Happy Easter, y’all! Joe Hills here, writing as I always do in Nashville, Tennessee, with a few quick updates now that I’ve returned from the Pacific Northwest.
Resurrection?!
Since today is Easter, I’m going to start off by thanking folks for joining me last night to kick off the next novel I’ll be reading weekly, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Here’s the VOD of that:
I’ll usually be reading Frankenstein each Saturday night from 8:30–10:30pm US Central Time, though next week’s Saturday reading will be much earlier in the day than usual to accommodate family plans. You can find my latest streaming schedule at https://joehills.net/soon
Gamers For Giving 2025
Y’all really showed up for this year’s charity stream event and helped HermitCraft raise over $800,000 for Gamers Outreach for the second year in a row! Thank you for helping us build and deliver hundreds of gaming karts to children’s hospitals!
There are so many generous and talented folks who worked to make this event successful that you may have caught on camera throughout the weekend, like Anthony from Mojang, the production crew from Liquid Dogs, and the Gamers Outreach staff. I’m grateful to all of them for making the weekend spectacular!
I wanted to take a second here to shoutout two folks I worked with off-camera who particularly helped us have an amazing event: Travis Ericksen and Nate Jones.
Special thanks to Travis Eriksen from Childs’ Play Charity for loaning Gamers Outreach and HermitCraft the telepresence robot that ZombieCleo, Oli, and Joel piloted around the studio, and for taking time out of his weekend to help us troubleshoot it with his tech expert Garrett!
Travis previously visited my studio with his kids, and we had a great time together, so if you’d like to learn more about Child’s Play, consider checking out the VOD of his visit!
Special thanks as well go to Nate Jones of Northstar guitars! Nate is the amazing luthier who built the custom HermitCraft guitar for the auction. The guitar sold for over $5000 and brought delight to every Hermit who held and signed it. If you’d like to see Nate’s build video for that, you can find it here:
The weekend was packed with fun moments, so I’m in the process of editing a recap video about the weekend now. I hope to have that video out by the end of the week, so I’d best get back to editing!
Until next time, y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, Tennessee. Keep adventuring!
It has been an incredibly busy week on #HermitCraft!
Come check out how VintageBeef and I have been searching and trapping the Permit Officers’ facilities, and see my side of me trying to mess with Skizz during his stream yesterday!
It’s been a couple months since I left Grian his Secret Santa gift, so y’all might not have seen that he finally discovered it today in the first few minutes of his video:
If you want a refresh about how Skizz and I brainstormed this present, check out my Christmas 2024 video here:
For the full backstory on the giraffe, you can check out Skizzleman’s Guess The Build video about it!
It’s been a year since HermitCraft 10 began and my fiftieth episode showcases the work still left to do at Hermit Holmdel!
Join me and special guest Allison Chapman, national LGBTQ+ legislative researcher and trans rights activist, as we talk about work to do in America as well!
It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty!
Long time no see, huh? I’m very happy to be writing to y’all again, so let’s get right into the news!
Love Tropics Charity Stream
Once again hermits have gathered to help charity organization Love Tropics! This year they were benefiting Women’s Earth Alliance, to help support women to gain resources and training required to help their local communities. You can find more about Love Tropics here and about Women’s Earth Alliance here.
And if you missed the stream, here’s the VOD!
TCG
With last spring’s pre-order being a huge success, everything is on schedule to be shipped in a timely manner. If you want to order more cards you can sign up for their waitlist or get future updates on their site here.
Quarterly Meetings
2024 Q3
We had another successful quarterly meeting over on the patreon discord! If you missed the meeting or are curious as to how it went, we have the VOD available as well as the minutes of the meeting on this page.
2025 Q1
Our next quarterly meeting will be on Sunday January 12th at noon US Central time. If you have an item you’d like to request for the agenda, please submit it under Joe Hills Meta> #next-quarter-new-business-agenda-requests.
Minecraft Servers
New Modded Minecraft Server
Server operator ToxxicGlitter and Joe are working on spinning up a new modded server for folks to play starting this holiday season! It looks like Toxxic has just about finished the preliminary stages and is looking to launch this week! You can find more details over in Joe Hills Meta> #feedback-next-modded-server.
September Everstorm
Obituaries:
Cent died trying to be a hero, and was the first victim of the zombie apocalypse.
