To celebrate Halloween and all things dead (or undead!), a special event will happen all day this Saturday!

On November 1st, you will notice that some mobs on the Survival server will wear pumpkins (and, more rarely, jack-o-lanterns) on their heads. Your objective: kill those mobs and gather all of the dropped pumpkin heads, if any! Zombies, skeletons and zombie pigmen are the monsters to target.

The event will run on November 1st, all day, from midnight to 10pm, Eastern Time. There is a maximum of 30 pumpkins to be gathered every hour, for a grand maximum of 630 units during the event! All players are encouraged to participate and see how many they can get!

To track the server-wide progress on that day, you can type the /pumpkin command at any time. Once the cap of 30 is reached for a given hour, the counter will stop increasing until the next round.

At 10pm, all players that have gathered heads will have to come to Grand Central Station for an official tally. Whoever gathered the most heads will win a prize! Additionally, a random person will be picked for a presence prize even if they didn't gather anything, so everyone is encouraged to show up no matter if they went hunting or not!

Note that vanilla Minecraft causes heads to happen on some mobs on October 31st, but not release them as drops. You can take that day as a practice run before the real harvest begins on November 1st!


- Raffle

A special raffle will also be made amongst all players who login on the Survival server, during Events Night, between 9pm and midnight (Eastern Time)! Simply logging in will give you the chance to earn 1 of 10 lots of goodies collected over time from banned players! Alternatively, if you cannot get in-game, visits in the chatroom will be included as well. The announcement of the results and distribution of items will happen shortly after midnight.


- Wallpaper

To put yourself in the mood, I've created a themed Halloween wallpaper in full HD resolution (1920 x 1080). Click the preview below to obtain the full version!

If you like this kind of detailed shots of the server, I've been generating and posting a new one every few days on the forums. Feel free to check out the entire set!

You've gone to space, and you have since returned on firm ground. This means that it's time to announce some results!

10 players entered the space contest and completed their entry to some degree! Three judges, Dr. Cossack, Mikey_el16 and Septina, have visited the area and given a note from 0 to 10 to each entry based on how well the space theme was followed and the overall quality of the work. Without further wait...

THE RESULTS!

First place: Katame and starfyredragon - $20 Amazon.com giftcard or $20 US bill
Second place: Anonymous_SoFar and MediaKlepto - horse owner and breeder kit
Third place: AshaLina - one super bow + stack of arrows
Random prize: Andromedea1 - one emerald block!

The full list of entries, along with comments from the judges, can be found on the results page! Amasia is still available for visiting, entry improvements, or even brand new construction. Congrats to all those who won, and thanks to everyone else for participating!


Now that the contest has wrapped up, something is obvious: many people claimed lots, some even started building, but many, many people didn't follow up on their ideas. In fact, only about half of the claimed lots really got developed. I'd like to know why: was the theme uninspiring? Was the building scope too large? Did you simply not have time to work on your entry? Please reply to this news post with anything you might want to share, thus helping me put together something even better down the line!

Eight brave contestants decided to face the madness of a Nether Spleef event mixed with wither battles... but only one player could come out victorious!

nikkehammerfist came on top of the spleef tournament, defeating Dr. Cossack in the final round! She then proceeded to attempt to take down two withers at the same time in the Lounge... but unfortunately failed at the task. The top four spleef players, nikke, Dr. Cossack, Mikey_el16 and tranxalive then rushed in and covered themselves in glory with a flawless victory! They each earned 100 levels as a result.

Once again, my thanks go to Skreelink for preparing and running another successful event!

Skreelink, Master of the Withers, is back again with a new event, something never seen before around these parts: Nether Spleef, with a Wither spin!

The battleground is a 1 vs 1 spleef arena, the floor made out of soul sand, with a wither freely roaming and firing at the contestants. As in standard spleef, you want to wield a shovel to cause your opponent to fall down. Once you have done that, you get to attack the wither until you defeat it or it kills you. Several battles using this format will be done, in a tournament structure, until one player stands victorious!

As a follow-up event, the winner of the tournament will be invited over to the Wither Lounge to fight TWO withers at once. Should he succeed, a great prize is awaiting him. Otherwise, the top 4 winners of the tournament will rush in to take over. If they fail too, then it's all over!

To participate, make your way to the Wither Lounge before 10pm Eastern Time this Saturday. To do that, from the End of Time, find the right destination in the PvP & Battles category. There will be a prize for everyone present!

