Java or Bedrock edition?

 

Java.

 

Can't afford one yet.

 

Have I got a story for you.

For the last week-ish we've been having an issue with griefing and stealing. Not exactly something terribly dramatic, not like entire chests full of stuff were disappearing, but enough that it's making the game unpleasant for people, not knowing when/if things will escalate to blowing shit up with TNT. So far it's been things like maybe an old iron sword with Sharpness II is gone, or a few blocks from your build taken out in such a way that you wouldn't notice at first, but too deliberate to be aftermath of a creeper boom.

Then this weird thing popped up: someone left a messge that something is at X:12 000 Z: 12 000. Server spawn point is like 30 blocks from 0,0 so 12k 12k is a bit of a trip.

I flew there today by elytra and found an apparent gift box set up by whichever cheeky bastard expected people to travel thousands of blocks just to satisfy one's own curiosity. In the box were several identical sets of pimped out items. A set consisted of:

diamond pickaxe (mending, unbr III, silk touch, eff V)
diamond sword (mending, unbr III, fire aspect II, sharpness V, looting III, knockback II)
diamond shovel (unb III, mending, silk touch)
elytra (unbr III, mending)
empty white shulker box
full stack of diamond blocks (btw, 64 x 9 = 576 diamonds; even with fortune III and perfect 4 piece drops every single time, that's still almost 150 diamond ore)

Honestly, my first thought was: ok, server admin is having a bit of cheeky fun, set up this stupid far away spot, created some badass gear and loot in creative mode and just left it there for folks to find and enjoy if they decide to make the journey. Before me today, apparently only one other player has traveled there. Today I went and informed another player, who then also made the trip. We were giddy as fuck and returned to spawn.

Me and this other player (let's call him Red so I don't have to play the pronoun game) are just fucking around at spawn, talking on voice chat about the recent griefing/stealing incidents (3 of his shulker boxed were stolen, which you know, shulker boxes are valuable as fuck). Half-laughing, we decided to look into "suspects".

And motherfucker.

So we're fighting some drowned in the river at spawn and just then I notice a not-random hole in the river bed, with an apparent water stream. I swim closer--it's a tunnel. The opening is one block tall and flooded, you can through it in the swimming animation. So we swim through.

It's a secret stash.

A very deliberately and cleverly hidden secret stash. If we hadn't been randomly fighting drowned in that spot of the river, we wouldn't have found it.

So naturally, we jump to the assumption that, holy shit, this is where the thief is hiding his loot. We look through: most of the stuff there would raise eyebrows on a new server (lots of wood logs, lots of prismarine) but we have a very well functioning guardian farm, so lots of prismarine isn't really evidence of anything but that someone spent quite a bit of time at the farm.

We found 6 shulker boxes in the Secret Stash, all of them red and white--important bit for later.

In one of the white shulkers we hit the motherload: 6 diamond swords, 5 diamond picks, 6 tridents. All the swords have the all the same enchantments as the sword I found in the 12k 12k gift box. For the sword, all 6 possible enchantments, all higest level--and all in the same identical order. The sword corresponds exactly to the one I found at 12k 12k.

Diamond picks: all mending, unbr III, eff V, fortune III, all enchantments in the same order top to bottom (statistically all but fucking impossible if you were using enchanted books). Same for tridents. And know this: you can find diamond swords/picks/shovels enchanted with mending in End cities. Nowhere in the game can you find tridents with mending. Tridents have to be enchanted. So all told, that's 17 mending enchantments sitting in that shulker box.

I message the server admin on discord: hey dude, we found your secret creative mode stash that you used to set up 12k 12k, gg, cool mystery to solve.

I go back to the game. About an hour later, message from admin: that's not mine, watchu talkin' bout Willis?

wait wat

Red and I rush back there and among all the loot we find a clue: one of the shulker boxes is full of concrete. Specifically, white, black, gray and light gray concrete.

So on July 23rd, a new player had joined the server. Let's call him Yellow. On July 24th, Yellow posts a screenshot of a fuckhuge building he's designing in creative mode which he wants to build on the server,made all out of prismarine, including lots of dark prismarine, which means hunting a lots of squid for the ink, considering that one inksac makes one dark prism block, and a squid drops about 5 inksacs if you have a looting III sword and get lucky.