Joju joined, tried to do something overly convoluted, and died as soon as he took a break.
ChefNutmeg died trying to set up tree fort cause there are shulkers in tree tops. got chased by drowned, slain by zombie.
Kindalas dug a hole and then a zombie got me when I ran out of tnt for mob fighting.
Michaelssocks had a rough night’s sleep.
Jvrrxk died fighting two skeletons in the caves.
Moonroses fell from the trees with horrid screeching creatures after her.
Magenta toured all the nether biomes before coming face to face with a blaze fireball.
Survivors:
SuperStone came by to check out the chaos, built a house, and played with modded TNT.
quilavabucket made a small tower, filled it with necessities, and worked to recall how multiplayer hardcore servers work!
madelinessocks twerked for food, captured phantoms, and memorialized her fallen friends.
October Everstorm
Obituaries:
ChefNutmeg drowned thanks to being too curious on finding a shrine.
Zoey ventured too far into a Nether village and an ornate Brute aggressively made a meal out of her.
Moon was turned into Vex soup after surviving a fall into a witches pit.
Lady Oolong set off to make an end on her own terms and ultimately perished assaulting a haunted bathhouse swarming with masked ghosts.
Survivors:
Joju logged on to honor his fallen friend. He then logged off for similar reasons.
Salem logged in, puttered around mining for a bit, then left before they could bite the dust.
WizardOfDocs totally intended to come back and check out that dungeon, he promises.
Jvrrxk boldly stayed by the side of their comrade, WizardOfDocs.
SuperStone commandeered an airship from its skeleton owners.
quilavabucket dug up an improbable amount of diamonds, tried to make a cliff house, attended a funeral, and then failed to log in for the rest of the month.
November Everstorm
Obituaries:
Lady Oolong got too greedy trying to mine at the top of the mountain and panicked running down to get away from monsters.
Graehart met his end facing down a hoard of the undead deep in the bowels of the Everstorm. A creeper capitalized on the chaos ensuring his death.
fancytoy was making a mad dash to the community hobbit hole when a mean ol’ willie with an unknown amount of eyes stabbed her with a trident.
quilavabucket was building a little hideout in the nether when it got raided by piglins.
Cent did nothing to the dragon after crashing, found some weird crystals, then got knocked off a bridge by a murder pigeon.
Mantua bridged her own way to a sky rat island help clear it then got knocked off the bridge by one she missed on her way back.
moon, after surviving two dragon fights, fell from a great height in despair for there was no food and there were no wings in the city.
Joju logged on to fight to the death. He died honorably in combat with skeletons after not having played much this month.
Mooot decided to log in one day and died the same day to a skeleton in the mines, so sad!
Survivors:
Kindalas survived the Everstorm to get the wings and the trims and turned Snow into Slime.
Magenta touched the world’s edges, slayed the dragon, and was the first to obtain the power of flight.
Zoeykinns enjoyed life and broke bread with fellow Survivors in The Hobbit Hole alongside Oliver, a cat from the Everstorm beginnings.
MJ survived a dragon fight for the first and second time ever, battled end birds, shulkers, and men, and carried the memory of a fellow adventurer back home.
Grit helped expand the border and supported exploration, assisted in sponsoring two dragon fights and achievement hunting on everstorm!
Dotty used her survivor tag to applaud Grit, Seanard, and the whole Everstorm community for all the incredible accomplishments they achieved this month!
December Everstorm
This month’s Everstorm is now live! As always it’s an experimental and temporary server, running until January 2nd. Folks can discover details and share with others or coordinate group logins over in Realms And Servers> #everstorm-dec-2024
10th Oreward Parades
We’ve had some parades after the judging of the company towns on 10th Oreward! I’d like to thank Team 15 Years for hosting a wonderful parade, and a thank you to all the participants who made floats!
We also had a parade to celebrate Labor Day! Thank you to Team The Route for hosting the late celebration, here’s the VOD for folks who missed it!
There was also a parade to celebrate World Nuclear Energy Day, hosted by Team Trident Town! I remember it like it was yesterday, which it was at the time of this newsletter going out. Thanks Trident Town, here’s the VOD!
Our next parade will be on Sunday December 15th, at 1pm US Central time. Team 5280 will be hosting their parade in celebration of the Festival of Lights! Folks can join in under Activity-Sign-Ups> #dec-15-parade-5280-festival-of-lights.