The following prizes will be awarded:

First part: tournament
Winner: Special Spleef Shovel + Wither Skull
Wither killer (if applicable): Nether star if successful

Second part: Twin withers battle:
300 levels if successful
Else, 100 levels per person for the top 4 winners if successful

Participation
5 iron blocks for all!

All rewards are legit and provided by Skreelink himself.


See you this Saturday!


- Events Night and Raw Survival

As the question has come up in the past few days, Events Night will happen only on the main Survival server. Many of the special features required to run it, such as the teleporters, cannot be done using 1.8 at this point. Besides, those events run best with many people involved, which is easier if everyone is in the same place!

As previously announced, our new server, running vanilla Minecraft 1.8 and named Raw Survival, is LIVE!

Those looking for more information on why a second server is being launched might want to read my previous news post on the subject. The short version is, this is meant for those who want to play with 1.8 right away, as the main server will remain on 1.7.10 for quite some time. The latter remains my main focus and our largest play ground!

This took quite a bit of effort to get running: different server structure, different hosting setup, strict limitations to work with... Still, I was able to get several key complements running the way I wanted them to, so that your visit to the 1.8 server will keep you in the same familiar environment you're used to. Countless hours went into this, but it's still possible that I neglected something. Please let me know if that's the case.

Those interested can jump in at:

The Raw Survival name was chosen to represent both the added challenge (no convenience plugins here!) and the fact that will be a test platform for future updates. While I'll strive to give this place my usual attention to details, its very nature means that it will possibly come with less stability. This server will also be a test ground for the eventual migration of the main Survival one to this server version and platform.


- Core differences with the Survival server

Going with vanilla Minecraft unfortunately involves some losses. The following are not available or possible at the new place:
- Chest & doors protections
- Anti-griefing protections
- Multiple worlds
- DynMap
- Preview mode: must be whitelisted to log in
- Automated End resets
- Achievements
- PvP arenas
- Ranks
- Quick tree felling

On a more positive note, I'm very happy to announce that I was able to get the chatroom integrated on the Raw Survival server! This means that you'll be able to enter the chatroom to chat with the in-game players, and that the players will be able to keep in touch no matter on which server they're playing!

As indicated above, the whitelist procedure doesn't support the preview mode that was added on the Survival server some months back: registration is mandatory. Anyone currently whitelisted on the 1.7.10 server has access to 1.8, as the list is shared.

The lack of protection plugins means that buildings can't be locked away, nor can doors or chests. While griefing is still strickly forbidden, and offenders will be banned, you need to take care of storing your valuables in secured locations. Don't leave everything out in plain sight!

One extra tip: all commands, most notably private messaging, require FULL usernames to be provided. However, you can rely on tab completion to get the job done. For example, if you want to send me a message, you can start to type "/msg drc", hit the TAB key, and it'll turn into "/msg DrCossack"... assuming I'm online, of course!


- The new world

A seed has been carefully selected to make sure that all biome types are available around the spawn point. Mega taiga? Check. Ice spikes? Check. Mesa? Check. Mushroom island? Check. Deep ocean? Check.

To properly manage growth, a world border has been installed. It is currently set to 2000 blocks around 0,0, and will be expanded as needed. This is a square border, so you can move between x=-2000, z=-2000 and x=2000, z=2000.


- Future

As soon as it can be done reasonably, this server will be migrated to the new option that'll rise from Bukkit's ashes. Once we have succesfully tested it, and most of the appropriate plugins are available, the current Survival server will be moved over to 1.8 as well. After some further stability tests, the current plans will have the Raw Survival world added as an extra destination in Central's TransHub, finally bringing back all players together in the same place. This will be a delicate transition that will only happen when it is safe to do so.

If you have any questions or comments, please reply to this news post or contact me directly!

Enjoy the new server!


- Post-scriptum

An event is scheduled to happen this weekend, during Events Night, on the main Survival server. More details coming later this week!

As many of you know, two weeks ago we started running a podcast for the Creeper's Lab, ran by our own Mikey_el16. The first episode was a success, with many people tuning in live on Twitch! It featured Mikey, ADeadlyFish, MaximumRose and myself talking about Minecraft, videogaming news and the announcement of the 1.8 server among other things.

Those who didn't catch it when it happened now have several options to catch-up:
- Direct download (MP3)
- Twitch
- YouTube

Additionally, if you are a podcast pro and use some application to manage your subscriptions, we also have an RSS feed you can follow!

We welcome your questions, comments and suggestions, and would like to have your thoughts! If you want to say anything, please post in this forum topic or use #CreepersCast on Twitter.

The next episode is planned to be recorded on Wednesday, October 29. Please join us then!