New things and future plans.

Posted on January 26, 2022 by TheClowner

With the 1.18 update largely out of the way now, we feel it’s time to share some of our plans for the future of ClownerCraft, and announce some of the things which we’ll be working on over the next few months.

First of all, however, is a reminder that our old Survival worlds will close on Thursday, February 3rd – so if you have an unfinished rank build there, you might want to get on that. Equally, if you plan to download the world(s) – please remember to note down the coordinates of places you want to visit now!

We will be publishing the world download a few days after closing the worlds. They will be fairly large (around the 10GB mark for each of Vanilla, Custom and Nether).

Survival
We’ve got a whole list of things we want to add and tweak in survival, primarily focusing on QoL improvements, as well as resolving a number of long standing issues.

These improvements will be split into several small updates, the first of which should be in the next few weeks, which will include:
– Craftable (and survival friendly) Light and Barrier blocks
– Extra bee hive information
– Re-balanced server shop pricing

I’d also like to note that the command and cosmetics shops are now considered part of this QoL update, and will be a later addition. Apologies for the delay.

SniperTownBlitz
We will soon be launching STBlitz: an explosive, fast-paced variant of our SniperTown minigame. That’s about all I’ll say about Zer0’s debut as a plugin developer.

Once launched, STBlitz will (for now) entirely replace SniperTown on the network, while we work on redeveloping the original game.

We’ll be hosting a Community Night to play the new version to help play-test, so keep an eye out on discord!

Other
As always, we have a whole host of things already planned to work on once these projects wrap up, including a QoL update for Creative, Redeveloping Gladiator as well as expansions to Carnival with some new themed areas.

We do always appreciate suggestions, and while they may take some time to implement – please do share your ideas and feedback in #suggestions-feedback on discord.


1.18 Protocol / Client Support

Posted on December 5, 2021 by TheClowner

I am happy to announce that the ClownerCraft Network now supports Minecraft client versions 1.8.8 through 1.18.
We’d still recommend using 1.17.1 for the best experience, as this is what our sandbox servers run on.
You can however now join the server with the new 1.18 client, just remember that any new gameplay features will not be available. 

We still have no ETA on the full 1.18 update, thanks for your patience.
~Clowner


Survival Reset: Item Transfers Open!

Posted on November 30, 2021 by TheClowner

We've got our Item Transfer system up and running, so you can start preparing your items to transfer over to the new worlds. Instructions are below.

A few quick reminders and other announcements:

  • Your inventory will not carry over to the new worlds. Only items put into your transfer chests.
  • If you want to take items to the new worlds, this must be before the rest. You will not be able to afterwards.
  • The reset will be no earlier than January 1st. 
    • Creative and PureSurvival may update sooner, but it all depends how stable 1.18 and plugins are.
  • From today, you can now buy up to 500 tokens in total from the token exchange. /warp bank

Spawners

Spawners that have been recently bought in Survival with tokens can be 'sold back' for 75 Tokens each.

Spawners will either need to be:

  • In item form (ie. in a chest)
  • Placed by you in the world within the last 3 months

These restrictions are to ensure we can verify the spawner belongs to you, and was bought with tokens.

To claim your spawners back, either place the items in a chest, or stand near the spawner and run /report spawner buy-back
A member of staff will check the spawner meets the restrictions above, and then remove it and award your tokens.

Using the item transfer system

In order to take items to the new worlds, you'll need to place them in the chests provided on your 'transfer island'.
Head to /warp transfer and walk through the portal to go to your own island containing your chests.

Note: Any alt accounts you have will be taken to the same island as your main account.

You'll find three unlocked double chests there, which you can place your items into.
If you add any of the banned or restricted items, you will be notified when closing the chest.

If you wish to downgrade your rank, simple head to your transfer island (ie. walk through the portal at /warp transfer),
then use /report de-rank or /report de-rank [new rank].
A member of staff will drop your survival rank either one or two steps down the chain, and unlock the additional chests for you. You can only get a total of two additional double chests, even if you drop more ranks.

