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.

For the previous four event releases of this series, please click the following links:

Wychwood | Snowhead | Shattered Sands | Shoals of the Departed

It's that time again, Horsemen event release!

This time, there's not one specific area releasing- we're releasing across all 4 existing Horsemen areas! Three new areas have appeared within Wychwood, Snowhead, and Shattered Sands- while 6 new areas have appeared within the Shoals of the Departed. We won't give away too much, as half the fun with these will be finding them, but details below!

Along with this, the delayed story chapters from last release have been completed, linked Here




Wychwood: Kaer Morhen

Hidden among the trees and the rain, a massive castle crawls with Conquest's frozen soldiers. Find their leaders and the mysterious survivor for a chance at some lucrative loot~




Snowhead: Snowpeak Ruins

Hidden among the peaks of the snowcapped mountains, a large fortress of a mansion sits decaying under the snow. Transverse the rooms and find your way up to the tower for some ancient relics!




Shattered Sands: Dominion Tower

Across the dead-filled sands under War's castle, an inverted tower awaits challengers. A 20-wave boss rush awaits any that believe they can make it to the end without dying!




Shoals of the Departed: Elder God Sanctums

Scattered around the depths of Death's ocean, the Elder Gods await in their chambers. Brave the puzzles and obtain 5 artifacts to unlock the ultimate challenge, in the sunken city of the dead.

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Science Updates

With 1.14 right around the corner, we'll be going around over the next week getting things ready for the upgrade. If you run into something not working or a villager missing in an area, it may be related!

If you notice any areas with open wiring or something exposed you think prooobably shouldn't be, let us know, and we'll take a looksie.


The Cavern of Science has been updated with all the items from this new event, as well as from Carnival Island. The Lorebooks across the Shoals of the Departed have also now been filled in, if you had noticed them missing.


Just a reminder to all, Events Night has been extended from Saturday at 9pm EST to Sunday at 9pm EST, get your science on!

Moosemart does not yet have the new villagers from either area, but will be going through a major update once 1.14 rolls around, so stay tuned!

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Hunter's Lodge

This month's raid boss is a bit of a sandy susan! …It's a mummy, leave me alone. Head over to the Lodge for a change to grind for the Pharaoh's Khopesh!

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UHC

UHC this month is a repeat of last month's due to a bit of low patronage, original release below:

At MediaKlepto's suggestion, your new challenge this month is a UHC map based on 1.13's rich oceans, but with an added twist. That's all yours to navigate and find how to make the best of it!

A slow hunger regen effect is in place to give you a chance of keeping your health up in this unique setting... although this won't do much for some of you!

As you know, 1.14 presented some unexpected challenges, especially when it came to plugin compatibility and server stability. After some efforts, I've assembled something that I believe should be stable, and it's ready for widespread testing!

For this, I'm bringing back our 1.13 test world, Tasmantis. You can access it from the lobby using the latest Minecraft version, 1.14.3. All the features that you're used to are in. Due to incompatibilities between game versions, you'll access that world at spawn, with no inventory.

If everything goes well, the full network will be updated to 1.14 Saturday the 13 of July, two weeks from now. Your global inventory will then carry over to Tasmantis, allowing you to retreive any materials you'd like to the main servers. A week after that link-up happens, Tasmantis will go back offline.

Important: if you decide to play on Tasmantis, either to try it or gather supplies, your personal inventory on that one server will be overwritten at the moment that the rest of the network is updated. As such, anything that you'd like to keep from there should be placed in chests. Enderchests should be avoided as they'll be overwritten too.

Some of you have said recently that we were overdue for another building contest. As luck would have it, I've been gearing up for one, and it's now time to get started!

This time, we're building BRIDGES! I've reserved a large area over water, where everyone will be free to show their skills in allowing people to cross from one side to the other!


