C’mon, grab your friends. It’s adventure time.
Developer Mojang updated Minecraft today to bring a number of new features into the block-building adventure. This new version emphasizes exploration with new nonplayer characters, locations, and llamas. Minecraft is one of the most popular games in the world, and publisher Microsoft is constantly working to keep the players coming back for more with regular updates like these. Gamers have purchased the game more than 100 million times across consoles, PC, and smartphones.
Microsoft and Mojang have kept busy with Minecraft over the last few months, but a lot of their efforts have gone into the console and mobile versions. Most notably, they introduced Add-ons to the mobile and Windows 10 versions, and this enables players to rejigger the game’s code to create customized characters, creatures, and more. But today’s update is specifically for the original, PC version running on Java, and it’s the biggest such patch since June.
Mojang is calling this the “Exploration Update” because it has features that should encourage you to chase down loot from far off lands. A new villager character called the Cartographer, for example, will give you a treasure map in exchange for emeralds. That map may then lead you to ocean monuments or the new woodland mansion. The new illager characters, cousins of the villagers, protect that forest setting as well as its special treasure. They can summon traps and new imp-like foes called Vexes.
But if you can survive the mansion, you’ll come away with the Totem of Undying, which Mojang claims can bring your character back from “the abyss of death itself.”
Finally, the other big highlight of the update is long-distance transportation. Once you finish looting the mansion or any other faraway location, you can now pack up all of your items on the backs of llamas. These creatures will form a caravan and will follow you back to your home base.