Sneaking

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Sneaking is part of the basic controls in Minetest for preventing falling off edges. This move is a bit unusual (and broken) in some aspects, so it deserves its own article.

Basic sneaking

The default key for sneaking is Shift. You will sneak as long as you hold down the sneak key. You can not sneak while you are at a ladder, inside a liquid or have activated fly mode.

Sneaking makes you walk slower and prevents you from walking and falling over a block's edge. If you try to walk beyond the edge of a cube while holding down the sneak key, you won't fall. You can walk a bit beyond the block's edge while sneaking, up to a certain limit, of course. This means for a spectator it will somewhat look like as if you float in mid-air while sneaking.

If you jump while holding the sneak key, you jump slightly higher than usual.

Known bugs and weirdnesses

Avoiding fall damage

Up to version 0.4.15, you don't suffer any fall damage if you fall on a normal block's edge or on a slab or snow or on some other non-cubic shapes while holding down the sneak key. This bug is known as issue 329. This bug is fixed in the current developer version of Minetest; in the release after version 0.4.15, this bugfix will become “official”.

Sneak glitch

Sneaking at the edge of a ledge by abusing the sneak glitch

The sneak glitch is a glitch in Minetest which allows the player to sneak at the edges of ledges when there is only 1 block of space (not enough for the player to stand normally), as shown in the first screenshot.

The sneak glitch is considered to be a “bug that has become a feature” in Minetest. However, it it is possible to disable the sneak gltich manually.

Climbing high blocks

Normally, you can only jump high enough to climb 1 block at once. But sometimes you can climb a wall of a height of 2 blocks while jumping and sneaking at the same time. This is not reliable and requires many attempts to actually climb the wall. This bug is fixed in the developer version of Minetestt; in the release after version 0.4.15, this bugfix will become “official”.

Sneak elevator

A simple sneak elevator in a wall

Alternative sneak elevator in a corner formation

A common structure for using/abusing the sneak glitch is the so-called sneak elevator (also known as “sneak ladder”). In its simplest form, a sneak elevator is just a vertical line of solid blocks which are spaced apart by one air block each, so that air and solid blocks are alternating. Sneak elevators can be built very easily built into high flat walls and cliffs, because you can continue to dig out the holes for the sneak elevator while climbing up.

To use/abuse the sneak glitch, stand in front of the sneak elevator, then hold down both the sneak key and the jump key. You will move up the entire structure at an insane speed (Ca. 6.2 blocks/second in Minetest Game 0.4.15, compared to only 2 blocks/second at a wooden ladder).

The sneak elevator works up to version 0.4.15, but in the current developer version (and the next Minetest release) it no longer works.

Disabling the sneak glitch

To disable the sneak glitch for a given world, simply activate the "Disable sneak glitch" mod and all weird behaviours caused by the sneak glitch (like using/abusing the sneak elevator) won't work anymore. Additionally, fall damage will behave normally.