Minimap Change - Important If You Use Waypoints

Anyone who played DiggyVerse 1.x will know that the minimap mod we use changed when we updated to DiggyVerse 2.x.

For 1.x we used the REI Minimap, as used in Tekkit Classic and many other modpacks, but unfortunately that mod is no longer in development and the author did not want to release the source code to allow someone else to take over.

When we were putting 2.x together we tried out every minimap mod we could find in search of a suitable replacement, and we ended up settling for MapWriter for a number of reasons.

A few Minimap mods have been updated over the past couple of months and as several players have noticed small but annoying glitches in MapWriter, which is no longer receiving updates for 1.7.10, we decided to try out the other maps again.

So, in the next update MapWriter will be replaced by another minimap mod (we are currently testing and comparing two possible options).

Whichever option we go with any waypoints you currently have will be lost, so we would suggest taking a copy of the coordinates etc if they're important to you.

The update will be released within the next few days.

OptiFine Update

A new OptiFine version was released today;

OptiFine_1.7.10_HD_U _D4

I have updated the download link on the 'About' page.

The update essentially only fixes a single issue, which did not affect this modpack anyway, so upgrading does not provide any benefits other than removing the "new version available" message that the mod posts to your chat.

Slenderman Summoning!

If you've read the post about the last update then you'll know that the Slenderman can now be summoned... if you're daring enough!

If you do decide to summon him, you'll need some supplies first in order to build and then activate the summoner, shown below...

As you can see the bottom layer consists of 4 Nether Brick and 4 Iron Bars, with a block of Redstone at the centre, on the top sits an Infused Ectoplasm Block. 

To activate it you must right-click the Infused Ectoplasm Block with a Nether Star. 

The summoner can only be activated at night and when it activates you will loose most of the materials used to build it (except for the Iron Bars). The Nether Star will also be shattered into Nether Star Fragments, one will remain in your hand and the others will drop to the floor. 

Sometimes one of the fragments will be destroyed and so only 2 will drop instead of 3.  

Enjoy!

Update: 2.0.1a Released!

This is a minor, but mandatory, update that makes several small changes as follows:

• DiggysMobs:
• Improved mob spawning in custom biomes.
• Sheep no longer spawn in Shrubland (replaced by Pigs).
• Goats now spawn slightly more often but in smaller groups.
• Massive Slenderman overhaul; slight spawn chance increase, improved AI, slightly increased aggression, health increased from 80 to 90.
• Added ability to summon Slenderman using a special structure (more info to come!).
• Thaumcraft: Added Stone Brick, Redstone Block & Quartz Blocks to Portable Hole blacklist.
• Various new recipes added related to using GrowthCraft Honey/Rice and Natura Barley in Diggys Mobs food recipes.

As always for full details you can check the Changelog on the Technic Platform.

Thanks to DigginChickin, dino_king & Jav0330 who gave feedback related to at least one of these changes.

Enjoy!

Server Down For Maintenance

I've taken the server down to take a quick world backup and apply a server side patch, this should take between 30 minutes and 1 hour.

Apologies for the short notice, an update will be be posted here when the server is back up and ready for players to connect.

Update 14:45 - The server is back up and players can now connect!

Jav Does Thaumcraft

Jav0330 has been making headway with Thaumcraft over the last week,

collecting Crimson cult armour... 

Making his altar more stable...

Building up a collection of nodes... 

And finally... for some reason...

...cooking Nevs010 in a pot!

Remember we pay $250 for every screenshot / image we

use, it's always fun to see what you guys/gals are up to!

Link Signs At Spawn

Due to a change in a plugin update some of the link signs at spawn were saying players didn't have permission to use them, this has now been fixed and all signs should now be working again.

I've also updated all the signs linking to this website to use the 'https' version of the web address.

Enjoy!

Network Issue

Sorry for the delay in posting, I've only just been able to get onto my computer.

As some of you have noticed the server is suffering from lag this afternoon. I'm not entirely sure what is going on but it appears to part of a wider problem affecting many London based web services. 

I am unable to connect to the hosting companies website (well for more than a few seconds anyway) and a few other websites I use are also having major connectivity issues this morning, hopefully whatever is going on will be resolved very soon.

If you can connect to the server then you can continue playing, there's no reason to think anything will be lost. Unfortunately I cannot do anything about the lag until the connectivity issue is resolved, although obviously the two things are most likely connected.