Rules

The contest area has several pillars and platforms already in place. Your goal is to link two platforms, in a North-South direction, with a bridge that can be traversed. How said bridge can be crossed is up to you: pedestrian, road, rail bridges are all allowed. The path can go up and down (and sideways!) if you want, as long as both ends of the path proper are level with the platforms at each end. You can't add anything to or on the platform, or build above or below then. Your bridge's main span can be wider than the platforms and you won't be penalized.

Multiple lots are available, with two different lengths: 100 and 200 blocks. You can choose either size, based on your ideas and building materials available - both will be judged the same. When looking at the middle of a building platform, you can extend to the left or right up to 20 blocks, giving you a maximum of 20 + 20 + 1 = 41 blocks wide to work with. You can build as high or low as you want.

UPDATE: I made a mistake building the second set of 200-long lots (the ones further away from the portal) and they're actually 199 blocks long. This will not affect your score.

To confirm your building location, you can look at the map of the area.

To claim a space and mark your entry, you must place a sign on the Southern end of your bridge.

The contest begins NOW and ends at the end of the month, 30 June, at 23:59 Eastern time. This gives you three weeks to design and build something that'll impress others!


Location

Easy: from Central, take the North Nether line toward Sanctum. Disembark at the second substation, String Theory, and go through that station's Nether portal. Cross the small bridge, and you're there! All building spots are located over water. If more spots are required, I'll add them as needed.

If you fall down into the water, all of the pillars marking the ends of each lot have ladders built inside them for a quick trip back up. Remember, the waters aren't as tame as they used to be!


Prizes

The top three winners will each earn the following amount of Merit Points:
First place: 50 points
Second place: 30 points
Third place: 15 points
Everyone else who participates will get 1 as well.

This, along with this month's UHC challenge, is your last chance to gather Merit Points in this cycle. Gather them for perks like limited flight and XP bonuses, or win the chance to score prizes like Lego kits, Minecraft plushes and more!


Additionally, I'd like to have two extra judges to help me rate the multiple entries. Please get in touch with me if you're interested!

Have fun!

I've got a few minor updates for you tonight, not all of them being related to each other but all worth a mention!


9-9 Events Nights
Considering that many of the current event areas (Lost Woods and Horsemen domains) are more easily handled when you can keep your inventory after death, we'll handle Events Nights a bit differently. These will now run from 9pm Saturday to 9pm Sunday, Eastern time, giving you a full 24 hours to play in the areas and access the teleporters network!

This is something that we're doing on a trial basis and might be revisited in the future.


Carnival Island
A new location has been made available for all - Carnival Island! Filled with multiple attractions (including a llamas carousel), you're sure to find something to your liking. Be sure to bring in coal and emeralds to afford to pay your way through the skill games, and hopefully win some cool prizes! This was built and designed primarily by MediaKlepto.

You'll find the carnival through the teleportation network at this location:
End of Time -> Additional Attractions -> Up a floor -> Carnival Island


North territories locked away
Laurasia is a large world, with some challenges on how to manage it over time. To keep things short, it's easier when the players are closer to each other rather than spread out over huge areas. To help with this, I've blocked off two large areas to the North-East and North-West of the world. Entry is outright denied: if you try to access them, you'll bounce back outside.

Remember that many areas on Laurasia, even if they were visited maybe once, are pristine and untouched. If you're looking for a good building location, don't hesitate to ask the chat, many of us will be able to help you!

These areas will be visible on the map once our plugin that shows map regions is back in working order. For now, here's an approximation of the blocked areas.




Status of 1.14
The last I officially commented on this, 1.14 required us to have a fully rewritten stats system to move forward. Work on that has been progressing well and should be done soon.

An additional, important complication is that 1.14, at least the first releases, performs extremely poorly on servers. This reached a point where it was outright unplayable by many. 1.14.2 made some major improvements toward that, and 1.14.3 is expected to be released soon with further fixes. I'll revisit the situation once that's available to see if things can be worked out. Thank you for your patience!