The Big Update to 1.16

After one of our longest maintenance breaks ever, the server has finally been upgraded to 1.16, and with that a long list of changes! The most important parts are marked red.

The poll from our recent article turned out very positive, so starting with the biggest change, we are moving forward with our transition to a claim-based survival server.

The implications of this are many:

• Claims block all form of block destruction, meaning you can no longer dig into a player’s base, replace all the blocks behind you and steal their things. This used to be a legitimate way of raiding, and we understand that some players may be upset about this. However, block destruction is the only action which is blocked. This means you can still PVP, steal from exposed containers, open doors etc. inside of claims. Our previous article outlines our reasoning behind adding claims, in case you missed it.

• You start with 625 claim blocks (a 25×25 claim area). This is a modification to the configuration we defined in our previous article, where we stated you would start with 2500 claim blocks (a 50×50 claim area). 50×50 is actually quite large and after testing around in-game, we realized that having new players be able to create 50×50 claims right from the start could cause difficulties for players to explore.

• Claims can be placed next to each other, meaning you can effectively create one big claim if you work together with other players.

• Claim blocks cost $10 each and can be purchased once you reach the rank of VIP. This means that going from 25×25 to the originally planned 50×50 starting area costs $18 750. Reaching the maximum claim area, 400×400 or 160 000 claim blocks, costs approximately $1.6 million.

• To prevent a situation where large portions of the wilderness are riddled with claims created by players that have not been online in a very long time, your claim will expire after you have been offline for three months without logging in once. However, if you have played on our server long enough, you should never have to worry about the expiration date. Therefore, once you have purchased 10 000 claim blocks (the difference in claim blocks between a 25×25 and a 103×103 claim area), your claim will never expire. This equals a cost of approximately $100 000.

• If you have not created a claim, the first chest you place will automatically create one for you, with a four-block radius around the chest. This automatic claim is special in that it will expire already after just seven days of offline time. Once you expand the claim in any direction by just one block, the expiration time will extend to three months.

• You can choose whether or not to enable explosions in your claim. The default setting is to block all forms of explosions.

• Fire does not spread or deal block damage within claims. This cannot yet be toggled by the player.

• You can invite however many players you want to edit your claim, or you can only allow players to build in specific areas, so-called subdivisions, created by you.

• All sizes of lots have had their price reduced by a significant amount to match the price of claims in the wilderness. Small lots now cost $32 000, while big lots cost $130 000. This reduction should make them more appealing given their extra layers of protection over claims, while also making them easier to acquire for the average player. Everyone that purchased a lot for the original price has been refunded the difference in price.

• Starting from September 10th 2020, griefing will be allowed everywhere where you have build access. Due to the significance of this change, we are allowing a long transitioning phase to give players time to log in and protect their areas without having to worry about getting griefed in the meantime.

To actually create a claim from scratch, you need to equip a golden shovel. To get information about a claim, equip a stick. The plugin should give you all the necessary information you need to proceed from there. Equally, if you place a chest and have not yet created a claim, the plugin will prompt you on what to do.

All commands related to claims can be found in the default commands reference.

If you have any feedback regarding the configuration of claims, we would love to hear it!

Phew, that is quite a lot to digest, but there is more!

• We have removed two redundant plugins from the server as the functionality of these is already a part of other plugins we use. The plugins in question handle homes and the economy. Regarding the economy, all the basic functionality you were used to from before is still there; some commands are just different. Regarding homes, however, we cannot transfer the home data to the new system. This means you are going to have to place a new home using the new system. You have until September 10th 2020 to do so before your current homes become inaccessible.

• The new command for setting homes is /sethome. To visit your home in the new system, use /home. To visit your old home, you must use /oldhome.

• The Nether has been reset to make way for the new 1.16 Nether biomes.

• Do you absolutely hate Phantoms harassing you because sleeping is almost impossible to do on multiplayer servers? This is no longer an issue as you can fake sleep with the command /rest which will stop Phantoms from spawning.

• Mail is making a return! You can once again use mail to send messages to offline players, which they will see once they log back in. The commands are /mail read, /mail send player message and /mail clear.

• Upon login, you are presented with the message of the day, which we will use to convey important and useful information. This should be less intrusive than our previous notification system, which automatically made you open a book every three days.

• Players of the Member rank now have access to all regular shop warps, which previously were restricted to VIP and over. The VIP Shop is still only accessible for VIPs. This means as a new player, you can warp to every regular shop in spawn which should make it significantly less tedious for new players to purchase items. If you are wondering which warps these are, have a look at Plugin information!

• Many smaller changes, such as hovering over player names and ranks showing unnecessary text along with the appearance of announcements and /rules.

• You can no longer be permanently banned for breaking rule §7 or §9 multiple times.