The Spawn Chunks – 091 – Minecraft Dungeons Deep Dive // The Spawn Chunks: A Minecraft Podcast

Welcome to the spawn chunks episode number 91 for Monday June 1st 2020 my name is Johnny but the internet knows me as pixel rifts and joining me as always is Jill Duggan hi Joel I am here I am back from the past and the future if you’d like to hear about

Johnny what do you been up to this week oh boy what have I been up to a lot of Minecraft dungeons which is going to be the main topic of discussion for this week so we’re gonna be covering a little bit about it in the news but we’re gonna

Be saving a lot of that stuff for later on in the show as you’ve probably seen from the title and the thumbnail we are gonna be getting into minecraft dungeons and I have been doing a lot so in that game but I’ve also still been you know hopping popping into core minecraft here

And there to work on my jungle temple which I think I mentioned last week I was rebuilding a jungle temple and kind of restyling it to look more like a a ziggurat or a Mayan pyramid so I’ve been working on that I’m working on the interior right now this week I’m gonna

Be building some traps and stuff in there and I also decided to do a little bit of stuff on stream with my trading hall because playing Skyblock has reminded me how valuable clerics trades are and being able to get a renewable source of redstone without having to go

Mining for it or afk at a witch farm which lately I find myself just really being against the idea of afk in for resources mainly because I’m using my computer for other stuff all the time so leaving minecraft open seems kind of annoying to me but I yeah I decided to

Recruit a bunch of clerics which ultimately means is Amba fiying them a few more times so their trade prices are better but now having somebody to trade rotten flesh to you and gold as well as by redstone and glowstone and lapis and so many of the important things clerics

Have is a worthwhile thing to have how about you Joel what you been up to this week so I actually have been pretty much exclusively streaming dungeons has been a chill and fun honestly a nice break from trying to figure out what to build next yes same absolutely oh yeah I

Find it very refreshing playing something a little bit different but still minecraft themed minecraft themed same universe same kind of visual aesthetic but obviously very pretty with you know the lighting and stuff but but I do find that I’m hitting which I think you’ve mentioned before the show that

116 Stoll yes the I have some ideas I have some things I want to try but it’s like wow maybe I should just wait until all this stuff happens because you know I’ve wanted to add some villagers and do some training to the city so I don’t

Have to grind as many blocks you know you know exactly what you’re talking about taking advantage of the village trades there’s changes yeah to how that works now so like I kind of feel like I want to wait so what I did do in game which was off stream and it’s one of

Those mornings where I just I didn’t sleep that well and I wanted something chilled to do to kind of warm up my brain and I had started this squid farm actually that’s a lie I think I did stream this see this is what the week has been like so I finished off the

Squid firm which is like a temporary only made it so big squid firm and then that’s right I did that on stream and then off stream I connected it to the main storage system under the bank so yeah you know me and my water streams I like being able to make things move

Around and turns out that it really wasn’t that far because the bank looks really far from the squid farm but the bank basement is much larger than the actual blank Bank building on the top like it’s on much as a much bigger system so I’m getting the water streams

And stuff together was fun you know it was a short tunnel it wasn’t like it was hours and hours I think it took me an hour and a half just to kind of go in there play for you know I have an extra cup of coffee and just kind of mess

Around and it dawned on me that my storage system into the bank is a combination of its traditional kind of like no overflow filters and and manual sorting however because of the aesthetic of how I laid it out and how I wanted it to all work I ended up leaving spaces

Between every row of chests so it’s not like it’s double chests all lined up next to each other it’s they’re spaced out mm-hm and what I really like about that is if you get something like oh I don’t know ink sacs that you then have to fit in to an

Existing system that weren’t considered when you built the system you have the room to head the filter yeah and what I like so much about this is that I don’t have to add the extra chests I am now putting two filters going into one chest Tower if that makes any sense so it

Means that I can do all of my manual die storage in one column and then insert the ink sacs into the bottom and just have have bulk of some and and manual of others and as much as I really like the idea of having a really cool multi item

Sorter thing and I’ve seen some stuff on online lately that I’m just drooling over but it’s a lot of work I sort of liking this idea of this this hybrid system of like some of its manuals some of its bulk some of its just sorting out things as you need but

The real win of the whole situation is the fact that I’m putting in I’m inserting filters into a system that allows for expansion which I thought really kind of worked out in my in my benefit yeah I I’m very much in favor of the idea of bulk storage for a lot of

Things and very small storage for other things like I always put out like a few double chests for a bunch of stuff and then realized that hey I’m not actually collecting a whole bunch of purple blocks or something like that whereas my cobblestone storage is overflowing into

The three chests either side because I have so much of this stuff and it ultimately comes down to what you’re using the most and the stuff that you’re able to stockpile more easily the stuff that you’re able to farm in large quantities and that kind of thing so

It’s yeah it’s something that I’m gonna revisit when I build this museum because I’ll need to have a lot of storage in that for the building blocks that are going to shape the building itself and also the stuff that’s going to be stored for display when I get around to that

But then I’m I’m looking at that going how exactly do I want to store all of this stuff how am I going to arrange any of this and does the storage system then become an exhibit in the museum itself like what point does it does it just get incorporated

To that so a lot of thinking going into that project right now as well but yes sounds like you’ve you’ve at least got some things you can tinker away with until the 1.16 stall is is over and who knows like inspiration might strike in the meantime because looking at the

Environments from dungeons that’s been kind of interesting and inspirational to me yep especially the desert temple level having traps in it I’m like oh I can try and take some some inspiration for those four traps in this jungle temple I’m working on we’ll see but you you mentioned the villager changes as

Something you’re waiting for him on sixteen so we should probably head straight into the news and talk about the latest snapshot this was a bit of a delayed snapshot actually because they didn’t put it out on Wednesday it came out on Friday I believe so kind of later

Than usual and everybody was playing dungeons at the time so I feel like maybe delaying it into a few days later in the week made a little bit more sense but this is Java edition snapshot 20w 22-a which we have a full changelog available of course on minecraft net

Linked in the show notes if you want to go and see that and the details of some experimental rendering changes may interest some of you they have pointed out that it might cause issues with some different graphics cards so bear that in mind but aside from those pig Lin’s will

Now sometimes dance in celebration when they successfully complete a hog lean hunt bells can be hung from the underside of a mall blocks when a villager that was traded with is struck by lightning the witch it converts into will no longer despawn not that you can

Convert it back but you just have a ton of witches hanging around players can no longer mount another entity when the crouch key is held down so no more confusion about getting into minecarts the villager Workstation logic changes that Joel hinted at are actually really great there’s a bunch of them here which

I’ll list quickly villages will no longer try to work at the same workstation the most experienced nearby villager for the profession corresponding to the work station you add will get the work station so the cleric who is like a master level is going to get the work station over a

Cleric who is still only a novice villagers now have to walk to and reach the work station before they can acquire the profession and work there so no more villagers claiming professions through wall villagers can no longer claim workstations and professions during night time or during raids villagers

Will check and make sure their work station is valid at all times of day as long as they’re within 16 blocks of the work station there are a handful of other technical changes and bug fixes there’s more information about most of those on minecraft net and of note there

Are a few fixed bugs here including zombie reinforcements being able to spawn on glass that has been fixed good news for zombie pigman farms their bees inside a nest or hive not growing up or getting their breeding timer reset light not propagating across chunk borders properly which I think has been

An issue for a while so it’s good that that one’s getting fixed and soul campfire not stealing twice the amount of damage as a normal campfire yeah I’m not entirely certain about that one I didn’t realize soul fire did more damage because yeah oh it’s twice that’s

Interesting because I may be that that sort of passed me by in previous changelogs but I I remember soul fire being added and it didn’t do any damage at first it didn’t destroy items or anything it was just aesthetic when it first got added with the the biomes but

I guess now it does twice the amount of damage that’s really interesting yeah so the bug was that it wasn’t destroying items like it wasn’t acting as fire should and when they fixed it they also said oh like they also added this other thing oh by the way it was supposed to

It wasn’t doing any damage and it was supposed to do twice the damage supposed to be more dangerous than a regular and that got looked over because the big change was like well now it destroys items you know the cool thing was that people thought it wasn’t going to

Destroy items because it means that you could farm stuff with fire have it killed the mob but have the item not be destroyed and before I yeah yeah but but uncle obviously it’s changed but yeah so like if you’ve got I know that you did I think it was campfires in your iron

Golem farm yes so you could change those to soul camp fires and and how do damage deal twice as fast that’s very interesting I wonder however and that will get used because campfires are actually a really good block for mob farms like that they are non solid so

The items can travel through them to hoppers and aside from the particles they’re actually a pretty friendly resource to get you don’t need a huge amount to get them I would soul fire I guess you just need to sell fire torches or soul soil to go in there or something

So I think it’s soul soil I think you place the call with source oil yeah that’s not that’s not too bad then I’ll see what we can be about that might be a an innovation that I can bring to my Skyblock let’s play at some point if if

You were under a rock then you might have missed the fact that minecraft dungeons launched this past Tuesday we now have a live game you can get that at minecraft.net you can purchase it for PC by following the link on your minecraft Launcher to the Microsoft Store and the

