An introduction to Minecraft Dungeons

My wife and I are what I would call casual couch gamers. We enjoy an evening of Switch games when our son's asleep. Nothing too serious.

Actually… We have been rather serious about this Minecraft Dungeons game for the past two weeks or so. We've been grinding away collecting more and better gear, trying to level as fast as possible, and honestly having a great time while at it.

My wife and I finding our way through Creeper Woods

I never expected us to have such a great experience, it's truly a wonderful game, and today I want to share some of our joy with you!

So Minecraft dungeons — MCD for short — is a adventure role playing, dungeon crawler kind of game: you play dungeons, to collect more gear, to play more dungeons, to level up, … you get the point, right?

There is some kind of story line, but honestly you'd be disappointed if you're buying this game just for the story. It can be summarized like so (careful, spoilers ahead): there's a villain who you have to defeat in the final level.

That's basically it 😅

So, luckily, the story line isn't what makes MCD great. It's actually the grinding and constantly advancing to play more difficult dungeons. It's strangely addictive, to be honest.

# A basic rundown

The mechanics of the game are rather simple: every character has a melee and ranged attack, as well as three special abilities called artifacts.

As you go around dungeons, you fight mobs that become stronger as you do, some dungeons have bosses, and you often find treasure around them. Loot consists of all kinds of items, as well as emeralds. You can use these emeralds to buy gear and artifacts outside of the dungeons, but be wary since you never know what you're buying: you get a random item over time.

Each artifact has its own effect, ranging from healing yourself and team mates, stunning enemies, special buffs , etc. You can pick and choose whatever artifacts you want, if you manage to find them during your dungeon runs, of course.

Each player has three artifact slots

Besides artifacts you gather three types of gear items: a melee weapon, a ranged weapon and armor. Note that it's entirely up to you how you build your character: there's no predefined classes that you have to choose from. You can very well have a tank and ranged DPS build for the same character, and switch between fights.

I would say that's actually a good thing: depending on the amount of people you play with, you'd need to switch classes. For example: if you're leveling solo, you wouldn't make it very far with a ranged DPS focused build, you'd need to be able to take some hits and heal yourself. If you're playing co-op on the other hand, responsibilities can be split between players.

Three gear items: melee weapon, ranged weapon and armor

Finally each gear item can be enchanted. An enchantment can make a weapon stronger, add special effects like pulling enemies towards you, allow bows to have multi shot, etc.

Each item has three enchantment slots, but it's predetermined how many can actually be used. This again is randomised, but the higher level the item, the more enchantment slots, usually.

You also can't freely choose which enchantment ends up in each slot: there's a few random options per slot. Once you pick one, that choice is final.

Two enchantments on my primary weapon

# Roles

Like I said there's no predefined classes in this game, you build your character role completely based on the items and enchantments you get. That doesn't mean there aren't any roles though: the gear, enchantments and artifacts you decide to use will heavily influence your play style. So let's list a few examples.

# Tanks

A tank takes the damage so that no one else has to. If you're playing solo, there will always be a tanky aspect to your build, but you'll have to be able to deal considerate amounts of damage as well. In co-op though, the tank can really focus on that one specific task: making sure mobs focus on him, all while staying alive.

There's a few aspects to succeeding: first you need the mobs to notice you and not your other teammates. There's gear and enchantments that help with this: Champion's Armor increases the chance of mobs targeting you, and there are the Grativty and Gravity Pulse enchantments as well.

Next, you'll need to stay alive now that everyone's attacking you. First of: the Champion's Armor I mentioned earlier also reduces the cooldown of your potion with 40%, a convenient bonus! Your potion, by the way, is an item that restores all your health when drinking, everyone has it.

Another way of not dying is by weakening or stunning mobs while they are attacking you, reducing the amount of damage you have to take. One way of doing this is by using the Gong of Weakening artifact, which weakens enemies around you. There's also the Iron Hide Amulet which, instead of weakening mobs, increases your own defence.

There's more intricacies to a tank build, but I'll write a detailed post about this specific subject soon, for now we'll move on to another role.

# Soul DPS

One mechanic I haven't mentioned yet are souls. Some artifacts require a certain amount of power to be used, and those are called souls. Every time you kill a mob, someone with soul-equipped artifacts will gather them.

Soul DPSing requires a specific set of gear, in order to increase the amount of souls gathered, but in return you get the best DPS in the game. It's more tricky than, for example, doing ranged DPS, but it also more powerful.

One must-have artifact is the Corrupted Beacon, which emits a high damage beam while slowly consuming your gathered souls. The Lightning Rod and Harvester are two other great DPS-focused artifacts you can use in addition.

I'm tanking the Corrupted Cauldron, while my wife is soul DPS

To ensure your gather enough souls to feed your artifacts, it's best to invest in at least two soul-focused gear items. There's the Soul Knife and Soul Bow, but there's also armor that increase the amounts of souls gathered. Two examples are the Phantom Armor and Wither Armor.

Whatever your choice, you'll notice soon enough whether you need to invest in more soul-focused gear if you're out of souls too often. There's more to tell about soul DPS as well, so you can also expect a follow-up post later!

# Ranged DPS

Another great DPS choice is ranged DPS, with artifacts like the Fireworks Arrow and the Flaming Quiver. Combined with bows like the Harp Crossbow and enchantments like Chain Reaction and Multishot.

The goal of ranged DPS is to keep mobs at a distance, and being able to deal the most amounts of damage, as quickly as possible.

My wife also does ranged DPS from time to time

Arrows are a little weird in MCD by the way: you start each level with a low amount of arrows and gather them from loot chests and mobs while running the dungeon. In a way they are similar to souls, but you're required to pick them up manually. That's why enchantments like Infinity are a good investment, and armor like Archer's armor also helps out by increasing the amount of arrows you receive per drop.

# Other roles

How about melee DPS and healers? Those roles will probably always be a hybrid of several roles, but there are good sets focused on those roles still. I won't spend too much time on them today though, I'll also write dedicated posts for melee DPS and healers later.

# In closing

Minecraft Dungeons is a really nice game. It's available on all major platforms, and also has online multiplayer mode. For now it's not possible to play multiplayer across several platforms though, but let's hope it'll be added in the future.

It's nice to see that the Mojang devs are very actively working on the game still: September 8th with bring the second DLC, as well as a free update for the main game. You can read all about it on Mojang's blog.

Have you played MCD already? Do you plan on checking it out? Let me know on Twitter, and make sure to bookmark or follow this blog if you're interested on upcoming Minecraft Dungeons posts!