"Anyone in Requiem?" "Is anyone in Asphodel?"

These are common questions that you might see (or ask!) during Events Nights. For your convenience, you can now try the new /anyone command! It will tell you the amount of players present in each science region and challenge area. This updates in real-time and gives you a chance to check before you travel to your destination.

Note that, all of the regions being located in Laurasia, this command will only work when used on that server.

Our official resource pack has been updated with a small quality-of-life change: items with high enchantments and potion levels will now display their power level in roman numerals like all others instead of falling back to decimal numbers. Go download the new version now!

This trick only works for Java players, but the display for Bedrock players looks better by default already, so you're set.

Thanks to Twixxi for the improvement and Sphenicus for the pack update!

Maybe you haven't seen it yet, but our YouTube channel has picked up in activity! Kamachi has been creating new content to breathe some life in our channel, with four video being added so far. Go check out our channel to see the latest additions, with more to come! If you've got suggestions on which builds would be worth a showcase, Kamachi is looking for your input!

Meanwhile, on the Instagram front, I'm now making sure that each of our news post has an update posted on our page at the same time. This can be a good way to know that something changed, and since many of our newer players found their way here from Instagram and Facebook, consider giving that a follow!

Remember that there are plenty of other ways to keep up with our news. There's the main website, obviously; the forums; the news feed; our Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter feeds; and the email newsletter every month. Plus, if an event gets scheduled, it gets added to our Steam group so you automatically get a reminder after you join!

A new month means new goals and challenges! We've got one beefy update to go through, including the brand new addition of Guilds, new Horsemen features and a new challenge, so keep on reading!

From Twixxi:

The Guilds of Creeper’s Lab have officially opened their Guildhalls to newcomers! New members such as yourself, known as Apprentices, start at the Laurasia Guildhall which can be found at the end of the Commercial Line in Central.

There are six guilds within the Guildhall and you are welcome to join any or all of them. Each provides you with unique challenges for you to go away and complete, then come back to the Guildhall to claim tokens which can be used to claim special Guild Rewards! Each challenge can be completed up to five times per month, and there is a brand new challenge each month.

The Guilds are:

• The Miner’s Guild who will ask you to mine a specific block, which might be a kind of stone, a kind of ore, or perhaps something a little different like clay
• The Builder’s Guild who will ask you to place a specific block, whether it’s a certain type of wood, a specific type of brick, or something unusual like snow
• The Farmer’s Guild who ask you to grow crops, which could be pumpkins or vines, or maybe they want you to use the ingredients to make cakes
• The Fisher’s Guild who might ask you to go catch fish, or perhaps they’ll ask you to cook fish instead
• The Hunter’s Guild who ask you to go and hunt a specific passive mob, whether that’s sheep or bats, or something a little rarer such as parrots
• The Blacksmith’s Guild who want you to craft a specific item specified, whether that be helmets or powered rails, or something unusual like lodestones!

Want to progress in the Guilds? Turn in challenges and save up your tokens for a particular Guild, and you can purchase a rank certificate! Register this at the next Guildhall to claim your new rank and access harder challenges which have stronger rewards! After the Apprentice Guild in Laurasia you can move to the Journeyman Guild in Rodinia, the Expert Guild in Superia and finally the Master Guild in Gondwana. All challenges must be completed on the relevant server. So if the Expert Blacksmith’s Guildhall in Superia asks you to craft iron bars, iron bars crafted in Laurasia won’t count!

Full details and the list of rewards can be found on the forum.

To celebrate the launch of the Guildhalls, a new contest is now open. The first person to claim the rank of Master in each Guild will be named the Grand Master of that Guild! As well as the prestige of the title and a seat in the upcoming Guild Council Chamber, each Grand Master will be rewarded with 50 Merit Points and a unique reward. You can only be Grand Master of one Guild, so choose wisely! If you believe you are the first person to obtain Master rank in a Guild, send Guild Council Leader Twixxi a message on Discord or the Forums to claim your rank as Grand Master.

The Horsemen areas are ever moving forward with updates! Some of you have already noticed that the Creeper Citadel is now marked as Divine Airspace. Rather than fighting flying players, the place now embraces it by being a free-flying zone. Don't stray too far though, else you could face a rough landing!

The Horseman Quests have been overhauled after a test run back in October, at our Night of Fright. The list of quests that you can complete for the Horsemen has been expanded to cover some non-combat targets outside of the science areas. Plus, to better find these, a new island has been added at the Citadel where the information of all the areas is regrouped together.

New to Horseman Quests and don't know where to start? No worries - on that island is a new guidebook detailing the system, where to go and how to claim your rewards! Go get a copy and give it a read! You can also check this topic on the forums.

Meanwhile, at the Hunter's Lodge, you can hunt down Cupid and Nyx, God of the Underworld.

In January, people raced away, away from all that angry nature! A record-breaking 53 players tried their best! Merit Points have been awarded in decreasing amounts from the best distance travelled. For the sake of keeping this section brief, here are the top five runners and their best distance:

GroovyBanana: 59,032
axe_y: 24,763
Twixxi_: 24,675
GingeKoda: 23,237
Doctacosa: 21,866

All points have been attributed, you can view your web profile or type /points in-game to view how many Merit Points you now have!

Replacing that mad stormy dash is a new round of UHC, accessible from the lobby, in a new world! As always, there are four targets that you must complete, each worth five Merit Points:

• Crafting a bookshelf
• Crafting an enchantment table
• Access the Nether
• Pick up a blaze rod

You need a reminder on what Merit Points are good for? Check the website!

A common complaint from new players is the difficulty of locating new building grounds in Laurasia. Sure, there is plenty of land available, but finding your way when you're a new beginner is more difficult.

