Minecraft Dungeons: 10 things that we'd love to see improved

Minecraft Dungeons Necromancer Source: Microsoft

Minecraft Dungeons is a pretty awesome ARPG that'due south accessible to all kinds of players but has a surprising amount of depth, peculiarly in the endgame "Apocalypse" difficulty tier.

Over the by couple of weeks, I've been grinding my way up to 100 per centum completion, and currently sit at level 110, trying out different builds. In that location's a lot to love nearly the base game, with truly infectious combat mechanics, great art and levels, and fun dominate battles.

Microsoft is already looking alee with the upcoming Jungle Awakens and Creeping Wintertime DLCs, the first slated to hit in July. Microsoft also noted that it's planning to update the game with free content also, with new features everyone will receive.

Now armed with over 40 hours of gameplay knowledge and experience, I thought I'd offering some feedback on what I run across every bit the game'due south biggest areas in need of improvement.

No cantankerous-play, no cross-save

Minecraft Nintendo Switch Source: Windows Key

This is the about glaringly obvious one, and also one Microsoft has confirmed it'due south working towards including. Thanks to the nature of UWP APIs, you can admission Xbox to PC crossplay using a glitch, just for the almost part cross-play and cross-relieve is currently unavailable.

Given Microsoft's general efforts in this area, peculiarly equally it pertains to Minecraft, it's a bit of a miss that this wasn't in for launch. Hopefully, we'll nab it sooner rather than later on.

The scarcity of loot can be frustrating

Source: Microsoft

My experience with this may be due, in part, to playing primarily solo. With more than players comes more than mobs, more than difficulty, and thus more rewards. Microsoft wants you to play with your friends, and it's a lot more than fun to do then anyway. However, it can be a kick in the teeth if y'all're playing on maximum difficulty, and spend an hr within a specially large Creepy Catacomb generation, only to not detect a single Unique. Sometimes bosses don't driblet any loot, except perchance some Emeralds, which just feels kind of wrong.

Inventory management can exist a pain

Minecraft Dungeons Bow Skills Source: Windows Central

Without persistent tidying, over time your inventory tin can become awash with random junk items that y'all most likely will not want or need. Coming in from Diablo 3's D-pad log-based inventory system, Minecraft Dungeons feels rather archaic. Moving through pages of items just to scrap them can be a chore, and the game doesn't have any sorting order for its category pages. There could be a lot of improvement in this area.

Some levels just aren't random enough

Minecraft Dungeons Creepy Crypt Entrance Source: Windows Primal

The best levels in Minecraft Dungeons are the ones that are randomized. Every level in the game follows a familiar path of specific areas and setpieces as you move towards the stop, but they often feature procedurally-generated areas that go off the browbeaten path. Nonetheless, only a few levels in the game really push this concept.

The Creepy Crypt is by far the most "randomized" dungeon in the game, spawning a maze of dark hallways crammed with chests and a variety of events. It'due south odd how much more randomized this dungeon is than almost whatever of the others. For me, having a unique layout every time makes the Crypt the about engaging level, but repeating that aforementioned level over and over gets former rapidly. I really promise Microsoft considers the Crypt's procedural design every bit a standard-bearer for future levels.

Pet and totem artifacts are far likewise weak

Minecraft Dungeons Mobs Iron Golem Source: Windows Fundamental

Necromancer and Witch Doc players from Diablo 3 might've constitute intrigue with some of Minecraft Dungeons pet-oriented artifacts, namely the wolf, the Iron Golem, and the llama-summoning items. Sadly, even with a build designed entirely around ally healing and defense force, pet artifact abilities still feel far too weak. Wolves but tend to run in and die, llamas get stuck shooting blindly into walls and corners, with broken pathing mechanics, and the Iron Golem is such a large target that he dies rapidly from absorbing practically all the damage on the field. Pets could be fixed with a Unique that boosts their defense or makes them immune to arrows, but the AI pathing as well needs improvement so that llamas can really, yous know, hit their targets.

That leads me on to totem artifacts, which can heal or defend units within an surface area of effect. I tried to employ them to go on my wolves alive while testing out pet-oriented builds, but their heals are then pathetically slow and weak, even at the highest tier, and the fact they heal in an area of effect means wolves (and players) just step out of them before they've done anything. You lot rarely stand up still for whatever length of time in a game like this. The totems should put a vitrify on players within the initial area of outcome, and then travel with them after they move.

