At XBOX Games Showcase earlier this year, we played a Minecraft Dungeons II demo that took us to the hacking/slashing/looting/shooting heart of this upcoming ARPG sequel – but today at gamescom 2026, I got to play a new version that showed us much more of what will surround that core mechanical experience.
In a 30 minute runthrough, I began my demo in the game’s bucolic hub town, Brave Haven, taking in the sights, getting to grips with some of the new options I’ll have access to, before using a minecart fast travel system to take me straight to a bruising boss fight – and sampling some of the smaller changes along the way.
Let me take you through some of the biggest new elements I learned about today:
At the heart of Brave Haven, you’ll find two smiths – one familiar, and the other a little… less so. The Blacksmith is straightforward enough, but I can immediately see how I’ll be using it for the entire game’s length.
Any piece of equipment you own can be opened up here and, for a modest fee, upgraded to the highest power level currently available to you. It’s a simple solution to a knotty problem in any game built around loot – if you’ve fallen in love with a particular sword, bow, or piece of armor, you won’t be faced with having to unequip it simply because you found something more powerful. The Blacksmith also solves another issue – maybe you have a piece of equipment that looks great, but its in-built buffs aren’t quite right for your build. Here, you can re-roll to add a brand new buff in its place, hopefully ending up with the perfect item for you.
If the Blacksmith is a way of tweaking and refining your equipment, the Enchantsmith is where you can make those items act in entirely new ways. Along your adventure, you’ll find Enchant Books – items that offer you new ways to add effects to your weapons. Bring them back to the Enchantsmith and, with a down payment of currency dropped by new Soul Corrupted enemies, you can add those enchantments to your items.
Even in a short demo, and with a limited number of enchantments to look at, the possibilities for buildcraft here are instantly tantalizing. Looking over the list of options, I spotted ways to increase how often I could use a dodge roll ability. But next to that? An ability to shoot arrows with every dodge roll. And what if I then added an enchantment to add a fire effect to all my arrows? In the space of a single menu, I’ve effectively created an entire new ability synergy for my character.
After I’d finished refining my build (an extremely capable ranged DPS character, with the ability to drop bombs and buff themselves in a couple of handy ways), I set off for a showdown. With a full Overworld map to travel across this time around, I took a minecart from Brave Haven to the stop nearest my destination, but still contended with dozens of mobs who blocked my path.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/08/26/minecraft-dungeons-ii-new-features-gamescom-2026/
