Minecraft Dungeons was one of those pandemic games that helped keep me and my friends connected. The game immediately sparked my curiosity and I enjoyed playing through the campaign when it launched. The Ancient Hunts mode was an update that came out in early 2021, but it wasn’t until the end of 2021 with the Tower update that I really got hooked and started to see the brilliance of the meta from a game developer’s perspective. Oddly though, it’s one of the few games that I can enjoy playing and not be completely distracted trying to dissect the mechanics!
The integration of the campaign, the tower, and the ancient hunts keeps the game fresh and creates a nearly perfect cycle for player engagement and progression.
For anyone who hasn’t played Dungeons, or hasn’t spent almost 300 hours in it (smiles anxiously), I’m going to detail how each gameplay mode works individually and then show how they all feed into each other and why this loop works so well.
The 3 Core Gameplay Modes: The Campaign, The Tower and Ancient Hunts
The Campaign
The campaign is the starting point for all players. It introduces players to the core mechanics and storyline. The original narrative setup is fine, and it was expanded in later updates to include new realms/themes. The Halloween events and themed loot was also *chef’s kiss*
In addition to learning the core mechanics and finishing the storyline, players also start to collect gear, earn enchantment points, and experiment with different character builds. And that is the central theme to Minecraft Dungeons: the gear lets you can be anything. There are no class restrictions, and what abilities and powers you have are based on what gear you have equipped, and are NOT dictated by some separate skill tree system. Gear is EVERYTHING.
And it’s not only finding gear, but upgrading it as well.
In the main camp area there was an abandoned Nether portal that we KNEW would eventually be opened. Unfortunately, even though the Nether WAS added in a DLC drop, this particular environment prop was never used and remains more of an artifact. It’s really interesting to think that at one time it probably was considered to be the way players would go to the Nether. If anyone from Mojang would like to comment on this, drop me an email haha.
The Tower
The tower is the next step for players. Unlike the campaign, it’s more of a roguelike challenge that forces you to start with no gear at all. With each mini-level completed in a tower run, you are rewarded with a choice of randomized gear. There are usually 30 mini-levels per tower “rotation.”
The tower rewards players by having them think strategically about their gear choices, and introduces you to new builds (ie: gear combinations). For example, in the campaign I typically focused on tanky-style builds that had lots of armor and melee damage. But tower runs introduced me to Souls gear (the equivalent to mana) and I was discovered the power of self-healing, high damage builds that were even more fun to play and min-max.
The tower was also our friend group’s favorite thing to play. Mojang updated tower rotations to be weekly randomized events and we’d play every Saturday/Sunday night when the new tower run dropped. We could complete some towers in a single night, while others took almost the whole week to finish! Those trickier ones we’d replay over and over until we figured out the right mix of gear and builds from the randomized drops that we needed to survive all 30 mini-levels and beat the final boss. We played the tower weekly for nearly a year!
Ancient Hunts
Ancient Hunts are essentially “end-game” content for people who are a little obsessed in fine-tuning their perfect builds.
To do a “hunt”, you have to first sacrifice some gear AND enchantment points earned from the campaign to unlock each run. Depending on the type of gear and the amount of points you sacrifice, you tweak the mini-boss encounters and the probability of finding gilded gear: the ultimate loot.
Regular gear in Minecraft Dungeons usually comes with up to 3 “enchantments” that you can upgrade. For example, a diamond sword may have three sets of enchantments, like: sharpness, life steal and explosive enemy deaths (each that you can upgrade the performance of).
Gilded gear, on the other hand, comes with additional buffs built into the gear itself. For example: a piece of gilded armor may come with 3 powerful enchantments, and an additional Tier III Lightning Damage bonus to any weapons or artifacts that do lightning damage. It’s all about these bonus multipliers!
The Interplay Between the Campaign, Tower and Hunts
The brilliance is not just what each of these game modes offers and how well they each play on their own, but in how they are designed to feed into one another.
The Tower introduces you to new builds and drops rare gear to help do better in Campaign reruns and Ancient Hunts.
The Campaign gives you the gear and enchantments needed to do Ancient Hunts, and can be modified with higher difficulty through Apocalypse modifiers.
Ancient Hunts reward you with ultimate drops so you can further increase the difficulty in Campaign reruns, and earn even higher levels.
And all of this feeds into the primary goal: higher levels, better gear, more builds.
Why This All Works So Well
The interplay of the micro loops inside the macro loop is beautiful and essentially keeps the game moving forward at all times. It encourages variety, reinforces progression, and keeps the campaign relevant.
Each play session also informs the next choice. The systems in Dungeons reminds me a lot of the landmark design in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In BOTW, landmarks are position on the map just so precisely that the player always has a visual on where they can go next while they are exploring. Dungeons is similar with its gear: each play session usually drops some kind of item that sparks an idea of how to do another build that could benefit from that new item. It’s like an infinite breadcrumb trail, where every item you discover sparks new ideas and sets a new goal for your next session.
And I think there’s also parallels to Minecraft proper as well. Both are games that prioritize accommodating different kinds of play styles. Dungeons leans into that sandbox mentality and not only lets players customize the way they want, but also doesn’t lock you in, and allows you to change your mind any time and do something completely different.
Finally, Dungeons seamlessly integrates and expands the lore of Minecraft. Everything fits together really well, and the IP is deep enough that most ARPG elements have some kind of Minecraft-based equivalent. The game balances familiarity with innovation, offering a depth of items and build combinations that can keep players busy for a really long time. I wish Mojang would integrate just some of the combat and item designs from Dungeons into Minecraft. The new Trial Chambers update feels like a first step in that direction. I’d like to believe that they are applying some of the lessons learned from Dungeons into Minecraft.
In the end, Minecraft Dungeons works so well because it elevates player agency, continuously inspires new goals… and creates a gameplay loop that feels as infinite as a Minecraft world itself.