Microsoft Store you can also get it there for Xbox it’s worth noting that if you’d like to try minecraft dungeons and you’re not sure but it will one there’s a whole lot of people streaming it so you can kind of check it out that way

But also it’s part of the Xbox game pass also Xbox game passed for PC which is in beta and also pretty cheap right now so if you’re looking to try minecraft dungeons and you’re on the fence about it you can do so if you have access to

The game pass because it’s it’s just a subscription and right now I think it’s a dollar US a month it will eventually go up obviously check with you know other people before you sign up for that but I thought that was fantastic that you have this brand-new game that day

And date is also available on this subscription idea I think it’s just fantastic yeah and considering considering minecraft is like a first party Microsoft property now it makes sense but it’s gonna be a big part of their offering going forward I think and I think regular minecraft is also on

Xbox game paths I believe or it was at a certain time I’m not sure if it still is but super cool minecraft dungeons we haven’t put this in the show notes so I thought I would add it here is also available on ps4 and on Nintendo switch

And I don’t believe there’s any kind of like it’s not on PlayStation now a PlayStation Plus or whatever the kind of like free games slider is for the sort of membership thing for PlayStation but yes not available for Mac or Linux right now and also not available on mobile

Devices because I presume there’s just a lot of too many controls hereford to be played on you know an iPad or something like that but as far as the console offering and a PC offering it is available on all of the most modern platforms I guess and I don’t I don’t

Think I knew that it was available for a switch I thought it was coming but it no it was available now yeah I think it launch day in date with all of the other versions yeah cool cool dungeons DLC have been revealed Holy Smoke that was fast

The first DLC jungle awakens is coming in July in this adventure you will enter a distant dangerous jungle to fight mysterious powers in three new missions to defeat the terrors hidden among the vines you’ll have new weapons armor and artifacts at your disposal the second DLC creeping winter is due

Later this year team is also working on cross-platform play functionality a cool new free content oh sorry and cool new free content for minecraft dungeons that everyone will be able to receive regardless of Edition we’ll come back with more details in the coming weeks this was another from an

Article on minecraft.net yes and the last piece of news related to minecraft dungeons here is that they have released a limited-edition clothing line by cloak and a hardback strategy guide so there is even some minecraft dungeons much out there for those of you guys who are into collecting some physical stuff let’s

Start with the snapshot which feels like a while ago now because all of the minecraft dungeons news but let’s let’s talk about these villager changes let’s talk about I guess yeah bells being able to be hung from the underside of more blocks that harks back to the lantern debate I know but

It’s cool that there are a few more options there yeah I agree I something I like about the Bell is that you can attach it to the side of things yeah and so you can have it if you wanted to have the bell look like it’s part of a shop

You know like a medieval signpost or something like that then it attaches in a very fun way to the sides of blocks mmm whereas if you put it on the ground it has like two prongs size of blocks and has one horizontal you know support and then now underneath things are just

Gonna hang straight down yeah I kind of wonder if if these all line up I saw a video where they went through a number of things like hoppers and fences and all the different things that you can connect it to the things you cannot connect to to makes sense like you can’t

Connect it to the bottom of a bed things like that but the thing that I’m wondering is is that if it lines up now with chains and lanterns and now the Bell can all roughly be hung from the same sort of stuff I know that chains can be waterlogged but

If I’m not mistaken bells because they’re redstone component get washed away with water yeah might be the case at least it seems to be becoming more consistent if they’re working with those as all being things that act a certain way when they are hanging from specific

Blocks and that kind of thing like if what’s what’s good for one thing is good for the other thing then that becomes more intuitive to players which is is great let’s see what else we got here the villager workstation changes I am a hundred percent on board width that

Sounds like it’s gonna make trading halls much more consistent and no longer the stuff of nightmares because right now if you have two villages with workstations opposite each other and it’s the same workstation then sometimes they can work at the one that’s in front of them sometimes they

Want to trade places and work at the workstation that they can see across from them and if you have traders in booths which a lot of people want to do to keep their trading halls neat and organized and you know have a sign above a villager to say what they trade very

Difficult to do that when they want to walk around and then they can’t refresh their trades because they’re not attached to the right workstation so these rules kind of streamline everything to the point where a villager behavior should be a lot more predictable and I love the fact that the

Most experienced villager gets to claim the workstation because naturally just about to say that yeah you want to have them be the ones that refresh their trades most often because they’re the guys you’ve already traded with so you know you don’t want the one villager who’s only got a couple of you know

Early game farming trades to refresh their trades when you’re after the farmer who can sell sell you golden carrots already you know yeah so that’s great and and mad props to the team who’ve been working on those changes because villager logic has been going under changes since it was released in

114 to try to get these guys to do what they want them to do and I hope that this is one of the last things we have to see from this because they should be a lot more logical at this point and I’m wondering if the new villager workstation mechanics will make it

Easier to get villagers to move around rather than pushing a villager those last handful of blocks which can be very frustrating we all know you can move things around with mine carts and boats and stuff but usually that fine-tuning that last few blocks has to be kind of

Like this constant headbutt of trying to get the villager around and in the right spot but perhaps similar to being able to coax a zombie across you know an empty space using a profession block as bait to bring a villager preferably one that doesn’t have a profession I would

Imagine but also even if it does if it’s the right kind of block and they’re looking like hey I’m a librarian and you’ve just taken my my work station if I if you place that down if that would basically reliably mean that they would then walk over to that work station at a

Regular clip it does kind of make me wonder if the redstone genius is out there the combinations of sticky pistons with proffession blocks attached to them in a long hallway I kind of wonder if you could just like bread crumb a villager over a long distance it might

Be possible and especially if they have to walk to it and reach it now instead of just you know adopting a workstation from several blocks away through various objects and that kind of thing I think that may that may be more possible and it’s gonna be interesting

To see how trading halls adapt to these changes in future the rest of the snapshot is looking pretty normal I do like the fact that bees now grow up when they’re inside hives that was my initial problem with bees was that you had to make sure that they were out of the

Hives so that they could grow up and then be able to breed whereas now if they are continuing to age when they’re inside the hive then you you don’t run into that problem you don’t have to block the hives off when they’re you know out and flying around and

Collecting honey going back in at night that kind of thing so that speeds things up a little bit more a little bit more time-efficient for players just kind of feel a little bit more natural and and I think makes more logic sense than than the way that it was happening before

Yeah I’m excited about the zombie reinforcements not spawning on glass because that’s gonna help me fix the gold farm on the Citadel we currently have an issue where zombies will spawn on the ceiling of the gold farm because it’s far enough away from the lava despite it being glass we

Just end up with this horde of zombies hovering around the player in the center because it’s one of those giant donut farms but we built it in the nether not on the roof yeah and so we we have a glass floor on the bottom of it which is

Great because it’s above lava which means the light level is always well above nine but the issue is that of course the the ceiling isn’t and I’m looking forward to having a cleaner a cleaner gold farm again because I think we also we’re gonna have to make some changes because

There’s gonna be some big lens spawning in there too but I think we just have to take some stuff out for magma blocks and we should be able to get back to normal but yeah it’s it’s gonna be an interesting an interesting conversion I’m looking I’m actually looking forward

To it it’s gonna be some fun fun technical changes but the fact that you don’t have to worry about the reinforcements of zombies on on glass now I think it’s gonna be great yeah yeah super great change what do you think about the dungeons DLC cuz we

Can’t really talk about that in the main discussion since it is no yeah but the themes they have gone with seem pretty different from what they’ve already got in the game which i think is is great for me they’re kind of they’re bringing in other biomes like the jungle and some

Sort of winter biome that I assume that’s gonna be coming out around like Christmas holidays sort of time like around the end of the probably yeah jungle awakens is coming in July which is fast and and in my head we I mean we don’t know when 116 is gonna come out

But end of June early July is generally when we’ve seen you know Minecraft updates sometimes as late as August so to have the DLC for dungeons come in the same month as 116 I thought was odd I’m not complaining because I think it’s great that it’s happening so soon yeah I

Was just I had purchased the hero Edition and just leaned back and thought yep it’ll be September or Christmas before we get an expansion and that’s fine there seems to be plenty to do in this game until then and so July is quick the screenshots that they have in

The article look fantastic I love the look of this vine tree monster Gollum thing yeah you see you seem to have like carnivorous plants as enemies which is something we’ve never seen in Minecraft before please add those two jungles and man I love I love me some plants vs.