Hermitcraft 10 Videos
There’s been a year’s worth of Hermitcraft since I last wrote a newsletter, so I won’t be linking all the videos! Instead, here’s a handy link to Joe’s Hermitcraft Season 10 Playlist, along with his most recent video!
Streams
Upcoming Streams
If you’re looking for a place to find out when Joe is streaming, have I got the answer for you! You can see a calendar of all Joe’s upcoming streams over at this page over here!
Notable streams
Lately Joe has been streaming readings of Moby Dick, and some Hermit Satisfactory! Stay tuned for future notable streams to be mentioned!
If you know any convention organizers in your area and think Joe would be great to hire for an appearance, please have them visit this page on his site, thank you!
So long for now…
As always it is my pleasure to write these newsletters to you wonderful folks in our community. I appreciate y’all being patient while Joe and I were both busy, so I hope you’ll join us as we get back into a steady rhythm of updates.
Thank you kindly!
This has been TommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty.
It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty!
We took a break off last month’s newsletter for PAX Unplugged and the holidays, thanks for being so patient, now let’s catch up on all the latest!
HermitCraft Season 9 draws to a close!
It’s hard to believe that the season is over! Starting back in March of 2022, the server reached a tender age of a year and nine months before ending. Don’t grieve this loss, and don’t rush forward for the next season either! Joe is not quite ready to say goodbye yet, as he’s still got some footage to edit and release throughout the month. You can look forward to that, but until then enjoy the world download!
Deep Field moves to stage 2!
While you enjoy the scale model pinball table from the download, Joe will be continuing to build it in real life! If you want to see it you can watch him do it live during his craft streams. Find out what times Joe plans to be live at joehills.net/soon!
If you’re curious about the materials and tools Joe will be using there is a spreadsheet available here for folks to follow along!
Music video release:
If you like seeing Joe in cool stuff, check him out featured in this music video! It’s definitely a fun watch!
PAX Unplugged panel
Speaking of cool stuff Joe has been featured in, Joe held a panel with fellow Hermit VintageBeef at PAX Unplugged! If you missed the event, you can enjoy the VOD of the panel over here!
HermitCraft TCG
If you enjoyed the PAX Unplugged panel, HermitCraft Season 9, or just like card games in general you can still get some! Booster boxes are still available for pre-orders until January 15th.
If you want a chance to play against other people, you should consider going to Tennessee Game Days! Joe and Quinn will be there, ready to battle any challengers. Do you have what it takes to win?
2023 Q4 Quarterly Meeting
We’ve got the VOD and minutes from the last quarterly meeting of 2023! You can find them on this page here.
Update! The Snow Globe build contest judging day has been moved! The new date is now Saturday, January 27th! The time is to be determined based on judge availability. I’m excited to see what folks build!
DS9 event schedule
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, January 20th, Noon US Central Time.
Winter Snow Globe Build Contest
Saturday, January 27th, 1pm US Central Time.
October Everstorm missing reports
The survivors of October’s Everstorm share these final reports:
Magenta built a lil house on the hill and survived by avoiding the sponges of doom
SuperStone explored the borderland of the Infernal Deep and the Eternal Storm, building riches in the shore of the river that runs through the rock
Moonroses built up spawn, attempted an iron farm that then fancy fixed, and survived a close encounter with a sponge.
Kindalas worked hard to summon the sponge wither without success.
Void almost died to a sponge due to curiosity and then decided to retreat to the safety of an ancient city
MJ mined a bunch of diamonds for the surface dwellers.
fancy didn’t do much but did fix an iron farm
Dotty will never look at a sponge the same way again.
Salem mined a lot and lives in fear of sponges now.
November Everstorm closes
Here are all the obituaries reported for November:
MJ is pretty sure that Husk had a mustache.
Arthr waterbent himself too far into the deep end and got impaled by a waterbending master (drowned).
quilava got blown to bits by a creeper while getting jungle wood for the seaside outpost
Magenta attempted to take on the sky dungeon as it claimed them as its victim
Moonroses perished by the axe of a Big Danger Castle denizen. She never stood a chance even with full gear.
Centuritron’s curiosity killed the fox, but ’twas no satisfaction to bring it back
The survivors of November’s Everstorm share these final reports:
Gritmonger’s curiosity did not kill him, against all odds.
