Minecraft Adventure Update Game Guide (Minecraft 1.8 Pre-Release)

Minecraft 1.8, also known as the Adventure update has been eagerly awaited for many months now, and guess who just got the pre-release? Me! You can too, if you follow the instructions found here, and are able to change a few files about in your existing Minecraft install.

Is Minecraft 1.8 worth it? Yes. Yes it is. A great many changes have been made to Minecraft in the Adventure update. For starters, when you create a new world, you'll now need to choose a type of world. You can choose between Survival Mode and Creative Mode. You can also choose whether or not to have structures automatically generated in your world. These structures include things like NPC villages and dungeons.

Minecraft Survival Mode

In Survival Mode, in which you must search for resources, gain levels, watch your health and watch your hunger bar. This mode is for people who always wanted to test the very limits of their ability to survive in an indifferently dangerous world and farm their own wheat.

Changes to survival mode include:

• Killing a chicken now drops raw chicken as well as the occasional feather.
• Cows drop leather and raw beef.
• Trying to kill a mob results in the mob trying to run away and escape, instead of jumping around whilst you hit them like they've endured a lobotomy.

How To Get Experience In Minecraft Survival Mode

Occasionally when you kill a mob, a luminous green ball will pop up. This is an experience ball or bauble and if you grab it, you'll gain experience.

The Minecraft Survival Mode Hunger Bar

Some of you might have some concerns about the new requirement to keep yourself fed. Fortunately, the game has been tweaked so that food isn't really a problem, even on that first night. With new foods like steak and roast chicken, (cooked beef from cows and chicken from chickens) you can find food everywhere. There also seem to be plentiful coal deposits, so getting your food cooked isn't as much of a challenge as it might otherwise be.

Minecraft Creative Mode

In Creative Mode, you can fly around as you please and all the blocks in the world are available to you. This is the option you'll want to choose if you just like building things but hate dealing with the harsh realities of the Minecraft world. If you always played previous versions of Minecraft on 'Peaceful', chances are you'll want to give Creative mode a go.

How To Fly In Creative Mode

You can activate flying in creative mode by pressing jump (spacebar) twice. Pressing twice whilst flying deactivates flying mode again. Don't worry about falling, you don't take damage in creative mode.

Other New Stuff

Field of View: It is now possible to change your 'field of view', in other words, how much of the world you can see at any given time. Settings range from 'Normal' to 'Quake Pro'. At Quake Pro levels, you can see quite a lot more of the world, but it also looks as if you're viewing everything through a fishbowl.

Oceans: From the moment biomes were instituted, people complained they were too small. They also complained that most Minecraft lakes and oceans were nothing but puddles. Not anymore! Oceans are now big enough that you can sail into the middle of them and not be able to see any land at all.

Improved Terrain Generation: Minecraft has always been known for its awe inspiring landscapes, but the terrain generation just got better in 1.8, with mountain ranges that take your breath away and biomes that go on and on and on. You now get the feeling that you're truly exploring a whole new world with real landmasses - not just a randomly generated mess of puddles and sandpits. There's much more variation between biomes too, with some producing giant trees, others producing nothing but shrubs.

Improved Lighting: Torch light now has a warmer glow. The more torches that are placed, the brighter and 'whiter' the light looks. If you have just one torch, your cave or home will be lit with a pleasant almost browny / orange hue.

Do I Need A New World For 1.8?

It's important that you generate a new world to get the most out of 1.8. Existing worlds will not feature things like NPC villages (currently devoid of NPCs though they may be.) They will also not include the new jungle biomes.