S McGrath

Isn't this a parity issue rather than being a bug?

This is a feedback/feature request, not a bug.

There's a lot to unpack here and you've included several seperate issues. Regarding the pathfinding, that is a well known bug with all mobs not being able to walk properly on full blocks.

Villager linking breaking happens often but its easy to avoid. If a villager cannot reach a bed/bed is broken/player sleeps in the bed, then it causes a cascade effect which can break several villagers at once as they all try to organize their linking. If you are just trying to setup a trading hall then its advisable to link a single villager a bed, then never touch that bed again and don't place anymore beds within the area. I recommend looking up some videos on villager mechanics for more detailed explanations and prevention techniques.

From wiki: "It also melts in dry biomes, regardless of block light or daylight level."

What biome were you trying to use snow in?

This is the third time this has happened in my world, most have been harmless but this one affected a build. The first time this occurred I was able to fix it by reloading the world but the 2nd and 3rd time the damage was permanent.

If this occurs in an area with flowers, the floating blocks will continue to generate and drop flowers.

Thanks, I couldn't find the main issue

Being able to spawn proof water seems more like a feature than a bug. There are plenty of ways to make squid farms without using the gates method as you have proven silent. Personally I'd prefer this to remain as is.

I'm not sure how old your world is but it could be related to that if the entities are old. As far as I understand it, the current system is that if the mob sees/tracks to the player (becoming hostile) at all then they become a permanent entities until killed. In the old system they all acted that way so would not despawn. I'm playing Win10 version on single player and I can confirm that newly spawned mobs do despawn over time if they haven't tracked to the player.

Perhaps try moving to an unexplored area, pillar up so nothing can see you and watch to see if mobs despawn once you are far enough away. Are you on realms?

I can confirm this is still an issue in 1.14.1. It doesn't happen frequently but it is noticeable. I have had several contained (no opening, full light) villagers disappear, I've had an armored horse vanish that was contained in a building and I've had the same hopper minecart despawn from a wool farm twice. In each of these instances, there was nothing that could have killed/broken the entities.

This happened on single player (win10). I'm not sure why its occurring, it could be either related to the distance away from the player (because it doesnt happen when I'm in my base, only when I leave and return, or it could be related to nether portals and the entity is failing to load when reloading the chunk.

" We've gotten a number of reports of them spawning in well-lit areas, but I haven't been able to reproduce that problem."

I'm not sure if you are count pillager raid parties in that statement but pillager raid parties are 100% spawning in well-lit areas.

They only spawn in beehives in 5% of trees in plains, sunflower plains and flower forest biomes. It also must be an area of the world you hadnt visited prior to the update.

Mobs also spawn on other non-full blocks such as stairs. I had a creeper spawn on top of a wall where the top block was quartz stairs.

They've started spawning underground since the last update. Anything to do with pillagers is very frustrating since 1.13