I've been on Patreon as a creator for three years today, and I wanted to take a moment to publicly thank all my backers, no matter if they've been around for a month or since the beginning. Their contributions help to cover the monthly fees on our dedicated server, the website and more. In the past year, I've used some of the excess funds to launch our email newsletter which features news, builds, events and players alike. I'm always thinking about the next steps for us, be aware that you're playing a big part in our success!

Want to help with the Creeper's Lab's maintenance and growth? You can! Think of Patreon as a voluntary subscription: you set the amount of money that you want to contribute every month, as low as $1, and you can continue as long as you like. In exchange, you get cool rewards like in-game markers, custom titles, particle trails, and even postcards! Please check it out!

It was discovered recently that the achievements Chatter (say 2000 words in chat) and Chatty Mouth (10,000 words) weren't working properly. I've applied a correction tonight and re-imported the entire content of the chat logs to ensure that everyone's words were counted properly.

If you talked enough to earn these yet didn't score them already, they'll trigger the next time you join any of the worlds for a few minutes!

UPDATE: Make that three, I forgot about Do You Hear Me Now? (50,000 words)

A new challenge is live in the lobby, and this time, your target is to Dig Away!

A derivative of the Race Away event, your goal is still to get to the highest X coordinate possible in a month. However, this time around, the world is all underground. Giant caverns give you a chance to orient yourself and make some progress more easily, but a fair amount of digging will be expected too! The world being in perpetual darkness, mobs will roam all over constantly.

Merit Points will be given to the top diggers/runners based on their respective, top positions. For example, the last person will get 1 point, next-to-last 2, and so on up to the top runner getting an amount of points equal to the amount of participants. A minimum of 10 points will be offered to the winner.

Dying will return you to the world's spawn point, but won't kick you out entirely as it does for UHC. Due to the difficulty of locating food underground, your hunger will slowly regenerate over time. Please note that the Nether is disabled (no quick travel!), and there's a bedrock layer on top of the world. Going over that top layer (through either glitching or broken world generation) will disqualify you.

Get your best running shoes on, and good luck!

I've started the update process for 1.14 and performed a dry run to see how the new version will work with our current setup. Unfortunately, a major complication has shown up: the plugin that's currently in place to track the player statistics is not compatible with 1.14 and its author has abandoned it. While it would be possible to move forward without it, it's tied to a lot of systems: achievements, player profiles, griefing tracking, and more. Considering that the achievements and other features are staples of the Creeper's Lab, I prefer to delay the update rather to do without. Even by discarding it, we wouldn't be able to upgrade today as other key features like DynMap are awaiting their own updates.

What I'll do is to write a new stats tracking plugin from scratch, tuned for our uses, while migrating the current data to ensure that your progress is saved during the transition. This will also give me a stable base upon which I'll build new features to be revealed later. Considering the amount and complexity of the work involved, this is likely to take at least a few weeks to do properly.

I appreciate your patience in this, such steps are necessary once in a while to ensure that we can keep the same worlds going into the future!

Mojang released today the latest version of Minecraft, the Village & Pillage update. While I know that many of you are waiting to explore and discover the new elements, the servers will remain on 1.13 until we're ready to properly make the switch. Thankfully, the technical changes are minimal this time around, so this should happen relatively soon. Keep an eye on this space for more information!

For the previous three event releases of this series, please click the following links:
Wychwood | Snowhead | Shattered Sands

It’s April 1st and time for another Horsemen Event! April Fools! There were some... delays of a physical and non-physical matter, but it’s time now.



Located within the vast ocean surrounding the Castle of Death, the Shoals of the Departed await any who have braved the previous three Horsemen castles.

Death’s castle can be accessed like the rest, through the warps at the Citadel or the top of the Keep of Time during Events Night, or via the Nether using the second floor of the Lemuria Nether Hub. The hub itself can be accessed via the first floor of the Eden Bay station on the Southern Mainline.



The main attraction here is a massive storm cloud in the middle of the ocean, the Tempest of the Divine; containing the very Gods themselves. What you’ll find there… you’ll have to find out for yourself. Especially if you check into the two new story chapters, accessible soon.

To reach this storm, you must navigate through the ancient city of Laputa, an island castle floating over the north of the ocean. Find the hidden keystone (pictured above), summon the Guardian of the World, and use its treasure to open the gate to the gods.

An entrance to the floating island lies somewhere on the ocean floor nearby, unless you reach it by… other methods.

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In addition to the storm, several shipwrecks and all manner of ocean ruins are spread throughout the ocean. The shipwrecks provide ‘keys’ which can be used to unlock the ruins and their treasure, provided you can find which key matches which ruin. Be warned, however, as the ocean here is teaming with danger- and just as many prizes.

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Hunter's Lodge
Due to the late release, last month’s raid boss will run the remainder of this month. And lucky that, the event item - the Mythical Lake Gourd, which can no doubt help in the oceans.

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UHC
This month’s challenge, for those that haven’t discovered it yet, is UHC! This new map features quite a few mountains along with large mysterious boulders scattered all over the place. Supplies should be plentiful, so please give it a shot!

I've pushed a series of improvements to the website to polish up the new version that was launched in January. These include higher resolution images for mobile and 4K display users, corrections to the sidebar and improved navigation among other things.

I've received little feedback on the website changes since the last revamp, and I'd like to hear from you, especially if you're viewing the site on your phone or tablet. Is there anything that stands out, in good or bad ways? Something that'd still need to be improved on? Please reply to this post to let me know!

The month is over, and the results are in! Here's the final score on the targets completed by all players who participated in the Grindatron.

Raegal: 93
GingeKoda: 78
Doctacosa: 65
Coneva: 58
Pteryx: 40
MineshaftBob: 19
axe_y: 6
AlexTheTrain: 2

Raegal keeps the lead in score, while several others were worthy competition. Congrats everyone! Each player earned his score in Merit Points, and the global leaderboard has been updated.

The Grindatron has proven to be popular and it'll be back later as part of the rotation of challenges. If you have improvements or suggestions on what could be changed, please speak up!

Our main resource pack was updated tonight thanks to Sphenicus. If you're set to auto-download, you'll get it the next time you connect. Otherwise, you can grab it from the resource pack page. Here are the changes straight from the horse's mouth:

"Updates include some changes to paintings, a fourth song for the nether, some new mob sounds, and a lot of new fun and excitement for the End in the form of a long awaited request, including a new surprise when you leave the End for the first time. Be sure to have your music volume turned up the next time you go to kill the dragon or travel the nether rails! And remember to sleep regularly :)"

Did you know that we have a monthly email newsletter? It's true, and you can subscribe to it for some exclusive content!

Every month, we send out an email to all those who have chosen to received it. Found within is a recap of the major news items for the past month, a summary of the ongoing events, a new render, an interview with an established player, and more! As a sample, here is this month's newsletter, which was sent out yesterday.

Interested? You can subscribe today to make sure that you don't miss the next issues!