Let's Play: Better on Bedrock

The first thing you’ll notice is the new UI. Not familiar with the term ‘UI’? It stands for Underrated Igloos! Hang on, that’s not even slightly true. It actually stands for User Interface. FACT!

Now when your cursor hovers over any block, item, or mob in the game, a helpful box appears at the top of the screen telling you what it is, the correct tool for interacting with it (e.g. a shovel for a dirt block), whether you can harvest it, and if it’s an original Minecraft feature or a newly added thing for Bedrock is Better. This is how we learnt that grass blocks aren’t a new thing, but are actually an OG Minecraft feature. Who knew!

Then there’s quests. Open up the quest scroll in your inventory and you can choose between Main Quests and Bought Quests. Yes, you can purchase more quests from villagers now! But we’re utter cheapskates who prefer to loot villagers and sleep in their beds afterwards, so we stuck to the Main Quests.

These steadily escalating challenges are actually a great way to onboard someone with the first few hours of Minecraft. ‘Upgrade to an iron pickaxe’ - that sort of thing. And each completed quest rewards you with some items, XP, and the perfect ‘omg you did it!’ noise. Nice!

But if you’re a Minecraft veteran you’re probably more interested in the new stuff, like the aforementioned ram, the delightful spotted sheep, and the promise of exciting new crafting materials that can make all sorts of delightful new contraptions.

In fact, you start with a book that you can throw in front of you. Not to make any nearby librarians cry, but because it’ll open itself and show you some nifty promises of what’s to be found.

The quests are honestly compelling enough to make you forget you’re not playing a DLC and get sucked into Minecraft’s usual gameplay loop of collecting better resources, building a nicer house, and wishing skeletons would shoot something else for a change.

But then we took a look out on the horizon and spotted the tower.

These towers appear to be dotted all around the Overworld. We got one just a brief swim away from where we first spawned. Too intrigued to worry about silly things like ‘our safety’ and ‘avoiding near certain death’, we decided to let ourselves into one and go exploring.

Imagine our surprise when we walked inside with our sword drawn only to discover a lovely surprise party with cake and balloons and compliments about our hair! And you’re gonna have to imagine that really hard by the way, because that’s not even close to what actually happened…

Still, if you survive the encounter (whether we did or not is hardly relevant), you’ll find barrels with nice items inside. So these towers are essentially optional combat challenges with big rewards – perfect if you wanna skip a few steps and get some great later-game gear.

But if you want the really good stuff, you’re gonna have to engage in some proper exploring and crafting. Or, if your monthly article for the Minecraft website is already late again, you’re gonna have to switch to Creative mode and cheat a little. Let’s not waste time speculating on which we did, and instead enjoy some of the excellent new armor sets in this…

FASHION MONTAGE!!!

Sick of looking at Steve, even when he’s this stunningly dressed? Not a problem - Better on Bedrock is full of new mobs. And refreshingly, a lot of them don’t want to kill us (sorry, we’ve still got PTSD from last month’s map).

Let’s not dwell on that and meet some cute animals instead:

We’ve barely scratched the surface of what this one has to offer. There’s barely enough time to mention the creepy soul shards that drop when you defeat hostile mobs, or the new enemies you’ll find in the Nether. If you want to discover those for yourself, look up Bedrock is Better by Poggy in the Minecraft Marketplace, or click this line of lovely green text.

Best of luck, and… HOLD UP. We have to show you the goblin trader before we go.

Phew, that was close. See you next month!