1.8 is an amazing update, possibly even rivaling the Redstone Update. I have access to the development builds through my own secret means so I would have been able to give you a preview of what to expect.
The first thing that you might notice in the game is the render distance meter has extended all the way to 32 chunks at max. When you do crank it up to max though, it virtually breaks the game. What I think is happening is that each chunk switches with the one that is rendering and you get lots, and lots of switching, identical phantom chunks:
I have found that a render distance of 12 (at least on my computer) is the maximum stable setting.
The second thing I discovered is in my hand. Yes, it's a spawn rabbit.
Unlike horses and cats, the only other animals with a random texture, rabbit textures are all pre-defined. Rabbits can drop three new items: Rabbit Hide, Raw Rabbit, and Rabbit's foot. Rabbit Hide is kind of boring because all you do with it is put four in a square to get a leather. Raw Rabbit can be cooked in the furnace to get cooked rabbit, which can then be combined with a bowl, carrot, a baked potato, and a mushroom of any kind to get Rabbit stew. Here's the cook's secret stew recipe:
In the inventory there are four rabbit hides, a raw rabbit, and a cooked rabbit. Due to the huge number of ingredients I decided to do a test to see if it is more effective to eat the ingredients separately. Here are the results: The rabbit stew restored five chicken legs vs. Cooked rabbit + carrot + baked potato restored 6.5 chicken legs. These are strange results because even without the mushroom and bowl, the Rabbit stew's fate is sealed. Nobody in survival will ever make it. I'm sure that the devs will fix this, it was a development version when I tested it after all. Rabbits get very excited when you pull out a carrot and will even ignore the chance to have babies for the very chance of getting just one delicious carrot (This reminds me very much of my dogs). Remember that rabbits act like cows in their mating, they don't get tamed.
R.I.P. Two innocent rabbits, because my sister told me to tame them. (The diamond sword was involved)
Next in the update there are more varied doors and fences. Basically there are doors and fences for each different type of wood.
The Spruce door looks most like a door I would expect to find in a jungle attached to a tree trunk. Next is a screenshot of all the different fences!
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| The generic Stick! |
When I opened my creative inventory for the first time, I noticed that there are some new stone types: Diorite, Andesite, and Granite. All of these new blocks are related in that they can be crafted with the one before them:
Stone + Nether Quartz = Diorite
Diorite + Stone = Andesite
Diorite + Nether Quartz = Granite
They also are mineable in the overworld so crafting, in my opinion, is wasteful. You can also create polished versions of these blocks to make nice buildings.
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| My nice, new, expensive, granite countertop kitchen! I can cook the new mutton! |
One of the more scary mobs they added was the ender mite. The endermite has a chance of spawning when an ender pearl is used, if it is an enderman, the endermite will have a diminishing chance of spawning where the enderman teleports. The endermite looks a lot like a fat, purple maggot with one red eye.
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| They aren't very good swimmers and will easily drown. |
I've experimented and found that it spawns where you teleport from, meaning that spamming ender pearls into an enemy castle will probably give them some nuances to deal with.
I believe it is time for the grand finale. 1.8 has added Ocean Monuments. Over four times larger than a desert temple it has lots of randomly generated rooms and Guardian mobs. The guardians zap you and squids with their lasers and reflect some damage back to you with their spikes. They drop fish and prismarine.
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| Look at all the guardians swimming around! |
Bows don't work very well under water, so it's a good idea to forget about it and just go in with a sword. Inside are many inter-connected rooms that are randomly generated. Around the center of the monument is a treasure room, it has a large cube of dark prismarine with a core of gold blocks. However, getting to it will be a problem for many people. Firstly, mining your way in is nearly impossible because the Elder-Guardians (Only three per monument and no respawns) give you mining fatigue. Next, you will have to fight your way through the corridors and kill all the dangerous (though somewhat funny) Elder-Guardians along with their babies.
The Elder-Guardians have tons of health and occupy two by two by two blocks, sometimes I see their tails glitching through the roof. The noises they make sound very much like they are burping, and that lead me to name the first one I met Burpy... and then all of the others... Anyway, their scales are much lighter than the other guardians' and they don't like anvils landing on them from a specific person in creative who I will not name.
Now that you have patiently read this long, long, long post I will show you how to use development snapshots:
1. In the launcher window you will click on the button in the bottom left that says "Edit Profile".
3. Use the drop-down box and select the snapshot that is highest on the list (If there is an official version above this one, like in the picture, you will be using a buggy version of the current update).
4. Click the "Save Profile" button (indicated by the green arrow) and play.
To undo this, simply repeat step 1, change the version to the one that you want, and repeat step 4.