If you have contest trophies you wish to transfer speak to a member of staff; or head to your transfer island,
place them in the top chest and do /report contest trophies.
A member of staff will then move them into a different location to transfer.

You only have until the new worlds launch to prepare your item transfer chests. 
This will be no earlier than January 1st 2022.

Please see clownercraft.net/caves#item-transfer for the full list of restricted blocks/items.


1.18 Update – Banned and Limited Items

Posted on November 26, 2021 by TheClowner

We've now got together the full list of banned and limited items for transferring to Survival's new worlds.
If you haven't read the original 1.18 update post - go do that. There's a lot of stuff happening in the near future.

One quick reminder before we get into the items: We will not be able to update immediately. It can take quite a while for many of the tools and plugins we rely on to update. So even though the vanilla update will be out next week - we will not be able to update for a while. Thanks for your patience.

The item transfer system

By default, you can take up to 3 double chests of items, but you can get up to two extra double chests by voluntarily downgrading your rank:
Go down one rank gets an extra double chest (4 total)
Go down two ranks to get two extra double chests (5 total)

Contest trophies can be transferred by out staff without taking up a slot - and are exempt from the item restrictions below.

Below is a list of the banned and restricted items.
You also cannot take any over-stacked items (ie. items that shouldn't be stackable shouldn't be stacked in your transfer chests).
When adding items to your transfer chests you'll be notified if anything will not be permitted.
Any items over the limits will be removed when the worlds reset.

The item transfer system will open up soon™
We'll post instructions on what to do here once it's ready.

Banned Items

You will not be able to take any of these into the new worlds.
Any of these items in your transfer chests will be removed.
Ores include deepslate and nether variants where applicable.

Filled Map

Enchanting Table

Enchanted Book

Shulker Shell

Dyed Shulker Box

Mob Spawners

Spawn Egg

End Crystal

Wither Skeleton Skull

Heart of the Sea

Budding Amethyst

Coal Ore

Coal Block

Iron Ore

Raw Iron

Iron Nugget

Iron Block

Gold Ore

but not gilded blackstone.

Gold Nugget

Raw Gold

Gold Block

Lapis Ore

Lapis Block

Redstone Ore

Redstone Block

Diamond Ore

Diamond Block

Emerald Ore

Emerald Block

Ancient Debris

Netherite Scrap

Netherite Block

Barrier

Bedrock

Wet Sponge

Elytra

Nether Star

Limited Items

You can only take a certain amount of these items.
Any items over the maximum listed below, across all of your transfer chests, will be removed.

Shulker Box

Max: Just one
The box must be empty, and not dyed.
All NBT data will be removed. (ie. name, lore)

Name Tag

Max: 4 Stacks

Sponge

Max: 9 Stacks

Observer

Max: 9 Stacks

Hopper

Max: 9 Stacks

Obsidian

Max: 4 Stacks

Ghast Tear

Max: 2 Stacks

Ender Chest

Max: 4 Items

Beacon

Max: Just one

Conduit

Max: Just one

Anvil

Max: 9 Stacks

Netherite Ingot

Max: 5 Items

Diamond

Max: 10 Items

Emerald

Max: 32 Items

Gold Ingot

Max: 64 Items

Iron Ingot

Max: 64 Items

Wither Rose

Max: 2 Stacks


Minecraft 1.18 Update – Our Plans

Posted on November 13, 2021 by TheClowner

TL;DR

  • This is a big update, I’d really urge you to read the update in full as we go into detail about the reasoning behind most of these decisions. 
  • We can’t give an exact ETA for the update – Currently we’re expecting mid January, but this could change.
  • Tokens will not reset, but will be capped to 1000 tokens per player. 
  • Survival will have a full world reset. For both the building and explore worlds.
    • Unlike previous resets there will be limits on what you can take into the new worlds. 
    • There will be at least a 1-month crossover where the old worlds will still be accessible to finish off rank builds.
    • The world will be made available for download after the crossover time ends.
  • Survival’s economy will also be reset. 
    • There will be some new ways to earn and spend money.
    • We’ve added more variation to player shop sizes.
  • Ranks (both building and purchased) will be kept after the update. 
  • Creative will see an added ‘vanilla-caves’ freebuild world.
  • PureSurvival will have a full world reset, as with most major updates.
    • These worlds will be made available for download after the update.
  • As we work on some of the new additions, we will be sharing progress in #update-progress. You can discuss the plans in #update-discussion.

