Killing the dragon, cool. Because I need some kind of ultimate goal like that even though I love playing around in a sandbox.

I just can't wait to see what a minecraft dragon looks like...

sorry about this unexpected outage. having to revert the mod. plugins are causing some major issues. should be back up within the half hour.
(going to take this short break to fix a lingering network issue too)

no data was lost.

 hey0s mod 121 seems to be a bit more unstable then 115 will try to upgrade again after next update.

new developments in minecraft

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/10/27/biomeshock-the-new-minecraft-worlds/

Lord only knows what manner of many-tentacled beast Minecraft will be in the years to come, but right now the most anticipated change to The Game That Surprised The World is biomes. That there being a fancy-falutin’ word for ‘environments.’ Well, multiple environments within the overarching game environment, to put it with crude specificity.

As the frankly gorgeous video below demonstrates, biomes are what will further cement Minecraft’s status as an explorer’s paradise. No one repeating climate or land-style any more, but instead huge, sprawling worlds full of different aesthetics, different weather, different flora and different fauna. Adventure! Beautiful, blocky adventure!
 

There’ll be over 10 different varieties of biome in the game once this update lands (which should be this weekend, in the Halloween patch), with Notch yesterday describing them as
“rainforesttemperaterainforestseasonalforestforestsavannashrublandtaigadesertgrassdesertice
deserttundra.” You can go ahead and put spaces in that yourself. No please, be my guest. I wouldn’t want to get in the way.

Lovely music in that video, too. Good work, Mr C418.

Speaking to Develop yesterday Notch has revealed some of his future plans for Minecraft, beyond the ones we already knew about: “I plan on adding some kind of overarching narrative to the game to drive the player forward and provide a sense of direction, and add many more new features, like monster towns and alchemy.” He also states that he wants to get the multiplayer mode into better shape once his new company is up to speed. And not just to make survival mode more workable: “I think there’s a huge potential in competitive multiplayer modes like capture the flag and so on, which should keep people – including myself – interested for a long time.”

Monster towns! And er, CTF! And the Halloween update is imminent. We await like tiny, excited children on the eve of Halloween. I guess. Or maybe a kind of spooky Christmas.

UPDATE: Indiegames got a Halloween preview with a nifty video, posted below. Portals look clever.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/10/29/minecraft-story-monster-towns-alchemy/

PC gamer also has an indepth preview of the Halloween update check it out at http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/29/minecraft-halloween-update-hands-on/ full of awesome sauce 

I like this bit lol

Yeah, so going through slipgates didn’t work quite how I thought.

At this particular spot in the Slip, I don’t run into any of its inhabitants. But later, I met my first Ghast: floating jellyfish that shoot fireballs at you. They’re much, much bigger than I realised: several metres across by the looks of it. But they keep their distance and they’re almost always floating in the air, so it’s hard to judge. Sometimes it feels like they’ve changed size.

It’s pretty much impossible to get close enough to hit one with a sword, and I think in most cases you’re better off avoiding them than fighting anyway. Their fireballs hurt if they hit, and make the world trickier to navigate by setting fire to chunks of it, but they’re actually a lot easier to avoid than I’d feared. They don’t seem to predict your movement when aiming, so you can usually run away.

That’s when I bumped into the other inhabitants of the Slip, the ones we hadn’t seen before. You hear zombie gurglings and turn to see this:

It’s a Zombie Pigman. They’re horrible to look at, but actually not hostile: you can run right up to them and they’ll just stare emptily at you. Of course, I did that with three Ghasts on my tail, so shortly after the poor guy was hit with a fireball, set alight and killed. Fact: they drop pork chops when they die. They also oink like a pig occasionally.

I quite like them, so I wouldn’t normally do this, but for the sake of experimentation I had to try attacking one.

Don’t attack one.

Admittedly I didn’t have a lot of health when I did it, but the result was a flash of pain and an instant ‘Game Over’ screen. In the background, the thing’s head was just gibbering on me, apparently biting me over and over.

Then a Ghast shot him with a fireball and he oinked. Hell is a strange place.

Notch:“I plan on adding some kind of overarching narrative to the game to drive the player forward and provide a sense of direction, and add many more new features, like monster towns and alchemy.” 

it's almost like he is trying to please you lol 

I bought Minecraft a couple days ago because Minecraft Classic was boring. I know that you can free build in it, but just building stuff? If I wanted that I'd pull out the Legos.

I gotta say, the $14 this game cost was absolutely worth it, I LOVE Minecraft. I haven't established a goal for myself yet, but I think I'm going to build a railway and keep going and going and going in one direction, forever in search of new mines to explore.

I haven't found any Diamond yet and I've put in at least 10 hours, is it really that rare? Today I spent 4 hours searching the same mine with no success (absolutely HUGE mine).

I hope that eventually, Notch will create unknown terrors that are only found when you dig too deep. I want it to live up to Lord of the Rings, in that respect. "The Dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dûm."

Whoa whoa whoa, biomes are going to be part of THIS update?  I thought they were coming way later!  And there's more than one new type of monster!  Oh shucks.

Updates automatically download if you're connected to the internet.

Not sure if your current world will automatically get the new update, since it adds about 6 new block-types, the hell dimension, and biomes (distinctly separate deserts, tundras, rain forests, beaches, regular forests, etc.).  It's going to change how the game randomly generates areas to make it much more diverse when you're exploring.  Also, you're going to be able to dig much deeper.  So I'm pretty sure you'll have to create a post-Halloween world for this update.  But smaller updates usually update your existing world just fine.  I think the torches are going to change to lamps in all our existing worlds though.

Take a screenshot of your pathetic looking castle!  Upload it here!  Then share it in this thread!  I want to see I want to see!