Hey everyone! It’s been a while since an update here. I’m amazed and surprised at how good the response was to our second map of Prison. Despite some economy screwups on my part (whoops) which made the map much faster paced than anticipated, it has been incredible to see so many people come on and enjoy the server. We have been hard at work with a follow up to our first Skyblock map, taking lots of feedback into mind.

Justifications for our changes

For this map, instead of bringing half-baked features which are impressive in concept but fall through in execution, we went back to the drawing board and worked to consider how we can polish and improve the core skyblock experience. In doing so, we have reworked many of our features, removed some of the inconsistent features which we believe were detrimental to the Skyblock experience, and added some new mechanics which should help to improve the overall feel.

In general, our goal was to create a modern version of Skyblock which incorporates the best-loved parts of Skyblock from the past few years. We are going for a nostalgic feel while working to use our attention-to-detail to improve every aspect of that nostalgic feel and bring it into 2020.

Additions and reworked features

First, I will cover some of the new features and reworked parts of this reset.

Minions

We are adding Minions to skyblock! These task-doers are good at one thing and one thing only: constantly chipping off ores from the enchanted ore block in front of them. Their powers allow them to collected enchanted ores from the block that is always in front of them. The minions I have on my island. They are different types (the left 2 are lapis minions, while the right 2 are gold minions).The lapis minion with the diamond crown is maxed out, while the rest are the first level. When minions collect ores, they go into their virtual chest. **You can collect the items from their virtual chest by right-clicking the minion then clicking on the chest. Make sure to collect these often! They will clear on every reboot. The virtual chest of my maxed Lapis minion. Unlike The ores mined by Minions are worth more than regular ores. Minions can be **upgraded with “Minion Scrolls”. These scrolls are obtained from /transfer, the Daily Quests shop, and crate keys. Upgrades make the minions mine faster, mine more blocks, and add fortune. The upgrades come in 5 tiers (Common through Mythical).

Daily Quests

The daily quests menu. Here, I have completed one of my quests. I have 3 more available to complete. There are 2 extra quests here that would be unlocked if I had a higher rank. We are adding Daily Quests as well! These are an interesting mechanic where you can receive 3+ quests which you can complete every day. For every quest you complete, you receive a varying amount of Quest Tokens. You can save these tokens up and spend them in the Daily Quest Shop for different varying rewards. One of my quests. As you can see, I have 5 hours left to break 500 emerald blocks. I better get to work… Every person gets 3 quests a day by default. Depending on your donator rank, you can unlock the other 3 slots (Every other rank unlocks another quest, so for example, Recruit and up gets 1 extra quest, Guard and up gets 2 extra quests, and Zeus gets 3 extra quests).

Lottery

We have also added a lottery feature to Skyblock. The lottery draws every 45 minutes. To enter, you buy tickets for $25,000 each (for a maximum of 400 tickets per lottery draw). When the lottery draws, a wheel spins on your screen and whoever wins gets the grand prize (after a 10% tax)! Here, I happen to be very lucky (just kidding, I bought way more tickets than everyone else).

GKits

We have added randomized GKits to Skyblock! You can win them from crates, buy them in /transfer, or unlock them from our store. Each GKit has its own purpose with randomized custom enchants, custom items, and more!

Pets

We are also introducing **inventory pets. **These pets have unique abilities and can be leveled up through grinding an action related to them. Each pet has its own buff and purpose, so make sure to collection them all: boosters in EXP, money, mobcoins, and more!

Skills rework: Better fishing, no farming and mining.

We have decided to rework the purpose of skills. Instead of being the central focus of the economy, we have decided to rework skills to be a way of receiving bonuses and rare items.

Fishing Rework

Fishing has been redone from the ground up. We have replaced the floating reel with an updated version of the old one from CaribbeanMC (which pops up in the middle of the screen). The new guide for how fishing works. Instead of each color receiving a different type of fish, we have changed it so you either receive seaweed or fish. However, you won’t be fishing for the fish: you will be fishing for the rare loot!

Every time you reel in a fish, there is a chance of processing a rare reward. This chance increases as you get closer to the center of the reel, with each color closer to yellow making it easier.

What are the rewards, you ask? It depends on your fishing skill level! As you level up, every couple levels change what rewards are possible for you to obtain. At the start, you can get some stuff to help you as a beginner, while the top levels contain exclusive items and rewards!

