Pixel Expo is over and it was amazing to see everyone and talk to so many people. We’re pretty tired but we had a blast! During the show we were able to announce the winners of the Creative Competition, where we asked players to build something with the theme of Retro Gaming.

The winners were:

1st: toothless_spy
2nd: Meowlicky
3rd: RubyBird12

You can check out the video of their builds below.

Prizes will be given out in game in the coming week, and we’ll be in touch with players either in game or in Discord to arrange prize collection. Each of the three winners gets a JB HiFi voucher, the usual in game loot, and toothless also scores a special Pixel hamper and winner’s medal!

Thanks for everyone that entered the competition! It was a lot of fun voting on them.

It’s time to announce the Player of the Month for September! It’s special as it’s our first round of POTM and we had 13 nominations! Thanks to everyone who nominated someone. It’s great to see the positivity! We’ll go through all the nominations (not saying who the nominator was) and then announce the winner. Some you’ll be able to guess, but others are a mystery, which is great!

Blossomfallen

• Because they have been helpful and really nice, they also help new players.

_pluto_9

• She’s awesome and she’s the queen. She demands respect, also she’s an epic builder and really nice and snazzy – she deserves it ❤
• They are such a good player. I think that they deserve to have this credited to their name and they were such a help to me when I joined 🙂

CountDoDo

• They are always funny and nice plus they always find the time to read my story.
• Very important, nice player. Nice role model for others. They are great.
• He’s always been active on the server and is extremely nice to everyone.

AquaQuokka

• They have been really helpful with things around the server and also really active.
• Really funny and very helpful during the railway build.

Cramskii

• Cramskii is such a nice and supportive player. I am honestly surprised they aren’t a mentor. They are always so kind to all the players on the server and they have really helped me and so many others on this server. This is why I think Cramskii really deserves to be POTM.

LordSquid__

• Squid has been really nice this month, especially with me settling in to live with him in my new base at Squid Bay. He provided me extra resources to build my base and is all round really nice and fun. Even though he is used to 1.8 PVP, he still plays PVP with me in LC often and it’s a lot of fun. That’s why I think Squid should be POTM.

toothless_spy

• This person helped me when I first joined the server and taught me the rungs to play LibraryCraft, explaining how to use portals and the competitions that went on all in an understandable way.

_Eve___

• Eve is so kind and so creative. She is so nice to be around and play with. I remember the first time that I played Bedwars with her and she knocked me off a bridge. She was so sorry that she gathered all the wool that she could find and made a huge “sorry” sign in the main island 🙂

Kisney

• Because when I was desperate for food Kisney gave me free food.

And the winner is CountDoDo! Congratulations Count, and well done to everyone nominated! It’s been such a pleasure reading all the nominations. Count will get a special rank in the server for a month, with [POTM] visible after his username, a POTM role in Discord, and two Mega Crate keys to spend in 118Survival!

Nominations are now open for next month. We’d love to see some of these happening again!

Our third Annual Report, for 2021/22 is now available. Click the image below to download a copy. Thank you all so much once again for your support of the program during the last 12 months! We’ve seen some incredible growth and opportunities and we can’t wait to see what’s in store for the next 12 months of LibraryCraft!

EDIT: Report edited to include a player favourite highlight that was missed – Creative Writing in Discord!

Over the last couple of months we’ve been working through the feedback we received in our 2022 Evaluation Survey, and it’s time to get everyone’s thoughts on what we’re thinking!

We’ve had some preliminary chats with the players on Discord to get an idea of what would be good and we think we’ve come up with some great ideas. A new page has been created on the website – Evaluation Feedback 2022. It’s also available on the right hand side of the top menu of the site. This page has a summary of what’s been talked about, and a few polls to get some more feedback from the player group as a whole.

These include:

• the Player of the Month initiative
• tweaks to the Mega Crate contents
• a new PVP plugin
• a poll to see whether you want ladders to be added in BedWars
• a poll for whether we expand the Survival world for 1.19, or start a brand new one
• a themed Survival world (similar to PVP Survival, but different)
• tweaks to the Project worlds
• tweaks to the Monthly Competitions

Plus workshops, real life meetups, server resource packs, minigames news, tweaks to Discord and more.

The three polls and the Evaluation Feedback page will be available until Sunday 7th August, 9pm, so it’s your chance to tell us what you think of the things we’re planning over the next few months! If you’re a player in LibraryCraft, we want to hear from you. You can also get in touch with us through Discord, or by sending an email to the server as well (seen on the right hand side of this page).

We’re back! Thanks for the patience 🙂

That’s right folks, our database server has gone down for an unknown reason. We’re working on it, but for now you won’t be able to connect. As soon as we have a solution we’ll post in here and on Discord.

