The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft! Volume 11

This volume is dedicated to the fantastic beasts of Minecraft. They bring our worlds to life, and in the case of the dastardly creepers, often blow them to pieces. We’re celebrating the mobs of Minecraft with a menagerie of features: we’ve got a Minecraft monster battle royale to decide which creature we love most; a guide to the best mods for adding new animals to your game; and a diary piece on making your own zoo, which might be the weirdest, funniest thing we’ve ever done. On top of all that, we’ll be taking a look at the smashing new LEGO Minecraft collection. This includes our first look at The Village - a set which comes with a whopping 1,600 pieces. We’re also offering the chance to win yourself one…

One of the many incredible things about Minecraft is how it just keeps evolving. Update 1.9 is another huge upgrade that really changes the way we play the game. Finally fully released in February, 1.9 has a stack of features, but the biggest upgrades can be found in new combat mechanics that make battling far more exciting than it’s ever been before. En garde! First off, the addition of shields means you can finally defend yourself against those pesky villains who’d like nothing more than to turn you into a Steve-shaped pin cushion with arrows. But the fun doesn’t stop there. Attacking now has a cooldown period that means you’ll have to time your attacks better rather than just senselessly hacking away. Swords have a special sweep attack and axes…

When we heard last year that Minecraft is coming to Samsung’s Gear VR and Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets, it felt like the perfect pairing. Now that we know more it’s even more exciting. This is a VR compatible version rather than a full new edition of the game like Windows 10, but there’s plenty of juicy facts to get our VR desiring-teeth into. While you can of course jump into creative or survival mode as normal, there’s actually two different ways to play in VR. One is traditionally, with your eyes seeing what your character sees in a first person view, while the other pops you inside a virtual castle and lets you play the game on a virtual screen in front of you. It might seem strange, but…

Ever wondered how your Minecraft builds would look as a real world model? It might be time for a move East. Six students at Sarugaku Elementary School in Tokyo are taking part of Microsoft Japan’s foray into using Minecraft as an education tool for coding. The ‘Digital House Making’ course is working in conjunction with a Japanese 3D printing service that lets students see their own builds and see how to improve. Everyone on the course designs and builds their own creation and then gets to see their own projects brought to life in full colour. Microsoft Japan hopes that the extra layer of adding Minecraft into the mix will encourage students to learn more coding and also use the 3D structure as a problem solving tool for future builds.…

HOT OR NOT Update 1.9 Shields and dual wielding combat upgrades are brilliant Minecraft Story Mode Three more episodes are on the way this year Minecon 2016 It might be all the way over in California but it’ll be streamed live Ender Dragon You can’t damage it with snowballs in Update 1.9 Igloos Update 1.9 adds these ultra chilly living spaces Yes, it’s been officially confirmed (again). You can get paid just to play Minecraft all day. A luxury estate agency called Elysian Estates sent out a call for a real world ‘virtual estate builder’ last month. The job is a fixed contract with a £10,000 salary for recreating 10 of the company’s properties in Minecraft. Potential candidates were asked to craft the exterior of the beautiful Aldourie Castle on…

The Caribbean? Pah, why on earth would you want to go there when you can just load up Xtr3mScorch’s incredible recreation of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag’s Havana. What do you mean there’s no cocktails with little umbrellas? This huge map’s been in development since December 2013 and has had a unique texture pack specifically created to give it the vivid colours needed to bring Edward Kenway’s Caribbean to life. There might not be any Templars to hunt down but even just wandering the streets of Havana is great fun and there’s parkour routes across the rooftops to make you feel more like an Assassin than ever. Ropes stretch between the buildings and while you could just explore the incredible recreation of the cathedral or make your way towards the secluded…