As some of you might know, Skyblock anniversary is due in a couple days. It has been running quite smoothly for the past year, but it’s now time for an upgrade.

Thanks to your generous efforts and support, for which I’m grateful each and every day, I’ve rented a brand new and faster server in the same datacenter as the old server.

It’s now time to move stuff over. The website has been already switched to another host, and soon will start moving Skyblock and the other 2 servers (Survival Games and Creative).

Will you lose progress, islands, inventory, your cat, etc?

YOU WON’T LOSE ANYTHING! Everything will be copied over: the map, the islands, your inventory, your spacecoins, everything. Well, everything except your cat. You’re on your own with that.

There will be approximately 1 hour of downtime later today. Unfortunately it can’t be avoided, as the servers need to be shut down to make sure all data is properly written to disk. Then copy it over to the new server.

I will announce the start time on this post, then update it periodically as I’m completing the migration.

Can you do anything to make sure it runs smoothly?

YES! Please make sure you’re connecting to the correct server IP, which is displayed near the top on every page on this site. Yes, those big bold letters on top.

Here it is again: skyblock.mcspacecraft.com. The IP didn’t change in more than half a year. It won’t change now either, but double checking to make sure that’s the IP you have in Minecraft can’t hurt, right? 🙂

All times are GMT.

• 6:00 PM – migration started
• 7:00 PM – data copied to the new server
• 7:15 PM – Survival Games and Creative servers shut down and migrated
• 7:45 PM – Skyblock server shut down and migration started. Estimated downtime: 1 hour.
• 8:07 PM – data migration complete. Running checks. Estimated downtime remaining: 30 mins.
• 8:19 PM – Skyblock server migration complete. All servers are online and functional.

Migration completed successfully. Enjoy 🙂

About 12 hours ago Mojang updated Minecraft to 1.6.4. A few moments ago all the servers in the network have been updated to 1.6.4. This includes Skyblock, Survival Games and Creative.

Taking advantage of the planned maintenance, I also pushed a couple bugfixes and updates that have been sitting there waiting to be deployed.

• If you’re a diamond donator, you can fly again in /ma donator. You don’t have to do anything special. Simply have /fly active when you join and you’ll be able to fly once inside.
• Books of Effects now only drop if you kill the mobs, meaning if you deal the killing blow with a sword, bow or other means. They no longer drop if the mob is killed by any other means not involving a player, e.g. from fall damage, lava damage, pistons or killed by other mobs. This has been requested a couple times by people with large mob farms.
• Sticky pistons are no longer able to pull protected blocks (diamond blocks, beacons, etc.)
• TNT explosions no longer deal damage to players. It has been requested on the forums, and I think it goes along with all other protections we have. It helps making your experience on the server as fun and safe as possible. TNT explosions still deal damage to mobs and animals, if you have rights to kill the animals in that area. Note this does not apply to creeper explosions, these still hurt players as they used to.
• /played has been reset for last time. We’re now handling this with a custom written plugin, replacing the old way we used to do this. It’s faster, better and has a couple other neat features you’ll see in upcoming weeks. As I said a couple times in the past, old played time is not lost and I’ll be importing the data to the new plugin in the near future. Until then, everyone that logs on the server will get 500 sc as a small token of appreciation first time they log on.

There’s so much new stuff coming in the next weeks. No matter if you enjoy PvP, PvE, working with redstone contraptions or simply building awesome structures, there will be something new for you to explore and enjoy. It will blow your socks off 🙂