You now have several more reasons to be playing Minecraft. With the release of Beta 1.5, Mojang’s wildly successful mining/building/survival sandbox game, Minecraftians have access to a whole new set of features, including weather, achievements, and a minecart rail system that doesn’t rely on a physics exploits to run.

One of the biggest additions in 1.5 is weather; your massive open-world environment will now reflect the climate through changes in the weather, ranging from snow to rain and thunderstorms. Rain blocks out Minecraft’s blocky celestial bodies, but it also has an impact on gameplay, putting out fires (with the exception of burning nertherrack blocks) and will cause your crops to grow. For those of you who were wondering, yes, mobs can be struck by lightning. And yes, if a pig is struck by lightning it will become a Zombie Pigman.Also added with this update are achievements that act as a sort of tutorial for some of the basics in Minecraft, which addresses one of the complaints against the game simply dropping you into the world without any instructions or information. The early achievements are as simple as punching a tree until it yields its precious wood to you (“Getting Wood,” har har), while later achievements involve complicated tasks, such as crafting a saddle and riding a pig off a cliff. Minecraftians will also be able to see just how many trees they have punched with the new statistics feature, which shows you more than you could possibly want to know about your time spent in Minecraft, such as how many times you’ve jumped and your distance traveled while mounted on a pig.Other new features include the addition of a Powered Rail, Detector Rail, unique saplings based on what type of tree they were harvested from, and wolves that can navigate through doors (finally!)

Posted: Apr 19, 2011 10:15 pm