From an official network status website:

It doesn't give much detail but that's a pretty big blob and definitely covers where we are hosted!

I'll update here when things are back to normal.

Update 22:30: Things are pretty much back to normal now, speeds still aren't 100% but very close!

Promotion Changes

As some players noticed the automatic promotions have not been working as intended.

I discussed this with the plugin developer today and due to some limitations reliable "unique days" based promotions are no longer possible, although this may change in the future.

So, for now at least promotions will be based on total playtime as follows:

• Resident - Play for a total of 32 hours (1 Day 8 Hours).
• Citizen    - Play for a total of 64 hours (2 Days 16 Hours).
• Veteran   - Play for a total of 256 hours (10 Days 16 Hours).

I have updated the 'Ranks' page and the information at spawn. 

I've also manually promoted a few players that I know were overdue for a promotion and would have had to have waited longer because of these changes. If you're affected by this (you already have more than 7 unique days but don't have the 32 hours total playtime) then please open a ticket within the next couple of days and I will promote you manually asap.

Enjoy!

Nevs Epic New Build

Well it didn't take Nevs010 long to find a great spot for an epic build...

In fact the build is so big it barely fits inside a City PS!

Having finished the huge wall around the edge he's already started work

on the smaller aspects and details, which are looking awesome already.

I think my favourite so far is the little farm / garden area in the final

screenshot, I can't wait to see the finished build!

  Remember we pay $250 for every screenshot / image we

use, it's always fun to see what you guys/gals are up to!

Competition Results: Go Fish!

The competition has ended and it's time to announce the winners!

So here they are, our winning entries...

1st Place: dino_king with a massive 468lb Halibut!

Congratulations on winning the grand prize of $3000 + 32 Gold Tokens!

2nd Place: Jav0330 with a slightly smaller, 464lb, Capitaine! 

Congratulations on winning  $1500 + 32 Silver Tokens!

3rd Place: Cullyn22 with a very respectable 395lb Halibut!

Congratulations on winning $500 + 32 Bronze Tokens!

All the other players who entered have been also been given 8 Bronze Tokens! 

Congratulations again to the winners, and if you didn't win.. better luck next time!

Update: 2.0.1 Released

This is quite a large mandatory update that updates 7 mods, the main changes are as follows:

• Fix for rare loading screen glitch (also slightly improved loading times).
• DiggysMobs: Fixed & improved spread logic for Shells & Autumn Leaf Piles.
• NotEnoughItems: Updated to latest release (a few small bug fixes).
• RailCraft: Major update, includes; 
• Numerous fixes, tweaks & enhancements.
• Disposal track can now be disabled by redstone signal.
• Coupler Track now has 'Auto-Coupler Mode'.
• Crowbar can now harvest tracks and related blocks (was pickaxe).
• AppleCore & SpiceOfLife: Update includes;
• Minor food container fix.
• Improved handling of nutritional values.
• Improved food journal layout, including extra information.
• Storage Drawers: Several fixes and config tweaks.

As always for full details you can check the Changelog on the Technic Platform.

Thanks to DigginChickin who gave feedback related to at least one of these changes.

Enjoy!

Server Down For Maintenance

I've taken the server down to take a quick world backup and apply a server side patch, this shouldn't take between 30 minutes and 1 hour.

Apologies for the short notice, updates will be be posted here.

Update - 13:25: The server is now back up, but a client update is required to connect, more information will be posted shortly.

Competition Reminder: Go Fish!

Just  a quick reminder that players have just over 24 hours to submit entries for the fishing competition,  for a details or the rules etc see this post...

https://diggyverse.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/competition-go-fish.html

We've already had a few entries with the current biggest being ahead of the rest by more than 10lbs. Having played around myself I know even that weight is beatable so all three top places are still potentially up for grabs... although the current contender for 1st place will take some beating!

Good luck!

Shearing Leaves Bug - Fix In Progress

Just to confirm their is currently a server side bug which stops players being able to shear leaves. The cause has been pinned down but requires a server-side code change which will likely take a few more days to put in place (along with some other minor updates).

In the mean time I enabled a feature for Treecapitator in the latest update which gives players a way to obtain leaves from trees (use an axe to cut the tree down while shears are on your hotbar). This setting will be kept enabled even after the shears bug is fixed as it can be very useful.

