Author: John Geijsman

We’re updating to 1.21.5!

On By John GeijsmanIn New Worlds, Updates

That’s right! Thank you all so very much for waiting so patiently – it’s been quite a while! We’re pretty much good to go on finally (FINALLY) updating LibraryCraft to 1.21.5! The plugins are ready and 121NewSpawn is pretty much ready to go! All things going well, 1.21.5 will be coming to the server in just over a week, ideally being ready for play on the 21st November!

We also aim to do another update potentially a month or so later, to get us to 1.21.8. A few of our key plugins aren’t quite ready for that, so we’ll have to wait for the locator bar and happy ghasts for a little while longer. 1.21.5 still has new particles, leaf litter, wildflowers, new bushes, firefly bushes, cactus flowers, dry grass, mob variants and some minor world generation changes for us to enjoy!

To make this work, the server will be unavailable for a week at the most, from Monday 17th to Friday 21st November. It’s longer than we’ve had before, but we’ve got some work to do! The actual updates, world uploads and preloads, testing, plugins set up and more testing. Hopefully we’re ready to go a little faster than that, but that’s what we’ve decided will happen. You’ll just have to keep an eye on the website! As soon as we’re ready to go, we’ll let everyone know with a post.

What will change?

  • Obviously, we’ll get 121NewSurvival! It’s a brand new world, with a brand new inventory. The spawn has been beautifully built by the builder team who went with a stunningly detailed pirate town. A huge thanks to Meowlicky, CopperJay, blossomintheair and Smaug12345 for putting this together. We know we say this every time, but it’s once again looking like one of the best spawn areas yet. They just keep getting better!
  • You will not be able to transfer items over from 121Survival. Like normal, the world will be completely separate.
  • 121Survival will still be available, but play will most likely be all on 121NewSurvival. 120Survival will be backed up and removed.
  • 121NewSurvival won’t appear on Dynmap for a few weeks, to encourage natural exploration.
  • The map will most likely be around 10000×10000, the same as 121Survival.
  • The Nether and the End will be blocked from access for a week or two at the start (as we always do), to discourage people from speedrunning. Take your time! It’s another long season.
  • Public Nether and End gates will not appear in the spawn area straight away. These will come in the first few weeks. These will be housed on the upper deck of the pirate ship at 121NewSpawn.
  • The /gwarp 121Spawn will be removed and replaced with /gwarp 121NewSpawn. If you want to go to 1.21 Spawn, you’ll need to use the gate at the Warp Ship.
  • Claims will still exist in 121NewSurvival, however if you need more claim blocks, you can either play more (as you earn more blocks the more you play), or unclaim some land in 121Survival.
    • As was the rule in all our previous Survival worlds, you are NOT allowed to claim areas of land to reserve resources for collection later. Claims are for builds only.
    • You are also not allowed to claim any villages, Trial Chambers or Ancient Cities. These are for everyone to enjoy.
  • We won’t be protecting the trial chambers closer to spawn like we did last season, but we do ask that people not clear out the chambers close to the spawn area so people can still run them. A big difference this season is we will be adding a datapack called Renewable Vaults, so trial chambers will be able to be run over and over again. One thing we do know is that you will not be allowed to destroy the trial spawners at all. Leave them there so players can redo the trial chambers.

Remember, if you find yourself unable to get in from the 17th, don’t panic! Just be patient, and check the website, and Discord if you have it. Bring on 1.21.5!

September/October Magical Forest Results

On By John GeijsmanIn Competitions

September and October had a competition run over two months while John was on holidays. We asked you all to build something around a Magical Forest theme, and we had some great entries! We didn’t get any builder entries again as they’ve been busy making some final additions to our next Survival spawn area for the new Survival map. More on that soon!

Let’s take a look at the results for the main Emerald Points Competition.

Also, just a reminder that prizes from this competition will be held and awarded in the next Survival map – stay tuned for when that is. Not long now!

1st Place: Heebyy_

Heebyy notches up a second win with this lovely dark oak forest! The trees appear to be little homes around a very cute lake. Nice work Heebyy!

2nd Place: Wingedphoenix

Wingedphoenix went with a densely populated mushroom village. There’s loads to look at and explore here, with details inside and out. Nice work Phoenix!

