Minecraft‘s 1.9 “Combat Update” Adds a Bunch of New Stuff

Minecraft‘s latest patch adds plenty of tweaks to how combat works.

Minecraft, as one would derive from the title, is a game that is primarily about mining and crafting. It does feature its fair share of combat, but that’s always been secondary, and as such, hasn’t been… great. Combat in Minecraft has always felt clunky and un-intuitive – something which Mojang has aimed to fix in its latest update for the game: the 1.9 “Combat Update”.

First and foremost, players can now hold items in both hands! This means you can dual-wield swords, have a sword at the ready while actively mining with your pickaxe, or utilize the new “shield” items.

Attacking now has a “cooldown” period, meaning it is more important to correctly time your attacks. To compensate, swords now have a special sweep attack, and axes now have a special crushing blow attack.

There’s also a bunch of new monsters, items, and zones, which you can read about in the full patch notes.

It’s nice to see Minecraft still getting significant (free!) updates like this so long after its release!

Source: Mojang