Minor Update: 2.0.0d Released

This is a minor, but mandatory, update that makes several small changes as follows:

• DiggysMobs: Fixed block name mistake for Tomato & Onion plants. Goats eat item chance decreased by 60% & spawn chance increased 25%.
• DiggysStuff: Animal Catcher now catches Squid correctly.
• Treecapitator: Enabled leaf harvesting when shears are on hotbar & autostacking of drops.
• Enchanting Plus: Added descriptions for all enchantments & improved ToolTip for Advanced Enchanting Table.

As always for full details you can check the Changelog on the Technic Platform.

Thanks to DigginChickin, Jabbawokkey & Jav0330 who gave feedback related to at least one of these changes.

Enjoy!

Competition: Go Fish!

By popular demand, and now I have more time, we're bringing back our regular competitions!

As many of you know Aquaculture assigns a random weight to fish when they are caught making it perfect for competitive fishing, so here's our first competition of 2016... Go Fish!

The idea is simple, use an Aquaculture fishing rod to catch the biggest fish you can!

Prizes will be awarded as follows:

1st Place: $3000 + 32 Gold Tokens

2nd Place: $1500 + 32 Silver Tokens

3rd Place: $500 + 32 Bronze Tokens

Be sure to read the rules below for full details!

Competition Rules:

• To enter the competition open a support ticket using "/ticket Go Fish Entry".
• Entry tickets must be opened by 9 pm (UK) on Sunday 17th April.
• One entry per player only, once your entry is submitted it is final and can't be changed.
• The fish must be in your inventory to be verified, so leave it there when offline.
• Only standard size fish, NO Sharks, Whales, Squids, Swordfish, JellyFish or Eels!

Good Luck!

Jav0330' New Friends & Home

As Jav0330 discovered whilst exploring Mushlings now spawn in the Roofed Forest biome...

...his new little friends were more than happy to give him a spore in exchange for cake!

He also discovered this very scenic beached shipwreck... 

...which he has decided to make into his new home!

  Remember we pay $250 for every screenshot / image we

use, it's always fun to see what you guys/gals are up to!

New Anti-Lag Tasks

I've added a couple of automated tasks to the server schedule, here's a basic list of what this means for players:

• Once per hour items on the ground (drops) will be cleared. Warnings will be given 60 and 20 seconds before this happens. Items, arrows and experience orbs will be removed, however anything dropped as a result of a player dying within the last 7 minutes will be excluded and stay where it is.
• Once per hour chunks will be unloaded if no player is nearby. This will help to keep memory use to a minimum and greatly reduce the chance of server lag. The spawn area of each world is excluded so it will still load quickly when players use the World Portals etc.

Staff will also be given access to commands that enable them to trigger these tasks early if needed as well as to detect and teleport to laggy chunks. Initially only Moderators and above will have access, but DemiMods will also get access to some of the commands once we have tested them out a bit more.

I've also enabled 'freeze when AFK' which stops players moving when they are AFK. The reason for this is that the Essentials setting to 'cancel AFK on move' that we used to use doesn't work for the current version and some players were not realising they were still set as AFK.

Enjoy!

Minor Update: 2.0.0c Released

This is a minor, but mandatory, update that makes several small changes as follows:

• PS Blocks no longer require a pickaxe to break, their hardness has been increased by 200% to rebalance the change so they aren't too easy to break.
• Cursed Spectre damage has been reduced by 25%, making it the same as normal Spectres, their spawn rate has also been reduced by 20%.
•  Butterflies are no longer tied purely to the Meadow biome and can spawn in small numbers anywhere a Plum or Cherry tree is planted.
• Mobs are now unaffected by Decayed Endstone and can walk over it as a solid block.
• Honey from GrowthCraft can now be used in all cake recipes (Vanilla, ChocoCraft and DiggysMobs).
• Rice from GrowthCraft can now be used in DiggysMobs cereal recipes (yep, we now have Gluten Free cereal!).

As always for full details you can check the Changelog on the Technic Platform.

Thanks to nevs010, DigginChickin, Diggybrine & dino_king who made suggestions and gave feedback related to these changes.

Enjoy!

Server Down - Back Soon!

The server went down around 30 minutes ago due to a software glitch (somehow the server time got changed), we believe this has been fixed and the server should be back up very soon, check here for updates.