3rd Place: Pompadoo2000

Pompadoo came into the competition scene after about a year on the server with a bit more of a paired back entry, but still one that was beautifully detailed. The end rods on the tree was a very nice touch.

Honourable Mentions

We had four entries that got honourable mentions this time around!

Flicky2016

Jaxzebunny

legofanatic212

FantasticFun

Leaderboards

Here’s what the leaderboards look like so far for season 2, 2025! To make it easier to see each change every month, podium players will be highlighted in blue, and honourable mention players for each month will be in green!

Player Emerald Points Competition

  1. WingedPhoenix – 26 pts
  2. _Heebyy – 20 pts
  3. strxww – 15 pts
  4. legofanatic212 – 10 pts
  5. TapuFini888 – 10 pts
  6. Jaxzebunny – 6 pts
  7. Pompadoo2000 – 5 pts
  8. Flicky2016 – 1 pt
  9. WoodyToucan – 1 pt
  10. JohnVivian – 1 pt
  11. FantasticFun – 1pt

Builder Competition

Congratulations to all our winners and entries!

A minor change to this season as we’ve had a number of players forfeit their in game prizes. If you would like your prize, please get in touch with JohnsanGeezo via /mail or a ticket in Discord and it’ll get set up in the greenhouse!

In Game Prize Collection

The 121Survival Competition Prize Collection Point is housed inside the large greenhouse just at the west end of 121Spawn.

It will have protected chests for each player that won a prize – podium OR honourable mention.

Please make sure you collect your items quickly, or you will risk losing them!

When is the next update happening?

On By John GeijsmanIn New Worlds

As we’re sure you are all aware by now, LibraryCraft has been on version 1.21 for a bit over 12 months now, with no update. Since Mojang changed their update schedule to be released a few times a year instead of one large update once a year, the timings for updates for us have been longer, but we do have one coming soon! This is a bit of a longer post, but it’s good that you get the chance to understand how these things work.

LibraryCraft runs on things called plugins – it’s what makes us capable of doing the extra things that the vanilla game can’t do. Note that these are different again to mods, which tend to be much bigger changes that add brand new things to the game, not just altering existing behaviours. Mods and plugins run on two different environments. The environments we currently use are one called Paper (based on one called Spigot, which is based on one called Bukkit); and Waterfall – the multi-server system that allows us to connect multiple servers together. You may only see one server in the game, but Survival, Creative and Minigames are all separate servers, linked together by another one that you all connect to.

While each new version (or sub version) is released to the public, it takes us a while to get it. We have to wait for our server versions to be updated, plus a bunch of other things, and it has to be in a particular order. These can generally take a few months, especially if either there are bigger changes in the game (new blocks, biomes, world generation, behaviours etc), or if the plugin developers are taking their time.

Here’s the process this time around – we’re currently at around step 7. We’re hoping we can get to 1.21.8 (with the new happy ghasts), but there’s a few plugins still to come. At the very latest we’d go to 1.21.5. That version includes new particles, leaf litter, wildflowers, new bushes, firefly bushes, cactus flowers, dry grass, mob variants and some minor world generation changes. At this stage, we anticipate the update to happen within the month. Woo!

  1. Mojang releases the latest version to the public. At the moment it’s 1.21.10.
  2. Bukkit developers update Bukkit with the latest version. Bukkit is the program that lets us use the extra plugins.
  3. Once it’s stable (a few weeks at least) it goes to Spigot, a better version of Bukkit. Spigot developers update Spigot with the latest version.
  4. Once Spigot is stable (more time again), it goes to Paper, an even better version of Spigot. Same thing…
  5. At the same time, all the Spigot plugin developers get their plugins updated and compatible with the latest version. Some do this, some don’t need to.
  6. We have to wait until the vast majority of our plugins work before doing anything.
  7. While all that is happening, the Builder team and the mod team are busy preparing the new Survival spawn area and map for players.
  8. In addition to this, this time John has to change the multi-server system over to a brand new one, and change some major plugins as well.
  9. Once the required plugins are sorted, then John can update the server. During this time, the server goes into maintenance mode, so nobody but John can log in. While this is happening, the servers get rebooted over and over while testing and plugin updates happen. We’ll tend to update a few at a time, reboot, test them, and then shut it down and do it all again.
  10. So the server is updated! Hooray! John loads in the new Survival world (all while the server is in maintenance mode) and preloads the new overworld and nether, set up the required permissions and the worldborders. The preloads are very important as it means a much better performance for everyone. The hardest thing for a server to do is generate land as we explore. The preload basically does that all at once.
  11. Once John has done the first tests, the mod team logs in and we do a little more testing.
  12. If all seems to be ok then John fix the gates on the Ship and after some final tests, maintenance mode gets turned off and we’re good to go!