Zombies so if you want to if you want to do plants vs. zombies slash Diablo slash minecraft dungeons I am on board plants and zombies vs. you I think is the have the plants and zombies team up at long last but yeah I think jungle awakens looks really cool and is probably going

To be a nice addition to the game for people who I mean you said you’re quite happy with the length all of it right now I think some people were actually kind of dissatisfied with the length of it considering that you can if you run through it super fast and

Don’t explore the levels super heavily you can complete the main story in five to six hours so I think some people were disappointed with that and wanted more from the storyline of the game and it seems like this might add a light story kind of like the main game has but with

The jungle theme and considering how much other stuff this points to in terms of other directions they could go with future DLC this hasn’t even touched on the nether or the end yet very very cool I like this also look at this there’s also some Island expansion thing

Happening if you go to that if you look at the map there’s there’s a little ender pearl icon on it yeah yeah Island adventure or something so that could be cool too and I don’t know if that’s part of the DLC or if that’s maybe a portal

To get the DLC yeah that’s doesn’t the impression the impression I get is that the mainland that we are currently on is the main area that in which the campaign takes place at but then you can ender pearl to this DLC at some point when it comes out whether that’s through a

Nether portal or through some other kind of means of transport that’s where the DLC hub is going to be for future missions not not basing that on anything other than my own assumptions but we will we’ll see what happens and then creeping winter later in the year looking forward to more information

About that as well also cross-platform play the fact that they’re working on that is gonna be really cool because some of my friends do not have a PC they have access to minecraft but they don’t they’re playing it on the Mac you know so they they don’t have access to dungeon so being

Able to play on a switch and potentially teaming up with somebody on a switch that while I’m on my PC if that’s even possible that would be awesome yes we have had a bit of feedback from our folks in the discord about minecraft dungeons and what they are playing on

And some folks have said there are a couple of technical issues with the switch version it tends to crash kind of frequently I’m not sure quite well causing that but I feel like it’s it’s difficult to port these game to different platforms when they all have different hardware specifications and I

Think the switch is kind of underpowered compared to like modern PC specs and the Xbox and so forth so I I do I do wonder how the experience is on switch and of course if you feel like writing in about that the email is spawn chunk mail at Gmail

Komm if you want to share your experiences with minecraft dungeons on whatever platform you play be super great to hear from you did you want to briefly touch on this cloak clothing line and the sort of merchandise I have to say I kind of want to get the

Hardback guide for Minecraft dungeons if only to find out what the names of some of the mobs are because it doesn’t always tell you in-game there is no like in-game bestie Airy so I’m kind I have that issue too yeah you know like I I’m not a usually a hardback guide person

I’m not that into you know going through the games in that kind of level of detail I used to be when I nin Tendo Power magazine I had a subscription I was a kid but I yeah I I am curious about stuff like that because I think

How in the game does it tell you is it only when you have a boss fight and they put up the name or its bosses and the only other time I’ve seen certain enemies named is when you get an enchanted one and then it shows up on screen what their enchantments are it’ll

Say like you know enchanted spider with you know fast attack and burning lava trail or whatever and so the only way I found out that wraiths were called wraiths which are the kind of blue floating enemies that you encounter okay yeah they’re in the desert temple I

Think first if you’re playing on lower difficulties but yeah it’s rough man they they are I had no idea what they were called and I was just calling them like Lich’s or necromancer’s or whatever and there’s like I actually nailed the name of the geomancer because I’ve been talking about wanting a geomancer

Villager for a while and there’s this elegy in pumpkin pastures onwards whoo yeah spawns these giant stone pillars around you to block your way and stuff and I I could I started calling that one the geomancer before I realized that was even its name but there is no real way

In game of knowing what those are they’re just like things for you to hit and if they’re not in the core minecraft game then we don’t know the nomenclature for them yet so I’m kind of interested to get that guide just to see if it has a little bit more information about what

Each of those are and there’s potentially information there that like is this an undead mob technically so does smite work better on it versus other enchantments and like knowing how the game classifies certain things if that information is in the guide would be very helpful to

Me actually yeah no I agree I’m less excited about the merge I don’t know about the clothing line yeah the clothing line I mean I’ve seen minecraft merch before I’m not a big merch guy and I understand that the design of some of the stuff is probably maybe not aimed at

Me but unless you’re a fan of cloak cloak cloak and I say that with a tongue-in-cheek because their logo is all over everything like it’s almost like you have to be as big of a fan of cloak as you do of Minecraft dungeons it seems like the dungeons design the

Dungeons IP is secondary to to these designs so I’d I’m not a fan i I would much rather have and this is something we can get into more in the main discussion because of it relates to the design of Minecraft dungeons but I think pardon the pun the icons in minecraft

Dungeons are iconic like when you see that sword or you see that that mushroom what’s the mush what’s the metal deathcap mushroom especially when it’s early level fishing-rod deathcap mushroom boots of swiftness things that everybody that’s played the game for five minutes is probably seen just give

Me that on a t-shirt like a periodic table just one and that’s all I need you know I think people that are fans of the game would be way more inclined to have cool stuff like that on it most of what I the closest thing I could find was was

A mushroom but it just it has cloak everywhere and you’re like so is there a mushroom cloak in the game like I just it all seems to be very confusing and definitely just not my style I don’t want to diss merch anybody that is excited and and is looking forward to

Getting any of the merchandise because obviously to each their own but I was really surprised considering how minimal the design is in Minecraft dungeons and how clean it is the design of the clothing is anything but I’m not sure if you felt the same way yeah it’s not my thing

And I’m yeah I’m fairly resigned to the fact that I’m not the most fashionable person in the world so there’s my buttons for people for whom it you know it doesn’t for me but yeah I mean it’s kind of cool to see dungeons almost like launching as big as

It has with there being like instantly a clothing line and a strategy guide and I think a bunch of YouTube folks also got sent like care packages with plush redstone golems and stuff in so like they’re doing the most with this they’re like they’re firing on all cylinders so

You got to admire that and I believe 10% of the revenue from the cloak clothing line also goes to a cove in nineteen relief charity so that’s super great obviously but yeah the the clothing itself not really my thing like you I’m not the biggest merch guy

But I have bought a couple of things in recent years and this doesn’t necessarily appeal to me but it’s not necessarily designed to so yeah I mean like I I’m a graphic tee guy I like I like a good Superman shirt or or a Green Lantern t-shirt or Captain America or

Something like that but I just and there’s there are things from minecraft that I would totally wear on a shirt but it’s just like I can’t cook nothing from this line really kind of speaks to me to the point where like well that doesn’t really say minecraft dungeons to be but

I guess I think part of it too minecraft has been around for so long that there are inherent social memes that just go with it right yeah whereas we don’t really have that yet you know for Minecraft dungeons I kind of feel like it has to be around longer before

Somebody makes a joke about like the fish and rod or you know about the wizard’s hat which I love like stuff like that is where people where it becomes like oh like you that’s o P or or this is you know this is instant death there’s something like that like I

Know these are the things that people make might cling to I might have a couple of options for you in the main discussion but we’ll get to that first of all we got some email to read and this one we do yeah this one is coming

In from Lord valor why don’t you take this one absolutely the subject of the email is experimenting with Minecraft dungeons hello pixel rifts and Joel I love the podcast it gives me something to listen to while I’m cooped up in quarantine keep it okay I think we will

I have been playing Minecraft dungeons and I am really enjoying it I am finding though that I am getting quite a few swords axes and armor in my inventory over time sometimes I have a hard time giving up some of the gear because it has a new enchantment I want to try but

Salvaging my current weapon or armor for its upgrade point maybe a downgrade for me downgrade for me in the long run how are you experimenting with all of the enchantments and weapons available when there are so many great options should I be watching streams and videos

To get more knowledge about the game so I know what I might prefer thanks for your entertainment you provide best regards Lord valor Lord valor writes into this to the Citadel cafe – so thanks very much for the great email or valor I’ve got some thoughts on this

Right off the top I had the same issue that you do with the game and that you kind of feel limited with what you can hold and what you want to keep and what’s good for you I’d love to have a chest small small capacity back at camp

So stuff that you can’t have access to when you’re playing a level but you don’t want to dismiss right away because like you said it has a cool enchant and it might be good for a boss fight or it might be good for something now you do

Have a fairly large inventory I think it’s like 30 slots I’ve not been to a situation where I’ve been full look I’ve never been forced to salvage something I’ve always had room to collect things I need but I’m also taking the time to salvage things that are basically junk

For me before I start a mission currently my build focuses on sustainability so I’m trying to balance max health with max damage reduction and then offensively any kind of damage over time or damage reduction to enemies I think it’s weakness or weakening I don’t remember the name of the enchantment

It’s purple I know that much and it makes a purple cloud over the bad guys may they hurt you less so in the combination with all of those things basically means I last a lot longer in a fight the issue with keeping weapons within chance that you want to try is

That you will quickly level that weapon and this is something that I’ve done where oh I want to try leeching and this is a really cool weapon it’s some knives or some the sickles that had leeching on them was like I’ll try those and then I

Played one more level and I out leveled those to the point where like well even if leeching was cool they’re like six points below my power rating now so I don’t want to use them I’ve got something that does three times the damage so why would I use those when I

Can clearly use this new thing so what I say if you want to try something try it you can get the enchantment point back if it doesn’t work out it’s not the end of the world which I love about the way that they’ve structured this game it’s not like you’re wasting enchantment

Points you get them but and you get them all back I salvaged that that weapon that had a full tier 3 weakness again correct me if I’m wrong and chant mint on it and I got all 6 points back when I salvaged that which I didn’t think was

Good I thought I was gonna get three like I was just like I figured there had to be a cost you know but it’s not alternatively you could do another playthrough with new character Salvage weapons you’ve used before just on site and then you like go in favor of stuff

You can just not try don’t don’t make a decision based on how you’re doing to say well I’ve never used dagger so I’m using backwards this time and that’s the only thing I’m going to use or I’m gonna build that specific way I have been been watching streams because of potential

Spoilers I haven’t finished the game yet but once you’ve played through the story once depending on how you feel about the discovery spoilers watching other people play as a good way to look outside your own experience as well I do however really like currently the shiny factor

