As many of you already noticed, a big challenge coming from Minecraft 1.14 is a lack of performance: slowdowns are fairly common. This isn't tied to our hardware, as the game itself is known for running slow in multiple situations.

I've done some setting tuning on Laurasia in the past 10 days to try to improve the situation, and the results so far have been positive. I've now extended this to the other servers, hopefully giving us a smoother gameplay experience!

The September challenge is now live! This month, we're doing something a bit different: a special map is available, where your mission is to destroy as much of it as you can! You've read that right - grab your best griefing tools and go nuts on an established place. We want this done properly, though, and not recklessly, because we care. If you accidentally die, you'll be kicked off the world for a full week, following the UHC rules. Workers safety first! To ensure that the spawn point remains usable, a 50x50 area around it is protected.

If you hang around a bit, you might even get a surprise... or two... or three... or...

Since tracking exactly who deals the most damage is difficult, we won't even try: anyone registered who enters Kenorland this month will get 5 Merit Points.

Have fun!

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In Hunter's Lodge updates, a new raid boss has risen: you'll be fighting none other than a Rancor! Your prize, if you manage to defeat it, will consist of Swamp Shards. These can be exchanged to obtain the Woodsman's Axe, which is enchanted with an unbreakable status.

To help new players get used to how we do things on the Creeper's Lab, I'm launching tonight a new tutorial for them! This is a new in-game area consisting of a few rooms, each giving basic information and helping players understand what sets us apart from other Minecraft servers. As an incentive, players going through the tutorial get basic supplies to start up, making it easier to survive that first night or two!

While this targets new players, everyone is free to try it out. It can only be completed once, so people can't continously go back to it for new supplies.

To try it, go to Cimmeria and enter /tutorial. That's it! If you see someone new asking questions like "What do we do here?" or "How do I play?", feel free to point them to the tutorial to answer their questions!

To battle!

Everyone interested in PvP is invited to join us this Saturday to try out our new PvP minigame! Introduced last week, this location gives you five fighting classes to chose from. You don't need to (nor can!) bring in any items, everything that you need is provided to you!

This will be in a free-for-all format, with no extra rules set in place. Simple, straight fun! All you need to do is drop in starting at 9pm Eastern time, this Saturday, to see who's the best at fighting! See you then!

Quite a few of our new visitors have been asking "pvp?" the moment they join the network. At the same time, many of our current players like to play PvP, but don't want to deal with the inconveniences of travel and item drops. As a solution to all this, we're introducing our newest minigame: PvP!

Sora and I have prepared a new play mode, accessible within the lobby under the "Games" category. In there, MountainB0y's giant arena is accessible at all times, to registered players and visitors alike. To keep things balanced, no inventory carries over from the main survival servers. Instead, five fighting classes are available to select from, each with its own set of equipment and effects:

Knight: Defensive powerhouse, but slow
Warrior: Quick damage and medial armor
Archer: Expert in ranged damage, but light on armor
Mage: Magical damage and support, but limited uses
Monk: No armor or weapons, but all physical attributes are empowered

You can switch between classes or reload your equipment at any time from the arena'a starting point. These have been balanced to all be viable, depending on each player's preferences. It's a free-for-all, as in you jump in and start playing. You can play a few quick rounds or stay as long as you like, so don't hesitate to check it out!

With a new month comes a new challenge! Due to the large amount of new players this month, I'm keeping things to the basics with a fairly straightforward UHC map. This time, a lovely oceanic island in a warm climate is your setting.

For those of you not familiar with our local flavor of UHC, the challenge comes in a special world with its own inventory, accessible straight from the lobby. The difficulty is set to hard and PvP is enabled, so you need to stay on your toes! You can explore as you want, aim to survive, or reach out to complete the four targets listed below:

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

Completing each task before the end of the month will earn you 5 Merit Points; more on points here. The access is opened to everyone, including visitors, but only players that register before the end of the month will be awarded points. It's important to note that dying knocks you off the world for an entire week, and you'll only be able to rejoin once that's over, so survival should be your top priority at all times.

Good luck!

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On the science front, more work has been done by Sora to gradually bring things back online in this post-1.14 universe. At this point, the Dragon Priests, the Hunters Lodge, Requiem, Nyx and the Overlook hotel are all back in working order, and the first two have received new additions making them worth revisiting. The monthly raid boss at the Lodge is the Ancient Pharaoh still, to make up for lost time last month.

