So I looked at the new 1.9 snapshots..

If you can't craft the gold apples, how can we hope to heal villager zombies?

Dungeon chests if I am not mistaken...

Ugh... I'm doomed. I'm not a very lucky person, so when I'm told it's a "chance" item, I'm usually pretty much out of options.

Ahh sorry about that, after reading again, figured out you were referring to the normal ones... xD
The Gold apples to heal the villagers is still craftable...
The Notch apple/OP apple however is the one you can't craft and have to find...

Oh, cool. I can probably live with that. I haven't really used the Notch apples that often.

Late reaction but unfortunately the info is not correct. No golden apple, neither enchanted nor normal, can be crafted in 1.9. That is: if the current snapshot reflects what is ahead of us of course.

Currently, only the Notch Apple cannot be crafted. The Golden Apple can.

I tried before posting; none can be crafted in the latest snapshot.

Just too bad that I tried to make a glistering apple instead of a gapple

You're fully right here: wrong recipe, wrong place. as we were

oh man, this gapple thing is going to make me work harder to kill mini bosses :/ grrr. I'm not a fan of not being lazy. also... golden apples? what do they even do? gapple/notch apples are all I have even used. (not really I have played a bit of UHC, just being dramatic) I understand it being only a treasure item but...

No need; just buy them from the ShellShop. And as a ShellShopFriend (I think? <checks> uh oh ). You could have gotten some discount: get 2, pay 3!

I just send you a friend request... uhm.. Because I really like you! <worst troll ever>

ok, a little more seriously... 1.9 also seems to provide opportunities. And Aya and me invested quite heavily in this, so knowing me this is going to blow up in my face (and it would still be fun!) But yeah... We're sitting on several stacks of notch apples and will patiently await 1.9

If they think gapple is to overpowered, they should just increase the cost of the craft. Something like needing a block of every expensive ore (so gold, diamond, emerald, lapis, etc). That would at least allow people to replenish the supply, without needing to rely strictly on luck in finding them...

Guys don't get to excited for this... 1.9. Will not hit EMC till a while after the update is out. Even when it does come out they will probably be some bugs.

I agree, but I think there's more to the story. Don't forget that regular food now also heals you a bit. So it seems to me as if it will become harder to fight, easier to get hurt but on the other hand also easier to heal yourself.

So, I'm not sure mind you, but I do think that the scenario's where you'd really need a gapple have also been reduced with all this (this doesn't take PvP into account of course!).

To be honest... I've done a lot of singeplayer games and so far I've hardly used a golden apple. At one time I used a normal one (which I found) to fight some blazes, also because I had never really fought them before and I was certain that I could end up getting fried. Which I didn't. And looking back I really didn't need them at all

Still.. I can somewhat understand why though, it does make the Notch apple a lot more special. Which also accounts for something.

I think most of us realize.

This may sound weird but in a way I think the update to 1.8 could very well end up as being more exciting. I mean: when 1.8 was out we could immediately enjoy all sorts of cool new stuff. We could craft slime blocks, we could run out into the waste and hunt for those new stone blocks or better: ocean monuments. And lets not forget about the bunnies!

But 1.9... Don't get me wrong: I think it is going to be exciting. But still less exciting. Because the major changes will basically be fighting, extra hand usage (which I think is at its best when mining or fighting) and.. yeah; the new blocks and new mob are all in the End which will probably be handled differently. Elytra is cool and all, but I don't think we'll easily get our hands on it. Lingering potions? Not without the dragon (or its head).

So although it is going to be cool, I don't think its going to have the same impact as 1.8 had.

Hi gang!

Warning! We're actually playing the 1.9 snapshot a bit in survival mode, so there are going to be some possible spoilers in here.

My last comment above kept me thinking; what could the impact of 1.9 be on EMC? Obviously that is speculation at its best because only the developers can have a rough idea what would be (im)possible. So I figured I'd test what happens if you play a 1.8 map in a 1.9 setting.

And to try to simulate the "server experience" a bit I downloaded the server jar from Mojang, slapped it onto my server and also ended up inviting a friend over who never really played the snapshot before. As such...

What happens with 1.9 and the End?

Ok, so the setting: I copied a map over which I've played (and still play) quite extensively in single player, it's one of my favorites. Because I never really bothered with going to the End I quickly made an End portal and killed the dragon before copying the map. I also punched the egg to make it teleport away, but didn't pick it up yet.

I'm in creative while Aya is in survival mode on normal difficulty. Obviously she's not going in unarmed:

• Regular golden armor.
• Diamond sword with: Sharpness X, Knockback II, Looting III and Fire Aspect II.
• Diamond pickaxe, axe and shovel with the same specs as our voters gear on EMC.
• Bow with: Power X, Punch II, Flame and Infinity.