Of seeing new weapon or new in chant or new artifact and the game that I had no idea even existed so I have been watching streams I don’t know how about you Peck service like when it comes to when it comes to experimenting with stuff like how are you going about it in

The game I have been watching a couple of streams and I was surprised to find that basically everybody has a different setup to me and I went whenever I would dip into streams I would see stuff that I’d never seen before so if anything it was kind of fun hopping into those

Streams and finding people being like oh hey like check it out I have this amazing sword that deals a ton of fire damage and and oh or like I found a unique glaive that did like a ton of damage or something and there’s there’s some really cool stuff to be found

Outside of your own experience so yeah I do I do think it’s it’s fun to get that stuff and and maybe find that that’s the stuff you want to aim for if you’re like right I’m gonna play until I find that weapon then then it gives you some other

Objectives if you know it’s out there to begin with which once again is another reason I want to get the the hardback guide for this game is knowing what else is out there that I haven’t found yet when I’m on that kind of completionist bent of I want to find

Everything just so I’ve had the full experience you know I agree that there should be some sort of storage chest or maybe the option to buy back items that you’ve salvaged maybe unique items only maybe for a higher price because you know what you’re getting but then I used

To play destiny one and destiny one did this with the exotic weapons once you had acquired them either through them being you know rare drops from gameplay or occasionally like once per week a character would show up at the tower and you could buy exotic weapons from him

And he’d always have something different and the perks on it would be different but then once you would acquire it once even if you junked it for whatever you got back in that game I can’t remember now you could buy them again from a kiosk at the tower and sometimes they’d

Have a different set of perks and pokes just being like kind of like the enchantments in Dungeons you know so if you if you scrap like a unique say diamond sword and it doesn’t have enchantments you want you can buy it back from someplace and maybe it has

Different enchantments that you like a little bit better instead of you having to grind levels over and over again in the hope that you’ll get that diamond sword that has a better set of enchantments might seem like a better system to me but that’s not currently in

The game I don’t know if they plan to add that in future if there’s you know a greater variety of weapons if it makes more sense then or or what I do like the fact that you can zero in on that stuff though so if you’re finding that you

Want sword style weapons you look for those weapons in the little icons that appear when you’re loading up the levels and you know not to grind for swords in a place that’s only gonna give you daggers or sickles or like you don’t want to go to the swamp if you want the

Heavier weapons like glaives you want to go to like redstone mines for that so it’s so the game kind of does that intuitively and seeds different loot in different areas as an alternative approach to just starting a new character you can clone your character from the main character select screen

From basically the main menu this doesn’t clone your entire inventory but it does clone anything that that carrot has equipped it will you know completely wipe all your emeralds and anything that you’re not actively holding but you get your artifacts your armor melee weapon

And bow so if you want to you can you know save your character that has all of the inventory and stuff then go through equip a sword and a bow that you feel like checking out maybe some different armor clone the character while they’re wearing those and you can go back in and

Swap some stuff around clone the character again and then you get multiple permutations of the same character at the level that you’re at right now on the power level you’re out right now all with different gear so potentially you can clone your character out that way if you want to experiment and have

Like a couple of offshoots branches of the same character or rock in different gear that that might be a little bit time-consuming and again bear in mind it does clear the inventory for the new character not your you know main character but the the new one that your

Your the clone that you create has no inventory aside till that’s one really cool I didn’t know you could do that and so is it the same skin can you change the skin later I think you can change the skin whenever you want to from the character select screen that’s really

Cool so you could essentially you know if you built up a bunch of stuff in here you just finished the swamp and you realize that you have a lot of rogue gear you could totally just make a rogue like character in terms of like dress your dress your tank like a rogue clone

It and then go back and dress your tank like a tank again and still have all your all your main gear you know and then have an offshoot character that’s the same level yeah although I want to say because I was experimenting with this trying to figure out how to get the

Right power level if you have different gear I’m pretty sure your power level will change if the gear is less than what you’re currently wearing yeah because I I mean your your your player level won’t change but your power level would right yeah the power level is

Really just a guideline though as far as I can tell like it doesn’t seem to affect the gear you get from the blacksmith and the wandering trader those seem tied to your player level and the power level is really just so you know if you’re underpowered going into a

Level where you’re you know moving the difficulty slider around and seeing where you need to be for for completing the challenges that are in that level so I think yeah power level can be more of a guideline and then once you know what kind of gear you like

Using you can maybe try and grind for higher level gear of that class it does so if you want to you have like a level 90 character or something absurd like that because I know some people out there have and and much higher you can just clone a level 90 character and be

Playing at that difficulty level as much as you want right the reason I ask that is because when I was trying to figure out where to go next in my last playthrough I had removed some armor and I was like oh wait a minute I thought I

Was a higher power level rating and it turns out like just switching out that one piece of armor for I think it was like rogue type gear for a more tank like gear and my power rating was flipping between 16 and 18 yeah-ah which set of armor I was wearing

So but that’s cool though I did not know that you can call I didn’t even see that at the interface that you could call a character that’s good to know yeah it’s pretty handy um again the alternative alternative is create new characters and do multiple playthroughs the game is

Actually quick enough that you can feasibly do this and that I think is the counterpoint to people saying the game doesn’t have a whole lot of content the content is going back through finding new weapons finding new ways to beat the game new strategies different builds

That kind of thing and the fact that you can go through the default difficulty in you know four to eight hours means that it doesn’t take long to get a second playthrough started and play it completely differently yeah the first time through I trashed anything that

Didn’t work for my rogue build now I’m going back through with the second character and messing around with the heavier melee weapons just to see what I missed because I was salvaging everything going nope that doesn’t have synergy with the stuff I want let me just you know trash all of that for

Emeralds and keep going through the blacksmith I think we’re already getting into our main discussion here so let’s let’s go in-depth first of all we’ve tried to keep it spoiler free thus far and we’ll be keeping it spoiler free as far as the plot goes for the remainder

Of this discussion we are going to be talking about the weapons and armor that we found and and the artifacts and stuff that we really like and probably where those can be found but we’re probably not going to go into the plot what happens at the end Jill hasn’t beaten

The game yet either so I don’t want to spoil the experience for you but then I think it’s it’s gonna be a different level of spoilers for everybody so if you don’t want to hear about the stuff that is out there gear wise then yeah maybe tune back in a

Little bit later or maybe play the game a little bit more and then come back to this discussion because we’re about to get into it so Joel your experience of Minecraft dungeons please man I I don’t know where to start other than just I really enjoyed this game it I was a

Diablo player I was not an end game Diablo player I played through it once and did a little bit of post you know first playthrough play but you know it didn’t really grab me in that way but I just as a minecraft fan dungeons is just

It is a ton of fun it is visually rewarding you know right off the bat you start to feel more powerful the firework arrow is great you can an upgrade that and it just piles and piles and piles and piles and I’m having a ton of fun

And as I mentioned at the top of the show it’s an excellent escape from the the 116 kind of like doldrums of like wow I kind of want to build stuff but I kind of want to wait and I’m also on a big project in a modern city in

Minecraft and like all the things I want to do next are ginormous and it’s like oh I don’t really want to start a big thing right now it’s a good game so grass tonight with and that is yeah yeah yeah I also do find it fun to interact

With the chat like there’s a lot more there’s a lot more going there’s a lot more questions so I find streaming dungeons is great because there’s I did a poll and about 30 to 40 percent of my chat room had not played the game and have not owned the game but were

Watching me play so they had great questions like how does that work what does it do it you know how do you know and then I always asking stuff of people that have played a little bit longer than me going like where the heck is the

Soul meter is there how do I tell how many of these I have and so we were going back and forth on that so it’s a really cool learning experience as well I as you mentioned I’ve not beaten the game I have not beaten the necromancer

In the desert although I have fought the necromancer in the desert temple I almost had him he’s a tough I almost had him and then he did something and I was full health and he one shot at me and I was like that did not that did not feel good

That’s just not who it was just like all of a sudden there was eight of him and eight of his friends and they all kind of went oh yeah it’s like what just happened there was nothing I could do and it was at the end of like a solid

One-hour play session yeah yeah it was between breaks they put saying our boss fights at the end of long levels yeah and I was like you know what I’m done with that for now we’re gonna keep playing cuz I was having fun but we’re gonna go do something else something I

Really do like about the game is that you never oh I say thus far I have never had only one option right yeah I am it’s not it’s not here’s your bottleneck it’s like okay you have to beat the cactus I think it’s the cactus Valley cacti Canyon cacti

Canyon you have to be capped at Canyon but after that you’ve got the fiery Forge and the desert temple so you can choose between them but I think that’s the only bottleneck and it’s been great because it allows you to choose like I get frustrated with that but then you

Can go to fiery Forge and gear up a little bit get let born levels and then when you go back it becomes a little bit easier I did not be the soggy swamp the first time through the end boss battle owned my face I just did not have enough

Healing power or strategy at that time and game knowledge to to deal with the creepy cauldron at the end cursed cauldron yeah and have you been doing in terms of like difficulty level like where are you playing out you playing at your power level above or a little bit