CheftNutmeg was not sure she could really count it as work wise she only managed to get on for about fifteen minutes all month.
December Everstorm opens- and closes!
The Everstorm has come and gone for December already, folks seemed to not enjoy all the mobs that plagued their winter wonderland!
Here are all the obituaries reported for December:
ChefNutmeg logged on, got into a building, lagged out of the building, and died to zombie.
Moon ran into the forest and was never seen again.
Gritmonger was too confident in their ability to fight zombies, and didn’t remember they have always been a noob.
The sole survivor of December’s Everstorm shares this final report:
Centuritron logged on, raided a distant village, planted a potato farm, & forgot to log back in.
January Everstorm opens
This month’s Everstorm comes kitted out with lots of structure generating mods! Here’s a handy list for you!
Check out the mod’s pages linked above if you’re curious about it! It’s all server-side, no need to download anything to play! Just be a Minecraft level patron on Joe’s Patreon and join with the server information posted under Realms and Servers > #everstorm-jan-2024
Toxxic Vault Hunters server
Server Operator ToxxicGlitter is back with a fun new modded server! Using the same seed as the Hermits are using in their current Vault Hunter series, you too can run some vaults! The modpack and server information is available under SMP: Vault Hunters By ToxxicGlitter > #vh-setup, there’s also #vh-setup-help for if you need assistance installing the mods!
Pinball FX Weekly Tournament
November Winners
Week 1: Twilight Zone results are available here and the winner was ButterflyGirlKMC, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to jsparker77!
Week 2: Hurricane results are available here and the winner was JoeHills, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to Laxmi13!
Week 3: World Cup Soccer results are available here and the winner was JoeHills, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to ButterflyGirlKMC!
Week 4: Road Show results are available here and the winner was ButterflyGirlKMC, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to Laxmi13!
The full results are available here, now here’s the November series winners!
Congratulations to ButterflyGirlKMC for taking first, JoeHills for 2nd, jsparker77 for taking 3rd, and Laxmi13 for 4th!
December Winners
Week 1: Cirqus Voltaire results are available here and the winner was jsparker77, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to JoeHills!
Week 2: Tales of the Arabian Nights results are available here and the winner was JoeHills, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to Laxmi13!
Week 3: No Good Gofers results are available here and the winner was JoeHills, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to Laxmi13!
Week 4: Indiana Jones results are available here and the winner was jsparker77, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to JoeHills!
Week 5: Sword of Fury results are available here and the winner was JoeHills, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to jsparker77!
The full results are available here, now here’s the December series winners!
Congratulations to JoeHills for taking first, jsparker77 for 2nd, Laxmi13 for taking 3rd, ButterflyGirlKMC for 4th, and Mr. Hardluck for 5th!
January Series
Here are the tables you can expect for January’s series!
Week 1: Whirlwind
Week 2: The Machine: Bride of Pinbot
Week 3: Space Station
Week 4: Funhouse
Vault Hunters
Even though Joe will be releasing his last episodes of HermitCraft season 9 this month, you can still enjoy the Hermits in their Vault Hunters series! Check out Joe’s playlist over here.
HermitCraft 9 Videos
Before the last of season 9 gets uploaded, make sure you’re up to date on all of Joe’s episodes! Here’s the HermitCraft 9 episodes playlist!
Streams
Upcoming Streams
If you’re looking for a place to find out when Joe is streaming, have I got the answer for you! You can see a calendar of all Joe’s upcoming streams over at this page over here!
Notable streams playlists
Crafts stream fans can enjoy all the latest arts and crafts VODs over at this playlist!
Wow that was a lot of updating and formatting and editing! As always, if you spot an error of any kind please let me know under Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-newsletter. Thank you, and Happy New Year!
This has been TommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty.
It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty!
I hope you’ve had a good month, and that November goes even better for you. Let’s see what’s in the news!
PAX Unplugged panel
I wanted to remind folks that Joe will be doing a panel with fellow Hermit VintageBeef at Pax Unplugged on December 3rd! They’ll be talking about the HermitCraft TCG so if you’re interested you can buy the Sunday badge to check out their 2:30pm panel in the Mothman Theatre (Grand Ballroom A).