I had an update ready to go so I'm going to take this opportunity to release it now rather than having a separate downtime for it later or tomorrow, you can download the client update as soon s it's available you don't need to wait until the server is back up.

Update - 13:50: The server is back up with a temporary whitelist while we check things over, the client update should start hitting the launcher within the next couple of minutes.

Update - 14:25: For some reason the update isn't reaching the launcher, fingers crossed it won't be much longer, the Technic Platform can be a  little slow in processing updates sometimes!

Update - 14:40: The update has started hitting the launcher and the whitelist has been removed so you can join as soon as you've downloaded the update!

Thaumic Sanity

As I mentioned a while ago the Thaumic Sanity mod is included in the modpack and provides an alternative way of gaining Eldritch research in Thaumcraft.

A couple of people have noticed that "Warp" is disabled, if you want to know more about what that is then read here: http://thaumcraft-4.wikia.com/wiki/Warp. We decided to do this as players new to Thaumcraft are often unaware of the effects of Warp and how disruptive it can be to game-play, it's also extremely annoying when you just want to get on with building etc.

Usually disabling it means that you loose access to a whole chunk of Thaumcraft research, but this is where Thaumic Sanity comes in... 

As  you can see in the image above the mod adds "Eldritch Epthany" to the "Basic Information" tab of the Thaumonomicon, and once you unlock it you can then carry out the rest of the Eldritch research as normal!

Minor Update: 2.0.0b Released

This is a minor, but mandatory, update to fix an issue with several DiggysMobs food items:

• Saturation value being set incorrectly (far too high). 

Thanks to dino_king for reporting the issue.

Enjoy!

Launcher Memory

I've changed the note about memory on the 'About' page to be a bit clearer.

For those who didn't already read it, you must change the memory allocated to your launcher to 1.5-2.0GB (the default is 1.0GB) or you will experience lag, especially in built up areas (like SpawnWorld & GameWorld). This is because Forge 1.7.10 is much more resource intensive than 1.6.4 (virtually every official Technic modpack also recommends this now).

It's easy to do but if you're not sure you can also find a brief guide on that page too. 

One other thing that I've mentioned and that a lot of people don't realise is that more memory does not always give better performance, setting it higher than 2.0GB can actually cause as much lag as having it set too low because of how Java manages the assigned memory. So if you've assigned more than 2.0GB and are experiencing client lag (low FPS) try lowering it and you might be surprised!

Minor Update: 2.0.0a Released

This is a minor, but mandatory, update to fix a couple of small issues:

• End Essence not smelting.
• Diggyolite Sword not taking damage correctly.

Thanks to nevs010 & DigginChickin for finding and reporting them.

Enjoy!

2.0.0 Update Live!

The DiggyVerse 2.0 update has been released!

You can now download the update and connect to the new server, please note that as the pack is now based on 1.7.10 it is somewhat more resource intensive, you will need to make sure that you have your Technic Launcher set to 1.5-2.0 GB of memory rather than the default 1.0 GB or you will experience severe lag.

You can change the amount of memory by clicking "Launcher Options" in the top right corner, then clicking on the "Java Settings" tab and selecting a new value from the "Memory" drop down list.

To use the 64x texture pack you'll also need to download the 1.7.10 version of the vanilla BDCraft resource pack as well as the new release of our patch, links can be found on the 'About' page of this site.

So... what are the changes I haven't announced yet? Update now and find out! 

Enjoy!


Here's a random picture of a baby zombie riding a chicken...

...just because.

Website Updating!

Please be aware that the website will be updating over the next couple of days, with the 1.6.4 information being replaced by the 1.7.10 information. This means that some or all of the information on a given page will no longer apply to the 1.6.4 version (for example, the OptiFine download link).

I have also decided to remove the comment sections from the pages of the website, they weren't used much and comments quickly became outdated, you'll still be able to comment on all posts as usual though!

I have already finished updating everything except the 'Commands', 'Donate' & 'Credit & Thanks' pages which I'll be starting shortly, as these require a lot more work they may be removed for a few hours while they are being worked on.

Thanks for your patience!

Server Down For Update!

The server is now down and being upgraded to DiggyVerse 2.0!

Once we're done updating, testing, and moving over your stuff from VaultWorld the update will be released and the server will come back up, we expect this to take around 48 hours so the update should arrive after 10-11am (UK) on Monday 4th April.

See you soon!