I know the specs are a little OP but that's also to compensate a little. Normally Aya plays on difficulty 3 or 4 on EMC and well; the idea wasn't so much to fight mobs but more to see what the End is all about. For example: how hard (or easy) is it to get the Elytra? And also to give her a good impression of 1.9.

The dragon has been killed, now what?

Overview: you can see the existing portal, and I also made a small bridge.

I switched Aya to creative too and we both started to look for the "End teleporters". It's the bedrock structure which appears after you killed the Enderdragon and it allows you to teleport to the outer rim, errr: the outer End regions where you'll find the islands (seriously though, with Star Wars in mind I think Outer Rim has a nice ring to it).

We found nothing.

So... I guess this means that if you already killed the dragon you won't reach the outer rim. Especially given the fact that the snapshot sits very close to the final release. But now for the main question: do these new End structures actually generate?

Aya and me took to the air near the portal and we used: /tp ~1000 ~ ~ (one of us used 1000, the other -1000). And what do you know? They do get generated:

Ignore the purpur wall: I made that to teleport us back to the main island.

Now, we can't be sure of course but I somewhat doubt that we'll be allowed to spawn in the Enderdragon on EMC, I think this is going to be controlled or regulated. Which automatically means that we won't be able to reach the 'outer rim'. Unless... Unless someone likes building a sky bridge which is 'only' 1000 or so blocks long

So quite frankly I think that the 1.9 upgrade can very well turn out less exciting than 1.8. Obviously this is not taking into account what EMC staff themselves might have in store for us.

Tower siege!

Now that we discovered all this it was time for Aya to switch back to survival and attack the tower to see what goodies she could get from it. I was hoping that we'd be able to find the official location of the Elytra too since I had no idea at that time where to find it. All I picked up was that it was hidden in an item frame somewhere.

Aya is fighting the shulkers.

Now, first an Enderman got angry at Aya for reasons I still fail to understand, then she got attacked by two shulkers at the doorway. It took some effort at first but eventually she managed to kill them, but that's the problem: the tower is literally infested with shulkers. Just take a look at the picture above: she just managed to wear out the first levitation hit (that's what got her on that level) but you can already see other shulkers attacking her from above. Anyway, Aya killed quite a few of them when all of a sudden she started to notice something:

We triple checked... I reset her XP levels to 0 before she entered the other tower and nothing. No XP drops nor any mob drops. Just nothing. We also ruled out the possibility that the OP weapons might have had something to do with it: when Aya entered the 2nd tower I replaced her sword and bow with a regular one. Well, it did make a small difference but not on the mob drops. Basically the only noticeable thing which happened was this:

I really don't need to know what happened here

So yeah, shulkers are nice and all but the reward you get for killing them is a bit disappointing. Alas: I spotted the End ship so I suggested that Aya should make her way towards it so that she could check the rewards and optional dragon head (which I didn't mention, but she already knew it existed because apparently she also reads some of my posts ).

Anyway, the generated parkour is nice and all but as I somewhat expected it doesn't have to pose too much problems for players at all:

Aya simply digging her way up

And well, once you start digging and mining I guess things become a lot easier:

Aya failed the ladder jump a few times, so she went back to digging!

I did offer some enderpearls but yeah, I guess that would have been cheating Anyway, her method also has its advantages, because where I assumed that you needed enderpearls to make it to the ship Aya had collected plenty of blocks to simply make a bridge:

And this where we found the Elytra. Hanging in an item frame behind a shulker. Which, with the ceiling and all, was very easy to kill (especially with an OP bow, but even with a normal bow you would only have needed 2 - 3 hits).

Anyway, it became quite obvious that Aya now had plenty of experience with killing Shulkers. At first she dropped dead one time from falling, but not anymore. Basically: Aya ran in and started fighting while I was landing and coming right after her to watch & make screenshots. Well, after I got in all that was left to see was this:

The Elytra is in the item frame behind Ayanami.

So.. what loot did she get?

Anyway, she ignored the Dia chestplate (Thorns II & Protection III) and the helmet (Protection III, Unbreaking III and Mending). In case you didn't know: Mending is an enchantment which allows items to automatically repair themselves with XP. So the moment you pick up some XP orbs they don't get added to your total but are used to repair those items (if required of course).

And yes... It has been confirmed: you can get a dragonhead without having killed the dragon:

The bad news is that the head dropped before Aya could get it. The good news is that there was an island below so the head simply dropped to the ground. And that's when I reminded Aya that she had that "wing thing" on her

She landed safely and I think this sums it up best:

Anyway, enough for now. Next time I'll continue with part 2 where we revived & fought the Enderdragon. Which also has a nice surprise in store for you if you already killed it in a previous version.