July 25th, Yellow builds a piston shop at spawn. Notice that he has been on the server for all of two days. He's already selling pistons? The shop building itself is a megablock piston, the construction of which had made use of generous quantities of white, black, gray, and light gray concrete--same concrete colors we found in the Secret Stash.

After building the shop, Yellow left some of his stuff out in front of the building, which I helpfully moved inside for his. The suff he left at the shop was contained in several white and red shulker boxes. Only white and red. The same shulker colors we found inside the Secret Stash. No one else on the server uses mostly or exclusively red and white shulkers. Plus, two days on the server and shulker boxes already? A big chunk of the End islands around the portal have already been raided, Yellow would have had to gone out pretty far to find an unlooted End city.

Tbh Red and I only just looked at the timeline of events today. This should have been suspicious from the start.

One more thing happened on July 25th. A new player joined (let's call him Purple), with a very characteristic name which I recognized because earlier on the 25th I wrote that fucker on Reddit that recruitment for the server is closed, k thx bye, and a few hours later he shows up, even though I didn't send him an invite link. How in the fuck?

Apparently, as confirmed by the server admin (I'm guessing they exchanged messages), Yellow and Purple are cousins, and Yellow, the cunt, invited Purple without asking for permission to distribute the invite link he had received from me.

By now Red and I are tingly with suspicion and theories, so we race to check out Purple's house. Purple has started building a simple house, literally entirely made of oak wood. And I do mean literally. The thing doesn't even have a roof.

But Purple set up a wood shop at spawn, where he sells all 6 varieties of wood, by stacks of logs. He has chests upon chests of all this wood, meanwhile his house doesn't have a roof.

Oh btw, Purple, as it turns out, also possesses 11 shulker boxes, all red and white. He also has an enchanted trident: unbr III, mending, loyalty, impaling V. Highest levels of all best possible trident enchantments. This trident is perfectly identical, down to the top-down order of enchantements applied to the tridents found in the Secret Stash.

So let's summarize.

Yellow and Purple are cousins (apparently)

Yellow and Purple are recent arrivals to the server.

Yellow and Purple had a burst of activity early on, but haven't been online (according to themselves) in a few days.

When the stealing/griefing issues first came up, Yellow and Purple were each other's alibi.

Yellow and Purple both have lots of shulker boxes. Imo, too many shulkers for their estimated play time.

Yellow and Purple use exclusively red and white shulkers. No one else on the server does this (I fucking checked).

Multuple identical enchanted tridents, swords, pickaxes were found in the Secret Stash by the river.

The Secret Stash contained the same kind of materials that have been used to build Yellow's piston shop.

Purple has a trident identical to the ones found in the Secret Stash.

Admin denies that this was him. Admin is the only person with command powers on the server, so only he can change his game mode to creative.

It is improbable that all this enchanted gear was acquired legitimately. Possible in the extremely long run, but very, very, very unlikely.

The pickaxes found in the Secret Stash all have the same name (items can be renamed using an anvil).

Now, the griefer/thief and what I described above are not necessarily connected. They could be unrelated. But let's examine what is known, and one conclusion seems likelier than all others.

Yellow and Purple are filthy filthy cheaters. They somehow got hold of commands (and this is a Microsoft hosted Realm server) and straight up creative mode'd all that gear and diamonds (one stack of diamond blocks is 576 diamonds) and shulker boxes and set up the spot at 12k 12k to give some of it away.

Yellow and Purple found some sort of duplication glitch (I'm less inclined to believe this because they would have had to have something to duplicate in the first place, so they would have needed at least one copy of each OP enchanted tool and weapon).

Either way, seems to me, Yellow and Purple aren't playing vanilla survival.

But the possibly worst part of this? Server admin has a "can't be fucked to look at screenshots" attitude about all this and has told me to "get solid proof" and "know for sure" because he won't kick anyone from the server "without evidence".

I.E. server admin is being a bit of a pussy.

Oh well. More proof, eh?

So I packed all enchanted tools and weapons from the Secret Stash into a shulker box and fuckin' stole it. I've hidden it somewhere you wouldn't randomly find it, well out of the way.

Now we carry on as if nothing happened and wait to see what, if anything, Yellow and Purple do.

I'm hoping they're just fucking dumb kids and for some fucking reason don't understand that we don't want cheaters on the server, but something tells me Yellow and Purple are old enough that they know exactly what they're doing and server admin will step up and get rid of them.

