Minecraft 1.8, the latest adventure update to the hugely popular sandbox building indie video game written in Java by Swedish creator Markus "Notch" Persson, is now officially live.

Aside from the official patch, Persson in his Word of Notch blog site, also provided an update on the Bethesda lawsuit. He said lawyers have been sending papers back and forth, threatening each other with deadlines and court dates. "Why don't we settle this in a mature way?", one party asks the other. "Your MOTHER settles things in mature ways", the other party cleverly retorts, "because of her age."

As to Minecraft 1.8, although the patch was leaked last week, it was still buggy. The bug-free and full version of the Adventure Update can now be downloaded through the Minecraft launcher.

Minecraft 1.8 adds these key features to the game:

* New biomes: You'll encounter new scenery like swamps, forests, oceans, rivers, caves, underground dungeons, and abandoned mines. There are treasures everywhere, but there are also monsters.

* New mobs. You'll be facing the Endermen, Cave Spiders and Silverfish. Tip: the Endermen will ignore you at first, but they'll attack you, after you look away.

* New health system. Food is now stackable. Eating food no longer immediately restores your health. Instead, health slowly regenerates after your food bar is full.

* New blocks. You can now build gates for fences and iron bars. There are the vines, glass panes, and stone bricks as well.
Weapons. Weapons can hand critical hits. You can deliver critical damage if you hit an enemy while falling.

* NPC towns. You'll find randomly generated houses and villages. They're still ghost cities because NPCs are only coming in 1.9.

* Survival Mode. This forces players to hunt for food or build a farm to stay alive.

* Creative Mode. You'll have unlimited resources to create any stuff that's on your mind or constructions on massive proportions.

The full version of the game is expected to be unveiled at the Official Minecraft Event on Nov. 18 to 29, at Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas Nevada. Versions for Android, Apple's iOS and Microsoft Corp. are also slated for release this year.

Although the game is still currently in "beta", Mojang, the video game developer founded by Persson, has already sold more than 3.4 million copies of Minecraft, which has been continually updated and patched since the release of the initial version in December.

Here's Achievement Hunter's walkthrough and guide for Minecraft 1.8: