Minecraft Earth Gets New Mobs, Minis, and Monetization

Minecraft Earth R13 is now rolling out to players, bringing some significant additions to the augmented reality title. It ushers in new boosts and mobs while bringing some customization in the form of sheep dying. Boosts are Microsoft's way of making money from the game. Each one contains a buff like increased attack damage, crafting speed, or max health, and can be purchased from the in-game store or obtained by scanning a $5 ‘Boost Mini' figure with NFC. There are a total of 12 boosts, and each has three levels that can increase its power, duration, of both. Assumedly, these will be available through ‘blind boxes', essentially a physical version of a loot box, like the other Minecraft Minis. Each boost has three levels, so perhaps duplicates can be used to upgrade them. Here's the full list of boosts:

• “Increase Attack Damage
• Increase Crafting Speed
• Increase Max Health
• Increase Mining Speed
• Increase Player Defense
• Increase Tappable Radius
• Increase XP From Adventures
• Increase XP From Collecting Mobs
• Increased Health Gained from Eating
• Keep Items in Backpack On Death
• Keep items in Hotbar On Death
• Smelting Speed Boost”

The new mobs are the Glow Squid and Skeleton Wolf, and they may also be coming to a store in physical form at some point in the future, as part of blind boxes. Personally, I'm not thrilled at the monetization model, which adopts gambling-like techniques for products aimed at children, but that appears to be a standard in toys these days. This build also comes with the usual bug fixes, including a fix for an exploit that let players sign into Minecraft Earth from multiple devices. Those experiencing crashes may also get some relief from this build. You can read the full patch notes on the Minecraft site.