiple entries, especially admins juggling resource packs across several worlds or game modes.
It's a small fix on paper but a real quality-of-life one in practice. Server configuration bugs rarely make headlines, yet they're the kind of thing that makes an admin's week harder for no good reason.
Where this fits in the bigger picture
Release candidates exist to answer one question: is this build stable enough to ship? RC1 and RC2 presumably caught the bigger issues, and RC3 is Mojang confirming the remaining cracks are sealed before Wilderness Bound goes live for everyone. Three release candidates isn't unusual for a game drop of this size. Some updates need one, some need five. The fact that 26.3's fixes have gotten smaller and more specific with each RC is a decent sign the update is close to done.
None of these four fixes are the kind of thing that'll show up in a trailer. But they're the difference between a launch that feels smooth and one where players immediately start filing bug reports for issues that were already known internally. Mojang catching the sprint-attack bug before full release, in particular, saves a lot of "wait, did combat get nerfed?" threads on Reddit down the line.
If you're running a server and testing on the snapshot or RC builds already, it's worth updating to RC3 before Wilderness Bound officially drops just to confirm your resource pack settings and any combat plugins behave the way you expect. Full patch notes are up on Minecraft.net if you want to check the exact bug IDs against your own testing.