This is the easiest mistake to make if you haven’t played Minecraft in a while, and knowing about it will save you potentially hours of frustration. Combat in the game has never been particularly complex: for many years, spam-clicking with your sword was by far the easiest way to deal with most enemies, but if you do that now, you’re going to be in trouble.

With the 1.9 Combat Update, not only was a second hand slot added but so was how frequently you can swing your sword. Now, when you attack, a small bar will appear just below your crosshair. If you don’t let this bar fill up, then your next swing will do almost no damage. Instead, you need to wait for a second to let it fill up, at which point you’ll be doing full damage again.

When you first spawn in your world, you’ll need to survey the surrounding area. In previous Minecraft versions, structures or villages were pretty rare. They were the perfect place to spend your first few nights, as almost everything you need is catered for, but you’d often have to look up the best seeds to find one. In 2022, you might want to take the time to explore a little further out than you used to, as villages have become a much more common occurrence.

Thanks to the 1.14 Village & Pillage Update a lot more biomes can spawn a village. Plains, Deserts, Savannas, Taigas, and Snow Plains all have village potential now, and the base rate they spawn at has been boosted. What’s more, the design of the villages is entirely different now, with each villager having their own jobs that determine what they trade.

Until version 1.18, caves in Minecraft looked the same as they always did. They were usually quite small unless you were lucky enough to stumble across a ravine. You could dig all the way down to level Y = 0, where you would find Bedrock that stopped you from going deeper. In between the surface and the Bedrock were all the resources you could possibly need.

The Caves & Cliffs Part 2 Update completely wiped the slate clean and started again with how caves generate, doing it better than even the best Minecraft mods. The most obvious change is that caves are now huge, with a lot of open areas that stretch out as far as the eye can see. Most importantly though, you can delve below Y = 0. In this area, rare materials like diamonds are more common, and Stone is replaced with the much tougher Deepslate.

Another change brought about by Caves & Cliffs Part 2, you can no longer dig at the lowest possible level to get every ore. Previously, Coal started to spawn at level Y = 120, and continue spawning all the way to Bedrock, but now there is a limit to how deep you can find it, and the distribution isn’t even anymore.

Continuing with Coal as an example, it now only spawns from level Y = 184 to Y = 0, but at the far ends of that range, it becomes exceedingly rare. If you want to find lots of Coal, you’ll need to dig around Y = 88, where it is most commonly found. The same system applies with varying ranged for most ores in the game, with Diamonds still being the rarest at the very bottom of the world.

In the old days of Minecraft, oceans were nothing but an inconvenience. The only creature they had was Squids which, in many ways, are worse than nothing. Sailing over them to get to your next destination was all they were good for, and if they were removed from the game, then most people would barely even notice.

However, the 1.13 Update Aquatic came along and changed everything. New biomes were added to oceans. In cold regions, you can get massive icebergs coming up out of the water, and in hot regions, a beautiful Coral Reef could line the ocean floor. On top of that, shipwrecks hold valuable loot, as well as treasure maps. Most excitingly, Ocean Monuments are an underwater maze full of the dangerous Guardians.

The Nether was a place you just had to deal with in Minecraft. The only thing worth visiting for was a Nether Fortress, and sometimes those were painfully hard to find. The community had been complaining about this for years, until finally, the 1.16 Nether Update came along, changing the hellish dimension forever.

With four new biomes, The Nether looks more impressive than ever, especially when amped up by shaders. Included are two new types of Wood, three new types of Stone, and the new Piglin and Hoglin mobs. Hoglins are wild basts with huge knockback power, whilst Piglins are more advanced creatures. They can be deadly, but if you wear Gold, then they will be peaceful, you can even trade with them.

For almost all of Minecraft’s history, it has been written in stone that Diamonds are the very best item in the game, fans even made parody songs on YouTube about this fact. They crafted the best armour and weapons, plus they were extremely difficult to find. Getting fully enchanted Diamond gear was the pinnacle of Minecraft’s progression system, but that’s no longer the case.

Another addition of the Nether Update was a brand new material buried amongst all of the Netherrack, known as Netherite. To get it, you must find four pieces of Ancient Debris, craft them with Gold, and then smelt them in a Furnace. Once you have your Netherite Ingot, put it in a Smithing Table with your Diamond gear, and it will be upgraded to Netherite, the new best gear in the game.

Beating the Ender Dragon, collecting the egg, and jumping through the portal is how you ‘complete’ Minecraft. You’ll see the credits roll, and you’ll be thrown back into your home bed. However, as anyone who’s played Minecraft knows, there is no true end to the game: you can keep building and exploring forever.

As such, it was inevitable that The End dimension would get new content at some point, and that came about with the 1.9 Combat Update. Now, once you defeat the Ender Dragon, a small portal will appear somewhere on the edge of the island. Throw an Ender Pearl into it, and you’ll be transported to an infinite series of End islands. When you’re out there, you need to find an End City full of Shulkers, which you can craft into portable chests, and the Elytra, which you can use to glide around your world.

Written by Ryan Woodrow on behalf of GLHF.