Or you can attend the whole convention! Tickets are still on sale on their website here, we’d love to see you there! Yes, that was a “we”! I’ll also be in attendance, I’m so excited to meet more of the awesome people that make up our community!
If you’re unable to attend but would still like to see the panel, it will be livestreamed on this twitch channel.
HermitCraft TCG update
To everyone who purchased the HermitCraft TCG from Creo, thank you so much! There has been an update from the company about the status of shipping the cards! You can take a look at the full notes over here on Reddit.
The main takeaway to share from Creo is the following: “Our revised target is to have everything in the mail by the week of Nov 6th. “
2023 Q4 Quarterly Meeting
A reminder to folks, our next quarterly meeting is on Saturday, November 18th at 1pm US Central time. I will see folks there and as always stream it to my twitch channel for folks to watch it live. The VOD and meeting minutes will also be made available for folks at a later date and time.
Folks are encouraged to submit any agenda item requests to the Joe Hills Meta > #next-quarter-new-business-agenda-requests channel.
With October coming to a close our Haunted Mansion build contest has ended! There were some really great builds from our community, I hope everyone had a great time!
If you want to see the unbelievable skills you can check out this VOD!
Winter Snow Globe Build Contest
This contest will be launching on November 18th during petitions, so if you want to be in the know of the snow, be sure to attend!
A quick summary of this contest is that folks will be making snow globes in marked plots. It will be an ongoing contest until Saturday, January 20th at 1pm US Central time. I’m sure when the rest of the details are released they’ll be very… cool!
DS9 event schedule
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, November 18th, Noon US Central Time.
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, December 9th, Noon US Central Time.
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, January 20th, Noon US Central Time.
Winter Snow Globe Build Contest
Saturday, January 20th, 1pm US Central Time.
October Everstorm closes
Here are all the obituaries reported for October:
Grit died like he always does on Everstorm, panicking and afraid.
May died as she lived, among piglin and feeling like her heart was leaping out of it’s chest.
eclogues was chased by skeletons into a hole, where a zombie ate what little brains he had
Arthr was too distracted by the prospect of a wolf friend to notice the creeper intersecting with them
Centuritron got in a bit over their head looking for diamonds, and suffered a fall due to Warden related injuries.
quilavabucket fell into a larger, less friendly bucket of lava while contemplating spooky mods
ruffboi was killed by a baby zombie who somehow managed to escape their zombie farm
No survivor’s posts yet for October’s Everstorm!
November Everstorm opens
This month Everstorm is getting a little more hands on! The only details I have to share are that pvp will be enabled and the server will be running the bending mod. Fans of Avatar the Last Airbender and/or Legend of Korra will enjoy this month for sure! Though I wonder what else is changed?
New Toxxic server
If you missed it, server operator ToxxicGlitter was creative lead on a creative server to test out the new building mod Axiom! It was really cool but now we’re getting ready to shut it down and bring you The New Hotness, a Vault Hunters server!
We don’t have an official launch date yet, as Iskall needs to first release the modpack and then Joe needs to spin up the server as per Toxxic’s instructions. I can tell you that it will be up within the first half of November, it will be modeled closely after the Hermit’s configuration, and will even use the same seed!
The end date is also not yet selected, but we guarantee the server will be up until the end of February 2024. A date will be finalized by the 1st of February, so have fun hunting vaults when you still can!
Pinball FX Weekly Tournament
After some discussion with some top pinball players, Joe has decided to wrap up the half year series early in favor of a monthly series! This will work similarly to the half year series, but instead of the best 15 standings counting to the final placings, we’ll be using the scores of the 4-5 tournaments per month.
Before we get to the weekly results, here’s the final winners with the full results available here!
Congratulations to ToxxicGlitter for taking first, Joe Hills for 2nd, ButterFlyGirlKMC for taking 3rd, Laxmi13 for 4th, and jsParker for 5th!
October Winners
Week 14: Star Trek: The Next Generation results are available here and the winner was ToxxicGlitter!
Week 15: Monster Bash results are available here and the winner was ToxxicGlitter!
Week 16: Creature from the Black Lagoon results are available here and the winner was Mr. Hardluck!
Week 17: Addams Family results are available here and the winner was Joe Hills!
Congrats to our winners for their awesome pinball skills! Here’s what you can expect to play during November!
