Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 8 ‘A Journey’s End?’ now available
Telltale Games has announced the release date for Minecraft: Story Mode, and fans won’t have to wait long as it’s available starting TODAY!
Telltale Games and Mojang have revealed the release date for the eighth episode of its popular Minecraft: Story Mode today, allowing fans to pick up right where they left off right now as it’s just been released across a number of platforms.
Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 8 – ‘A Journey’s End?’ is now available to download on PC/Mac, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and mobile devices. PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 players will need to wait just one more day as the new episode will launch on September 14th.
Minecraft: Story Mode’s eighth episode picks up with Harper leading Jesse and crew to the world of the Old Builders for a chance to return home. As we’d expect, it won’t be easy to return as we’ll need to take on a number of opponents in a series of gladiatorial games in order to not only win our freedom, but to save our friends and possibly even make it back home.
Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 8 arrives today, bearing the appropriate (?) subtitle ‘A Journey’s End?’ You’ll have to play it to figure out whether that question mark should be there or not, but Mojang describe this as the “epic conclusion” and “very final” episode of the three-part DLC series, so I presume it wraps a few things up.
“With Harper leading them to the world of the Old Builders,” the YouTube description reads, “Jesse and crew finally have their chance to return home… but it won’t be easy, and the stakes are high. You’ll need to take on opponents in a series of gladiatorial games to win your freedom, save your friends, and maybe, just maybe, make it back to your own world!”
Episode 8 is available to buy now, either individually for $4.99, or as part of the $14.99 Adventure Pass.
Creating sustainable farms inMinecraftis an important factor of long-term survival. Here’s all you need to know about getting a farm set up and keeping it alive in Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta.
In order to plant a farm, you must first collect seeds from the natural environment.
Find a patch of tall grass and start clicking. Not every piece of grass you hit will produce a seed, but keep at it and you’ll soon have a collection of seeds.
Once you have a farm up and running, wheat you harvest will usually provide between one and three seeds — sometimes no seeds — so that you can replant the crop.
Find some farmland
The ideal spot for a farm is an open, grassy area close to water. As long as your farmed dirt tiles are within four blocks of water, they will become hydrated and will grow much faster. Ensure your farmed tiles are also at the same level or one level below water.
Keep in mind you can also transport water using a bucket. If you’d like to play it safe and stay within your shelter, use this method to create an indoor farm.
Till the soil
Your next step is to start tilling the soil with a hoe. If you haven’t crafted one yet, now is the time.
You might also want to dig a few trenches extending out from the water source. Creating rows of crops without any other crops directly next to them, as shown above, will deliver the best growth rate. You also want to keep a bare strip of dirt blocks to walk along, as walking on your crops will damage them.
Using your hoe, right-click the tiles you’d like to farm. They will darken if they’re hydrated.
Take out the seeds you collected, and right-click the tilled blocks of dirt. This will plant the seeds, and they will begin to immediately grow.
Water your crops
If you happened to over-extend your crops to where your water source doesn’t reach, or if you want to create indoor farms, you can use a bucket to transport water.
The first step, if you haven’t already, is to craft a bucket.
Next, find a source of water that isn’t flowing. With your bucket, right-click the water to fill your bucket. You will notice the empty bucket icon changes to a bucket full of water.
Approach the area of your farm you’d like to water, and right-click the ground — click within a hole to contain the water — to empty the bucket. The water will spread out, watering your crops as it goes.
Fertilize your crops
You can use bone meal, which is created from bones, to fertilize and instantly grow your crops. If you don’t have any bones in your inventory, wait for night to fall and venture out with a sword and some armor. Kill as many skeletons as you can without dying!
Once you’ve collected bones and crafted bone meal, right-click with the bone meal on any crops you’ve already planted. Wheat, potato, and carrot crops will grow anywhere from two to five stages.
Protect your crops
As mentioned, walking on your crops can damage them. This also applies to animals running around your world, so you’ll want to create some fences and a gate.
Place fences around the perimeter of your farm, and ensure there are no blocks at the same level nearby — if there are, animals will be able to jump over the fence. Place a gate where it’s easy to access.
Give your crops light
If you’ve created an indoor farm, or if you want to keep your crops growing overnight, you must place torches nearby.
Space out the torches to ensure each block is getting light — you can never have too many!
Know when to harvest
Your crops will go through several stages of growth before they are ready to harvest. If you harvest crops before they’re finished growing, they will not provide any wheat.
Once the stalks have become dark green and the tips of the wheat have become an almost brown color, they’re ready to harvest. Using any tool — or even your hands — click to harvest. Each block will produce one wheat and, usually, some seeds.
Pro-tip: Replant the seeds in the soil before it becomes un-tilled to save time!
Farming other crops than wheat
Cocoa beans
Cocoa beans are usually quite plentiful in jungle biomes — you can find them growing beneath the foliage in trees. Seeds can also be found in dungeon chests. Unlike other crops, cocoa beans must be planted on the side of raw jungle wood. They do not need to be planted near water.
Potatoes, carrots, and beetroot
Found growing near NPC villages, potatoes and carrots can be planted and grown just like wheat, except there are no seeds. Plant whole potatoes or carrots in tilled dirt and wait until they’re fully grown. When harvested, they will produce more units than you planted.
Beetroot grows near NPC villages as well, however, they will produce seeds when harvested. Replant the seeds to grow more beetroot.