          ClownerCraft’s 1.18 Plans

          It’s that time of year again where Mojang have given us some lovely pre-releases of the next update, and we have plans to share about how ClownerCraft will change to bring in the new content. 

          1.18 (or what would have been 1.17 before it being split into two) is one of the biggest updates we’ve seen in a while, and as such we’ve planned some significant changes to the server. 

          We know many of you may be frustrated with the decisions we’ve made, so we will try to be as transparent as possible about the reasoning behind them. This has been in the works for quite some time, but we’ve held off announcing things until the update was more final, since Mojang already messed up our plans by splitting caves and cliffs before 1.17 was released. We’ll try to answer any questions you have as best we can on discord. 

          General

          As with every Minecraft update, we cannot give an exact ETA for when the server will update. This is because we rely on many third-party projects to make things work, and we will need to wait for most of these to be updated. Plus there’s the fact that we don’t even have a release date for 1.18 itself yet. We’re currently expecting our update to fall somewhere in Mid-January, but this is subject to change.

          Tokens

          We will not be resetting tokens, however we are capping token balances to 1000 tokens. If you have over that amount at the time of the reset, your balance will be set to 1000, and we will be adding you to a new Token Hall of Fame – so at least you get some bragging rights out of all those tokens. This cap will only be applied at the time of the update – so you can earn more tokens afterwards as normal.

          Spawners that have been recently bought in Survival with tokens can be ‘sold back’ for 75 Tokens each. Details of how to claim this will be announced when we open up the item transfers.
          Spawners will either need to be:

          • In item form (ie. in a chest) 
          • Placed by you in the world within the last 3 months
            These restrictions are to ensure we can verify the spawner belongs to you, and was bought with tokens

          Survival

          Survival will see the most major change of all our sandbox servers – with a full world reset, economy reset as well as some other additions.

          World Reset

          Survival will have brand new Vanilla, Custom, Nether and End building worlds. 

          We will be adding a new Building-End, which will not be reset like the explore world. 

          The new worlds will be generated to ±5000 blocks (except custom, which will be ±7500), but will open with a smaller border (around ±3000) to ensure there’s plenty of land free for the future. This will expand over time. We are generating these smaller than the current worlds to give us the option to generate new chunks for 1.19, if needed. 

          The custom world is currently in the process of being rebuilt and improved. We will be fixing the persistent leaves, and cleaning up a lot of biomes as well as adding some new ones. 

          Our current worlds date back to 1.13, and have been extensively built in. Worlds cannot last forever and we’d rather tie a reset into an update that changes the world generation in a major way. 

          Crossover time

          The current worlds will stay available for at-least 1 month after the reset, although item transfer will no longer be possible. This is to allow you time to finish off any rank builds before the worlds are removed.

          After this time the worlds will be made available to download.

          Please note that you will need to transfer your items before the reset, as this will not be possible within the crossover time.

          Item Transfer

          Unlike previous resets, we won’t be allowing you to take all your items with them. You will be able to transfer a limited number of items to the new worlds. By default this will be three double chests worth of stacks.

          However, by downgrading your rank you can get an extra double chest. This will be capped at 2 double chests. ie. if you are diamond, you could get 2 double chests by voluntarily dropping back to stone. You can then of course build new rank builds in the new worlds (with those extra items you took with you).