Below or how you have bad yeah so I’ve found that I’ve gone through one place where I was at level 16 and the next level up was like level 20 or 22 and it was like 1.5 – difficulty and I went in there and I basically got owned yeah I

Think I beat it but it was only because it wasn’t like a boss battle it was just like the end battle was basically just like one of those waves and waves and waves of people but in in the levels that I had done before in the beta where

I knew what to expect I was going in luckily I was being rated above level 2 but below level 3 so like the power ratings are 16 and 22 and I was like 18 so going in at 18 under 22 is actually not bad it’s challenging

It’s fun I you got to think like you can’t just spam and go in there and own face you have to you have to really think about what you’re doing and change your strategies and stuff I haven’t beaten fire reforged I’ve been in it but I ran at a time on stream and

I think for me it’s been at least eight hours but I’m taking my time yeah I’m really crawling through these places and I’m taking 20 or 30 minutes over the course of a stream all told together to empty the inventory decided what to enchant like I’m kind of building things

Out and talking with the chat yeah I actually I really like that that ability to be at the camp and have a chance to talk with chat and decide what to do and answer questions and stuff like that so I’m really I’m quite liking that um in terms of the difficulty

I like the pacing I like that you feel overwhelmed very often when I’m playing at my power level I’ll be down to like 25% of my health which makes you pay attention but it doesn’t frustrate you like you’re not getting utterly destroyed every time I in places where

I’ve died where it’s not been at BOTS fight I’ve known the mistake that I’ve made like yeah like now I know what happened there I rolled and I shouldn’t have or I got caught or something that I do a lot which I need to figure out how

To fix is that currently I have my inventory as E and my heel was was are and I kept on hitting my inventory but no no no button which completely blocks the screen not only did you not heal but now you can’t see what’s going on and

Then you just see your character taking damage in the yeah screen that’s yeah so so I’ve I’ve moved it to D so heal is now D which means I don’t have to move my finger which is good and so and I’ve also picked up a couple of our defects

And stuff that have helped me along the way yeah but like I said like I’ve you know I played I slayed I died and I don’t mind because like it’s it’s difficult enough that if I died a boss battle and this I guess not to get ahead

Of myself but this is one thing I did find that I was surprised that I got all the way down to the end of the creepy cauldron and I just happened to be standing in the wrong place like I thought I thought I had enough DPS

To get rid of him at the very last health bar he had like 5% left and then he did the Ring of Fire and I was standing too close and I didn’t realize that because of the perspective because of the way that you know I was above him

And I didn’t realize how close I was to yeah yeah and I died and when I came back he was at 5% health I walked out to him and basically flipped him in the forehead anything and I want yeah and that and I and I was fully expecting to

Have to do it again but I knew how to do it so I wasn’t really that worried and I just felt like ah I just I got overconfident and I stood in the wrong spot just you know it’s a game mechanic have to get used to it was just me being

A little overconfident but I was not necessarily disappointed I didn’t want to do it again because this longish fight but I just I was surprised I wasn’t punished like I’m surprised that I was able to just like spawn back in and be just like oh um he’s basically

Dead yeah it felt strange I thought he was gonna be at least half or full power like I thought it’s like you’ve died I guess it’s because it wasn’t my last life that was the only reason that it wasn’t that yeah and and if you game

Over on a level you do have to go and play it from the beginning so that’s the only real punishing element of it but then again you don’t lose your inventory you don’t lose any emeralds like you haven’t like dropped anything it’s not the roguelike minecraft experience that

People are used to from the core game where like you have to go back and get all of your items recover your souls in like the Dark Souls kind of way it doesn’t work that way at all in this game and I think that’s good I think that’s probably where they’re pitching

It in terms of difficulty that the player base maybe some younger players wanting to get into the game and there is potential for stuff like that to be introduced on higher difficulties but I still think the game scales really well for for higher difficulties and I think

It’s nice that you don’t end up being punished too much because that might put me off playing the level again if I feel like the same thing is just gonna happen again I’m gonna be set back away and have to grind your way back into it yeah

I agree so that I mean that’s kind of like my my general experience from the first first co-editor how was yours been the overview yeah mine has been again very very good I like this game a lot I beat default difficulty did that over two streams on Twitch I

It took about seven hours total for me to beat the story once I explored every level pretty thoroughly like I was opening the map every so often to check that the were areas that I hadn’t gone into yet and I was trying to find as many kind of little hidden chests and

Stuff as I could just to try and get some some loot eventually I think I was skipping my way through sections of the last level just because I wanted to get to the end of the experience I wanted to see what the boss was and and find out

What was next so since that I’ve created two new characters one to kind of play through casually and try out the weapons I discarded because like I said earlier I was playing more of like a rogue style built for speed fast weapons and that kind of stuff and a very up close

Melee approach whereas now I’m feeling like a lot happier with stuff like glaives which have a really long range and that kind of stuff my second playthrough is a personal challenge which I will get into a little bit later once we’ve had more of a discussion because yeah you guys are gonna like

This it’s a little bit a little bit silly I’ve also played some multiplayer with the hotdish previous guests on the show and a couple of her streaming collaborators there was no voice call she was streaming at the time sighs just listening into her stream and I think it

Was easy enough for a pickup game where I wasn’t like in a discord call to follow the flow of the game without direct communication the emote system that they have in there is pretty cool the one bit of feedback from that was that there was a pretty regular

Connection issue when we finished a level everybody would get like kicked back to the character select screen once we won and I’d have to like rejoin the session from there but when you rejoined and went back to camp I mean even if I think even if you didn’t go back to camp

With all of the other people you still got rewards for the level you just finished so that chest still appears that gives you an item at the end of the level when you go out into camp so that’s not bad because it’s not just like you know kicking you in the teeth

After you’ve just been you know thrown out of this collaborative gameplay experience you’re still getting the rewards that you’re owed so that was that was a fun experience they were much higher level than I was so I find that if you’re in a level and they’re doing

Like a higher difficulty you feel a little bit if you’re under power do you feel underpowered I was taking down a zombie within like you know five or six slashes of a dagger and then the next zombie would just one shot me and they’d have

To come and revive me but I had enough things like you know a firework arrow crossbow that I could use as like let me clear out this area a little bit more and I’d take out some of the basic enemies and then they could come in and

Clean up some of the the the kind of higher difficulty ones so I think ultimately I felt like I contributed even though I was probably 20 or 30 levels lower than they were experience wise did you find any of the like was there any cool mechanics that were being

Used in the group were like you know healing auras or protection auras and things that’s going on down the first thing dish said was like stay close to Chris he has radiance so every time he fires his weapon it’s gonna heal you and I was like okay I’m sticking by him and

I tried my best to keep up with them as they went through the level TNT is still really good as well like the consumables and stuff will scale the damage they do based on what difficulty you’re on I think so you can still clear out a room

Of zombies on a higher difficulty if you just chuck TNT in the right place which is very good so yeah the first thing I saw after I finished my default playthrough i raided I think eff whip or somebody who had been grinding the game since before it came out because they

Got early access and I saw somebody on apocalypse difficulty doing damage in the thousands and yeah like once it gets to higher levels of the game you are dealing with enemies that have a super high HP threshold and you are doing super high damage so it feels like the

The power level increases sort of exponentially almost to the point where you are getting armor that can give you 3,000 health and higher you know and I don’t know what the level cap is in this game either I don’t know like what the upper limit is if there even is one it

Seems to be above a hundred like you can probably based on whatever graphical interface that can fit exactly what’s the hits for digits we’re kind of stuck yeah exactly but y2k but it’s not like a level 99 thing where you can’t go over that there are people who have characters who are

Like level hundred and fifty I was seeing people with gear that had a rating over a hundred like it’s it’s it’s good it’s deep and you can probably get to the point where you are beating apocalypse difficulty handily if you keep grinding through those levels it’s also very cool to see that

Everybody has a different play style because like I was doing rogue stuff I joined your stream you’re doing more tanky kind of melee stuff you’ve got the armor that does damage reduction I saw sting in was streaming and he had like a cool soul build where he was

Gathering Souls from stuff using little mark magical artifacts using the armor that increased your magic power and there’s enough gear to sustain that for either multiple solo playthroughs or for multiplayer to have a really well built out set of classes and people can mix and match stuff so that oh yeah yeah

Having having spells as a melee player like having some artifacts that can do some stuff is is super cool for me I just started experimenting with soul power in my latest stream I didn’t even know it was a thing I get an artifact it’s like oh this will destroy us

Souls in an explosion it’s called the harvester which is weird because it doesn’t harvest anything it just did well I guess it does but it more so it disperses them in a giant soul explosion and until it’s huge it’s like the size of a firework if you get it done right

And and I was like okay well it needs Souls how do I get Souls and no there was no explanation of what how to get souls until later on when I picked up the soul blade when it says oh this will collect Souls from from enemies and I

Thought okay well now I know how to use that so I equipped that then I got a bone armor I can’t remember the name of the armor but the armor is basically a skeleton that you wear yeah and it says collects 100% more Souls so all the

Sudden I had like two artifacts a weapon and armor that was collecting Souls so I was just I was full of soul I was a soul man you start to get that stuff around desert temple when they’re kind of like the necromancer themes start creeping in Souls will actually get gathered if you