Generally this process takes a few days, but we estimate a week just to be sure. We know that everyone is excited – we are too! Just be mindful that if you’re all asking us if it’s ready, we’re spending that time replying to you saying it’s not and to just be patient, instead of actually getting it updated. It takes a lot of time and a lot of work to get there, but it’s worth it! At this stage we don’t have a date for when we’ll be updating, but as soon as we know, we’ll give you guys about a week’s notice. Also, during maintenance mode, please don’t try to log into the server. It won’t let you anyway, but please just leave it be until maintenance mode is off.

More information will come when we know it, but for now, finish your bases and get excited for the next map!

November Creative Competition – Dream Home

On By John GeijsmanIn Competitions

It’s been a while since we’ve had a new theme, as the last competition went for two months while John was away, but it’s great to be back! November is almost here, and with it comes a brand new competition theme! In November we’re going with Dream Home. Build us your dream home! You’ve got a good amount of space, so we’d love to see some front and backyards too, if you can fit them.

There’s also no extra builder requirement this time, as it’s your dream home, not ours!

Remember, each month counts in terms of points, plus there’s the Builder Rank Competition too – the GOLD bordered plots are for Builders only – do not claim these if you are not a builder. If you do, we will clear them without warning, regardless of whether there’s builds on it or not.

The November Competition world gate – located in the Creative Lobby – will replace the September/October gate which will close to building at 9pm tomorrow, Friday October 31st.

The gate will open in the Creative Lobby on the morning of November 1st, so get thinking about your build!

Something that we’ve decided to do in this competition should be exciting for you all! We’re very close to being able to update to a newer version of the server (either 1.21.5 or 1.21.8). We’re imagining that this will happen in the next month (all things going well), so this month, prizes will be claimable with a mail to JohnsanGeezo to be redeemed the new world only! When the new world is ready for play, your prizes will be put in the new prize collection point when it is ready to go.

Season 2, 2025 Prizes

As you know, each month we give away the following prizes to regular players:

  • 1st Prize: 4x diamond blocks, 1x mega crate key & 15 Emerald Points
  • 2nd Prize: 3x diamond blocks, 1x mega crate key & 10 Emerald Points
  • 3rd Prize: 2x diamond blocks, 1x mega crate key & 5 Emerald Points
  • Honourable mention (1 vote): 1 Emerald Point & 1x diamond block

Each month the Emerald Points are tallied up and can be seen in the Emerald Hall on the Survival Lobby world. It’s also been given a rather large revamp, thanks to Meowlicky, one of our builders!

At the end of the season (June and December), the grand prizes are awarded to the final top three Emerald Points winners from across the 6 months of competition. This season we’re giving away:

  • 1st Prize: $250 worth of LEGO! It’ll be in the form of a LEGO store voucher, sent online. Nice and easy!
  • 2nd Prize: $100 JB HiFi Voucher
  • 3rd Prize: $50 JB HiFi Voucher

The parallel Builders Creative Competition will be judged at the same time, with the overall winner each season getting a $50 JB HiFi voucher.

October School Holiday Social Session!

On By John GeijsmanIn Meet Ups

We’re almost done with Term 3! This year is absolutely flying along. It’s time to announce the October school holiday social session! John isn’t around this time as he’s on holiday, but you guys wanted one anyway, so thanks to Meowlicky spearheading it and Kisney helping out, it’s still going to happen! Kisney will also be on hand on the day, representing the mod team.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Where: Fremantle Library
When: Wednesday 1st October, 1 – 5pm
Cost: FREE!
Bring: Just yourself and your own laptop ready to go! There won’t be any library laptops available this time.

Also, please tell Kisney in a mail or in Discord if you plan on coming so we can get an idea of how many people to expect.

See you there!

