Minecraft Dungeons - The Minecraft ARPG

Oh right, I had assumed it must be using it, else it should run way better given how it looks.

But now I recall Minecraft itself runs on Switch at 1080p/60 so maybe they should have used it. ;)

He he. Possibly. Then the game might also actually allow that crafting thing.:)

Yeah, the performance on the Switch is the pits. Even my 7 year old noticed it, I guess because he watches enough Youtubers playing to know what good, PC performance looks like. I’ve seen this before with ports, and almost inevitably performance improvements get patched in if the game is still being supported. I hope Dungeons is doing well enough on the Switch to justify ongoing support and those future patches.

Bizarrely, the Switch performance is noticeably worse when the console is docked compared to handheld. Basically the opposite of every single other Switch game.

I suspect it’s doing well on the eShop because it’s often listed in the top couple of sellers since release. Do hope it gets post-release performance patching because it IS fun, especially multiplayer.

But WOW performance is SO bad.

Diego

My daughter and I play it in the Switch docked and we rarely have any problems. Once in awhile there is slowdown but mostly fine. And we have played 10 plus hours. At least it’s not enough of a problem to make it unplayable or anything near to that. Odd.

It’s definitely not unplayable. I’ve put in enough hours with my kids to attest to that. But we are not particularly sensitive to points where frame rate dives into the sewer and things chug for a few seconds. I know others who would consider anything other than a trivial amount of that unacceptable. Even the animated logo (Microsoft Games Studio’s maybe?) that comes before Mojang’s before the game even loads chugs.

My wife and I are around level 70 now. We aren’t normally very frame rate sensitive. But there are so many mobs on the screen, often including enchanted ones, that, if the frame rate was chugging, I’m sure we would die a lot more than we do now.

I do hope they patch it on the Switch. Because the game keeps cranking more and more mobs, explosions and effects as you level up. I fear it will become harder to enjoy for you 2 as time goes by.

Exactly. I’m only around 10 hours in but feel like I’m seeing this already.

Diego

Has the Switch version been patched to run any better yet?

I can confidently say no. They do seem to be working on top crash bugs & interface issues, but no so much Switch performance.

Here’s the change log: https://help.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/360044268272-Minecraft-Dungeons-Patch-Notes

Diego

Ugh. Thanks. Guess I’ll wait a bit.

New free and paid DLC content coming in September:

The free part includes daily challenges, new planned end game content (both will give you higher level gear). There will also be new camp merchants for everyone (including a blacksmith to let us upgrade gear).

The DLC includes a new biome and storyline, new gear (ice wand, …), new mobs (icy creeper, …).

https://help.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/360044974732-FAQ-Jungle-Awakens-and-Creeping-Winter-DLC

The new update is here:

It includes daily trials, as well as all the changes listed in the post above.

I haven’t had a chance to check in-game yet, does anyone know if Mojang added an increase or higher cap for difficulty selection?

My son and I loved playing this couch co-op at release and through the first expansion pack, but we got to a point where even the highest difficulty option on Apocalypse wasn’t really presenting much challenge and we could just steamroll through each level without blinking. My son really loved the game and theme, but eventually became bored of the lack of challenge. I’m not sure it is even worth returning to play through Creeping Winter if we cannot increase the difficulty further. Dungeons was a huge hit in our household, but the weaker endgame had us shift our couch co-op back to the Garden Warfare series of late.

I was considering having us try another aRPG Diablo-like on the Xbox, but he is fairly sensitive to depictions of blood and other dark themes.

I can answer this now. Some update in between then and now did increase the higher cap for difficulty by many magnitudes. If you play on Apocalypse you now have have 20 additional difficulty levels past the initial core 7. So after you Apocalypse VII you can shift to +1 and keep moving up… +2, +3, etc. depending on your character’s or party’s Power Level derived from gear.

This has really breathed new life into the game for our household and we have been playing it with even more gusto than release. Shifting into the additive ‘+’ levels of Apocalypse means the game went from a cakewalk to a situation where we tend to lose maps 4 times out of 5 (which is a positive for us). It can get extremely challenging in some circumstances.

The other nice addition of variety is that the game now features a minimum of 3 daily challenges or Daily Trials. You run these on the available maps but they feature a random slate of ‘mutators’ that present a list of boons and disadvantages that alter the gameplay a significant degree. For example a recent Daily Trial gave every player the ‘Prospector’ trait which meant that you would be collecting a much higher level of Emerald currency during your run along with a couple other boons but when any player went down that was instant game over with NO additional chances. That was quite fun to run a version of permadeath and see how far you could get into the level and how many Emeralds you could horde before some mob caught you by surprise. Around Halloween the game included 4-5 ‘Spooky Trials’ in addition to the normal ‘Daily Trials’ so there was quite a bounty of randomized content.

A very recent update enabled cross platform play across all systems for those that had friends on a different console or device.

The only thing that is starting to bother us is that we seem to have mostly exhausted the number of Unique weapons to find in the game. I suspect that we have seen most of what the game has to offer so the only variety is finding new ones with different stat and ability rolls and varying gem layouts. That should be remedied by the another new DLC pack coming out in December: Howling Peaks. That should usher in some new weapons, Unique variants, armors, and artifacts. Though for the sheer number of hours our household has put into this game we cannot complain too much. All of these updates truly did revitalize the game after we started overpowering content back in the Summer and the new expansion will freshen it up further with a new biome, maps, enemies and equipment.

Definitely worth a revisit if you fell off earlier in the year.

I believe the devs have been moving this game in a very positive and productive direction with each update. I hope the sales or Game Pass engagement keep funding further development into 2021.

The next DLC sounds very cool:

The Nether, new mobs, new game modes.

Has it gotten any better on the Switch? Or have they just left it to bake in its unoptimized jankiness on the Switch?

Eager to hear an answer to this. I haven’t played in ages, but I would take it back up for the Nether content if it was improved performance on the Switch. PS5 buttery smoothness has now spoiled my son and me.

Can’t answer unfortunately as I only play on the One X.