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:
Blacksmith and Enchantsmith
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.
Meeting the Copper Monstrosity
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.
It was a great reminder of how speedy and gratifying the combat in Dungeons II is feeling – every fight requires me to fire my bow, finish off enemies with the sword, and make multiple uses of my Artifacts (the items that offer me extra abilities). But at the same time, cooldowns are mercifully brief, meaning I feel like I’m constantly fighting at full power, rather than simply spending my time turtling, waiting for the next ability to pop up again. It feels odd to say about a Minecraft game, but Dungeons II feels built around aggression, rewarding you for taking on enemies as relentlessly as you can.
Once I reached my destination (and getting ambushed by waves of increasingly tough enemies), I eventually ascended a tower to meet the Copper Monstrosity, a brand new boss being introduced with this demo. A hulking mass of, you guessed it, copper, the Monstrosity initially presented as a straight tank, with hefty punches that require careful dodging (or, in my case, liberal swigs of health potion). But quickly it introduced lightning AOE attacks, sending sparks crawling under my feet before activating, and full-arena dashes that took me by surprise.
It’s a single fight that shows the diversity of combat, and a real sense of challenge – just like the mobs, I felt encouraged to make use of all my abilities at once, but now with a genuine sense of risk-reward, with the Monstrosity able to shave huge sections of my health off in seconds if I didn’t apply some thought to how I reacted. Dungeons II may be an ARPG built for all experience levels – but that doesn’t mean it has to be nice about it all the time…
Quality of Life Upgrades
Along my short journey, I got to see some of the smaller elements that are adding up to make for a true sequel to the original Dungeons. One small but crucial change comes in the form of an onscreen inventory option – press up on the D-pad and you’ll be taken to the default inventory menu. But hold that button and a miniature version of the menu will pop up onscreen, allowing for quick swaps. It’s a solution designed for couch co-op players in particular – no longer will whole teams using a single screen need to wait for each individual player to sort their items, as all of them can bring up their own mini-menu simultaneously.
For those who want to spend longer in those menus, though, there’s the surprisingly compelling “Effects and Enchantments” menu, which boils down every single effect from your weapons, armor, and talismans into a single list. If you’re going to get heavily into buildcraft, this will be where you spend a lot of time. It lets you identify exactly how your items are affecting your build, which ones might need to be tweaked, and where you might be able to improve it.
As much as the big mechanical changes, it’s these kinds of little tweaks from the first game that show how Mojang is pushing this sequel so much further. By improving the experience for couch players or hardcore genre enthusiasts alike, they’re delivering on the promise of being an ARPG not just for everyone, but for anyone.
Minecraft Dungeons II launches September 29 for XBOX Series X|S, XBOX on PC, cloud, and will be included with Game Pass. Play it on both console and PC at no additional cost with XBOX Play Anywhere. Also available on Steam, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2.
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