LEGO ANNOUNCES NEW 'NETHER' AND 'VILLAGE' MINECRAFT SETS AT SDCC

A couple years ago, a running petition on LEGO's CUUSOO site led to the release of a Minecraft LEGO set, a partnership which seemed all but inevitable. And on Wednesday, the plastic-brick company announced the impending launch of two brand new Minecraft kits. Both sets will debut during San Diego Comic Con at the LEGO booth (#2829).

Image Source: CNET

"Given our similarities, Minecraft and LEGO building have always been a great match," said Mojang's Lydia Winters. "After the excitement over the first set, we were delighted to extend the line and continue our partnership with The LEGO Group."

The two new sets, launching on September 1, will offer recreations of a Minecraft Village and The Nether. The Village set will include blocks for constructing houses, in addition to Pig, Villager, and Zombie "Micromob" figurines. The Nether kit features a Netherrack, gravel blocks, and lava blocks as well as two Ghasts and a Zombie Pigman.

The suggested retail price for each new LEGO Minecraft set is $34.99.

@Minecraft, 1.9.3 PRE-RELEASE 1 READY FOR TESTING

1.9.3 has some hotfixes out today, hopefully improving performance across the board for everyone! A minuscule chance exists that performance may worsen slightly. Performance should not stop completely. Maximum performance!

There is a rumor circulating that later versions may include more cosmetic changes, including actual path blocks (in lieu of the commonly used gravel). No promises, but time will tell! So, what exactly is on the menu today?

CHANGELOG

• Fixed some erroneous skin part display logic
• Fixed adult horses not being able to walk up full blocks
• Fixed the world corrupting when teleporting to y=(-)Infinity
• Fixed a crash when going outside height limit or into the void with F3

BUGFIXES

• [Bug MC-82464] - Colored 'dead' skin template parts cause in-game issues
• [Bug MC-89760] - Skin's jacket parts do not show up under specific conditions
• [Bug MC-95973] - Adult Horse/Donkey Pathfinding Issue: 1 block elevations treated as "non-traversable" terrain
• [Bug MC-100410] - Currupting world by teleporting to y=(-)Infinity

Please report any and all bugs you find in Minecraft to bugs.mojang.com. If nobody reports a bug, we might end up traveling back in time!

To get snapshots, open your launcher and press the “New Profile” button. Call it “snapshots” and check the box saying “Enable experimental development snapshots” and save. To switch to the normal version, you can select it in the dropdown at the bottom left corner of the launcher. Back up your world first or run the game on in a different folder (See the “new profile” dialog).

Snapshots can corrupt your world, please backup and/or run them in a different folder from your main worlds.

Cross-platform server jar: Minecraft server jar

@Minecraft, COMMUNITY CREATIONS: TERRA SWOOP FORCE (1.9.2)

The guys over at Noxcrew are well-known for their crazy map-making skills, having developed a strong reputation for quality with the game-show maps of the Noxcrew Gameshow series. Terra Swoop Force takes all their creative energy and packs it tightly into this crazy adventure map!

The concept is fairly simple: you are a member of a special task force that has been hired by Geo Descent Labs. Your mission is to to discover what happened to the Terra Scooper bore-drill and it's crew when it mysteriously vanished once it hit the core of the earth! You'll have to glide down to the center of the earth using the lab's new technology: The Thermal Flight Armor 1541 (Attached with the Minecraft 1.9 Elytras!) Of course, gliding downwards at insanely fast speeds isn't as easy as it sounds. Are you tough enough? Can you handle the speed?

If you think you can handle this intense adventure, head on over to the Terra Swoop Force thread, and grab it now! It has TONS of custom resources, including great new textures and models, and original music scores which won't trip YouTube's ContentID system, as they are royalty-free (in case you want to make YouTube videos with it). Again, it will only work in version 1.9.2, so be sure to play the map in that game version!

@Minecraft

Betweenlands: a strange name for a strange place. This mod adds an entirely new dimension to the game - in a similar vein to old mods like Aether - but this place is not peaceful, pleasant, or for the faint of heart. Loads of things are out to kill you, including the environment itself. The air is so foul that any creature breathing it slowly decays. The realm has no day/night cycle. Clocks, maps, redstone, flint and steel, and compasses are useless here. Due to the warm and wet environment of The Betweenlands, food from other dimensions rots when traveling through the portal to this dimension, becoming Rotten Food.

As Flint and Steel cannot operate in the dimension, there is an alternative way to creating a fire. Simply hold right-click Moss, Cave Moss, or Thorns (either placed or dropped, both block and item forms work) with an Octine Ingot to light it on fire. The ingot will cause the plant to slowly build up flame until it turns into a fire block, without consuming the ingot in the process. This is essential for getting an Infuser started.

Torches will not work here, and you will require Sulfur Torches instead. Along with that, tools from other dimensions will be diminished in effectiveness in the Betweenlands, prompting the player to use the Betweenlands tools. However, Betweenlands tools in your inventory will undergo Corrosion.

If you think a bigger challenge is needed in Minecraft, Betweenlands will definitely scratch that itch, while providing some interesting new lore and content.

Betweenlands is for version 1.7.10. You can download it