          You will be able to transfer up to three double chests of items to the new world, however some high value items will not be permitted or have a limited quantity:

          • Beacons, Wither skulls, Stars
          • All ores with ingots and blocks variants
          • Shulkers (All color variants)
          • Shulker Shells
          • Elytras
          • Enchanting Table
          • Conduit / Heart of the Sea
          • Budding Amethyst
          • End Crystal
          • Enchanted Books, Anvils
          • Mob Spawners, Spawn Eggs

          A full list of restrictions on items will be published by Sat 27th November.

          Contest trophy items will be exempt from these restrictions, and can be transferred separately by staff. 

          Instructions for how to transfer items will follow once the system is set up for this. We’ll make sure there’s at least a month for you to be able to do this. 

          The intention behind these restrictions is to help level the playing field between longer-term and new players. Previous economy setups, and other server features had made many items extremely easy to gather in large quantities, which isn’t as easy now. So we’re trying to take away the unfair advantage from these times. This should also help reduce the abundance of resources and improve the balance of the economy, as well as driving more demand to buy and sell resources – both through auctions and rented shops.

          Economy & Player Shops

          Alongside the world reset we will also be resetting the economy. We’re hoping the new worlds will allow some more item scarcity to actually create a market for selling items. 

          Before the reset however, we will allow you to exchange your balance for tokens, $75 buying one token. This will be capped at 500 tokens. 

          The shopping area of spawn will also be redesigned, with more variation in shop sizes (and therefore rental costs). We’re hoping to encourage more small, specialist, shops to appear post-reset, focusing on a few items rather than everything like many of the shops do now. 

          We are also adding some new ways to earn money:

          • Build Money: You will be awarded a small amount of money for placing blocks.
          • Rank Bonus: When you pass a building rank you’ll receive a bonus payment. 
          • Rank ‘Money Kit’: You’ll be able to claim a small payment every so often. The value of this will increase with each rank.
          • Sell Shop: We’re expanding the server sell shop, with more items included in each rotation. 

          There’ll also be a few more ways to spend your money:

          • Bundles: A selection of random items for a price. These will function much like our old ‘TokenCrates’ for those who remember them.
          • Command Shop There will be an additional area where you can buy some cosmetic perks, as well as timed access to things like /fly. 

          We’re trying to ensure that you’re rewarded financially for spending time building, hopefully making it easier to build up money to spend on resources and other items. 

          Creative

          Creative will only see one major addition with the update: a new ‘Vanilla-Caves’ freebuild world, which will allow you to build in the new terrain. 

          Ranks, and all other worlds will stay as they are now. 

          PureSurvival

          PureSurvival’s worlds will be reset, as we do with most major updates.
          Pure’s old worlds will be made available to download.

          Discord

          We will be posting updates as we work on some of the new features on our discord server, within the #update-progress channel. 

          We will also open up an #update-discussion channel, so you can talk about the changes, and we’ll be happy to answer any queries you may have. 

           

          Thanks for making it to the end of the post. We hope many of you will be excited for these changes, because we have spent a lot of time planning and preparing for this. 
          ~Clowner and Team

          EDIT 27 Nov 21: Added details about Spawner buy backs, Increased the item transfer limit from 1 to 3 double chests, and added some other clarifications.


          Survival, Creative and PureSurvival now running on 1.17!

          Posted on July 5, 2021 by TheClowner

          Our Survival, Creative and PureSurvival servers have now been fully updated to 1.17.

          As a quick reminder of some of the changes introduced to allow access to the new content:

           

          Survival

          • Explore worlds have been reset, and have been generated in 1.17.
            • The worlds will start with a smaller world border of ±2.5k
            • The end has a border of ±1.5k, which will expand to ±2.5k over the next 7 days.
            • The borders will be expanded on 1st August, and 1st September. With the Explore worlds next due to reset on 1st October.
          • The server shop has been expanded
            • There’s a generally wider range of items available now, including some harder to obtain 1.17 blocks.
            • We’ve intentionally left out most of the new items to leave a market for player shops
          • We’ve added a small sell shop to the server shop:
            • There are 5 items you can sell, which will change every 2 weeks, to make a little extra cash.

