Table of Contents
Player Count
Over the course of the first week, the server received 14 new players. Now you can tell from the graph that these people did not stay for too long. But I was impressed to see 14 people join a hardcore server, as I had anticipated only seeing 20 people in the course of a year. However, this could still be the case as the longer the march of time progresses, the more lost the server will become. For example, on minecraftservers.org, the server is on page 886/888. Already, a trend is showing that no new people have joined, and this will most likely continue if the server does not receive more advertising. Which I really have no intention of going out of my way for.
Of the 5 remaining alive players, with the exception of one, they all played for less than three minutes, so I do not believe they will be coming back. Two of them joined, tried to use cheats, and were disappointed when it did not work.
Player Deaths
The first week of the server has been more deadly than I had anticipated; out of the 14 new players, 9 have already died. So let’s take a look at some of the death stats:
During this opening week, an average death rate of 64% occurred. Of those who died, the average time to stay alive was 34 minutes, the longest someone survived was 1 hour, 22 minutes, and 50 seconds, and lastly, the shortest time someone lived was 31 seconds due to falling!
The top 3 ways players died were:
- Creeper 3x
- Zombie 2x
- Falling 2x
I think this is pretty expected with Creepers being responsible for the most deaths, seeing as they can 1-shot unsuspecting players even with full armor. I was a bit surprised about zombies taking second place for mobs, as I would have expected Skeletons to be taking a slot, but so far, only 1 person has died due to a Skeleton.
Discord Server
I actually did not expect anyone to join the Discord server, but I am glad to see Heavycrafter938 and another player joined the Discord server. You are more than welcome to join the Quartz World Discord if you have died, or even if you do not want to play hardcore and just want to pop in.
Bug Fixes
A couple of bugs in QuartzGuard made themselves known after going live. The first issue was that every player who joined the server would attempt to be added to the website instead of the new player once someone new joined. This has been fixed by explicitly checking that a new player is not already on the website.
@tasks.loop(seconds=120)
async def check_for_new_players(self):
with open(self.unique_players_file, "r", encoding="utf-8") as players:
unique_players = {line.strip() for line in players}
stat_files = os.listdir(self.stats_dir)
for stat in stat_files:
uuid = stat[:-5]
if uuid not in unique_players:
player = self._get_username(uuid)
self.logger.write("info", f"Found new player {player} | {uuid}")Another issue that someone discovered is that spectators can die and get posted to the Discord and website multiple times. I did not believe this to be possible, but spectators can die due to falling into the void. This has also been fixed, but with a more band-aid solution of ensuring the player who dies has not already been announced.
# Prevent duplicates due to spectator's falling through the void
if uuid not in str(compare_content):
player = json_string[uuid]["player"]
death_msg = json_string[uuid]["deathMessage"]
time_of_death = json_string[uuid]["time"]
Lastly, if a new player joins and dies within about 5 minutes of their first time joining, their obituary will fail to be added to the website as the server takes a few minutes to create a stats file when someone joins (unless they disconnect). This has not been fixed yet, mostly because I haven’t bothered to do so. Right now, it requires me to restart the Discord bot, and it will correct itself.
My Adventure
I am glad to announce that I am still alive on the server. I was worried about death, especially since I was online for about 5 players who died. My secret? I just play Minecraft slowly and always go to bed when night comes. For example, in my single-player world, I only died after 100 days, where I messed up a water bucket clutch during the Ender Dragon fight. All the time before that, I was just building a house, making a farm, and creating a villager hall. I do not really go into caves, and have only been into one cave on the server so far. Over the course of the last 5 hours of gameplay, I have seen one pillager crew and fewer than three mobs because I spent my time making a farm, building a house, and doing some light terraforming.
If you have ever seen the meme of a new player joining a server and walking far, that is me times a lot. In one server I played on, I once reached 500,000 blocks away from spawn, and this was after the owner changed the world border just for me, five different times (My server has the default 30 million blocks world border if you were curious). So after spawning in, I promptly went away 3,000 blocks. One, because I like the exploration, and two, I am scared of confrontation. I found a small village to set up in while I got the tools to use the Nether to travel even further. During this time, I also welcomed the first player to join the server, The_cthulhian.
There was a nearby portal ruins that I completed that was right next to a fortress, a big however, being that this portal was floating high up in the air above lava, and I did not trust it. So I left and made a new portal. But, if you are interested, check out x: 3494 z: -2386 for all the loot I left behind, and also, if you want to go check out the portal ruins for yourself. (The texture pack used is Ashen)
After spending an unspecified amount of time traveling in [redacted] direction, I popped back into the overworld to find a place to call home. I wanted to be near a village so I could get villager trading running, as well as, for the first time since playing this game, getting some totem of undying from a raid, as it would help immensely in a hardcore server. This took way longer than I expected to find a suitable place. I feel like I constantly find villages left and right in Minecraft, but during my travels, it took so long. I even got false hope and found an abandoned village, which has to be like way more rare. But luck was later on my side as I later found a double village right next to each other. Unrelated, but I also found a cool, large portal ruin next to a bamboo jungle.
After finding a village, I still wanted a cool spot to call my own, so I wandered around a bit more and found a small island close to land. I like building on islands, as I can spawn-proof the entire area without feeling like I have to cover an entire country’s worth of land with torches just to feel safe. Plus, my single-player world is on a large island, so I felt right at home. I spawned proofed the whole island and went about building a farm and making my house. Now, I will show you the house, but listen… I understand it is bad. I always build out of logs and planks, and wanted to spice things up, not to spend an eternity chopping down trees. So it’s made out of logs and cobblestone, with the second layer being made with stone bricks. I even tried making the roof look a bit more interesting with cobblestone and plank stairs, but I think it’s not the best. So I will eventually replace the walls with a better building material, or even get over it and make a new base eventually. I also spent a while doing some light terraforming as the island was made of grass, stone, and sand, all on the top layers. The stone is gone, but I am still in the process of removing the sand.
After a close call with a drowned using an enchanted trident, bringing me to below half health, I took a break and went to get fully covered in diamonds. While making a staircase down to an appropriate level to find diamonds, I found some skulk. Now I do not know if there is an ancient city there, but I have never seen a skulk or been to an ancient city. But I know what lives there, so after a noise that made me fear a warden annihilating me through the walls, I made another staircase somewhere else, where I managed to get myself decked out in full diamond armor and diamond tools. Also, while getting a bird’s-eye view of my island, I found a pillager crew washed ashore onto my land. So I have now received my ominous potion and am one step closer to my totem of undying.
End Remarks
This was a fun first week, but I know the rest of the server’s time is sure to be a slow one. These kinds of posts will probably not be a constant thing. Maybe a monthly review every once in a while, but still probably not. If you were one of the 9 players who died, I hope you got at least something out of it. Especially the player who made it 31 seconds.
Also I got a custom skin that is my character dressed as a Blu Medic wearing the Lavish Labwear so thats cool.
