The Boss Update will bring Guardians, Ocean Monuments, the summonable Wither Boss fight, slash commands, and some UI refinements to the game. Additionally, it also provides the first iteration of Add-ons, allowing people to customize Minecraft using tools as simple as Notepad and MS Paint.
You can download some example Add-ons from Minecraft.net right here, including the E3-demonstrated Alien Invasion pack and a zombie Castle Siege pack. We'll have some guides up shortly on how you can customize your own creatures in Minecraft, from the way they look, to the way they behave and interact with the game's world.
The full changelog is as follows (via Mojang):
New Features
- Ocean Monuments
- Guardians and Elder Guardians
- Prismarine, dark prismarine & prismarine bricks
- Prismarine shard & prismarine crystal
- Sea lantern
- The Wither!
- Nether star
- Beacon
- Wet & dry sponges
- Slash commands (with a handy auto complete feature). Enable cheats for a world in the options screen for access, but note that Xbox Live achievements will be disabled when you're using 'em!
- Custom key bindings! Hooray for lefties!
- A new Creative inventory search feature
- Add-On section for world settings
- Basic F3 support! (Win 10 only)
- Coordinates!
- You can change game modes in Realms (note that doing this will restart the realm)
- Ability to upload & download worlds in Realms
- Ability to promote players as operators in Realms
Tweaks
- UI improvements!
- Performance improvements!
- Tweaks to various mob action/behavior triggers, including fixing creeper explosions
- Elder guardian de-buff visuals fixed (feedback from Android beta)
- Fishing rods & arrows will fire in more than just one direction
- Lots of tweaks to water textures to make underwater more fun
- Tweaks to Realms settings
- Visual tweaks to sun, moon & stars when rendering in VR immersive mode
- Ridiculous numbers of bug fixes!
Sadly, the update still excludes the Windows Phone version of the game from Realms, Microsoft's subscription-based dedicated Minecraft hosting service, but the company has always told me that it is their goal to bring it in, eventually, in addition to Xbox One and Xbox 360.
If you don't have Minecraft and want to see what all the fuss is about, join me, Daniel Rubino and Zac Bowden tonight on Beam.pro where we'll stream some Minecraft, chat with you about Microsoft and probably get blown up by wayward creepers!