New Shop System

One of our primary goals for this reset is improving the general player experience. As a part of this, we are introducing a freshly-rewritten shop system! This shop system is designed to be easier and quicker to use, navigate, and understand! Above is an example of what it’s like to sell and buy with the shop system. The primary change here is it is now much faster to sell items. It is also easier and faster to buy items because, instead of having to enter in an amount and click accept, you just click however many you wish to buy. You can quickly buy stacks and stacks of items. You can also click on the “Bulk Buy” sign and enter in an exact amount you wish to buy (More than 1, automagically capped at how many you can fit in your inventory).

Searching!

In addition to being faster to navigate and buy/sell, there is also a revolutionary search system built into shop! Here are examples of some of the things you can use in a search query:

  • A category name (like blocks, spawners, etc)
  • A name/type of an item (e.g wood, stone, bricks, sandstone, etc)
  • Search for a mob name to get its spawner and any of its drops: e.g searching with /shop iron golem will bring up an IG spawner, iron ingots, and all of the upgraded drops (gold ingot, diamond, emerald).

Here is a GIF of that search system in action:

Battle Pass Revamp

We have reworked our Battle Pass significantly, making challenges more interesting and “worth it”. There are now a total of 66 challenges you can partake in! There are new challenge types as well which add new dynamics to gameplay. An example of one of the new challenge goals: opening envoys in PvP! There are several new challenge types which are very interesting…

Removals

In order to make everyone’s Skyblock experience better, we have removed a few features present last map. Here is a list of those removals and a justification for each:

  • Mob Mines: Based on community feedback, we have come to realize this feature is difficult to integrate into a classic skyblock experience.
  • Player Upgrades: We believe these were underutilized and confusing to new players, so we have removed them.
  • Elixir: See Player Upgrades.
  • Skills Economy: Based on feedback, we believe that a classic skyblock economy is more enjoyable and fun long-term.
  • Mining Skill: We removed the mining skill in accordance with the removal of the mob mine (see below).
  • Farming Skill: We removed the farming skill because we decided to make farming a better beginning economy rather than another way to receive rare items.

Our new spawn!

Of course we were going to show it off… we just wanted to put the important stuff first. Here are some pictures of our new spawn:

Some cool images of our spawn. It’s my favorite yet.

Our new /warp pvp build!

And we also built a new PvP map. This one is designed specifically to be fun for PvP, KOTH capping, and boss fighting!

Full Changelog

  • The entire stack of mobs is now killed instead of just one off of the stack.
  • Removed Quick Access
  • Removed Player Upgrades and Elixir
  • Removed farming/mining skills
  • Removed the mob mine
  • Fixed the Ghast mob armor health boost effect being buggy.
  • Reworked mob armor to not need mob mine boosts
  • Recoded mob stacking, spawner stacking, spawner upgrades, and item stacking
  • Reverted to our older custom skyblock system (the one used on Caribbean).
  • Trimmed down scoreboard
  • Replaced bossbar sale notification with a compass
  • Recoded shop
  • Removed the need to specify /sell hand vs /sell all: you will automatically use /sell all if you have a donator rank, otherwise sell hand by default. You can still manually specify /sell hand if you really want to for some reason…
  • Removed the sell menu: now, instead of middle clicking to sell all, you just right click to sell any of an item in your inventory. This should help users who play on a laptop.
  • Fixed KOTH key vouchers
  • Improved connection handling
  • Optimized redstone
  • Improved battle pass challenges
  • Custom enchantments now use levels instead of EXP: this should make it easier to tell when you are able to buy CEs since you can just look at your hotbar.
  • Added a /warp tutorial with holograms explaining the server
  • Added a board at spawn with signs explaining common island commands
  • Added minions (see above for details)
  • Recoded Sell Wands
  • The spot above your EXP bar, which previously showed your character upgrades, now shows your balance as well as a special status indicator if you are wearing a full set of mob armor.
  • Added searching to shop: you can search by block name, spawner name, etc with /shop (ex. /shop blocks, /shop stone, /shop creeper, etc). Notably, searching for mobs will bring up their spawner as well as their drop (e.g searching /shop witch will bring up the witch spawner AND slimeball)
  • Added leaderboards at spawn
  • Reworked fishing skill.
  • Reworked all crate keys.
  • Added lottery.
  • Reworked coinflip.
  • Added information for each spawner in /shop spawners of what each spawner drops and its upgrades.
  • Reworked island top: blocks no longer count for /is top. Spawners are now the only source of island worth. Spawner upgrades also count for their worth.
  • Added daily quests.
  • Squids now spawn at any Y level in water.
  • Improved bulk buy in shop. When you click bulk buy, you can enter in an amount of exactly how many you wish to buy.
  • Hostile spawner mobs now spawn at day as well as night.
  • Spawner mobs can no longer catch fire (but still take damage from lava).
  • Reworked fishing skill rewards.
  • Reworked custom enchants.