Last night's event, which involved digging down to find as much gold as possible within two hours, was a resounding success! 11 players formed teams to duke it out, while several others joined as observers. Once the time was up, Anonymous_SoFar and Sphenicus emerged as the winners with 411 gold ingots and ore, nearly twice the score of the team in second place! They each earned a set of items that included a mule and a beacon, while everyone kept the spoils of their digs.

Thanks to Coneva for coming up with an original event and running it; we know that many players enjoyed it!

The standard resource pack has been updated tonight by Sphenicus with a few new additions!

- Some new paintings!
- One replaced music disc!
- New sound effects!
- Improved cake taste!

If you have the pack set to be automatically downloaded, you'll get the updated version the next time you connect to the servers. Otherwise, you can download it and its addons, or get more information on all this, on the Resource Pack info page!

Coneva has prepared a new activity for next Events Night, themed after this mining game of ours, which will put pickaxes to good use! As the title says, "thar be gold in dem hills!"... Quoting our showrunner:

Upon arrival players should stop at the bank to withdraw some "silver" which they can use to purchase their mining supplies at the store. At the designated time all teams [pairs of players or single adventurers] will go to the mining grounds and choose a mineshaft. A timed challenge will begin; the goal? GOLD! The idea is to dig up as much gold as you can. At the end of the timed challenge teams will produce their haul, and the team that mined the most gold wins a prize. The bonus is that everyone gets to keep all the fruits of their labor!

Things to note: you will only be supplied with basic and limited quantity supplies; better equipment may be secured as you mine. There will be enchantment books available in the forge, which can also be purchased. Players can do anything they want (except grief) as long as they do not port or nether out of Gravelton, and only start mining in the designated area to be part of the challenge.


To recap: bring nothing but your good spirits! You'll be provided with a starter kit, with the option to purchase more items to make your digging more efficient. The team or player that finds the most gold WINS! Plus, you keep your findings! Prizes will be announced and awarded at the event itself.

Please make your way to Central this Saturday, the 28th, at around 9pm Eastern time. The event will start as soon as people are ready and will last for two hours. Try to find a mining partner beforehand, and make your time count!

Coming straight from Game Master Himochi:

The results of the 2015 Halloween Event are in!

Our winners for the escape ladder collection event are:

Kagato, axe_y, primagen102

Each of them will receive a Zombie Horse!


Next up, the winners of the scavenger hunt are:

Kagato, Coneva, DrCossack, axe_y, primagen102

The prize here is a custom-tailored zombie skull! As previously mentioned, when the 1.9 update occurs, these will offer additional protection against zombie hordes by lowering their effective line of sight when worn!


Bonus prize!

For being brave - or perhaps foolish - enough to outsmart the mad construct of the Horseman of Death, Kagato will be awarded a replica of the Scythe of Death - although it has been scaled down somewhat, compared to the original version...


Bonus bonus prize!

For being brave enough to venture in to the...uh, cake dispensery, following the...uh, cutting of the cake... Sphenicus will be awarded a Radiation Suit and...uh, Cake Tester.


Congratulations to our winners, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks for participating, and enjoy your cake~


On an additional note, everyone who looked hard enough to score at least one item has been given 10 Merit Points for their efforts! These will give you a chance to earn prizes (including some physical goods!) in early July of next year, when more points gathered over the various seasonal events giving you the better odds to scoring something. You can see the current point holders right here.

Coming up next: a Christmas event, starting in December! Stay tuned!

I'm introducing today a reorganization of the servers of the Creeper's Lab with the addition of a new lobby!

This will be the starting point of all new players from now on and the transit point between the various servers and activities. These will be separated as follows:

The portals for the current survival servers (Laurasia, Rodinia and Gondwana) have been moved here from Central's TransHub and are accessible at all times. Reaching each world's exit point will return you to the lobby, from where you can select your new destination (survival or otherwise).



This is where the connections to affiliates servers, in the vein of Team9000, will be made. This saves new players the trouble of navigating Central when they are only interested in reaching one of the affiliates. There is also one new addition on this front, detailed below...!



