According to a post on the forums, The Adventure Update will be releasing in the next few weeks, and with it comes a massive shit-ton of new features. Some you might not have even heard about until now!
Cobwebs and mineshafts and dungeons… oh my!
Randomly generated abandoned mineshafts will be generated in the world. In these mineshafts you will find new cobweb blocks as well as a new type of dungeon with its own rewards.
Towns
There’s now randomly generated villages that house non-playable characters. In these towns you should be able to socialize with NPC’s to buy goods and the like. Also, the town architecture is surprisingly beautiful for something that’s randomly generated.
Don’t fuck with the Endermen
You know that episode of Doctor Who with the angels that kill you if you blink or look away from them? Well, Endermen are just like that, only they attack you when you look at them. They are peaceful until you move your cross-hairs over one. If you do this, they will teleport to you and attack you. They can also pick up and place blocks at random. It’s unsure if they are allowed to remove player placed blocks or not. As of patch 1.8, Endermen will be a rare spawn.
New lighting and brightness slider
The way light is generated has been completely revamped. No longer will the day/night cycle look like it’s loading block by block. The new transition from night to day (or vice versa) is much smoother.
All items that emit light now have distinct lighting colors. Now my red-light district will get much redder! Also, there’s now a brightness slider allowing you to adjust the brightness of the game to your personal preference.
Experience Orbs and Hunger Bars
The way food effects your player has changed. No longer will it just heal you, but now it effects your rate of healing. Eat food and it will fill your hunger bar. The more filled it is, the faster you will regenerate health. If the bar gets too low, you will actually start to loose health. With this feature comes a new “eating” animation. Om nom nom.
You now gain experience by killing monsters and upon their death you can collect Experience Orbs. With the Orbs, you can purchase items that have been promised as worthwhile.
Rivers
No more ditch digging for me! Rivers are finally in the game. Rivers are large and ca span the length of land and connect to an ocean, or form a “circular” river that is connected to itself. They won’t flow, meaning they will be just as still as the oceans, but the team are considering making those fuckers gush in the future.
War never changes…oh, wait. It has.
Bows can now be charged longer, for higher damage, and it will be possible to score critical hits. Crits are possible from jump attacks with your sword or from random charged bow shots.
New impact animations have been added to the monsters in the game, including arrows penetrating attacked monsters.
Run, Minecraft Steve, Run! We can now sprint! Besides running for extended periods, monsters who are hit while you’re sprinting will go flying back. That’s useful for fending off those bastard spiders that crawl at ungodly speeds.
New and expanded biomes
Biomes are now much larger than they were before. Yes, that should likely end the infamous “one block biomes” we’ve all grown to accept in the world. They will also feature clearly marked boarders, allowing the transition between biomes to be much more noticeable.
Time to get creative!
1.8 adds Creative Mode. In this mode you can fly, break blocks with one hit, control the time of day/night, and spawn infinite items, all while being invincible.
So, that’s all, folks! Looks like Christmas is coming early this year. Look for Patch 1.8 to hit the interwebs in the next couple of weeks.
