Minecraft Dungeons breaks down Ancient Hunts and Apocalypse Plus changes in ‘Flames of the Nether’ DLC

Minecraft Dungeons continues to expand rapidly.

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What you need to know

Minecraft Dungeonsisn’t the same game it was when it released and has added a ton of new content, quality-of-life improvements, and feature changes since its launch. The next step for Mojang Studios' ARPG co-op focused spin-off of Minecraft is the positively humungousMinecraft Dungeons Flames of the Nether DLC. Coming on February 24, Flames of the Nether includes six new missions, with tons of new mobs to fight, loot to unlock, and content to play through. Alongside the paid portion of Flames of the Nether, though, is an equally-massive free update coming to all Minecraft Dungeons players.

In a newdeveloper blog post, Mojang Studios has provided additional details on all the big features coming in this free update. Most notably: Ancient Hunts and Apocalypse Plus mode. If you want to learn more about the Flames of the Nether DLC for Minecraft Dungeons, you can also check out therecently release dev diary.

There’s a lot of information to unpack here, so let’s get started:

Ancient Hunts

Ancient Hunts are player-influenced, procedurally-generated missions that are high-risk, high-reward. These missions will provide a ton of nearly endless endgame content for players to experience while rewarding them with some of the most powerful gear in the game.

With Ancient Hunts:

Gilded gear

While Ancient Hunts can provide a wide variety of potential rewards for players in the endgame, Gilded gear is the most lucrative and desirable. This powerful gear can only be found in Ancient Hunts and will be the rarest and most valuable loot in the game.

With Gilded gear:

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Apocalypse Plus

In an earlier update, Minecraft Dungeons added the Apocalypse Plus difficulty. This mode added a further twenty levels of challenge for players and massively raised the maximum power level for heroes and gear. However, players found that difficulty spiked abnormally fast towards the end of Apocalypse Plus, while a select few players found exploits to reach the end relatively easily. With Flames of the Nether, Mojang Studios is making a ton of changes and further increasing the endgame in Minecraft Dungeons.

With Apocalypse Plus:

Balancing and other changes

Alongside all these changes, Minecraft Dungeons is introducing brand-new enchantments to the game, with a bunch of new enchantments targeted specifically towards pet and companion builds. There will also be new “damage” enchantments for thunder, poison, fire, souls, and more.

There will also be balances and tweaks to existing enchantments, to make the game more fair and consistent overall.

Endgame changes

The idea behind all of these changes is to provide a ton more content for players in the Minecraft Dungeons endgame. By mixing Ancient Hunts with Apocalypse Plus, players will be able to achieve new heights in power, find more ways to play, and be able to spend even more time reaching the top of Minecraft Dungeons. This is the missing piece that has prevented long-term investment in Minecraft Dungeons, and now Mojang Studios has finally added it.

With these changes, it’ll also be easy for Mojang Studios to make additional changes to Ancient Hunts and Apocalypse Plus, and add further levels to it, if necessary.

If you haven’t played Minecraft Dungeons yet, it’s available as a part ofXbox Game Pass, and is even one of theBest Games for Xbox Cloud Gamingon Android. To get the most out of Minecraft Dungeons, consider investing in one of theBest Headsets for Xbox Series X|S, that way you can always keep in touch with your teammates.

Explore new worlds in Minecraft Dungeons.

It’s been a busy first year for Minecraft Dungeons, and now the ARPG dungeon-crawling Minecraft spin-off is looking ahead towards its future, with four new expansions planned. The first one, Howling Peaks, is available right now, but players can also grab the new Season Pass to gain immediate access to all four expansions as soon as they launch.