Special games! In Minecraft! Fun! The goal is to provide alternate things to do for those who are bored of survival gameplay, and also frees us from the constraints of a survival gameplay environment. The games will be available 24/7, without having to make you wait for Events Night to reach them. Note that the chat of each game will be limited to that game only: the messages won't be carried over to Survival or IRC.

The creeper flask remains as the logo for the Creeper's Lab as a whole, of course.


Why a lobby?

Having a lobby will allow players to move from one server to another, as they can now, with the added upside that all accesses will remain available even while Laurasia is down for maintenance. Likewise, updating the lobby will keep currently connected players in-game instead of kicking them out for a reload.

Part of Central's paths have been reorganized to account for this and to help all players, old and new alike, find their way around more easily. Central's spawn point is now the plaza located immediately south of Grand Central Station. That location has been chosen as it allows people to immediately be within reach of the train station and Nether portal should they want to head out to new destinations.

Chatting between the lobby and the survival servers is enabled so we can reach out to those in-transit and help new players find their way around. If the possible influx of new players creates too much noise for those peacefully building in-game, this might get cut off.


How do I visit the lobby?

Simply type /lobby to immediately jump to the lobby! From there, you can access other servers and destinations at your leisure. If you return to the server you just left, you'll find yourself standing in the same position as before. For example, if you use /lobby while in your glorious dirt mansion on Laurasia, you'll return to that precise location once you rejoin that world.


When will the games be available?

Soon! I'm working on setting them up, and they will be added gradually over the coming weeks and months.

Note that the games will be accessible to everyone, including visitors. Since the games won't allow any chance at griefing, there's no reason to restrict access! This means that anyone, even non-registered Creeper's Lab players, will be able to participate, helping to bring in more people to keep things rolling. Of course, the standard rules will still apply, including maintaining a family-friendly attitude at all times.

A teaser of what is coming, you ask? Let's just say that exploding heads and fast-moving carts are in your future, among others...


Also introducing: Miranda!

Now, for something different. Joining us tonight is a new server affiliate, Miranda, run by our very own Skreelink! This brand new location is available straight from the lobby, in the "Affiliates" section.

The goal of this new place is to allow large builds to happen without needing to gather the main blocks themselves. Still, the gameplay is survival-based: you need to defend yourself against mobs and make your structures without any flight abilities! You can get an idea of this new land by looking at its dedicated map.

For this purpose, a store is available to get unlimited stacks of the basic building blocks. The only cost to pay is the entrance fee of one iron ingot, which ensures that players have to do some basic digging before being granted access. This special building, the Super C, is visible from the spawn area.

Only players with the Trusted rank and above players on the Creeper's Lab side are allowed to access Miranda. Also, your player inventory isn't shared between the two, so you're effectively starting anew. Note that most rules that exist on the Creeper's Lab apply over there, with the addition that no automated farms or massive redstone systems are allowed anywhere on the world.

If you have any questions about this setup, feel free to ask Skreelink!


Wrapping up

Read all this? Good, give yourself a pat on the back!



(Click on the image for the full version!)


I hope that everyone will enjoy these new additions and what's coming up next!

Did this one sneak up on you? The Creeper's Lab is four years old as of today! With still no map reset occurring to this day, some players have been focusing on making bigger and bigger builds while others just create more projects! Beyond simple block breaking and stacking, though, a lot has happened in the past year. This includes the following:

In the past year:
- All servers were moved to dedicated, far more powerful hardware!
- A single, simple server address to memorize was selected: play.creeperslab.net
- Player profiles were added to display all of your stats
- An affiliation program was launched, with Team9000 joining us... then going offline
- Seasonal events were introduced to offer players new goals, with two successful ones happening so far

And more is planned, including a Christmas-themed event for December and a major new addition scheduled for this weekend. As such, I invite everyone to join us during next Events Night, after 9pm Eastern Time, to discover what's coming up next!

On an extra note, if you didn't get a chance to explore the special Halloween world, you have until this weekend to do so!

Again, I'd like to take a moment to thank all of you for playing with us. The Creeper's Lab wouldn't be the same without its awesome community!