It's snowing outside, which means it's getting cold!

Wait, that's not it. It's November again, which means that the Creeper's Lab is now eight years old! Still going strong, with many players staying around for long periods of time or even returning after breaks, proving that we're in a healthy situation. Thanks to everyone, old and new alike, for continuing to make this place to success!

Looking back at the past year, quite a few things happened:
- The email newsletter has been launched, with a new edition coming out every month. Subscribe today!
- Four major releases for the Horsemen events give you more content to play with!
- The main website had a refresh with (finally) mobile support!
- Gathering points now allows you spend them to gain a limited amount of flight or an XP boost!
- A difficult update to 1.14 was eventually done successfully.
- A new PvP game mode has been added to the lobby!

Additionally, thanks to the support of the Patreon backers, we were able to do a first round of advertising this summer and recruited many new players. While this required quite a few adjustments early on, we made additions and improvements through the month to better manage the flood of incoming players. To support this and new developments, in exchange for perks like in-game cosmetics and postcards, please consider looking at my Patreon page. Any amount of support is appreciated and can go a long way to make new things a reality!

New additions are actively being worked on, including one that should land Soon™. Stay tuned!

You might have seen some of our regulars chat about game randomizers, or playing "randos". These take a classic game, such as Super Metroid, and randomize the location of all items. The end result is that the gameplay sequence is completely different, forcing you to search for locations that you usually take for granted.

This is what we're doing for this monthly challenge. All item drops have been completely randomized: the classic "punch tree, get wood" no longer applies here! There is no set goal, as merely trying to work your way around the list of items should be enough to keep you busy. Teaming up might make this simpler!

Good luck!

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A new raid boss is now available in the Hunter's Lodge! Squishy makes a return, offering anyone who manages to defeat it some elusive Underworld Shards.

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Against all odds, all 20 Pumpkin Titans have been defeated! The rewards will be handed out during next Events Night, starting tomorrow night. If you scored one of the Halloween Pumpkins, trade it to a staff member to get your prize!

And you thought we were done with the Halloween events?! Not a chance!
With the aforementioned date rapidly nearing, we have one last treat (OR IS IT A TRICK?) for everyone: 20 Pumpkin Titans have descended at major locations across Laurasia.

Those who attended SpiderDome had a first hand encounter with one of these beings, and had the first shot at their unique drop- a Halloween Pumpkin! Hold onto one and bring it with you to the ending event ceremony on the next Events Night, November 2nd, and hand it off to a staff member for a prize (Only one prize per person; so don't hoard your gourds!)

While we're keeping the locations secret for now, we will reveal where one of the remaining 19 Titans are hiding- riiight in Central.



This Titan, however, is different from the rest; it has a big chair! It's also incredibly more resilient than the other Titans hiding around the world, but drops a much greater amount of Halloween Pumpkins; plus, as an extra challenge, if it is destroyed within the timeframe of the event, EVERYONE'S PRIZES ARE DOUBLED! (and yes, before you ask, they -can- all be killed.)

Group up with some people and start whacking some Titans!

Event Starts NOW!
(Ends at Nov. 3rd at 9pm EST)

With the current contest creeping-up the overworld, it's about time we ring in the season for the Nether as well; with some good old-fashioned Spiderdome mayhem!

This weekend, Saturday October 26th starting at around 10pm EST, we'll be dishing out the chaos with our token stock of crazy mobs as well as a few fancy new surprises. As always, loot obtained during the event is yours to keep so you might walk away with some goodies as well!

It may even be a good idea to hang around for the finale, because you never know what we might bust out next...

For those unfamiliar with the Spiderdome, the quickest way to get there would be to hit up your nearest TARDIS or similar access to the Events Night teleport network. Exit to the main room of the End of Time, hit the PvP & Battles lever, and you'll find the warp to the Spiderdome on the same floor you land on. Alternatively - if you feel like visiting everyone's favorite bookie George - you can find the Spiderdome's entrance overworld in Kaikon, just outside of the third floor of Eden Bay station in the southern Nether.

