Summary: General - Dynmap change / performance improvement for the rest of the server Survival - AFK kick to lobby Survival - Nerf to xp & drops from grinders Survival - McMMO update overview Survival - Sewers Level 4 Survival - McStats player profile update Survival - McStats top players Survival - Break-in at the Cash4Ingots kiosk Creative - Building contest IRL prizes! General - Dynmap change / performance improvement for the rest of the server http://www.shadecrest.com/map First off, would like to mention that for those who didn't notice there's been imaxorz sightings in game! Secondly, Max was gracious to step in and help recover the server the other night from a direly needed maintenance. We have moved the Dynmap's files to a specific harddrive so they aren't writing to the same harddrive as the rest of the server's files. This resolved not only the direly needed issue, but should actually result in a performance improvement for the servers in general. We've already noticed that performance improvement on the Vanilla server. Survival - AFK kick to lobby AFKing has always been something that all persistent world game designers have to struggle with. Minecraft is no different. AFKers affect server performance and if they do it intentionally could keep chunks active which cause potential lag. So ezeiger92 has implemented the AFK kick timeout for Survival. When that time is reached, you will be booted to the lobby. We will be making sure that is implemented similarly on other servers. Survival - Nerf to xp & drops from grinders Similar to the AFK kick, we've been concerned for quite some time about the affects that grinders have on the playerbase, how they play the game, and how it effects the economy. Sure the economy on ShadeCrest is not super healthy right now, but that's no excuse for us to not work to make it better. So ezeiger92 has implemented some custom code to nerf the xp and drop rate of items from grinders. These are several different nerfs depending on the kind of grinder. The intention is, the less work you have to do to kill a mob, the less xp and loot you should get. So if you have to kill the mob manually, you get more xp than if you drop them a distance and they are hurt but not dead and 1 shot them, that yields less xp/loot, but if you dropped them from a great distance instantly killing them from the fall or used a machine to murder them with suffocation that would get you even less xp/loot. Survival - McMMO update overview http://www.shadecrest.com/site/threads/6574/ CyberVic has been busy all week, every night implementing huge changes to McMMO. There will be a lot of wiki updates to reflect all the specific changes but let's summarize what has changed. The intention of all of these changes is to make McMMO more interesting and accessible to more players, but make the grind to 1000 more enjoyable and the top end more grindy than before, but worth it for the dedicated player. Every skill/ability should be enabled in McMMO. No longer are there completely disabled skills or abilities. Most notably this includes double drops, salvage, and a few other minor things. Party teleport is also re-enabled but we are having some permissions issues which should get resolved soon. The overall xp curve is now exponential instead of linear which means the low end of xp gain should feel faster, while the high end of xp gain should feel slower than before. All skills should properly scale from 1-1000 instead of some skills only scaling from 1-200 or something lame Many skills got their top end power buffed. Some skills got their low end power nerfed. No skills have 100% guaranteed chance of success even at 1000 skill. Most passive skills top out at 80% chance of success. Some skills have as high as 95% chance of success on activated abilities (ex. Graceful Roll). Crit and crit like abilities (ex. Archery Daze) have a top end chance of Success capped at or below 33%. Many skills got their xp gain buffed, particularly those which were insanely difficult or slow to level (ex. Alchemy & Taming). Some skills got an xp gain nerf which were too easy to level (ex. Excavation & Repair). Fishermen should be wary of the Kraken. Survival - Sewers Level 4 http://www.shadecrest.com/site/threads/6161/ CyberVic's Sewer dungeon level 4 is now complete and accessible to the public. Like before when you reach the end of level 4, you should get a congratulations signs and a level 4 enderchest with good loot. So far only 3-4 people on the server have even figured out how to get to level 4 and only 1 person has completed it. If you notice the new portals which have appeared throughout the dungeon, the department of magical transport is working on getting those fixed for transit through the sewer system. Survival - McStats player profile update http://mc.shadecrest.com/MCStats/profile.php?player=CyberVic CyberVic's McStats player profile page has been updated with a few new bits including stats on Salvage, Smelting, and a few other minor updates which I can't remember. Remember, if you want to see your stats just change the url to replace your name after "player=". Survival - McStats top players http://mc.shadecrest.com/MCStats/top.php CyberVic's new McStats top players page is now complete. It's something we've wanted to do for quite some time and with all the changes to Survival recently, it was a good time to get this done so players could track how they are progressing on survival in respect to other players. One of the top core values the community agreed was part of ShadeCrest was the core value of Competition. Hopefully with this new top players page, it will encourage a fun, healthy level of competition for the coveted top 10 list. More stats and features plan to be added to this in the future. Survival - Break-in at the Cash4Ingots kiosk There has been a break in at "/warp Cash4Ingots". The building was sacked and for a short time this week the ability to buy / sell ingots for rupies was not available. The international bank of ShadeCrest believes that in the future it might have to remove the ability for citizens from buying from the kiosk, and possibly stem the flow of sales to the kiosk, but pledges to retain current market availability until such time they can reduce the risk of current offered services. At the very least, the kiosk will retain the communities gold standard indefinitely in the future. Creative - Building contest IRL prizes! http://www.shadecrest.com/site/threads/6583/ @qb10panther has made a post about the next Creative contest and it sounds like it's going to be a good one (Steampunk is the theme). Lots of room for creativity there for sure! He's upping the ante on this one and hopes to do this for future contests by giving away games on Steam for the winners. We need a lot of people to enter and compete through if you guys want to keep seeing real prizes. Obviously if there is not enough people competing the contest will be postponed and we'll only do a contest if there's enough contestants. It's up to QB and the rest of the Creative staff to determine that, so please bare with them. Hopefully this initiative pays off and people get more excited about these contests. I know I loved seeing the modern designs from the last one.
Oh I forgot. Please make sure everyone to vote on these two polls. The more feedback we get the better! http://shadecrest.com/site/threads/6597/ http://shadecrest.com/site/threads/6605/
Automatic/afk farms were severely nerfed, xp farms (punch kill mobs in one space) were slightly nerfed.
Level 4 is a little difficult, but far from impossible. The mobs are killer, so don't cheap out, bring some real deal gear!