As many of you are aware by now, the update to 1.13 broke a fair amount of features and functionality that the staff has been busy fixing. Here's the status of some notable items.

Ongoing events and features
- The Creeper Citadel is fully operational and includes villagers for 1.13.
- The challenges of the End Arena are back online.
- The three regenerating structures, including Requiem and Nyx, are fixed.
- The raid boss at the Hunter's Lodge is back, with lowered HP to com ...

November is back, and since it's the 11th, it means that the Creeper's Lab is now seven years old! That's a long time for an online game and community to be running, and I'm proud to say that we're in a good position to keep on going for a good while! My thanks go to everyone, no matter how old or new you are around these parts!

Quite a bit has happened in the last year, most notably the following:
- The launch of the Grindatron, a month-long event where players ...

Many of you have heard of the various challenge areas that have been designed and built in the past several months, many of them being spearheaded by Sora. These include the regenerating structures, the Hunter's Lodge, the Horsemen events and more. Unfortunately, some of these were temporarily offline due to changes to the game's data structures in 1.13.

We're happy to announce that the Lost Woods are now back in working condition, wrapping up the work into converting every ...

For the first release of this event series, see: here.

What better way to start off the snowy month of December than with a new Horsemen event! And it just so happens, this one is located out in the snowy reaches of the East, the Castle of Conquest! Specifically, the areas around it: Snowhead. The castle and it's grounds can be reached much like the others: During events night using the warp at the top of the Keep of Time, the warps in the Citadel, or via it's nether porta ...

It's December already, and you know what that means, right? Christmas cards!!




For those new to this, every year I send out a holidays card in the mail directly to you, featuring a scene from the server, and its free! All you need to do is submit your physical mailing address, wait, and you'll get one around the holidays!

You have two ways to claim yours: in Laurasia, visit the Seasonal Park (in Central, heading North, using the Residential Line) and find the giant mailb ...

Following up on yesterday's news about cards, Sphenicus has updated our Christmas resource pack! This brings it to the 1.13 data format, along with some new content and improvements. You can download it from the resource packs page!

Unlike before, this is now an add-on. That is, you want to install the regular pack, then add this one with a higher priority so you get the best results.

Many of you have heard of the newest batch of challenges to be added, from the Lost Wood to the Horsemen events. Some have already tried them, but others might have been intimidated by the potential difficulty. As such, how about getting some assistance in discovering these?

Itachi has graciously offered to bring groups of players through the Lost Woods, our Zelda-like adventure challenge. This is your chance to be guided through the experience, learning how these activities should be han ...

2018 is finally drawing to a close, and what better way to celebrate than with a giveaway! This isn't a raffle in our typical style; this time everyone wins!

We've got a huge backlog of confiscated materials to dole out, as well as some science-y items to give you a headstart on the Lost Woods, the Hunter's Lodge, the End Challenge, Wychwood, and Snowhead. Prizes include materials like diamonds and lapis, collectibles like skulls, armor pieces and ammo from the various chal ...

A casualty of the dedicated server move two months ago was the images gallery featuring various views of the player builds. After having to re-upload the images one by one, that gallery is now back online!

Once in a while, I generate a render of a view from the server, either of a specific player build, a natural structure, a town, or more. I brought my rendering setup back online in October and have resumed creating new images in the meantime. You can visit the gallery today and find eig ...

We're getting even closer to the end of the year, and now our week of preparations leading up to the giveaway has also concluded.

We had a great turn-out of 33 players show up this week, and as promised we whipped up even more prize packages to hand out. Some players have already received their winnings, but we've still got plenty to go around for those of you who missed out on the chance to grab them tonight. Feel free to poke MediaKlepto or SorathePumpking in-game or on Discor ...

You might not be aware that you can vote for the Creeper's Lab daily! Voting for us helps us to be ranked higher on the Minecraft servers lists, making us more visible to attract new players. Want to help us in a way that's not too time-consuming? Remember to vote, it takes a minute or, it really makes a difference and you can do so daily! You can get the voting links straight on the website, or by typing /vote in game. Please do it as often as possible!

In exchange, for every d ...

It's been a while since I last ran a survey about the present and future of the Creeper's Lab, and so I decided that we were due for an update.

Just a few days ago, you gained the ability to use your accumulated Merit Points to earn various perks. What did you think of these? Do you have ideas on what else could be offered? What should be the next Big Thing™ that I work on? Here's a quick, straighforward survey with 5 questions for you to answer!

Answer the survey!
...

Tasmantis was introduced after Minecraft 1.13 was released, first as a test platform to see when the upgrade would be feasible, then as a resource world for people to grab the new ocean elements in a convenient setting. Most players have already accomplished that, so I'll be retiring the server at the end of February. If you have any supplies left in there, or anything else that you wanted to gather, please be sure to get it done before then!

Cimmeria is our starter world for new pla ...

It's been a while since we've had a friendly competition, how about trying something new?

You're all invited this Saturday for boat racing in Central! I've designed a new racetrack using Central's canals, which now form a loop. Put your navigation skills to the test, and see who can come up ahead of the pack!

A few quick rules:
- The first player to complete 3 loops wins.
- You must ride on boats, not swim! If you fall off, quickly jump back in.
- No attacki ...

The Grindatron is back at long last!

This challenge was popular in its first iteration, and I was looking forward to bring it back. Like many other things, it needed a partial rebuild to work properly under Minecraft 1.13. I've worked on that over the past month, and here's the result! The full details are below, for new and returning players alike.

What's the Grindatron?
The Grindatron is this month's challenge, accessible from the lobby. It takes place in its own ...

As announced before, the new version of Cimmeria is now live! The spawn town, Aditus, has been migrated over while everything else is new. Note that this world features a nice variety of oceans and is a great spot for fishermen and coral hunters!

At the same time, Tasmantis has been retired after serving us well for a few months. Farewell!

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 ...

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 f ...

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 re ...

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!

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

Racing, digging, dying. All three happened in last month's Dig Away challenge, and we have some winners! Without further delay, the top positions of everyone who participated:

Kagato: 22168 metres - 17 points
axe_y: 18876 metres - 16 points
GingeKoda: 17088 metres - 15 points
Coneva: 17082 metres - 14 points
MineshaftBob: 4638 metres - 13 points
Connovan: 3543 metres - 12 points
Raegal: 1548 metres - 11 points
Exodio: 156 metres - 10 points
VivaLaFu: 71 metres - 9 points
Ale ...

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!

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 ...

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 N ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...