The Lost Woods are next on the list and should be back soon!

I've updated tonight all game servers to the latest Minecraft version, 1.14.4. This includes several performance improvements, and the game will hopefully run smoother for all. It's incompatible with the previous one, so be sure to change the game version in your launcher before you resume playing!


Region markers are back

The region markers had been gone from Laurasia's map for a while due to incompatibilities, but they're now back in place. Large player-claimed areas, along with permanent event locations, are all marked to warn anyone looking for new building locations that these are not available. Additionally, the two large North-West and North-East quadrants that have been previously blocked away from being opened to players are now easily visible in red.


Render view back up

The render view had been temporarily lowered on Laurasia to keep the server running smoothly. As a test, I've set the value back up, so you'll be able to see further out. We'll scale it back down if it still causes performance issues, but for now, everything is looking good.


Creeper Citadel / Moosemart are back!

Sora has been working diligently to convert commands to the new format. While all science areas had to be closed for a while, the Creeper Citadel along with the Moosemart are now back in business for visitors and trades! The traders specific to each play area will be re-added after their own areas are converted.

All game servers have been updated to Minecraft 1.14.3! Update the version in your launcher, and you're set to join us! If you need a reminder on how to change game versions in the newest edition of the launcher, here's a quick visual guide.

There are a few things to note related to this update, please be sure to read on.

- As announced before, all science areas are now offline. They'll be brought back one by one, after extensive work is done to adapts commands to the new syntax. This is expected to take about a month.

- Tasmantis will be retired a week from now. Its inventory is now linked to the rest of the survival servers; if you wanted to move items back and forth, now's your chance!

- I wrote a new stats tracking plugin to take over the ever-failing methods I was trying to rely on. The code on the forums needs to be adapted to the new data structures, I'm hoping for that to be done within a day or so. In the meanwhile, the player profiles and achievements features are disabled, but whatever you do still counts and will register later.
UPDATE: Done!

- The new ravager beasts roam the land as part of the patrols and will quickly give you a bad time. As with creepers and endermen, they've been set not to grief the land they traverse, but the protection isn't perfect yet. This is expected to improve over time.

- The world border on Laurasia had to be changed from a circle to a square. This is temporary and done to avoid a bug with Nether portals. The border will go back to a circle as soon as possible, so please don't venture in the extra areas in the meantime.

- The TNT tag minigame had to be pulled due to multiple issues, it might not be back for a while.

- 1.14.4 is expected to come out any day. It's going to be incompatible with what we're now running, but it should be installed on the Creeper's Lab within a few days. Among other things, it'll fix a bug with the trade interface of villagers not staying opened.

Lots of building happened, and bridges appeared from thin air! Or stayed as thin air, in one case... 12 participants entered the competition, then three judges went around to give them a score from one to ten: MineshaftBob, SorathePumpking and myself. Without further delay, our top three winners:

First place: Anonymous_SoFar
Second place: axe_y
Third place: MediaKlepto

They earned 50, 30 and 15 Merit Points respectively, while all other participants got one. Congratulations to all! You can see the full list of entries, along with comments from the judges, on the results page.

This concludes the latest yearly cycle on Merit Points. The results on that should be published by the end of the month, along with new updates surrounding the system and maybe even new features. Stay tuned for more information!

Due to a recent revelation we've found testing with 1.14.3, we'll need to close all science areas down immediately after the new version hits for updating. We're currently estimating approximately a month to have everything back up and running, and we'll announce step-by-step as each area gets back in running order again.

This includes:
The Creeper Citadel, Combat Training, Moosemart, Requiem, Nyx, Overlook Hotel, The Lost Woods, The Dragon Priests, The Hunter's Lodge, Carnival Island, Wychwood, Snowhead, Shattered Sands, and the Shoals of the Departed

If you need anything from these areas, please get it now before the update; once all the areas have been fully updated, we'll be available to replace any items affected/changed by these updates.

We also recommend to remove any science items, enchanted items, or shulker boxes from your inventory or enderchest prior to the update, to prevent any corruption to your items. This isn't mandatory but could be a good idea. Also make sure your Tasmantis inventory and enderchest are clear before 1.14 hits!

We're still targeting this weekend for the update.