Having been originally announced back in May as part of tenth-anniversary celebrations for the release of Minecraft, it was announced late last month that Minecraft Earth would enter its early access phase for Android and iOS during the month of October. While we caught a glimpse of the IOS version of the title earlier this year, we now have our first look at the crafting and smelting implementations in beta version 0.4.2 of the game.
As is the case with regular Minecraft, players must mine and collect resources from the world around them in order to build objects, such as tools, that can facilitate or speed up other specific activities. At first glance. players will have up to three crafting and three smelting slots at their disposal, although two of each type will initially remain locked and unavailable for use.
Heading into the crafting menu reveals a list of available recipes, with crafting times ranging from 30 seconds to obtain a bundle of wooden planks all the way through to eight hours for a diamond pickaxe. However, for those who simply cannot wait, the game incorporates the concept of rubies as a form of in-game currency to speed up the process and can be gathered while playing the game or as a digital purchase, at least for those playing the Android beta of Minecraft Earth. Interestingly, rubies were slated for inclusion in version 1.3 of Minecraft but the material was dropped before the patch"s final release back in 2012 in favor of emeralds.
At this stage, it remains to be seen as to how often rubies will drop during in-game play and if the game-enforced crafting timeframes will be adjusted, with and without the use of rubies, and whether or not this will drive players to splash their cash for the sake of faster crafting.
Source: Windows Central