Soul-generation mechanics are clunky

I complained about Soul-generation aspects in my review, given the way they work. Some magic-oriented abilities in the game require "Souls" to use, which are harvested from dead mobs when you accept a Soul-based particular equipped. Each soul fills up a judge beneath your artifacts bar, and the amount it fills up depends on what items you're using. If you lot're using lots of Soul-oriented equipment, for instance, each soul can grant you a fairly large heave in the gauge, allowing you to unleash some of the most devastating powers in the game, including the Corrupted Beacon and the Harvester explosion. The problem lies inside how all of this works.

Source: Windows Central

The Soul Dancer Robe and the Eternal Pocketknife give you the biggest boost to Souls-oriented gameplay, with the Knife granting you lot a chance (roughly ten per centum) on-hit to proceeds a small number of souls, equally opposed to on-decease. The Soul Dancer Robe also boosts the harm you lot deal with those abilities, which can effect in truly monstrous ability. The large, large downside is that when there are no mobs around to harvest souls from, yous become effectively useless.

I genuinely call up that if you have the Harvester or a specific Unique equipped that your Soul-gauge should regenerate passively, to prevent situations where yous're forced into melee combat with a Redstone Golem or some other particularly nasty melee-oriented enchanted mob. Running out of Souls when you come face to face up with an enchanted, arrow-deflecting Vindicator feels a bit unfair, particularly since other archetypical builds don't become stuck by any particular situation.

Difficult to play with under-leveled or over-leveled friends

Minecraft Dungeons Co Op Source: Microsoft

Given the style Minecraft Dungeons' death mechanics work, it can be a chip tough to play with friends in certain situations. When joining a party with an nether-leveled friend, they can dice very easily, which tin wipe out your lives quickly. You merely get iii tries per level before you get sent back to camp, and keeping an nether-leveled friend alive through to completion can be incredibly crude. On the flip side, bringing in a high-level friend into your low-level game makes everything brain dead easy, of grade, which isn't particularly fun.

Typically, in a game like this, you might make dissever characters to play with different groups of friends, but I feel like in 2022 there must exist a better mode, like level syncing or downscaling, like to what World of Warcraft recently implemented.

Needs some form of endgame "Rift"-manner content

Minecraft Nether Portal Source: Windows Central

This is similar to my comments about not plenty "randomized" maps, but Minecraft Dungeons needs some procedural, challenging content similar to Diablo Iii'due south Nephalem Rifts. Rifts are essentially randomized dungeons congenital on a tileset principle, like to the Creepy Crypt in Minecraft Dungeons, albeit far more than challenging, with massive swarms of mobs designed to test actor's builds and synergies to their limits. Towards the stop of a Rift, a boss spawns to end the challenge. If killed, you'll get a central granting access to even more difficult Rifts, with even more than powerful rewards.

A system similar this is badly needed to give players who have nerveless all of Minecraft Dungeons' Uniques something to practice in the mail-game, perhaps with leaderboards and other season-based rewards. Implementing something as complex as this may take a while, but ultimately I think a system similar to this is what will go along players coming back. And hey, Dungeons' broken Nether Portal in the camp might exist a pretty user-friendly style to access that sort of content ...

More than ways to spend emeralds

Speaking of rewards, right now in that location isn't a huge corporeality you can do with Emeralds in Minecraft Dungeons, except pour them into the Blacksmith for a relatively depression take chances to go a unique particular. It would be cool if you could spend Emeralds on pets, skins, or other cosmetics, or perhaps the ability to respec an item.

Communication tools in-game aren't great

Minecraft Dungeons has a neat advice wheel which lets you lot ship full general messages to your grouping, such as "Come hither" and "I need arrows," simply it could actually do with some boosted, more nuanced communication tools, or even reaction emotions. This could all as well exist solved by simply including a conversation log, which Minecraft Dungeons strangely omits right now.

Information technology'southward early days yet

Considering the game just launched this week, information technology's probably a little early to be complaining almost it, but as someone who has been maxed out for a few days now, I feel like a lot of these issues are the ones that will become nigh apparent as more than people get through the game.

Minecraft Dungeons is an excellent have on the genre and the perfect sort of spin-off style game of the legendary franchise that started it all. While it is low-cal in telescopic compared to similar games of the genre, information technology is only $20 to play, and even cheaper if you catch information technology through Xbox Game Pass. The potential for expansion is rather massive too, particularly when you lot look at ARPGs like Path of Exile, which has evolved into much larger, much more complex game since its early on days.

What do you call back about Minecraft Dungeons? Striking the comments, let usa know.

Smash and loot

Minecraft Dungeons

Minecraft meets Diablo

Minecraft Dungeons is an action RPG set in the blocky worlds of Minecraft! Team upwardly with three friends and get your dungeon crawl on for rewards and adventure.