Please be patient with us!

In early June we announced a new competition coming to LibraryCraft – the Builder Competition. Our Builder rank players don’t get to enter the competitions any more, and sometimes there’s a bit of down time for build projects. We want to be able to let them show off the crazy build skills so one of our awesome team came up with the idea!

This year we’ll have three 2 month competitions – July to August, September to October and November to December. Only Builders will be able to build, but anyone is allowed to check out the progress! The plots are much bigger – 100×100! Each plot is pre-assigned to the four builders. There’s even a bonus build in the middle to explore too!

Voting will also happen in September by the mod team, with points being tallied up over the whole year, just like the main Emerald Points competition. Prizes are a $50 JB HiFi Voucher for 1st, and a couple of mega crate keys each for 2nd and 3rd.

On to the reason you’re here! The theme for this competition is:

Twisted!

We want to see what the Builders interpret as Twisted. It could be anything….

This one will be fun! The world will be available July 1st.

The LC Evaluation Survey for 2022 is closed, and we got some excellent feedback from almost 50 responses! The mod team will be going through all of the feedback (yep, all of it!) and seeing what we can do over the next week or so. We’ll update everyone with our thoughts and plans! We got some great feedback on the server, Discord, workshop ideas and in person meet-ups.

What we have done is choose our two winners! These two players will receive a $50 JB HiFi Voucher each.

The winners are quipp and _boonana! Congratulations! We’ll be in touch through Discord to arrange for prize pickup.

As many of you will know by now, 1.19 The Wild Update, the next big thing in Minecraft will be launching tomorrow, June 7! There’s plenty to get excited about:

• the Deep Dark
• The Warden
• Mangrove swamps
• shriekers
• sculk blocks
• mud
• boats with chests
• Allays
• goat horns
• Frogs and froglights, and
• tadpoles!

Click the image to get the full info on this version from the Minecraft website. A lot of you (like me) are excited to get stuck into it, but it won’t be available on LibraryCraft just yet. If you try to connect to LibraryCraft using 1.19, it won’t work. You’ll need to use 1.18.2 until an announcement comes up on this site. So why does it take so long? Here’s the process we need to go through:

1. First, there’s the general release to Vanilla. That’s tomorrow, so we’re close to ticking the first step off.
2. Bukkit (the first iteration of the core system our server runs on) developers update Bukkit to 1.19.
3. Once stable (a few weeks at least) it goes to Spigot (the slightly better version of Bukkit our version is based on). Spigot developers update Spigot with 1.19. Spigot is also what our plugins use.
4. Once Spigot is stable (a bit more more time again), it goes to Paper – the system we use. Same thing…that gets updated and tested etc etc.
5. At the same time, all the Spigot plugin developers get their plugins updated and compatible with 1.19. Some do this, some don’t.
6. We have to wait until at least our major plugins work before doing anything. Otherwise it causes major headaches for John.
7. Once the required plugins are sorted, then John can update the server. The whitelist gets shortened for this step, so only John can access the server. Don’t worry, you’ll see a message appear before this happens, and you’ll be warned well in advance. There’s a lot of restarts in this stage, and even more testing.
8. So the server is updated! Hooray! Let’s play! Hold on. Not yet. John will then expand the 1.18 Survival world so we have more land to explore, which will include the new goodies.
9. The world gets a preload – John tells the server to explore! Normally, players exploring new territory do this, but it takes a while, and it’s a huge load on the server, so it’s much better for performance to do it first.
10. Once that’s done, there’s a little bit more testing, before the whitelist goes back to normal.

In amongst all that is a lot of testing, long hours and responding to the relentless excitement from players asking when it will be ready! Please go easy on us. We’re excited to play on 118Survival (soon to be renamed 119Survival as much as you all do. It just takes a LOT of time and a LOT of work to get there.

Once we’re good to go, an announcement will appear on this site. There will also be regular updates in Discord, so if you want to be up to speed, get in touch with the community there.

It’s that time again! We’d love to know what you think about LibraryCraft! In order for us to make this server the best it can be, and to get some information for the 2021/22 Annual Report, we’re asking for your input.

There are two separate surveys:
– Players Survey: https://culturecounts.cc/s/2PpPcP
– Parents Survey: https://culturecounts.cc/s/4UKsVY

It’s important that we also get thoughts from the parents, as they’re a crucial part of getting onto the server to start with.

We’re also offering an incentive to give us your thoughts in the Players Survey!

Two player entries will be randomly selected to receive a $50 JB HiFi Voucher each. Entries are able to be received from now until 17 June 2022.

The information we receive is valuable to us as it can help us improve the server and the programs that happen in and around it, as well as seeing how important it is in the community.