           

          PureSurvival

          • The worlds have been expanded up to ±4
            • This means there is newly generated land beyond Approx ±3200 blocks, where you can find the new resources.

           

          Event servers and such will be updated at a later time. We look forward to seeing what you all create with the new blocks and items! 😀


          1.17 Update News: Weekend Downtime

          Posted on July 1, 2021 by TheClowner

          ClownerCraft will be updating sandbox servers to 1.17 this weekend!

          There will be some downtime for individual servers, but the network as a whole should stay online the whole time. We will be staggering the update over a few days so that you’ll still have something to play on while the other servers are down for the update. And of course, if all else fails – go join the firework contest 😛

          PureSurvival will be offline to update from 10am GMT // 5am EDT on Saturday 3rd July 
          Creative will be offline to update from 10am GMT // 5am EDT on Sunday 4th July
          Survival will be offline to update from 10am GMT // 5am EDT on Monday 5th July

          There are two features which we expect to be broken for a while after the update:
          Firework maker (/fwm) and /lay still need to be updated.

          If you missed the details of some of the changes we will be making with this update, you can read the plans here: https://clownercraft.net/2021/06/06/1-17-update-plans/


          1.17 Update Plans

          Posted on June 6, 2021 by TheClowner

          TL;DR We’ll update to 1.17 as soon as we can, probably a few weeks after it’s release. PureSurvival gets a worldborder expansion, Survival’s Explore worlds will reset and we’ll add some new shopping things to encourage player shops to sell the new items. 

          With 1.17 expected to release this coming Tuesday, it’s probably time we shared what our plans were to make sure you can access the new content on our network. I’d normally try to share these sorts of things as soon as the first pre release appears, but with Caves and Cliffs being split into two parts, we haven’t been able to finalise our plans quite as quickly this time around. 

          First though, the usual update disclaimer: We will update as soon as we can, but because of the way servers run, we have to wait for paper, plugins and various other things to be updated and stable. This can take several weeks after the update releases. As usual, we will aim to get 1.17 client support up and running within a few days of the update, but getting the server onto 1.17 to access the new content may take a little longer. We will share a more accurate ETA once we have one, but please be patient, and remember that our entire staff team are volunteering their time and often have other things which have to take priority. 

          Here’s the major changes we plan to implement to get access for the new content on our sandbox servers:

          Survival

          • Explore worlds will be reset.
            • There will be a fresh set of worlds, generated in 1.17, for you to gather and farm the new resources and blocks. 
            • Going forward, we will be changing the Explore World reset schedule to only reset every 3 months, with the world border expanding during the months in between. 
            • Biome warps for the explore nether will be added.
          • A new Sell Shop
            • We will be adding a small sell shop with a limited selection of items you can sell to earn some extra cash.
            • The items will be changed every 2 weeks. 
          • Shops & Economy
            • We wont be adding shops to buy most of the new items, to help encourage player shops to start selling the new blocks and resources. 
            • Some unobtainable items will be made available in the server shop and tokenshop.
          • Light blocks
            • We will try to add a crafting recipe for the light block, and make it survival friendly.
            • This may not be available immediately, but is in our plans. 

          Creative

          • Special blocks menu
            • We’ll be adding a menu that lets you get some of the special blocks which aren’t in the creative inventory. Including Barriers, Light Blocks and Command blocks. And possibly others. 

          PureSurvival

          • The world border for Pure will be expanded by 1000 blocks in each direction. Including the Nether and End.
          • /rtp will be expanded to the new borders. 
          • There will be some downtime to pre-generate the new terrain. 

          There is still potential for these plans to change, but that’s about everything we’ll be doing for this half of Caves and Cliffs. If you have ideas or feedback, please do share in #suggestions-feedback on our discord server!