To help with this, we're adding today on Laurasia two new Nether lines dedicated to beginners. Reachable directly from the spawn platform, or the basement of Grand Central Station, these two let people get to a nice variety of untouched biomes. Each destination can be reached in less than five minutes!

To make it even simpler, these new lines are separate from the main Nether rail network, so people can't get lost. Once an area is developed enough, its rail will get removed from the beginners section and get redirected to the main network. I'm asking our established players not to use these - you know where you can look, so you don't need it! Instead, please leave this for the convenience of newcomers. If you see someone new asking for directions, suggest this as a good starting point!

Related, I'm introducing today a new /minecart command. By using this, you will obtain a minecart immediately. This should be useful if you happen to get stranded far away. To prevent any abuse, you can only use this command once every 24 hours.

This is now live on Laurasia and will be extended to the other servers soon!

You're playing through the science areas, collecting items, storing them carefully, but you have a creeping thought in your mind: "Did I skip something by mistake?"

Thanks to StTheo, we now have a solution for all the collectors out there! As you might know, you can visit the Cavern of Science, under the Creeper Citadel, to see the full list of items that can be obtained. As of today, you can bring a shulker box and sheets of paper to the cavern, tap the box against one of the chests, and obtain a blank copy of its content! You can then bring that back home, replace the named sheets of paper with your actual items, and view your current progress. It's like filling a collectibles album, one item at a time!

Here's the full details on how this works, courtesy of StTheo.

I've written a plugin that should help those organizing and collecting science items. With it, you can potentially organize your own Cavern of Science with shulker boxes, with placeholder "cards" in place of actual items as you try to gather them.

To use this tool:

• Grab an empty shulker box and a stack of paper.
• Go to the Cavern of Science and find the chest with the items you would like to start collecting.
• Put your shulker box in your main-hand slot and punch the chest with it (like you would with a protected chest).

The results:

• You'll get a text and sound notification.
• Your shulker box will be renamed to match the sign closest to the chest.
• The contents of the box will be papers whose names and lore match the items in the chest, in the same positions as in the chest.
• The number of papers added to the shulker box will be subtracted from your inventory. If you had 64 paper and hit a chest with 16 item stacks in it, you would be left with 48 paper.
• To distinguish between real items and replicas, unique metadata from the original item is listed as an with the following codes:
• • Aqua: Enchantment
• • Blue: Attribute Modifiers
• • Dark Purple: Potion/Arrow Effects

This will only work if:

• You are in the Cavern of Science.
• You have as many papers in your inventory as item stacks in the chest. One stack of 16 items still just requires one paper.
• Your shulker box is empty.

Minecraft Java Edition 1.16.5 has been released today to fix some critical server issues. It happens to be compatible to .4, so you can move to it whenever you want! The potential problems are already fixed through our network, so we're good to go.

I'm introducing today a small feature to help you navigate the various worlds: the /pos command!

Used as-is, this displays your current position along with the cardinal direction you're looking at. You can also use /pos on to have a display that auto-updates as you move around; it will fade out after a few seconds of staying put. To completely turn it off, use /pos off.

This is available for both Java and Bedrock players and is a lighter alternative to the full debug screen, some client mods or Bedrock-only settings. Give it a try!

It's early in the month, but some tuning to Race Away has been done!

The in-game positions display will now feature the progression of the runners in increments of 500 metres, so everyone can get a better idea on how things are going. On death, temporarily, the top position of that runner will be used instead. The network-wide chat announcements remain at 5000 metres increments.

The amount of hostile mobs that spawn has been lowered by 25% as the large number was actually causing lag both locally and server-side. Make no mistake, this still isn't a walk in the park!

Race Away!

Nature is angry.

You've plundered the land, grinded resources, all to empower yourself and hopefully earn a few points. Did you ever consider the consequences of such efforts, though...?

This month's challenge in Kenorland is Race Away! You start at 0, 0, with no equipment, and you must reach the highest X coordinate in the month by running East. Flee away from 2020, from these troubles, and run, run East, as far as you can!

There are no horses and no Nether to provide shortcuts. Dying sends you allllllll the way back to the beginning, so be careful! You can only move on the Z axis between -500 and 500.

All runners will earn Merit Points based on the amount of participants. Let's say that 10 people enter this month: whoever comes up first will earn 10 points, the second place 9, the third place 8, and so on. If there are 15 entrants, the first place will get 15 points, second 14, etc.

But remember: nature is angry.

Grindatron results

Last month's Grindatron saw quite a bit of activity from many people! Here is the final tally of the amount of targets reached by each player.

revjho2KB: 101
Doctacosa: 88
Kimonellos: 80
Coneva: 77
Daydefender5634: 73
BioZombieActive: 65
GingeKoda: 62
Pteryx: 43
GodofRandom23: 33
Connovan: 32
MineshaftBob: 12
D_0c: 10
~giratinarevenge: 9
xKamachi: 5
Redrockdraco: 4
BrendanRawrs: 4
~SinisterSiren49: 1
Garn3tButt3rfly: 1
Diamondmaster70: 1

All of your points have been assigned; you can see them in your profile or with a /points in-game.

Raid bosses

The raid bosses at the Hunter's Lodge are now set on a twelve months schedule to ensure a proper rotation. To open up the new year, John Madden and Bagel Man are waiting to be picked on. Plus, I hear that Jack Torrance and Redrum are still somewhere in there. Build up a group, or go at it solo, and raid these bosses to get their precious drops!

Additionally, all event items from the raid bosses were recently updated and improved. If you haven't done so yet, make sure you go to the basement of the post office, at the Creeper Citadel, to trade the old versions for the new ones!