Have a soul artifact of some kind you just have to be at mobs and the little like soul particle will rise up out of them but which I thought was great because I wasn’t a real big fan of the sword but I realized that if I have if I

Had the armor on and one artifact I would still gather souls I thought like this is great so I had a soul powered healing artifact that had a one-second cooldown which is honestly a little o P and then I had this this Harvester and man when you’ve got the

Gear like I had which was negative thirty five percent damage so you take less damage you have a hundred and five health or something bananas so I switched from using the bone armor to using my may at my my tank armor with my Glade that was going in and weakening

Everything so I’m just marching into I don’t know fifteen twenty Tom B’s and bad guys all swarming me and then going and then the soul explosion just dismantles everything yeah and so basically it’s like a superhero landing in the middle of all these mobs and you can go back and watch the clips

On my my twitch channel I giggled like that was twelve it was it’s very satisfying and so I want to experiment more with the soul thing because I think that it’s it’s got a neat mechanic I like how you don’t have to use like a specific weapon that you may not like to

Gather it and I like that it’s not like a Mario thing where you have to run over them to collect them like they they kind of float towards you which i think it’s great it really just had so much mysticism to the gameplay I like it was

Something I had no idea was in the game it was a really fun discovery live on stream yesterday it was it was great the other thing that I’ve found that I’ve gravitated towards is my clave glaives for the wind man yeah I’m not sure if

You’ve used them at all but so far it’s it’s my favorite weapon yeah it it has all the things that I like it has several different animations it has an insane range for a melee weapon and the last swipe with it is a is a sweeping attack that hits multiple enemies yeah

And combined with the enchant that weakens the enemies it was just a lifesaver for me because I was having a little I’m not a big you know dungeon crawler gamer like I’m not the best twitch gamer out there in terms of like you know twitch reflexes so being able

To last little bit longer and being able to keep enemies that hit like trucks like the armored I think it’s the armored illah Jers yeah they will really mess you up and the vacations with like the whole and helmets and stuff yeah yeah yeah so

You got to keep those guys at a distance and the glaive is fast enough that you can kind of hit them a couple times or with a combination of like a point-blank bow shot which always makes me feel like an arrow Kai when I do it and a couple

Of glaive hits and it’s enough to push them back that you’ll survive it and they don’t get anywhere near you and so that it’s been an absolute lifesaver and then I ended up with rogue armor that increased my attack speed by 25% boy howdy is that fun with the glaive it’s

Really good and yes I mean that’s it’s it’s that’s kind of where I am with my build right now I do have a really cool bow I think I only just retired it recently for a more powerful one but a twin bow was my sidearm for the longest

Time and no enchant needed it just shot two projectiles at two different enemies and so you start with twin arrows and then you can add like explosives and other stuff to them so man it was just an excellent way to kind of like get through some of the bottleneck levels

That I was experiment experiencing what would like so what I know you were going with speed and I think you mentioned speed synergy the last time we spoke about it so what have you been doing in terms of your your weapons and like what artifacts have you found that just been

Super cool so for my rogue playthrough I was just swapping stuff until I got you know whatever was best at the time I didn’t really use the glaives all that much because at that point I’d settled on sick sickles and daggers and swiftness boots Death Cap mushroom

Basically anything that got me to move or attack faster when I played redstone mine I got a unique variant of the wolf armor which was Fox armor and you know me and foxes at this point okay if people have been listening to the show regularly they know about my foxes I

Have that there’s a family of wild foxes that just hangs out in my backyard sometimes so I love foxes in Minecraft and in real life and I never took the Fox armor off it is still on my character it is probably 11 power levels below what I should be wearing at this

Point I don’t care until I get some better Fox armour I’m not taking it off that one doesn’t necessarily have too much stuff aside from a slightly faster move speed that benefits the rogue but it’s got a decent health thing it’s one of the ones where with Wolf Armour it

Heals people around you when you drink a health potion is like the main buff for it the Fox armor also has a bunch of like it’s like a percentage chance to negate hits entirely so you don’t take damage sometimes when mobs hit you so that allowed me to you know play the

Melee game like the close-range game pretty well I started out using heavy crossbows because they sounded cool but I kept running out of arrows and then it was only after I did a bit more experimentation between streams that I realized some bows start you with less ammo and only

Give you ten arrows per bundle and then if you have like that there’s actually along with like power and speed there is an ammo rating for those bows and the heavy crossbows give you like very little and there are multi shot crossbows like scatter crossbows and the harp crossbow that I eventually got

Which they gave you way more arrows you pick up more ammo because you are dispersing more ammo but then you get enchantments like multi shot and chain reaction which not only fire more arrows than the bow is supposed to naturally but then those arrows ricochet off in two different places and hit multiple

Targets and then you combine that with the firework and you use the thing to clear a room so the Lightning harp crossbow became my main sidearm for this one and I spent most of the time with the difficulty slider like one level above what was recommended because I

Found that a fairly satisfying challenge and I did pretty well um the first level that really gave me trouble was I think like you the desert temple because I didn’t have a whole lot of healing artifacts at the time I was just relying on potions and those enemies that summon

Other mobs were really tough to take down because I couldn’t get up close to them at that point and I was still using heavy crossbows so I can really like deal a huge amount of damage to a ton of stuff at once I didn’t really use the

Soul artifacts very much so I’m looking forward to getting a few more of those and and trying out some more magical stuff a little bit later on but for my first playthrough your get one or two you get the corrupted beacon you get the harvester that was basically it

And so I just stuck with physical stuff and and basically anything that made me faster I think I finished with the firework arrow the deathcap mushroom and swiftness boots like I was keeping it pretty simple and like stuff that you get at the start of this game can carry

You through to the end of the game the final boss I won’t spoil anything but was great and went from easy to terrifying very fast so have fun with that folks I also I ended up trying out a couple of levels on adventure difficulty and you really feel the

Difference like I went into deeper woods I maybe went to difficulty to on adventure and I was getting my butt handed to me and that’s that’s good because then that means there is depth to the game after that and reason to replay those levels plus once you get

Into adventure difficulty there might be a couple of other secret areas that start to unlock so there is more depth to this you probably picked up that scroll that gives you the creepy crypt level from what I understand there are more of those out there I was wondering

That because it’s one of those things where I feel like the creepy crypts thing just kind of makes sense like you’ve got this random dungeon that’s gonna squirrel around it’s huge it takes a solid hour in 20 minutes to go through every every bit of it unless you’re

Rushing and it’s one of those things where you can you kind of think that there’s going to be more of those adjacent to the main story levels where you’re gonna be able to go into that environment like the redstone mine and have a giant redstone mine dungeon right

So I’m looking forward to unlocking those if there’s going to be more because I think that’s gonna be that’s gonna be cool so some of the things for me that have stood out and just just some great moments just fun kind of whimsical things like kiting skeletons

Towards me and then watching them be squished by the stone booby traps in desert temple they gotta get punished from both sides yeah yeah they get smooshed and then they fall and I was like I didn’t shoot him did he just die like are these booby traps hitting them

Too sure enough they are it’s brilliant sending a heavy Ilic er the ones with the horns horned helmets tumbling after a one shot over the edge into the fiery Forge in just one foul swoop now he was already dead like I got him it’s not like it was it was I

Used the the kickback to kill him but it was just that satisfying physics of him doing like a spin like he just got roundhouse kicked by a giant arrow and then the ragdoll physics in this game was so much fun oh it’s and the fact that he was there

And then gone in a minute and it was very clear that he kind of went over into the lava and myself and the chat was like wow like that man is dead now yeah you are see yeah yeah I really enjoyed stuff like that and then finally like I

Mentioned before releasing the full power of the harvester of souls when you are mobbed by mobs in a checkpoint fight like the like the real serious fights man is it fun like it just it shakes the room and stuff goes flying and it’s they all have this like we’ve got you now

Kind of vibe to it and you’re like nope big red button click and then see you later everybody it was idea I I had a blast with some of the combinations of artifacts and I know what you mean about the early artifacts sticking with you I still use the firework arrow now granted

I’ve upgraded it I found I got a new one so it’s it’s not it’s a higher yeah it does the OL damage at that point yeah and it’s a broader range too but I also continuously keep the boots of swiftness on me because I find that especially in

Places like the desert temple and I was trying to think about 100 evading redstone columns that are quick on their feet for big dudes yeah the boots of swiftness come in very very handy and I’ve kept them on my bar pretty much exclusively yeah definitely um this game

Is not without its problems though like we’ve been talking it up a lot but there are I think are still a few technical issues with it if not gameplay issues then a couple of things I’ve run into our issues with like collision and movement here and there in very rare

Cases here and this is towards the end of the game so I won’t say exactly what it is it’s on the last level I would walk into an object I was meant to interact with just clip straight through it like I wouldn’t fall or anything but it would

Meant to be something that I was gonna step on and it just didn’t step on it like I my character sunk into the block and was like clipping through it so there are some stuff that I don’t know what causes that it seems to be kind of random which is frustrating because it’s

Unpredictable and a lot of the time you’re in high-pressure situations in that last level so you want to be able to to you know have stuff work the way it’s supposed to work I would also run into some issues where I got stuck on scenery with mobs

Attacking me and be unable to move and sometimes like a dodge roll out of it but sometimes they were just blocking the path of my role and I couldn’t seem to get free and those are probably the most common cause of death for me if I’m playing carefully um so those are the

