We were also able to kill some zombies and get their new drop item: rotten meat. It serves no obvious purpose, except that you can eat it. It’ll fill hunger, but also (unsurprisingly) poison you.
Above: We’ll stick with the raw chicken, thanks very much
Update 1.8 also features randomly spawning dungeons and villages, complete with houses, guard towers, wells, and gardens. But there are no NPCs yet, so there’s the chance of occasionally stumbling across a ghost town.
Above: There are no village people
Outside of adventuring, the update also adds Creative Mode, a “new” feature that balances out the now-more-demanding Survival Mode with a no-pressure, construction-oriented sandbox experience. An early version of Creative was available in the free “Classic” version of Minecraft (playable at Minecraft.net), or by modding your game, but in 1.8 it comes standard. Creative Mode grants you infinite blocks of every type, the ability to destroy any block with one hit, and the ability to fly like a goddamned eagle.
Above: Imagine the theme from The Neverending Story playing right about now
So when we came across a randomly spawned village while having access to infinite blocks of every type, what else could we do? We laced the whole thing with TNT, set up a quick redstone switch, flicked it on, and quickly supermanned high into the sky to watch the fireworks. It was beautiful.
Above: Creepers are enthusiastic amateurs, compared to the cunning of a malicious gamer
As new mobs go, there are Endermen, Silverfish, and Cave Spiders. Endermen are an advanced mob, and probably the spookiest one on the game. They’re tall, gaunt figures of pure black, with purple eyes that glow in the dark. At first, they paid us no mind.
Above: Mover over, creeper – these are our nightmare fodder, now
They’re actually fairly peaceable… until you look at them. They just mind their business, grabbing and placing blocks in a way that makes sense only to them. Once your crosshairs settle on them, however, they become enraged and attack as soon as you look away.
Above: This was a good idea.
Above: As soon as our crosshairs left it, it disappeared in a flash of purple light…
Above: … only to appear right behind us and attack
Silverfish are different. They’re very rare - we only came across one mob.
Above: They pack a punch, and they travel in groups. Also, they’re a health code violation
Cave spiders are particularly nasty. They attack like normal spiders, but they’re sort of bluish and have a poisonous bite. They can only be found in abandoned mine shafts, and it’s best to take them out from a distance with a bow. Getting too close can kill you pretty quickly, especially if there are several of them.
Above: We hate you we hate you we hate you we hate you we hate you we hate you we hate you
Interestingly, killing from a distance is a little different, now that the arrow physics have been upgraded. Now, the length you hold on the bow increases the range and damage.
Above: Here, we see the bow at full draw
Above: The result of a fully-drawn shot is less an arrow, more a crackling beam of death
The closer arrows are the shortest range the bow fires
In addition, arrows will stick to the enemies they hit.
There’s also a rudimentary engine for critical hits. A fully-drawn bow will always land a critical, whereas a sword will only do so if you’re jumping while you attack. Hopefully they switch that up, because aside from being a really irritating way to do more damage, jump-attacking also makes no damn sense.
On an unrelated note, individual biomes (i.e. deserts, forests, etc., which could be very small in original-flavor Minecraft), are much, much larger. They’re also frequently separated by rivers, which act as a good visual shorthand for signs that you’re entering a new area.
The update also adds some new technical options. For example, you can now use a slider to change the lighting levels and the size of your field of vision, all the way from “Normal” to a pulled-back, walleye-lens view the game calls “Quake Pro.”
Above: Classic on top, Quake Pro at bottom. Can you spot the difference?
Also, double-tapping the movement keys makes you sprint, increasing not only your speed but your jump distance. This also runs down the hunger meter at an alarming rate. If you attack an enemy while sprinting, though, they’ll get knocked back, which is great for dealing with creepers, as it puts some real distance between you and them before they blow.
The 1.8 adventure update is positively huge. There’s a remarkably enticing framework that’s been put into place here, and 1.9 will only build upon that. By the time we hit update 2.0, there’s a chance Minecraft will be a very different game.
Sep 16, 2011
