The following has been written by Stuart who works with Apex Minecraft Hosting, a leading provider of Minecraft servers in the USA.
The latest update for Minecraft was released last week, offering several new features for players and adding some variety to the game. Dubbed the Exploration Update, Minecraft 1.11 is one of the biggest updates the game has seen in quite some time. This update, alongside the Combat Update released at the end of February this year have provided players with the biggest changes to gameplay since way back in 2014.
While the update comes with the usual host of bug fixes and code changes, there are also a handful of new gameplay elements which look reward those looking to explore the game fully. There are also a couple of new mobs and items included to help add some variety to the game.
Illagers – A new kind of enemy which can be found in the new woodland mansions. Illagers are village outcasts, and will even attack villagers as well as Steve. There are two kinds of Illager, Vindicators and Evokers, which have different attacks and abilities.
Vex – A new kind of flying enemy which can be spawned by an Evoker during a summon attack.
Cartographer Villager – A new kind of villager who will sell you the Treasure Map for a few emeralds.
Llamas – A new animal mob which can be used as transport and storage. Llamas can be tamed, saddled and leashed, and they have a 6 slot inventory for storing items. While they can’t be controlled when riding them, leashing them will cause other llamas to follow you so it’s a useful way of forming a caravan.
Treasure Map – Purchased from the Cartographer Villager, this map can help you find things like dungeons, monuments and the new Woodland Mansions.
Shulker Shell and Shulker Box – The shells which Shulkers drop can now be turned into boxes which will keep their inventory even when broken.
Observer Block – The Observer block will update and output a redstone signal.
Woodland Mansion – New huge dungeons which can be found in the Dark Oak Forest biome, and will be highlighted on the Treasure Maps acquired from Cartographer Villagers. They are a pretty rare occurrence and they are often some distance away from the spawn point. They contain a variety of treasure items and provide an excellent base if you can defeat the Illagers inside.
While it’s not a revolutionary update, it’s great to see some more improvements and innovations in the game after all this time. Development has really stepped up over the last 18 months and there have been some major updates which are keeping the game fresh.
Historically, most of the innovation has come via mods and plugins which, while impressive, aren’t the easiest for some players to use. It’s great to see Microsoft expanding on the existing game content and giving players a real reason to go back to the Vanilla version of Minecraft.
To play the latest version, all you need to do is open your launcher and edit your profile to choose version 1.11 of the game.
Related: Minecraft: Story Mode – The Complete Adventure Available Now at Retail
I'm a published author and proud US Army veteran who happens to be a gamer, so I decided to combine the two and love every minute of it! Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments and I'll be sure to get back to you.
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