Only bugs I’ve really encountered so far I’m playing on PC Windows 10 with an Xbox controller but yeah I don’t know if other people are experiencing the same stuff if there is other stuff how about you like maybe not just technical stuff but maybe what are you feeling about

This game could be improved so the only bug that I’ve encountered has been the Redstone golems being so big they can get caught on geometry in the game and depending on your weapon you can sort of cheese them I’m seeing that as a legitimate strategy in a way though so I

Chose not to I wanted to I lured a red stone golem into one of the chambers in the fiery Forge that had like the river of lava down the middle and then pillars on the sides thinking that I could basically get some relief and maybe he couldn’t follow me but he followed me

And then got caught on like a it was something silly it was like a brazier something if he if he got stuck behind a pillar I’d call that strategy but he got stuck behind like he basically stubbed his toe and couldn’t figure out how something might have just been able to

Crush you know yeah yeah like I feel kind of bad here so I kyta them around it and then fought him he was pretty much dead anyway yeah but yeah they’re hard and and in closed quarters you think you want to get them in close quarters but then they do this spawning

Explosion particle thing and like oh maybe I don’t want him in places where I can’t run away so it becomes tricky but no the things I’m most noticed are I would say maybe some gameplay improvements or some design improvements um I wish these single damage stat weapons things like the great hammer or

A pickaxe that don’t have a range they just simply stay does 45 damage they also have a single attack animation which is too bad cuz it’s kind of boring yeah great hammer slam it’s great pardon the pun but it’s repetitive and it’s just it just doesn’t feel as exciting

When you’re just constantly doing the same animation over and over again yeah when you have things like sickles that have five different swipes ax glaive they’ve got three swords I’ve got two or three they also the soul blade that I picked up it has one thrust animation

That’s it yeah just don’t you yeah and yeah I felt that too I feel like the pickaxe won while obviously like overhead swings of a pickaxe is very Minecraft it does feel like the most boring weapon to use to me yeah I feel bad I do I got a diamond pickaxe at one

Point and I was like saying you know what I’m gonna trash this I just yeah I just I just don’t see myself using those when the other weapons are more exciting like I’m just going for something that feels fun to use and exactly the pickaxe really doesn’t and really and they could

Have it with overhand swings like you could maybe just do one or two you know different overhand swings just change the animation a little bit I can see what they’re doing though because the ranged the weapons that have a range of damage they do the first two swipes that they

Do are on the lower end of that yeah and then it’s their final third roundhouse thing that usually hits more than one enemy that does more damage you can test this out on the dummies that are at the at the camp but yeah I guys I feel like

They could make it a little bit a little bit more fun especially because I feel like if I was using a pickaxe in battle I would swing it around in a circle but yes one of the techniques I would probably use which is so yeah so that’s

That’s one of the things that I think would be kind of neat I feel like you should be able to roll up slight inclines not stairs I’m not saying you should be able to do a roll up stairs but I’m I’m thinking like you know

Things that look like less than a half a block because I’ve done some rolls to evade and I’ve been caught on what looks like like a molehill and it’s like okay yeah especially when like you said when you die because of that you’re like come on

Man yeah yeah if I’m if it was firing yeah I have the power of the Sun in the palm of my hands with these firework rockets but you’re telling me I can’t jump over this rock so that that I found a little bit sticky also and I don’t

Know if you’ve noticed this I only noticed it in the desert temple but when stairs run southeast going up they are very hard to see and understand that they are stairs because visually from perspective they’re like a sliver yeah and like metric side of things is

Something yeah so and because it was a dark dungeon I just I found it very difficult to understand that I could go that way or that I would get caught on them if I didn’t go that way like it was so I didn’t die or anything but I just

Felt I basically walked around this room going like how the heck do I get out of here and then realized oh this is a staircase that’s where those skeletons are shooting me from so like I felt kind of dumb so I feel like some of that kind

Of stuff maybe could be just better lit you know from a gameplay perspective like oh hey there’s a staircase over here that kind of thing yeah and lastly the soul collection meter in the UI it took I had no idea it was there it took

Me the chat had to be like Joel it’s below your yeah blow your thing tutorial for it at any point no problem you just start picking up these artifacts and then you realize later that there is something in the in the inventory that’s like filling up on the the HUD and I

Don’t think it’s there until you I haven’t checked but I don’t think it’s there until you get an artifact that has soul no it is not yet it’s not there at all till you pick up a harvester or a corrupted beacon or something and it’s

Very small and I kind of think like if you look at if you if you look at the UI and you look at your level and or not your level but your enchantment points they’re off on the left hand side so it’s very far left and it’s not small

But it’s not ginormous either but compared to that the soul meter is miniscule it’s sick a couple of pixels yeah and I kind of feel like those should be the same size they’ve like if they increased the Sol meter to just a little bit larger you’d either notice it

Right away or it would just be a lot easier to glance like once you know it’s there you can look down yeah but I do I do find it a little bit strange now I will also say I did reduce the UI to something like 70% I find it kind of

Large at first so I did make it a little bit smaller but still like it is proportionately I did find it small but those are I mean those are the kind of need a tiny nitpicks that i think could be improved the big the bigger thing for

Me is some of the some of the weapons not being as fun and therefore you’re like well I don’t want to use it I would want to use it but it’s just not nearly as fun as the other stuff and I think that’s that’s the one disappointment

That I have on the subject of souls I kind of wish that there was a way for you to collect souls at the camps so that you could try out those artifacts because everything else you can try out on the practice days that the soul weapons you can’t and that’s kind of a

Shame to me I really wish that it was possible to do that but they think you have like a gravestone that you just walk up to and just get like you know full of souls yeah halfway I feel like most of the artifacts don’t even use

Half of your soul bar like it goes in chunks true No so yeah I feel like you could get a little bit of that umm right I before we wrap up here cuz I know we’re going pretty long we have a lot to say about this game I want to introduce

You to the way of the bare fist Steve I’ve seen this that is so good so this is something I discovered entirely by accident on one of my streams that when you unequip your weapons which you don’t have to just swap a weapon for a weapon

In your inventory you can take them out of the inventory slots entirely you can still punch which does one damage at a time but it still works so when I discovered this I started compiling a few ideas for like challenge playthroughs one of which I still plan

On doing another time which was the kind of Minecraft classic approach in which you only use equipment that’s available in vanilla minecraft so as far as weapons you can only use swords pickaxes axes bows crossbows and you can’t have any of the more fancy stuff like glaives

Or daggers you could also apply that to accessories so the fishing rod in the firework is still allowed but you’re not allowed the deathcap mushroom I’m still not sure what to do about Armour with this because armor is actually really crucial for certain things but for bonus

Points you could stick to only having vanilla enchantments so you youo you’re only allowed to use sharpness looting multi shots etc like stuff that is in vanilla minecraft so I was thinking about that I had another one where you try and beat the game only using the

Equipment you get from the start so the sword bow fishing rod and firework arrow and so once you beat the tutorial you have everything you need to beat the game not certain if that one would work but my absolute favorite was basically a monk class playthrough you don’t have

Any weapons you don’t have any soul consuming accessories which are also pretty powerful weapons elemental rolling attacks are not allowed either because the goal is to punch your way through everything so you can equip an enchant armor any accessories that enhance your physical abilities are fine

I thought I saw I sort of decided that you should allow pets as well because they’re kind of early you useful early on and then consumables like TNT are okay because sometimes they’re just really useful in a pinch so I decided to try the bear fist Steve playthrough to

See if it was possible and I really enjoyed it basically you’re playing on the lowest possible difficulty for every level because if you don’t you’re probably going to die but doing one damage at a time on difficulty one you can kill a zombie in four or five hits

On creeper woods so you’re having to take everything a little bit slowly and for people who say that they just rush through the game and they it only has four hours of content try this because one level will take you about two hours Wow yeah it kind of encourages a more

Strategic approach to each level and it makes even the lowest difficulties pretty tough but it is ultimately doable and if you don’t believe me I have a video out about this on my channel and I’m gonna be uploading more stuff I am now on the last level of the game and I

Have not used weapons the entire time here is how first of all every time you discovered if you don’t have any weapons in your inventory the game gives you a sword and a bow every time you return to camp every time you start a level so you got

To scrap those four emerald instantly you can’t just keep them in your inventory if you want to but if you get a sword and a bow every time you change levels then that means three emeralds every time so that can be kind of useful some of the early levels like creeper

Woods for example the goal is not to kill a bunch of mobs or beat a boss you just have to free some villages and get to the exit so if you want to go through and just get the artifact for completing the level or open up the next set of

Levels you can do that just by getting some boots of swiftness which you get for beating creeper woods the first time or you know find some swiftness potions in chests and stuff like that you can get lucky and you can sprint through until you reach the exit other levels

Are not like that because the boss fights are a bit of a problem if you try and take on the Avoca in pumpkin pastures you better hope there’s a geomancer around because then they raise those exploding pillars and half the time that takes out the Avoca for you the redstone

Mines boss I found kind of easy because there is stuff in the environment that is able to do damage to it but if you look at the corrupted cauldron fight in soggy swamp or if you look at the nameless one fight the necromancer in the desert temple those are incredibly

