How to set up online co-op in Minecraft Dungeons

Minecraft Dungeons has been specifically designed for fun and frantic multiplayer brawls with a group of friends. You can play Minecraft Dungeons solo if you'd like, but the levels in Mojang's dungeon crawler have been built to encourage teamwork and cooperation. 

Grouping up is simple: Up to four players can play in a Minecraft Dungeons session, and players can easily drop in and out of each other's games. With a team the difficulty will adjust automatically unless changed by one of the players manually.

You can set the difficulty with the threat slider, found in the mission menu when you first select a level. To access more challenging Minecraft Dungeons difficulty options, players will have to first complete the game on lower difficulties.

Here's what you need to know to party up.

How to set up a co-op session in Minecraft Dungeons

To set up a session in Minecraft Dungeons, one player will act as the host and invite others to join their game. Up to four friends can be on a team and can either be added as local or online co-op partners (unfortunately, Mojang says that "at launch, local co-op and online multiplayer cannot be played simultaneously"). There's a handy menu for players to see if others are online, which gives the option to drop in and out of a friend's game.  

How does looting work in multiplayer?

With a four-player crew, you might think loot would be a first-come, first-serve situation. Thankfully Mojang has followed Diablo's approach to this issue. Everyone in the party gets their fair share of loot so that no one is left empty-handed. All the loot that you collect throughout each level is all yours. No battling (or racing) your friends to claim it.

Does Minecraft Dungeons have splitscreen?

Minecraft Dungeons has local co-op, though it's not technically splitscreen. The screen never splits, but it will zoom out a bit to keep characters on screen. Note that you need at least two controllers to play multiplayer on PC (keyboard/mouse and one controller won't work). Players can spread out some as the camera zooms out, but wander too far away and you'll be warped back to the side of the party leader.

When playing online co-op, the screen will not be split between players and everyone's screen will centre on their own character. There's also no invisible banding limiting how far you can roam from each other. Players are free to explore wherever they like, but many of the mobs and challenges in each level are designed for a team effort.

Minecraft Dungeons crossplay: Is it available?

Unfortunately, crossplay is not available in Minecraft Dungeons at launch. But Mojang is working on crossplay between Xbox and PC for the future. Whether crossplay comes to the dungeon crawler's other consoles—like Nintendo Switch and PS4—is something the team is exploring.