Melons and pumpkins
Pumpkins and melons can both be found growing wild, and seeds can be purchased from some NPC villagers. Seeds can also be found in dungeons or abandoned minecart chests. When you plant melon or pumpkin seeds, they will grow and can be harvested. Once you’ve harvested the pumpkin or melon, the seed will continue to grow anew on the same block of dirt.
BBC Click’s Spencer Kelly goes back to school to see how the video game Minecraft is being used as a teaching aid.
He joins a IT teacher Ray Chambers and his class at the Brooke Weston Academy in Corby to see how the game can accelerate learning in a lesson about logic gates.
Six-year-old Olive Sáenz has been “obsessed” with Minecraft for about a year, says her mother, Andrea Sáenz. “She spends hours building stuff, blowing stuff up, and building stuff again. She’s been pretty amazing at self-teaching.”
But until this past summer, the video game was a solo experience for Olive, who is just now learning to read. Because she wasn’t able to communicate with other players she instead spent hours watching Stampy Cat’s popular YouTube videos, which serve as a Minecraft “how to” for beginners, and putting her own spin on challenges like constructing a roller coaster.
Then, she went to Minecraft camp. At “Skyscrapers of Tomorrow,” a weeklong summer program developed by the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Olive worked on a team—dubbed the Unicorns—that used Minecraft to design a skyscraper that would function as a towering vertical neighborhood.
“It’s super fun because you can make whatever you want,” Olive says. “We even added a pink street.”
The last day of camp, when all the teams presented their skyscrapers to parents and teachers, was by far Olive’s favorite. “There was cookies! Everyone ate a cookie, I ate a brownie.”
“What I think she got out of the camp was the ability to observe how the world is built and organized, and then bring that back into Minecraft,” her mother says.
This fall Minecraft, the blockbuster game acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, is moving into classrooms with an education-specific edition geared toward elementary school students. Microsoft, which is selling licenses between $1 and $5 per student, hopes to see teachers embrace the game as an entry point to lessons on computational thinking as well as traditional subjects like history, math, and science. To help teachers get started, the company has developed lesson plans around topics like the Temple of Artemis as a way to inspire creative applications for what is in many respects a remarkably free-form digital learning environment.
In the meantime, educational organizations including the Chicago Architecture Foundation have been at the forefront of developing curriculum around Minecraft, which even in its mainstream format lends itself to teaching and learning.
“The kids and parents love it,” says Gabrielle Lyon, vice president of education and experience for the foundation. “The parents are so relieved—they feel like, my kid is on Minecraft all the time, I don’t know if they’re learning anything. They come here and they feel great that their children are developing skills and getting to be social, but also doing things that take them outside.”
Students in the weeklong camp programs that the foundation introduced in August spend time at their computers, but also visit sites around Chicago in order to observe built environments with a critical eye and experience otherwise abstract architectural concepts, like pathways. On their first day, they measure the size of a Minecraft cube.
“Students leave with a real idea of scale and context,” Lyon says. “‘Read a building:’ we’re talking about materials, we’re talking about structures.”
So far, the foundation has introduced two variations on Minecraft camps, the skyscraper program and another called “Build a City” that emphasizes green space. Both run for five days, culminating in a 90-minute “showcase” that allows students to present their work. During the school year, the foundation plans to offer weekend workshops that use Minecraft to engage students in projects like repurposing historic buildings.
LEGOs and other physical blocks play a supporting role in the Minecraft programs, and a central role in other classes and workshops. Across all tools and mediums, Lyon says, the foundation’s focus on design and critical thinking remains intact. “The technology is a means to an end. Minecraft works best when it’s the best tool to get the job done.”
Chicago parent Jennifer Goolsby says she saw that philosophy come together in her son’s experience. “They don’t even realize they’re learning about arches and trusses and domes,” she says. “The hook is the technology.” Of course, the learning extends far beyond the redstone walls.
A new trailer for Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 8, “A Journey’s End?”, debuted on Tuesday, giving us one last sneak peek at the episodic adventure’s season finale. And some familiar voices can be heard in the final launch trailer of Minecraft: Story Mode ’s first season.
Just in case you forgot, the season finale of Minecraft: Story Mode is out today, bringing a close to a series so popular it was expanded by 60 percent a week before the series’ fifth (and presumed final) chapter was released by Telltale. Jesse and his friends finally have a chance to make it back home, after many adventure sand one hell of a journey, provided you can help them navigate the handful of obstacles still in their path. And the party’s final tests should be pretty familiar to any longtime Minecraft players out there.
The new trailer also marks the first time Minecraft: Story Mode players get a chance to hear Jim Cummings and Kari Wahlgren step into their new roles as Hadrian and Mevia. It looks like the season finale will also include a bit of Spleef, the competitive Minecraft mod that was rechristened as Tumble for the various console versions of the game. And that won’t be the only mini-game we see in episode eight.
For one last (free) look at Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 8, “A Journey’s End?”, take a couple minutes to watch the new launch trailer from Telltale Games. Then head down to the comments section and let us know whether or not you’ve enjoyed the first season of Minecraft: Story Mode.
Minecraft: Story Mode is available on PlayStation 3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC, iOS and Android. The season finale is now available on all platforms.
Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com and follow Scott on Twitter for more Minecraft: Story Mode coverage throughout 2016 and however long Telltale Games continues to support its first episodic Minecraft adventure in the months ahead.