          Voting changes

          Posted on March 8, 2021 by TheClowner

          Just a little update with some changes to voting, based on feedback from our survey:

          • We’ve now reduced the number of sites that give rewards to 6.
            You can still vote on the other sites, but rewards only come from the main 6.
            Our hope is that this makes voting regularly less frustrating.
          • Voting rewards have been increased, in line with the reduced sites:
            • 8 tokens and $40 per vote
            • Bonus rewards are now  10 (1 in 10) and 25 (1 in 50) tokens.

          Head on over to our voting page to go earn yourself some tokens and money!

           


          Survival Economy Changes

          Posted on February 1, 2021 by TheClowner

          TL;DR

          There’s a new shop plugin for player shops, use [shop] on the top line of a sign to create a shop, then shift+right click to manage the shop.
          Up to 15 tokens per day can now be exchanged for $30 each.
          Voting now gives $15 per vote
          There is now a /warp petz, where you can purchase some spawn eggs for $$ instead of tokens.

          Survial Economy Update – Feb 2021


          Today we finally get to announce some changes to our Survival server’s economy. We’ve been planning these for a while, although the feedback from the recent survey has shaped some of the changes, and we will continue to review your feedback for some of the future plans we have for Survival. This update features a few significant changes, most notably the new player shop plugim, but I’ll get to that later.

          Earning Money

          We’ve tried to balance out how money gets into the economy – and making it slightly easier to get hold of, particularly for new players.
          The main changes we’ve made here are:

          • You can now transfer up to 15 tokens into $$ every day at /warp bank
          • Tokens are now worth $30 each (instead of $50)
          • Voting now gives $15 directly per voting site, (instead of $10)
          • We’ve increased the default starting balance to $200, instead of $10

          Between voting and exchanging tokens you can now earn up to $660 per day, instead of $390.

          Spending Money

          We realise that aside from player shops, there isn’t a whole lot to spend your hard earned $ on, so we’re planning on launching two new shops, as well as revamping the existing server shop.

          Today we’re launching /warp petz where you can buy a selection of spawn eggs, either to get yourself a pet, or to change a spawner.

          In the future, we will be launching:

          • An updated server shop
            • With a larger range of resources available.
            • Some price changes to help give player shops a greater profit margin.
          • A perks shop
            • Selling packs of random heads, random blocks, and some special perks
            • We’re in need of more ideas for this shop however, so if you can think of something please do share with us on our discord server!

          Player Shops

          And probably the most major change today, is the introduction of ccShop for player shops!
          This is the new plugin I’ve been working on for a while, and I shall try to give you a rundown of the features below.

          The plugin is still in development, so it’s likely some areas may change dependant on your feedback,
          so if you encounter any issues, or want to request features, please let us know on discord!

          For those of you who already have player shops setup, we will be keeping the old ChestShop plugin for a short while, so you don’t need to rush to rebuild your shop just yet, you have about a month.

          The key features of this new plugin:

          • GUI-Based shopping experience for your customers
            • Much like our main server shop, your customers can choose a quantity directly when buying/selling
          • Supports any container block
            • Be that a chest, barrel, shulker or even a furnace, it will work.
          • Link up to 3 chests per shop (within 16 blocks)
          • Sell up to 5 items with a single sign
            • Each with their own price and other options.
          • Check shop stock, and manage them, remotely with /shop stockcheck and /shop manage
          • Customisable signs
            • You can set the sign to look however you wish, even with Colours!

          So, here’s a quick rundown of how to setup your shop:

          Place a sign with [shop] on the first line.
          You can leave it there and set everything else up by the GUI if you wish,
          or follow the format below:

          Line 1: [shop] *Required
          Line 2: Item name, or auto to select what is detected in the chest. Optional
          Line 3: Price per item. This can be changed in the GUI after. Optional
          Line 4: buy or sell, dependant if you want to have people buy from you, or sell to you. Optional

          You can then open the shop manager by right-clicking (or shift+right if directly on a chest) and change your shop options.
          Remember to set your shop as open!