November Series
Week 1: Twilight Zone
Week 2: Hurricane
Week 3: World Cup Soccer
Week 4: Road Show
Who will be our first winner? Only time will tell!
Vault Hunters
I’m sure folks have noticed the new modded series the Hermits have been playing! Joe’s been having such a great time playing Vault Hunters with everyone that he’s made a playlist for folks to watch! You can find that that playlist over here.
Also, there’s a Vault Hunters website! Did you know that? Cause I sure didn’t! Take a peek over at https://vaulthunters.gg/
HermitCraft 9 Videos
If you somehow have missed all of Joe’s episode the past month, no worries, I’ve got a link to where we left off since the last newsletter! There’s a ton of episodes to enjoy thanks to Decked Out 2 from TangoTek! If you haven’t seen Joe’s runs yet or if you want to watch them again, here’s the HermitCraft episodes playlist!
Streams
Upcoming Streams
If you’re looking for a place to find out when Joe is streaming, have I got the answer for you! You can see a calendar of all Joe’s upcoming streams over at this page over here!
Notable streams playlists
Crafts stream fans can enjoy all the latest arts and crafts VODs over at this playlist!
It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty!
We come to a new month so that means it’s time for another newsletter! We’re jumping straight in today!
PAXU and other conventions!
Want the chance to meet Joe at a convention? Here are some of the events he’ll be attending!
PAX Unplugged
Joe will not only be attending PAX Unplugged this year, but also holding a panel with fellow hermit VintageBeef!
The panel name is HermitCraft TCG: physical blessings of a digital world. Here’s the description!
Two Minecraft Let’s Players, Joe Hills and VintageBeef from the HermitCraft server, will share how their experiences making gaming videos prepared them for new adventures in the physical (or unplugged, wink) world. VintageBeef recently created a full trading card game in survival Minecraft, HermitCraft TCG, which was popular enough to justify physical production of over a million printed cards. Joe Hills, who helped him playtest the game, will lead him through a lively chat about the challenges of the playtest art direction and production pipeline for the TCG.
The two Hermits will also discuss other ways their work on HermitCraft has rippled out into the real world via charity events and audience meet-ups. If time allows, questions will be taken from the audience.
Isn’t that exciting?! I know I’d be thrilled to attend, I hope I can make it to PAXU this year! All of the details are being finalized, so for now I can offer you this tentative date, time, and location (subject to change):
Sunday, December 3rd at 2:30pm in the Mothman Theatre (Streamed to Twitch.tv/PAX2)
Music City Multi Con ticket sales are open now! Get your tickets over at their website here so you can join in the fun!
Spring dates for TGD have been confirmed, so folks interested in attending can start putting that on their calendars! Here’s an overview of all the conventions!
Gamers Outreach Children’s Hospital visit and Go Kart update!
Joe has an episode out where he talks with Scar about his visit to a local hospital that received some of the go karts funded by the Gamers Outreach charity stream back in October last year!
You can find details and pictures available in the video, but as a quick summary, folks will be happy to know that the fundraising was a huge success and has already vastly improved the lives of children in hospitals across the United States. Gamers Outreach have even found ways to improve the karts in the future as they continue to help kids feel a little more joy in their lives.
Our last B’Hala outpost build contest, oh my! This parade float build contest was in celebration of Carl Garner Federal Lands Cleanup Day, here’s a VOD if you missed it!
Thank you to team Warden Hunters for hosting! That’s a wrap on the B’Hala parades! Thanks everyone who hosted, and participated!
Haunted Mansion Build Contest
Even though our B’Hala parade build contests have ended, we still have the Haunted Mansion build contest! This was announced live at our August 2023 DS9 petitions, so here’s a refresher on the details!
Teams will build a haunted house mansion and landscape around it
The last day to build is Friday October 20th as the build window closes at the strike of midnight US central time, ticking into Saturday, October 21st. Judging will be later that very day at 1pm US Central time.
Your haunted mansion must be built at least 3000 blocks away from 0,0. Command blocks for teleporting far out are available inside the snowy mountain donut near spawn.
The goal is to be remote, and to also get a feel for what kinds of things you might learn from the experience to provide good feedback for the teleport system
There are otherwise no hard and fast rules, this competition is very loose! Everyone will get to present cool haunted houses that explore both the interior and exterior.
