Minecraft 1.8 Adventure Update Guide

It's been a long time coming, and fans have been anxious to start exploring a world filled with many more unique obstacles and entities. Ever since the unexpected pre-release version of the 1.8 Minecraft update, gamers have been trying to find out as many secrets as they can before the official release of the Minecraft 1.8 Adventure Update. With changes ranging from new mobs to new craftables to new biomes, there's a lot to talk about.

Without further ado, let's explore the world of Minecraft in what is without a doubt the biggest update the game has ever seen:

Creative Mode

That's right, Creative Mode is back with a vengeance, and better than ever before. When making a new world, players have the option to enter Survival Mode (regular gameplay) or Creative, though it cannot be changed once the choice has been made. Once in Creative Mode, players can open a pallet to instantly select and spawn any type of block or item in the game, allowing users to build infinitely without having to worry about mining, death or hunger. All blocks will break in one hit regardless of what tool or item is being held, and by double-tapping the jump key, players can take flight to build anywhere without needing to construct stairs. It's a much-anticipated update to the very origin of Minecraft itself, and is a great mode for those who just want to create. Of course, servers have the option to function as either Survival or Creative, so you can always build that Star Trek Enterprise replica with a bunch of buds!

Minecraft 1.8 Creative Mode

The New Survival Mode

The brand new version of Survival Mode entails rewards for the gamer who dares to go out to fight, gather supplies and face the dangers of the pixelated world. Incorporated RPG style elements such as experience points and a food consumption bar, the new Survival Mode is sure to make gameplay a little bit more challenging for those who play on more than Peaceful:

Minecraft 1.8 Combat

Experience

First and foremost, it needs to be said that experience has no purpose in the game right now. Notch stated that until 1.9, there'll be no way to unlock things with earned experience points, which will deplete anytime the player dies. Experience is gained by picking up 'Experience Orbs', which drop from any mob killed by hand.  The orbs can be red, blue or yellow but at the moment there's no difference between them. The green bar below the health mete will fill up as you gather experience orbs, eventually filling up and giving you an experience point, then emptying for the process to begin again.

Minecraft 1.8 bow arrow

Combat System

The face of combat has changed from how we once knew it. Critical hits, blocking and sprinting can change the way we do combat entirely. At the moment, a critically hit can be scored by slashing out at a mob while in mid-jump, and players will see a little dust-like animation spawn from the mob while delivering the blow, confirming that a critical was scored on it.

Blocking is achieved by holding down the right-click when any type of sword is selected, allowing players to try and deflect or minimize the damage from an enemy attack. While blocking, movement is restricted to a slow-walk.

Sprinting allows players to travel at twice the normal rate of speed, but consumes the hunger bar very quickly. Sprinting is achieved by double tapping the forward key and holding it, then simply releasing it to stop the sprint. If you do this leading up to a jump, you'll be able to jump further (4 blocks as opposed to the normal two) however, players will find it much harder to turn or change direction when sprinting. Additionally, if you sprint into an attack, you'll rebound off the mob, giving yourself some space to quickly get out of a hectic situation.

As good as melee combat is, we can't forget about distance strikes. The bow has received many changes in the Minecraft Adventure Update, functioning entirely differently than it did before. Instead of rapidly clicking the mouse to fire repeatedly, holding down the fire key will allow the bow to launch power shots. Hold down left-click to charge up an arrow, and then release as you see fit. The longer the button is held down, the further and straighter the arrow will fly, dealing more damage to the enemy in question if it hits.

If a fully charged arrow strikes a mob, the arrow will actually protrude from their bodies as they move about (presuming they didn't die), which marks the first time a mob is graphically effected by an attack from the player. Bows also have new animations, stretching as a player charges the shots.

Hunger

The 1.8 Update is all about rewarding adventure, and the new hunger bar makes sure players can't just stay in their house all day for fear that a creeper managed to stay out in the daytime. As previously stated, when the hunger bar is full, health will slowly regenerate. If your character is completely idling (not looking, moving or performing an action) the hunger bar will not deplete, allowing users to go away from their computer if needed. If your hunger bar drops below 1 food level, health will gradually decline and players will have to find a source of food before starving. For those playing on Peaceful, the setting has been changed so that starvation never occurs.

Actions like digging or chopping, will consume the hunger level faster than just walking around would. So far, the most hunger-consuming process is sprinting, which is done by double-tapping forward. While it gives an impressive boost of speed, it also tires you out pretty quickly. Still, it's a handy move to escape a creeper explosion or time a jump.

Minecraft 1.8 Update New Mobs

New Mobs

With an update focusing on rewarding players who explore in tandem with an updated combat system, it only made sense to include new creatures to stumble upon. These include the creepy Endermen, the shock-trooper silverfish and the cryptic blue spider - we've got the details on all three:

Silverfish

Silverfish are a rare creature, but players will certainly know them when breaking them loose upon themselves. Each time a stone block is mined there's a very small chance of uncovering a horde of silverfish, which will head towards the player in a quick and tight-knit line of bugs. Aside of heading straight for you, they have no special traits or tactics, but are sure to surprise many an unwary miner. Reportedly, they can also spawn in the wild on occasion, so keep an eye out regardless of what time of day it is!

