A Noob's Guide to Minecraft vol. 1 | Page 8

8 A Noob's Guide to Minecraft / June, 2014

Top Features of 1.8

1.8 is going to be the next big Minecraft update, planned to be released this summer. As it is a major update, there are a lot of new features planned, such as skin overlay control and new blocks. With each new major update, there will be a top new features list for the best new features with notices. There will also be a link to the Minecraft Wiki page about the update at the end of the list.

6. Endermites

Endermites are a new mob added in the snapshot

14w11a (http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/14w11a).

They have a 5% chance of spawning when an Ender Pearl

lands or 15% when an Enderman teleports (the chance

goes down by 1% each time, meaning that an Enderman

can only spawn 15 Endermites).

5. Changeable World Border

The World Border, before 14w17a (http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/14w17a), was unmoveable, even with commands. Now, there are a set of commands that allow you to control the world border (http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/World_border). They let you change where the world border is centered, how far apart opposite sides are, how much damage it does and more.

4. The ability to lock Chests and similar blocks

Using the /give command, you can obtain blocks with inventories that can only be accessed if you have an item with the name specified in the NBT tag in your inventory (the item must have been renamed in an anvil, or /give-ed with that name in the tag.

3. Barriers

Barriers are an invisible block added in 14w05a. They act as a full block, but are completely transparent. They also can only be broken in creative mode, and can only be seen while holding one in creative mode. Barriers are only obtainable by using the /give command. Any block that breaks when the block it is on is broken can be placed on barriers. Barriers can be used to prevent players from accessing certain areas in adventure maps or to create invisible mazes.

2. Slime Blocks

Announced towards the end of last year,

slime blocks were added in the first snapshot,

14w02a (http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/14w02a).

Slime blocks can be crafted by placing 9 slimeballs in a crafting table. Slime blocks have the ability to prevent fall damage when falling. They also have the ability to push or pull up to 12 connected blocks when used with pistons. When a slime block is above a piston, powering the piston will cause any entities (items and mobs) to fling a few blocks into the air, effectively making accessing hard to reach places easier to reach.

1. Customized worlds

Probably the largest feature of 1.8 is the ability to customize world generation.

To access world customization features, under world type, go to customized and press the button beneath it called customize. Through the customize feature, you can change ore generation, the rarity of some randomly generated structures (lakes and dungeons), toggle the generation of specific randomly generated structures, and more. There are also some presets for people who don’t want to take the time to mess around with the different customization features to get the right world.

The current model for the Endermite

The Slime Block can be used for all sorts of mechanisms