Winter Snow Globe Build Contest
This contest won’t launch until mid-November, but I thought a reminder would be helpful. If you can’t participate in our haunted mansion contest, worry not, there’s still our winter one!
So far the only details are that you can expect a specific build location with marked plots to build a winter landscape snow globe. The plot sizes will vary to allow different sizes of teams. The rest of the contest details are being withheld until the contest launches as we want everyone to have the same time frame to design builds for the contest when the time arrives.
Judging is scheduled for Saturday, January 20th at 1pm US Central time.
DS9 event schedule
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, October 21st, Noon US Central Time.
Haunted Mansion Build Contest
Ongoing until judging on October 21st, 1pm US Central Time.
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, November 18th, Noon US Central Time.
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, December 9th, Noon US Central Time.
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, January 20th, Noon US Central Time.
Winter Snow Globe Build Contest
Saturday, January 20th, 1pm US Central Time.
September Everstorm Closes
With the month coming to a close we also close the September Everstorm. The From the Fog mod was definitely our defining MVP mod of the month, but here’s a list of all the mods added that made September so terrifying.
betterthanmending-1.3.0.jar
‘Book Of Experience 3.1.0.jar’
dungeons-and-taverns-v2.1.4.jar
everything-is-dirt-2.1.jar
fabric-api-0.87.0+1.20.1.jar
fabric-seasons-2.2.1+1.20.jar
From-The-Fog-1.20-v1.9.2-Forge-Fabric.jar
geophilic-v2.0.0-mc1.20u1.20.1.jar
HorseBuff-1.20-2.1.2.jar
Here are all the obituaries reported for September:
May was shot by a skeleton whilst trying to escape spawn.
eclogues was expertly handling a creeper when another creeper came from nowhere and blew up.
Arthr got bested by a creeper while investigating the ruins across the water.
MJ was doomed to fall fleeing from a skeleton he never even saw. That’s what he gets for coming out of the cave.
ruffboi did his best, but the creepers did better.
fancytoy got overwhelmed by a group of zombies while trying to secure a couple geodes.
quilavabucket died getting tag teamed by a skeleman and a zombie while stream watched.
Moonroses4u traveled 3000 blocks in a search for cactus. Two zombies cornered her, one with a sword. She leaves an unnamed horse with gold armor.
Centuritron succumbed to a Zombie with the aide of their old nemesis, a Creeper.
MagentaAvocado found the ravager in the mirror was closer than it appeared.
Beyr33 never saw the wither skeleton that killed him.
NJ went exploring for charity, rode the lightning but was skewered by the trident-wielding drowned.
The survivors of September’s Everstorm share these final reports:
Gritmonger was a consummate coward and risked nothing in trying to stay safe and stockpile resources in two-block-high bunkers.
Void raided dungeons, built a Skulk island, and decided to kill the dragon before the end of the world.
Kindalas almost died. Almost.
October Everstorm opens
October may be the scariest month of the year with Halloween as it’s crown jewel, but we already got our horror quota filled from September! This month you can expect a more welcoming spooky experience. How can this be? Well the only hint I can give you is that this iteration will be using the StarterKit mod on the server side to give folks a Halloween basket and treats when they first join. Please enjoy!
Pinball FX Weekly Tournament
If you’re interested in the tournament standings you can find that here. These placings are calculated on a player’s best 15 scores out of the whole series, so come and see how you can do! Here’s how folks held up in September’s weekly tournaments results!
September Winners
Week 9: The Machine: Bride of Pin•Bot results are available here and the winner was ToxxicGlitter!
Week 10: Theatre of Magic results are available here and the winner was ToxxicGlitter!
Week 11: Safecracker results are available here and the winner was ToxxicGlitter!
Week 12: Champion Pub results are available here and the winner was Joe Hills!
Week 13: White Water results will be available in the discord when the tournament closes out at the end of this week.
Congrats to our winners for their awesome pinball skills! Here’s what you can expect to play during October!
October Tables
Week 14: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Week 15: Monster Bash
Week 16: Creature from the Black Lagoon
Week 17: Addams Family
Do you have what it takes to join the ranks and climb to the top of the standings? Play pinball with us to find out! Details are under Activity-Sign-Ups > #weekly-pinball-challenges.