As a quick word of warning, as with all Spiderdome and other associated combat events: please be mindful of your armor and weapon durability before and while participating. (RIP Doc's helmet.)

Good luck and enjoy the festivities~

Someone pointed out that it'd been a while since the last building contest, and since it's officially the spooky season I guess we're in luck! The village of Woodhollow sits surrounded by the haunted forest of Hangedman's Noose, and it's looking a little grim lately. A new resident has taken up in the mansion consumed by the forest's snaring trees, and he (it?) is looking for a few brave souls to...Beautify his front yard.

To reach this desolate place, you'll need to take the main Southern Line to Eden Bay nether station, and head to the third floor for the rail to the Kaikon Nether Hub. From there, hop on the rail to the Wardhaven Capital City, and you'll find the rail straight to Woodhollow once you're there. Watch your step outside; there's a little bit of the forest creeping along the ground!

Across the covered bridge to the north of Woodhollow you'll find a series of plots in all manner of non-standard shapes and sizes. Your task this time around is to spread some spooky holiday cheer by building the creepiest creation you can muster. Anything from pumpkin patches to graveyards to broken down buildings and ramshackle wells is fair game - just keep that cute junk out of here!

There are just a few rules that all participants must abide by:

- These builds should be creepy/spooky/scary/potentially macabre within reason. This is a haunted forest and mansion, after all! (You can disregard those pink curtains on the top floor...Those are for later...)
- Although plots have no direct lines, try to stay relatively within the fences! An overhanging block of leaves and the like is acceptable provided that it does not in any way impede the builds neighboring you, or the path between the plots.
- Builds may be a maximum of approximately 20 blocks from the lowest point of your plot's natural landscape. That being said, some smoothing of the ground is allowed to fill in gaps and open floors. When in doubt, ask for clarification!

As an added bonus, we've rigged up a series of 10 decorative head traders for use during the contest (pictured below). Each copy of each one costs only a single, uncarved pumpkin. While you're permitted to take extras for personal use, these particular dispensers will be removed after the end of the contest. They may feature again later at Moosemart, but until then, get 'em while they last!

Builds will be judged on adherence to the theme, use of space, and general quality. The contest starts NOW and will run until 12am EST, Sunday, November 10th. All entries should be finished by then and ready for judging, so we can pick our Top 3 Winners!

Now I'm sure you're itching to know what you stand to win from this madness, and the prizes are as follows:

- 1st Place receives 30 Merit Points, and a Woodhollow Gourd; a fancy new helmet (not a pumpkin!) featuring Aqua Affinity, Depth Strider 3, Protection IV, Knockback Resistance, and a boost to your speed (+0.1), PLUS enough Respiration to keep you breathing underwater infinitely! They'll also receive the 2nd and 3rd Place prizes, sans Merit Points.
- 2nd Place receives 20 Merit Points, and a Woodhollow Lantern; when held in the offhand this accessory boosts your attack (+0.05) and movement speed (+0.05) and gives you resistance to knockback...With the unfortunate side effect of luring monsters to your position with its bright light. They'll also receive the 3rd Place prize sans Merit Points.
- 3rd Place receives 10 Merit Points, and 3 bottles of "delicious" Pumpkin Juice; take a drink and you'll run with Speed 3, Haste 3, Night Vision 3, Saturation 3, +60% Speed, and +30% Attack Speed for a solid 80 minutes! It even makes you Glow!
- All other participants will receive 1 Merit Point for submitting a completed entry!



And with that, we're off to the races! Good luck, and don't die...

Salutations!

As we near the "Holiday Season" we're often bombarded by one in particular... You may already be seeing the merchandise out already, conveniently skipping two other holidays!

Here over in Miranda, the Super C decided to fight the major corporate greed by celebrating HALLOWEEN instead! That's right, we're giving October a bit of love.