Endermen

The terrifying, awkward-looking new Minecraft mob, the Endermen have been a much-discussed addition to the game. Based off of the old Slenderman urban legend, the creatures are long, black entities which give off smoke. With extremely long arms, they passively pick up blocks here and there - until you stare at them. From the moment a player points their reticule at them, they'll turn to the player and return the stare - what happens next is inevitable. As soon as you break eye contact, the Enderman will turn extremely aggressive, teleporting multiple times to reach the onlooking player if necessary, and even teleporting behind them at times.

An Enderman attack will hit for 2.5 blocks of damage, an extremely powerful blow made even worse by the fact that their long arms allow for 2-blocks worth of reach, about twice that of a zombie. Hopping into water is a good defensive idea if you can't score any hits, as water will literally consume endermen like lava, causing 1 heart of damage to them per second. When killed, they drop Enderman Pearls, which have no usage right now.

It should be noted that players can wear a pumpkin on their head to prevent endermen from seeing their stare, thus preventing it from being aggravated if someone points their reticule at one of them. It may look ridiculous, but if you're starving and low on health, you'll probably find yourself donning the world's worst helmet.

Blue Spider Minecraft

Blue Spiders

You thought you were done with the spider updates? Our jumpy friend now has a blue cousin who will only spawn in Abandoned Mineshafts and random dungeons for the time being.  They're much smaller than their cousins (about 1x1x1), meaning it's much harder to hide from them than any other mob. When bitten by a blue spider, the player's character becomes poisoned and their hearts turn yellow as they gradually lose them. A note to the wise - milk cures poison, so show some love to a cow or two before butchering it for meat and experience.

A Brave New World

The entire ecosystem of Minecraft itself has changed, new domestic creatures now live in an entire new system of landscapes, which range from larger biomes to completely new biome types. More interesting things can now be seen littering the previous plan worlds, such as NPC villages, abandoned mineshafts and even, perhaps, the elusive Stronghold:

Strongholds and Abandoned Mineshafts

Strongholds will only spawn once per map, and will be reportedly spawn near the 0,0 axis of any Minecraft map. Much larger than any previously seen dungeons, strongholds have multiple levels and floors to explore, even including iron doors and crumbling ruins inside them. It will reportedly take some time to explore a stronghold sheerly due to their size.

Above ground, a Stronghold is recognizable by stone ruins that at one point would have been an impressive structure. When located see it, it's the player's choice whether or not to face the dangers that await below - rumors are that in a future update, Boss Mobs will await you.

Abandoned Mineshafts are, at the very least, more tame than a Stronghold. Featuring Minecraft tracks and old pathways deep into the ground,  there's a chance of discovering good minerals down where others have given up. Just beware that blue spiders will have taken a liking to the mineshaft and will have to be fought off as a price for exploring the dark pathways.

NPC Villages

Don't be shocked if you walk into a well designed town complete with crops. NPC Villages are one of the biggest plans for the Adventure Update, and will spawn in random locations all throughout the world. For the time being, no NPCs will actually inhabit these villages, so feel free to loot the town - or hey, you can even live in it.

Glass

Are you tired of having to use an entire glass block for a window? Mojang thought it was pretty wasteful too, and you can now spawn glass panes. The panes are approximately 1/5th of the glass block itself and allow for proper window sizings to be placed. In addition to that, they spawn like fences, and react to other glass panes being place around them to turn into corner pieces and the like. The panes can be used to create a beautiful look that simply wasn't achievable using full blocks, and for the moment, panes can be broken up and re-used, though it'll likely be changed to match that of the full block, which doesn't drop anything when destroyed.

Tables

Tables aren't quite craftable, but Jeb introduced a system to allow people to create pure aesthetic tables for the timing being. By planting down a fence post and putting a pressure plate on top of it, a table will form - however, items cannot be placed on top of it for the time being. It's expected in a later update that some actual furniture may be able to be made.

Iron Bars

Iron bars function exactly the same as fences, not allowing users to jump over them when planted on the ground. At the moment they seem to have the same strength as wooden fences, so the differences between the two are narrowed down to looks.

Stonebrick

As revealed through Jeb's Twitter, there are three new brick materials which can be crafted in Minecraft, and were first revealed in the Stronghold Pictures. There is a regular variant, a cracked variant and a moss-covered variant, though how to spawn each different type is still a question at the moment.

Brick Stairs

With bricks becoming more prevalent in the Minecraft universe, it makes sense that stairs should be craftable out of the material. The stairs can either be made of red or grey brick, and will be crafted like any other stair system, albeit just using the appropriate brick material to choose the color of which the stairs will be.

Ivy

Ivy can now be grown and placed along the sides of blocks, where it will droop down. It's essentially a moss-like substance, but gifts a fantastic look to certain materials when it wraps itself alongside them.They can be found in the wild, though it is unconfirmed at what speed they will grow once placed by the player elsewhere.