 

@Zombie thanks for the heads up, I'll mention that to our admin

 

Scott's on a server working on his third prestige, here I am just playing pacifist-vegan-hardcore mode. I died due to a tragically misunderstood skeleton and a creeper that we enabled with our own imperialism.

 

Have a thing

 

Survival. Building in creative doesn't give me the same sense of achievement.

 

Day one of pacifist vegan hardcore(round 2), spotted a village in the distance, but I'm not going there. Trading with them for leather is just as bad as killing the animals myself.

I planted six plots of grass seeds, minimizing my impact on the ecosystems of the water's edge.

Shortly after spawning I discovered this, which must be a prison the villagers designed to contain the underrepresented minorities. Disgusting, really, but I'll give them a small amount of credit for not killing them.

I managed to find some iron in a mine, so as soon as it's light again, I can collect wool from the sheep in an ethically responsible manner.

 

Day three or so of pacifist vegan hardcore (round two) I got to meet my neighbors! I'm so excited to be living in a diverse community. I plan to go to the aforementioned village to trade seeds, shall post update.

I have no words.
For those of you who can't tell because of the intersection of their bodies this is a pair of bovines in a 2x1x1 container of trapdoors, barely enough space for one. If they, humanity forbid, have any intention of breeding the poor dears in there, I'll have to pen a sternly worded letter made out of ethically sourced materials (acacia signs).

One of my neighbors is under a tree this morning, and it's because of the light that endangers him, and I just can't believe the apathetic response of the villagers. We have to end sun violence.

I managed to armor myself a little more in case of a pillager raid, though we have to remember that all illagers are tacitly supporting pillagers by not calling out their fellow illagers as being pillagers. I couldn't help but notice the animals, walking around all free and happy in the field. I might have to make some changes to ensure their safety.

A tragic thing happened today. The sun claimed the life of one of my neighbors. I'm still in shock. My bereavement process will begin soon.

I invited both illagers and my neighbors to the celebration of the life of the skeleton who lost his life today. His possessions are interred in a simple chest, and I'll be putting path over it in a moment.

This is what my environmentally friendly residence looks like from the outside. I'm happy to say that I've replanted every tree that I've ever used for wood.

One of my neighbors regrettably perished after hitting me with a few arrows, likely mistaking me for a pillager. It's understandable. I'll be holding another funeral service, and it's sad to me that the villagers are so desensitized to this already. I invited them anyway.

Here are the completed graves. I'm crying as I type this, but no illagers showed up at the service. I just can't believe their callousness.
--- Post automerged ---

I reached the file limit, so here's the last two images. I found a mineshaft that my neighbors created, and I was careful to explore without destroying anything they built, or accidentally appropriating their culture. I'm going to have to show the villagers what I found down here, because it's proof that they weren't the ones who invented farming.

Here is where my journey ends. A good friend of mine, one whom the illagers enabled due to their imperialism, committed suicide in my close proximity. I won't be around to conduct a funeral service this time, so I expect that absolutely no one will celebrate the unique and interesting life of this victim of depression.

 

Started a new server, mod pack is Engimatica 2 here is ip

Spoiler: Don't make it so easy.

51.79.44.223:25595

 

xisumavoid summarizes 1.15 and 1.16 news from Minecon live

 

I haven't seen anyone talking about it yet: Minecraft earth! I'm pretty hype for this one. Can't try the beta yet as my phone isn't supported yet but I really can't wait to try it. Anyone else excited?



We've already seen actual working real life pressure plates from sethbling.

 

Kind of. I might get back into Minecraft, if I'm lucky it'll break my War Thunder addiction.

 

I don't know. Those AR games don't appeal to me. Maybe there just hasn't been the right game yet. I'm more intrigued by Minecraft Dungeons. Looks like Minecraft Diablo, basically. My current laptop won't run it, but when I upgrade I might try that one.

 

Update time. Old view of the base:

Spoiler

Current:

Spoiler

The main building, which I've dubbed The Hangar, has undergone a pretty extensive remodel. New front facade:

Spoiler

The back:

Spoiler

I tore out much of the interior and rebuilt it.

Old interior:

Spoiler

New interior, same angle:

Spoiler

Imgur album with lots more pictures: https://imgur.com/a/0qQ6e5r