CHAPTER 11
NEW GAMEPLAY
In addition to the updates to combat and the End, the Minecraft 1.9 update brings a ton of new content, from new blocks and buildings to a new surprise enemy—the skeleton trap.
The Skeleton Trap
If you hear a thunderstorm, you may want to stay inside. But if you want to witness the incredible skeleton trap, stay outside. In 1.9, a lightning bolt has a chance to spawn a single skeleton horse. If you play on Easy, the chance is lower, and if you play on Hard difficulty, the chance is greater, up to about one in three. That single horse is the skeleton trap. If you or another player gets close, within ten blocks, another bolt of lightning will strike the skeleton horse, transforming it into four skeleton horses with skeleton riders. The skeleton riders wear enchanted helmets and hold enchanted bows. These deadly skeleton horsemen are protected from being damaged in the first few seconds, and they are very fast.
Once you dispatch their riders (don’t kill the horses!) skeleton horses are like regular horses, just very bony. They are already tamed, and you can put a saddle on them and ride them. You can’t put horse armor on them though, but they are pretty fearsome without that!
There’s a brand new way to make roads in Minecraft, and that’s with the grass path block. You create the grass path block by right-clicking a grass block with a shovel (you can’t pick it up with a Silk Touch weapon). Grass path blocks combine to form wider paths, whose center is a bit lighter or more golden than the edges. The grass path block is actually a tiny bit shorter than a full block, at 15/16 of one block. In addition to making great rustic paths, this block is also great to make the edges of ponds or the middle of pigsties a bit muddy, or may be combined with other blocks for a partly trodden effect on a path.
The new grass path block you create by right-clicking with a shovel.
You can use the grass path block for more than paths—it’s a good way to make ground uneven or look muddy.
Igloos
Igloos—they’re cold, white, and round (Minecraft “round”)! You’ll find them in cold, snowy biomes—the Ice Plains and Cold Taiga. They’re made of snow blocks and have windows at the sides made of ice and a doorless entryway. Inside you’ll find a cozy single room with carpeting, crafting table, a redstone torch for dim light, and a furnace. They make a great pit stop if you are traveling. Some igloos (about half) will also hide a secret. At the back of the interior, hidden beneath carpet, is a trapdoor, which leads to a hidden dungeon room. Here are two jailed villagers, one regular and one zombie. In this dungeon room also is a brewing stand, a chest, a cauldron, and a clay pot with cactus. Inside the chest and in the brewing stand are a golden apple and a splash potion of Weakness, the cure for the zombie villager.
Igloos can be hard to spot in the snowy biomes so keep an eye out for their distinctive shape.
Boats
Boats are fixed! They no longer break when you sail by a lily pad or brush up against the shore, and they have become a great way to get around. (It seems to me that rivers are a bit wider, longer, and easier to travel too, but this could just be my imagination.) In addition, boats:
• Have paddles
• Go faster than 1.8 boats and go really fast on ice!
• Can carry two entities (you just need to ride a boat near a mob or push them into the boat)
• Have six varieties, for each type of wood
• Move by using the WASD keys (A and D spin you to the left or right)
• Try to put you on the nearest land block you are looking at, when you press Shift to disembark
• Can no longer travel upward vertically in water
• Can be driven on land, slowly
Boats move much faster now and break much less.
Beetroot
There’s a new veggie in town and it’s a red beetroot. You can find beetroot growing in villages and find their seeds in chests. You grow and harvest them in the same way as other vegetables. Six beetroot on top of a wooden bowl make beetroot soup, and you can craft a single beet into the rose red dye. Roses can be hard to come by, so it’s nice to have another way to make red dye. You can use beetroot to lure and breed pigs. (You can also now use potatoes to breed pigs.) Eating a beetroot gives you 1 hunger and just a little saturation; eating beetroot soup restores 6 hunger points and 7.2 points of saturation.
You can find the pinkish-red beetroot growing in villages.
New Enchantments—Frost Walker and Mending
There are two new enchantments in 1.9, Frost Walker and Mending. These are special “treasure” type of enchantments—you won’t be able to find them using your enchanting table. You’ll have to look for them in chests, fish them up, or trade with villagers for them. Trading with villagers is probably your best bet.
Frost Walker is a boot enchantment and it turns source blocks of water to ice, in a circle around you, and lets you walk on water. The water turns into a special type of ice, frosted ice, which melts fairly quickly in daylight back into water. The frosted ice won’t harm squid or other stuff in the water, it will just avoid those inhabited blocks. Frost Walker I turns water blocks within two blocks of you to ice, and Frost Walker III turns water to ice within three blocks of you. You have to start off on ground for this to work; if you jump off a cliff with Frost Walker boots into the sea, no ice will be formed. Also, Depth Strider and Frost Walker are mutually exclusive: you can’t have (in Survival mode) both enchantments on the same boots.
The Frost Walker enchantment on your boots lets you walk on water!
The Mending enchantment is kind of a game changer when it comes to enchanting your tools, weapons, shields, and armor. Mending lets your stuff be repaired by experience points that you are currently gathering from an activity. Specifically, each point of XP will undo two points of durability. As you kill mobs, mine ore, and smelt things in the furnace, the XP orbs that usually fill up your XP bar will first go toward gear enchanted with Mending. The gear must be in one of six slots—the four armor slots, the new off-hand/shield slot, and the currently selected hotbar slot (what’s in your main hand). Once your mending gear is repaired, the XP will go back to filling up your XP bar. If you have more than one item enchanted with Mending, the game will randomly choose what item to repair. (If you want to specifically repair one item, then make sure that’s the only item you are using or wearing.) This means that your perfect enchanted sword (especially combined with the Unbreaking enchantment) will last much, much longer.