Farming & New Crops

Farming was also one of Notch's big focuses in the Minecraft Adventure Update, and will be much more useful than it previously has been. The most noticable changes are the addition of watermelons, pumpkins and the system of which animals will now spawn.

Melons can be sliced into individual pieces once the full grown fruit is harvested from the crop, similar to a cake. Melon Seeds also have a chance of being collected when harvesting a full watermelon. During their early stages, watermelon crop will appear to be a 'white-yellow' fruit, followed by more and more tinges of green as the crop nears maturation. Most notably, watermelons can be grown alongside vines when seeds are place around it, and will spread along the ground to maximum size.

Pumpkins function much like watermelons, growing alongside them on vines.  Pumpkin Seeds will also drop from harvest pumpkins, allowing for the planting of new crop elsewhere. Though there aren't any cooking recipes for pumpkins thus far, wearing one on your head will prevent an enderman from attacking you as the pumpkin breaks your stare.

Passive Animals

Though the idea of keeping animals on a farm hasn't matured yet in this update, animals indeed do function very differently. The first thing you'll notice is they pick more intelligent routes of escape when attacking them, sometimes causing a decent chase to occur. Cows now drop a random amount of raw beef, which can be cooked and consumed for health, alongside their usual drop of leather. Killing a chicken will now also give you a raw chicken food item, which should always be cooked before being eaten. If not, there is a chance the chicken will poison you. Hey, you were warned about raw chicken. Pigs also received a new update, their in-game model now possessing a 3D snout which wasn't there before. All raw food items are now stackable, allowing for massive amounts of food to conveniently be collected, and presumably cooked when needed.

New Biomes

Biomes themselves are set to be much larger in the Adventure Update, allowing for massive forests and deserts like never before. Rivers will now flow through multiple biomes, creating a beautifully intertwined world that brings more realism - and beauty - into the game. The biomes also mesh into each other more gradually, so there won't be the awkward 'desert into arctic' biome mix anymore.

There are also two new biome types: Mountainous and Ocean.

  • The mountainous biomes are exactly as described, with extremely uneven terrain, they're very inconvenient to walk across.
  • Ocean biomes on the other hand,  are all about a huge amount of water seperating land, and should be considered large enough that trying to just swim the distance is a terrible idea - just be thankful Notch hasn't added an aggressive water mob yet if you do decide to take the plunge. Unleash the Kraken, Notch. Please.
  • There are also two other rumored biomes: Swamp and Giant Mushroom Forest, but they've been completely unconfirmed in the pre-release. Of course, any new discoveries will lead to an update of this post.

User Interface & Game Setting Changes

There are plenty of new changes on the technical side of the game, and the first one can be seen when launching Minecraft. The old background is gone, replaced by a camera panning through a blurred world of Minecraft. The options screen has been completely overhauled, allowing for entirely new GUI options:

  • Instead of flipping between different automatically set options for Field of View, there's now a slider which ranges from things like 'regular' to 'Quake Pro', though that name will probably be changed in the final version. Changing between the two points had a surprising affect on how the game looked, so each gamer will have to find their comfort zone for viewing pleasure. As Notch showed us at PAX, the brightness option functions the same way, going as low was 'Moody'  and rising all the way up to a very bright option.
  • The lighting engine has also been completely revamped, eliminating block-by-block lighting entirely. The new system utilizes a smooth lighting system that gets rid of any buggy, patchy lighting errors we may have seen before. Because of this, lighting is now a much easier process for the computer to handle, getting rid of many lag-ridden scenarios. Place down a torch and take a look - this looks like the final version of lighting for Minecraft.

New Sounds

C418, the man who has been working on the music of Minecraft and creating sounds since the early days, has come up with several new and modified sounds for the 1.8 build. Most interestingly, the new skeleton is self-describedly 'more horrifying', and new movement sounds on things like grass, gravel, sand and stone have been confirmed. The sounds give a fresh feel to what is undoubtedly the biggest update for Minecraft yet.

Animations

If you're going to use a chest, you may be surprised to see how the lid pops on and off when using it. Notch has implemented some nice animations to smooth the game over, including how players must now hold down right-click to eat food now, causing th character to chow down for a few seconds.

So what's in the Minecraft 1.9 Update?

The Adventure Update has been split into two halves, and there are several important pieces left out of the puzzle for now. The NPC Villages will be populated by actual characters in the next adventure update, and trading with these inhabitants should be on the menu. Likewise, attacking a town will probably yield an aggressive response from the town as a whole, so watch out when griefing poor NPCs.

Boss Mobs have also been talked about, and at some point may be added to places like Strongholds, which only spawn once per map so far. Nothing has been revealed about what they're thinking of using as a boss mob, but players should probably never go into fight one without a diamond sword when they're released into the game - Creeper Queens don't go down easy, or something like that.

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The changes to Minecraft in this update are off the charts, and will throw in a lot of surprises gamers won't be expecting. We hope the guide was able to help you through some sticky situations, and lead you to discovering some awesome new features!

Minecraft will be completely released November 11th, 2011. What do you think of the Adventure Update?

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