August Haunted Results

On By John GeijsmanIn Competitions

That’s another month of competition down! We’re in our regular quieter season at the moment, but we’ve still had some great entries for the Haunted theme! This was also a very tight competition. We didn’t get any builder entries, because they’ve been busy planning our next Survival spawn area for the new Survival map! Yes, work has begun on the update!

Let’s take a look at the results for the main Emerald Points Competition.

1st Place: WingedPhoenix

After a number of competitions entered, WingedPhoenix (previously known as m1cro and microsoftmaster) has got a win! Phoenix created a rather spooky and fun-to-explore Factory of Reanimation. This one has loads of details to check out, plus a lot of red! I think something bad happened here…

2nd Place: legofanatic212

Legofanatic went with a brilliantly crafted graveyard with spooky tree. The graves around the build all contain usernames of some of our players and mods! Simple, but very effective.

3rd Place: Dragoncosmo222

Dragon built a large glass fronted house with a graveyard out the front, and a large ghost hovering over one of them. It’s a shame the inside of the building was empty, but a cool concept nonetheless!

Honourable Mentions

We had one entry that got honourable mentions this time around!

JohnVivian

Leaderboards

Here’s what the leaderboards look like so far for season 2, 2025! To make it easier to see each change every month, podium players will be highlighted in blue, and honourable mention players for each month will be in green!

Player Emerald Points Competition

  1. WingedPhoenix – 16 pts
  2. strxww – 15 pts
  3. legofanatic212 – 10 pts
  4. TapuFini888 – 10 pts
  5. Dragoncosmo222 – 5 pts
  6. _Heebyy – 5 pts
  7. WoodyToucan – 1 pt
  8. JohnVivian – 1 pt

Builder Competition

Congratulations to all our winners and entries!

A minor change to this season as we’ve had a number of players forfeit their in game prizes. If you would like your prize, please get in touch with JohnsanGeezo via /mail or a ticket in Discord and it’ll get set up in the greenhouse!

In Game Prize Collection

The 121Survival Competition Prize Collection Point is housed inside the large greenhouse just at the west end of 121Spawn.

It will have protected chests for each player that won a prize – podium OR honourable mention.

Please make sure you collect your items quickly, or you will risk losing them!

September/October Creative Competition – Magical Forest

On By John GeijsmanIn Competitions

Edit: As John is away for a few weeks over September and October, and for the lower numbers in the server at the moment, we’ve decided to extend the September competition to include October too!

We’re almost through with August – this year once again is flying by! The server is a little quieter this time of year, with schoolwork ramping up, exam preparation starting, and lots of other commitments, but nevertheless, we’ve got another great theme for you all to get stuck into! In September, we’re asking you to build your dream Magical Forest! Given the amount of players that love building natural things, we’re hoping this will be a popular one.

A big thanks to minywire for designing the gate build for the competition!

Extra Builder Rank Requirement

One of the requests this year from the Builder team is to give them a bit more of a challenge, so each month we’ll also be adding in an extra requirement, just for the Builder rank players! Regular competition players do not need to do this.

Include a fairy ring!

Remember, each month counts in terms of points, plus there’s the Builder Rank Competition too – the GOLD bordered plots are for Builders only – do not claim these if you are not a builder. If you do, we will clear them without warning, regardless of whether there’s builds on it or not.

The September/October Competition world gate – located in the Creative Lobby – will replace the August gate which will close to building at 9pm on Sunday August 31st.

The gate will open in the Creative Lobby on the morning of September 1st, so get thinking about your build!

Prizes will be claimable with a mail to JohnsanGeezo in 121Survival.

Season 2, 2025 Prizes

As you know, each month we give away the following prizes to regular players:

  • 1st Prize: 4x diamond blocks, 1x mega crate key & 15 Emerald Points
  • 2nd Prize: 3x diamond blocks, 1x mega crate key & 10 Emerald Points
  • 3rd Prize: 2x diamond blocks, 1x mega crate key & 5 Emerald Points
  • Honourable mention (1 vote): 1 Emerald Point

Each month the Emerald Points are tallied up and can be seen in the Emerald Hall on the Survival Lobby world. It’s also been given a rather large revamp, thanks to Meowlicky, one of our builders!