Tedious because your goal is to you know rush in punch it a bunch of times and then run away again I decided that early on it was gonna be easiest to use boots of swiftness and deathcap mushroom because deathcap mushroom allows you to punch twice as

Fast but then I got I got the fishing rod to stun stuff later I got this artifact called the wind horn which knocks enemies back in a radius around you and also slows them down which is really good for crowd control and also if you get a totem of regeneration you

Can basically create a radius in which you’re gonna heal so if you slow down all the enemies that are walking towards you it gives you time to heal before you can rush away and start punching some more stuff then the keystone of this strategy ultimately was a enchantment

You can get on armor called surprise gift which if you drink a health potion it gives you free buff potions it basically drops a swiftness potion a shadow brew or a strength potion or sometimes a bundle of arrows and so suddenly I’m able to do two damage instead of one and

With the death cap mushroom I’m doing two damage repeatedly and you can take down tail for enemies that way eventually I ended up at soggy swamp getting an ember robe which is an armor that’s like the advanced unique version of the enchanters robe and it does burning damage to anything that’s within

Melee range it also reduces artifact cooldown time had the surprise gift enchantment and also had a cooldown reduction enchantment so I can refresh my artifact like it’s almost as soon as I’ve used them so the later levels get really tough especially because as you go through the levels there is a minimum

Difficulty and by the time you reach the final level you have to play it on difficulty five so that’s a concern because I guess the final boss is tough enough that they don’t want to set expectations by having like really low level enemies and then have the final

Boss absolutely stomp you if you’re not prepared for it but brave the difficulty levels scale up enemy attack an enemy HP so it becomes increasingly more difficult to take out the same enemy classes however I got that far I beat high block holes which is the second to

Final level it took me two and a half hours and it involved a lot of using the wind horn to knock enemies into pits because there are those bottomless pits that like yeah if you’d knock something off of the edge if you knock it back with some sort of effect then it will

Just die automatically and so maybe I wasn’t getting experience for that but I had backup strategies of just being able to like get one enemy isolated from everything else corner them activate my regeneration totem and then just wail on them until they keeled over it’s it’s a

Lot it’s it’s very me me it feels like a massive troll strategy but it works and tomorrow on stream I’m gonna try my best this is we’re recording this on Monday my Tuesday stream is going to be me trying to beat the game having never used weapons it’s a lot it’s it’s it’s

Super fun and I’m really really excited about it because once again this highlights a different approach to playing this game another way you can have fun with it and the fact that this is even possible in the first place shows how well they’ve thought through some of

The stuff in this game like how varied some of the approaches to combat are I don’t know if they intended for you to be able to you know one punch your way through this game but you can and I’m doing my best we’ll see how the final boss goes though

Something dawned on me watching the video on your YouTube channel that was just how fun it looked because of the increased speed of punching like even though you know you’re only doing the one damage the sheer fury how fast you punch it’s having just you know having

Just died twice you know being unable to complete the fiery Forge because I run at a time dying in a one shot to the the necromancer you know a little frustrated to watch somebody play the game and just wail on stuff yes again you know a death

By a thousand cuts but it just looks so satisfying it is and every make thought sick let me tell ya and it makes me well two things come to mind one it makes me want to try a rogue build where I use daggers or use sickles

And just kind of like you said go speed like just speed enchants speed synergy worry less about how much damage I’m doing per blow and more about like well how much how quickly can I just can I fight them because something that you mentioned which is a great tip for for

New people to the game in your video is that stun locking when you’re punching an enemy or attacking an enemy depending on how quickly you do that you might be able to keep them in a constant state of being punched and being unable to hit you back yet it interrupts their attack

Animation yeah yeah so that’s what I do when I have a slow weapon like a glaive or a hammer I shoot a bow first I do a quick point-blank bull you know shot with the bow which sends them one kick back but also does a little bit of this

Interrupts animation and then you can hit them with the other thing and it usually is enough that you can get you can get them down and out especially on those bigger enemies that require like five or six hits even at later levels yeah but yeah like it just the other

Thing that dawned on me is that I’m surprised that there’s no fist weapons there are Joel oh I’m here to tell you that there are and that is that is the cool thing because from what I understand they are only available on adventure difficulty but okay get gauntlets that are effectively like you

Know bare-knuckle glove type weapon yeah you increase your melee damage so here’s what I’m thinking if I can complete the entire game on like basic normal default difficulty and beat the final boss and start adventure mode and get to the level where you can get those items I’m gonna be able to

Punch my way all the way through apocalypse and I want to do a stream at some point that it’s called bare fist Steve versus the apocalypse and we will see how far we get but it’s it’s a lot of fun and I agree with you there kind of it feels really satisfying just

Punching stuff super fast and I’ve been chasing all of the stuff in this game that feels fun and satisfying to do and this is somehow one of the most satisfying experiences I found in this game so far and it is a phenomenal game I’m really enjoying it like once again

It’s not breaking the mold as far as dungeon crawlers go people were you don’t want it to that’s the thing you don’t want it to heat people were wondering why they hadn’t kind of reinvented the wheel and I was like well you know there’s wheels roll for a

Reason you know like it’s it’s not like they could have added like crafting elements into it to make it more like Minecraft or they could have you know allowed you to break blocks but then that breaks the geometry of the level and you know you can just enjoy this for

What it is I think and RNG yeah I think the orangie is really where they’ve taken it to a different spot I know that in Diablo like you can pick up weapons and they’re gonna have certain enchants on them and you can use gems and things

Like that but for me it’s this cool combination of like you might have this unique item that you’ve picked up that’s like this cool glowy bow and it does all this stuff and the very next thing you pick up could be a regular bow and just

Because it has two enchants on it or the ability to have two enchants and what those enchants are and the combination of it might make it better than the thing that you just picked up you just you just don’t know and I think that’s a really cool mechanic in that the way

That they do the enchant system and the way that they randomized not only the enchants but also the number of enchants that you can get combined with the different weapons combined with the different artifacts that you have like the possibilities are literally endless and and I think that will keep it fresh

And I think that that is to me what separates it from other dungeon crawlers experience I’m telling you I’m spending 20 minutes between playing a level and and the next one hanging with my chat and twitch and going into camp and basically not men maxing but like making

Decisions as to how we want to play what we think will work best for the next step in the next level and what we want to keep and what we want to enchant how we want to roll forward and it’s fun that part of the game even though you’re

Not punching anything it’s fun I reckon that’s a great note to leave it on as well and folks if you are a warrior over the apocalypse or if you’re just starting out minecraft dungeons we want to hear from you Joe will have the email address for you once again in a second

But that is gonna be it for this episode of the spawn chunks you can find more information about the show and links to some of the stuff we talked about today at the spawn chunks calm the music for the show is composed by me and the spawn chunks is proud to be a

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Special thanks go out to our content engineer patrons Cameron sugalski greener Kanak JT Williamson at yak of nasty and Y it’s for your support on this episode one of the things I really like about our discord right now is how hoppin the Minecraft dungeons channel is

And how respectful every one as being of spoilers I think it’s fantastic you can go in there and feel safe and get tips and just learn some stuff and not feel like it’s gonna be you know too much so tip of my hat to everybody I’m having

Some fun in the in the discord sharing the podcast with your friends is the easiest way to support the show percent free just find us on Twitter and Instagram at the spawn chunks personal recommendation is by far the best way to share the podcast with friends oh just

Tell a friend hey there in the dungeons we’re in the dungeons we should all be in the dungeons sounds creepy but honestly he’s a lot of fun check out the podcast you can email the show at spawn chunk mail at gmail.com you can subscribe on itunes android stitcher and

Spotify we’re also on youtube leave a star rating and review on the Apple podcast app it’s free even if you don’t use the app as your main podcast platform a lot of services draw from iTunes to pick up new podcasts using a quick rating helps us find new listeners

On the platform the RSS feed is linked on spun chunks these spawn chunks calm and the patron only RSS feed is on the patreon page which is where you can listen to the render distance the extended version of the podcast my name is Johnny but online I go by Pixar if so

You can find most of what I do at youtube.com slash at Pixar it’s where I do my Minecraft Survival Guide series and you can also see the way of the bear fist Steve a begin to take shape I also stream three days a week on Twitch where I do behind-the-scenes work

For the Survival Guide and as of Tuesday June 2nd I may hopefully have beaten minecraft dungeons without using weapons I’m also the voice of the unofficial hermitcraft recap which you can find through a quick youtube search and aside from that I’m at pics or ifs on both Twitter and Instagram Joel where can

People find you online everything I’m doing online including my illustration and design portfolio is that joel duggan dot-com if you’re interested in hiring me then just drop me a line there you can also find a link there to the citadel cafe which is my other podcast about sci-fi and fantasy entertainment

Mentioned quite a bit about this in the render distance but myself and server mate alistair hung out for a special anniversary edition of the civil cafe where we talked about Back to the Future the trilogy it turns 30 years old this past weekend so we had a lot of fun

Talking about that you can follow me at Joel Duggan on social media super easy to find and I will of course point you towards twitch.tv slash Jill Duggan where I am playing a lot of dungeons glaive for the win thanks for visiting the spawn chunks the world outside is

Infinite have fun storming the castle You