The Skeleton Dungeon Review (21189)

Hello everyone! Today I’ll gonna be reviewing the LEGO Minecraft Skeleton Dungeon set!

Initially I didn’t think this was going to be the most interesting set. At first glance it’s not as cool as some of the other Minecraft sets of the current wave. But as I began building, it was more enjoyable than I expected.

Dungeons in Minecraft are places where hostile mobs (zombies, skeletons, spiders) spawn from spawner blocks and can contain small chests of loot. Since this set was the skeleton dungeon, the spawner in the set spawns skeletons. Crazy huh! The set comes with three skeletons. One of them has an enchanted bow and helmet, while the other two are normal skeletons. There is also a cool explorer, with a crossbow and pickaxe. The explorer has a nice design and even has a headlamp printed on their head.

There are 4 main areas of the set, and I’ll go through each individually. The first is the main spawner area. The spawner block in Minecraft looks like a black cage with a spinning mini-version of the mob it’s spawning inside. The LEGO version nailed the spawner in this set. Although the cage is a bit big to be accurate, it can open at the top. There is even a nice little play feature where you can spin the mini skeleton inside the spawner’s cage. The floor around the spawner in Minecraft is made of mossy cobblestone, and to make the floor look mossy in the LEGO version there are some dark green 1×1 tiles dotted around.

On the right side of the set there is an area of pointed dripstone – the Minecraft equivalent of stalagmites/stalactites. The area is built out of dark tan bricks and different dripstone spikes hang from a raised area. The raised area is held up by 2 bits of dripstone from the roof and floor that join together into a column. There are also lots of dripstone spikes that poke up from the ground, on the floor and the raised area.

There’s also a cool play feature where if you pull a block that is attached to a technic rod, the rod pulls itself out of 2 blocks of dripstone. These blocks of dripstone have spikes facing downward and can fall onto the skeletons below. Finally, there is also a new ore block of copper, which hasn’t been in a LEGO Minecraft set yet.

Next up is the waterfall area. This area, as you would assume, has a nice waterfall that is part of a lush cave. There is a chest near the waterfall that has a bone, bread and best of all a music disc. This disc is printed on a curved 2×2 tile and is a first for LEGO Minecraft. I think it looks great! The surrounding area is made of bricks that look like clay. It’s the block that makes up lush caves. There are also some drip leaf plants dotted around the water, along with a spore blossom flower that hangs from the roof.

The final area of the set is the top part of the lush cave. This is next to the raised area of the dripstone and is completely green to look like moss blocks. There are some torches, grass, and even two azalea bushes, which look really nice. Under the lush cave area, there is also an epic play feature. Three walls sit on a rotating circular piece and each quarter the walls divide the circular piece into can fit a skeleton. So when you put a skeleton in one of the quarters and then turn the circular piece, it turns to make the skeleton ‘appear’ in the dungeon area as if it has just been spawned by the spawner. I think it’s very smart and it makes good use of the area behind the spawner.

Overall Thoughts

So that’s that! I think I’ve covered the entire set. This set definitely turned out to be better than I thought, and it is packed with lots of play features for people to enjoy. It comes with a reasonable assortment of minifigures, but if we just judged the set on the figures, it wouldn’t be the best. The set also comes with some new items for the theme, such as music discs and copper ore. All things considered though, this is a great set!

See you later!

A special thanks to our friends at Zavvi who supplied this set for us to build.