Mojang today announced a huge update to its popular Minecraft Pocket Edition app for iPhone and iPad. The big focus of the update is access to new free and paid skins for characters (as pictured above):

Skins are the way you change the appearance of your Minecraft character. Instead of looking like Alex or Steve, you can roll with a different vibe, like a butcher, dog, or plumber. Skins are purely cosmetic – they don’t affect the way the game plays or give you any special abilities.

Paid skins are available to purchase in bundles, but users can also upload or create their own as well as find free skins within the game. You’ll get around 20 skins for $0.99/€0.79/£0.79 if you opt for the paid bundles.

The update also includes other improvements and new features including the ability to fish and a long list of new animals. The full list of what’s new is below:

Multiple language support

Boats with space for two! Take your pet for a pleasant ride.

The ability to throw stuff from boats, including snowballs and eggs

Fishing! Now you can fish for fishies!

Squids!

Spider jockeys!

Cave Spiders!

Bats!

Adorable baby zombies!

Weird chicken jockeys!

Edible clownfish. Yum!

A fancy new World Edit screen so you can rename worlds, change game modes and do other things

Creative players can no longer be set on fire. Controversial

We’ve stopped cheeky chickens from walking on water

Animals can no longer breed without touching each other ooh err

Drinking milk now removes mob effects

Ridiculous amounts of bug fixes

More cool things that you should discover for yourself

You can grab the updated Minecraft Pocket Edition on the App Store soon (it’s submitted to Apple and should arrive any day now).

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