Okay? What exactly is involved? Well, for the entire month of October, Contractor's Evening will be enabled. That's October 1st through Halloween, October 31st. Allowing you plenty of time to get any major builds (hopefully some awesome Halloween themed builds) accomplished in Miranda.

Maybe the community can get together and add a new town? Something creeeepy? :)

For those who are new, or need a refresher: Miranda is an affiliate server made for larger scale builds or those who bemoan gathering resources. There's a store at spawn, that you can gain access with a single iron ingot to give you stacks of all major building blocks, as much as you can carry. So you don't have to spend hours gathering materials for your build. Plus, Keep Inventory is on full time, so you don't have to worry about losing it all if you happen to fall off your build.

Contractor's Evening (Not to be confused with Events Night on the sLab)is usually on Wednesdays at 6PM EST. During it, a shrine at spawn is active. One push of the button at said shrine will grant you the power of flight until you tap the button again, or disconnect.

Quick reminder of the rules, Creeper's Lab rules apply with a few addendums.
1: Trusted rank required to join.
2: No mob, iron, gold, or other auto-farms.
3: Build awesome things.

tl;dr
Contractor's Evening will be active October 1st through October 31s to celebrate Halloween and kick Christmas in the head.

Apocalypse Event Release: 5.5
For the previous five event releases of this series, please click the following links:
Wychwood | Snowhead | Shattered Sands | Shoals of the Departed | New Game+ Releases
This event release is a bit.. strange. Born from the mass of updates needed due to the 1.14 update, we've had to comb through all the existing science areas, items, and mobs; and decided to use this opportunity to rebalance and fix some of the earlier things while we were at it!

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First and foremost, the Science forum thread has had some major updates across all of it's areas, including an armor-rating scale of each area, unified directions for all areas, and the best of what can be obtained at each.
The Moosemart section has also been updated with all the new/improved villagers and updated layout.

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Secondly, everyone who'se obtained any sort of science items pre-1.14 (Everyone remember that raffle event from 2018~?) should direct their eyes to this link here. This is a changelog of all the items that have been edited during this entire debacle. What's this Post Office it mentions, you ask? WELL...

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Creeper Citadel: Post Office
First, a history lesson. Back when Laurasia's Nether Central station was in major usage, there was a handy dandy Post Office built into it, for player to setup mailboxes, and other players could leave them things without them actually being around! With the advent of Gates and the new Grand Central Station, Nether Central's usage died out, and the Post Office was moved to Rodinia; which didn't garner as much use as it had, due to most people not moving around on Rodinia.
Why's all this matter, you ask? Because the Post Office has officially been moved to the Creeper Citadel! That place everyone goes to! Anyone that had a box either in the Rodinia or Nether Central version has had it moved to the new location- if you haven't set a mailbox up yet, go do so!
Ontop of thise, the basement of the Post Office has been designated as a gathering location for Science items from the changelog that need to be updated. Have some stuff you need updated or repaired? Go have a visit!

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Lost Woods: Hard Mode Shrines
Next on our list of updates, the Hard Mode Shrines within the Lost Woods are now live and kicking. Our recomendation is to run these -after- having run the Shoals of the Departed, and on an Events Night, but you do you!

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New Regenerating Areas: Pandora and Camirus
Following this trend of new stuff, we have two new regenerating areas: Pandora, a Flower Forest, and Camirus, a re-runable village raid!
Details for both can be found on the Science forum post, as well as how to reach them. Need flowers enmasse or want to fight a Village Raid? Head on over!

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The End: Laurasia Dragon Priests
Next up in the new-content category, four new Dragon Priests have been hidden around the overworld of Laurasia. Find them all, collect their heads, and bring them to the Happy Mask Salesman to obtain the key to the mother of all Ender Dragon fights. Be warned, you'll never have KeepInventory out here!

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Science Updates
Last but definitley not least, on the topic of the 1.14 Science updates, we are happy to announce that all Challenge Areas are fully operational once again, and open for business!

Since the last set of areas to be released didn't get too much attention before 1.14 shut everything down, take a gander over at the Last Event Release if you missed it!

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!