At the end of the season (June and December), the grand prizes are awarded to the final top three Emerald Points winners from across the 6 months of competition. This season we’re giving away:

  • 1st Prize: $250 worth of LEGO! It’ll be in the form of a LEGO store voucher, sent online. Nice and easy!
  • 2nd Prize: $100 JB HiFi Voucher
  • 3rd Prize: $50 JB HiFi Voucher

The parallel Builders Creative Competition will be judged at the same time, with the overall winner each season getting a $50 JB HiFi voucher.

You can now buy your own floating island!

On By John GeijsmanIn New Worlds

That’s right! Inspired by something we did about 5 years ago called The Broken Sky, we’re now offering a once in a lifetime deal! We’re offering the choice of one of four floating islands to be purchased and placed anywhere in the 121Survival world! The prices aren’t cheap, but we know how easy it is to get diamonds these days, so it’s very affordable.

The four islands are able to be explored just north east of the 121Spawn area. For those players without elytra, a handy gate has been created at 121Spawn to get you there too.

On to the prices! They’re also on signs at each island too.

Island 1: 5 Diamond Blocks (also comes with a premade cave and underground farm area)
Island 2: 5 Diamond Blocks
Island 3: 15 Diamond Blocks (double island!)
Island 4: 25 Diamond Blocks

Obviously the centre island is not for sale.

Why this sounds great! How do I purchase one?

We’re glad you asked. It’s very simple! Purchase a token for the island of your choosing from the Shopkeeper on the centre island.

To redeem your token, simply leave it in your inventory! Once that’s done, send a /mail to JohnsanGeezo saying you’ve purchased an island, and the coordinates of where you’d like it to be placed.

Islands will be placed no lower than Y=160, and will be placed at the coordinates of your choosing from the centre point of the island. Obviously you aren’t allowed to place an island where it will interfere with other claims or builds, or above spawn.

Islands will come with a waterfall, to allow players without elytra to get there, and will be pre-claimed for the player that purchased it. Once islands are placed, they are not able to be moved, so choose carefully! Once your island is placed, it’s yours to modify as you see fit (as long as it’s within our LC rules).

Have fun shopping!

July Transport Results

On By John GeijsmanIn Competitions

It’s the start of a new season of competition! We kicked of Season 2 with Transport and we had some beautiful builds. These were really impressive! This month we unfortunately didn’t get any builder entries, so hopefully we’ll see some entries from them next month!

Let’s take a look at the results for the main Emerald Points Competition.

1st Place: strxww

Straw kicked off the new season with a beautiful mountainside build with a cable car running to the top! This was really well crafted! So well, in fact, that it secures Straw’s third competition win! That means that we have a new Builder! A massive congratulations to Straw! Welcome to the Builder team. We’ll be in touch with a Discord ticket for what happens next.

2nd Place: TapuFini888

Early in July we saw a couple of our original players re-join after a long time away! It was great to see both Fini and marginalin coming back and getting stuck into a competition! Unfortunately marginalin didn’t get to finish his build, but Fini did, and it looks stunning! A highly textured and detailed fishing dock! This was great to explore.

3rd Place: _Heebyy

This month Heebyy went with a train! I’m very impressed that it’s not just a straight train and track – there’s a slight curve! I love this grass texture look too. Nice work!

Honourable Mentions

We had two entries that got honourable mentions this time around – this was a difficult competition to judge!

WoodyToucan

WingedPhoenix

Leaderboards

Here’s what the leaderboards look like so far for season 2, 2025! To make it easier to see each change every month, podium players will be highlighted in blue, and honourable mention players for each month will be in green!

Player Emerald Points Competition

  1. strxww – 15 pts
  2. TapuFini888 – 10 pts
  3. _Heebyy – 5 pts
  4. WoodyToucan – 1 pt
  5. WingedPhoenix – 1 pt

Builder Competition

    Congratulations to all our winners and entries!

    A minor change to this season as we’ve had a number of players forfeit their in game prizes. If you would like your prize, please get in touch with JohnsanGeezo via /mail or a ticket in Discord and it’ll get set up in the greenhouse!

    In Game Prize Collection

    The 121Survival Competition Prize Collection Point is housed inside the large greenhouse just at the west end of 121Spawn.

    It will have protected chests for each player that won a prize – podium OR honourable mention.

    Please make sure you collect your items quickly, or you will risk losing them!