HermitCraft 9 Videos
Whoa, so many videos came out in September! Joe’s been spoiling us with it all! I don’t want to clog this newsletter further with video embeds, as not including the Gamers Outreach video linked above, there’s another 10 videos!
Instead, you can follow this link here that will take you to Joe’s HermitCraft Season 9 playlist. It’s conveniently placed right at the video after the charity update episode, so you won’t miss anything! Woohoo!
Streams and other content
Upcoming Streams
If you’re looking for a place to find out when Joe is streaming, have I got the answer for you! You can see a calendar of all Joe’s upcoming streams over at this page over here!
Get in the Halloween mood!
Do you want some spooky Halloween themed videos to get you in the mood for the holiday? You’ve come to the right place! These videos here have been selected by Joe for their seasonally appropriate themes and ambience.
Enjoy these classic Joe Hills videos!
So long for now…
Phew! What a long newsletter! Lots of love and care went in to crafting this for you lovely folks out there reading this! I hope you enjoyed, and if you’re celebrating at the end of this month, have a happy Halloween!
This has been TommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty.
It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty!
Welcome to our new monthly newsletter! Old and new readers alike can use this resource as a means to get all the news happening with Joe and his Patreon discord server! Without further ado, here’s the news!
Hermits return!
Joe’s been so excited to play more HermitCraft with his friends! You can see Joe playing Xisuma’s new Bedwars game, and on his team returning to the server is Hypno! I can’t recommend this episode enough to folks, take a look!
Joe’s also excited to see Iskall and Stress on the server again! You can check out their videos linked below, be sure to give them a warm welcome back!
These are worth checking out for information on how we operate the discord and for our upcoming build contests!
A quick update
I also wanted to take a moment to let folks know that since the quarterly meeting the staff have had one of our monthly meetings and have started cooking up our next wave of Minecraft servers.
They will have complimentary but not identical structures for handling complaints and conflicts so players with different play-styles will still have a home here. We recognize that one method of conflict resolution will not work for all types of players.
For more conflict averse players we will have a high tempo resolution system moderated by Yirggzmb on her more relaxed Vanillish server.
More aggressive play-styles will be optimized to problem solve amongst themselves on ToxxicGlitter’s Modded server, with Toxxic stepping in when necessary.
The Flagship Vanilla server with Joe as creative lead will continue in season 10 with a monthly petition approach somewhere in the middle of the previously mentioned servers. There will now be more accessibility as TommyBoii (that’s me!) will serve as a proxy for folks who feel they are unable to raise issues themselves for any reason.
The only confirmed date we have right now is the last day of Toxxic’s 1.19.2 Create Mod server. That will ending on October 2nd. More information will be announced in the near future, so keep an eye out for that in October’s newsletter!
Minecraft Servers
DS9 parades
August had only one parade held, and what a parade it was! In celebration of Independent Worker’s Day, folks built all kinds of floats on the Deep Slate Nine server! Here’s the VOD for anyone who missed it!
We have one last parade to hold at our B’Hala outposts, and it will be for Carl Garner Federal Lands Cleanup Day! The parade float build contest is hosted by Team Warden Hunters.
If you’re interested in participating you can join everyone on Saturday, September 23rd at 1pm US Central time. Be sure to bring enough materials to build your float, you only get 1 hour to build!
DS9 event schedule
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, September 23rd, Noon US Central Time
Carl Garner Federal Lands Cleanup Day, hosted by Team Warden Hunters
Saturday, September 23rd, 1pm US Central Time
Haunted Mansion Build Contest
Ongoing until judging on October 21st, 1pm US Central Time.
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, November 18th, Noon US Central Time.
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, December 9th, Noon US Central Time.
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, January 20th, Noon US Central Time.
Winter Snow Globe Build Contest
Saturday, January 20th, 1pm US Central Time.
August Everstorm Closes
Here are all the obituaries reported for August:
Magenta could not fend off the pillagers and the trident-wielding drowned at the same time
SuperStone was cornered in a cave by a heavily-enchanted skeleton.
ChefNutmeg was sniped by a skelly lighting up the nether fortress.
Ellas died to a tree climbing drowned, they lasted about 20 minutes
Eclogues withered away due to hubris
ruffboi died as he lived: ridiculous and easily jumpscared by creepers.
Beyr33 went out with a bang by falling 1900 blocks after killing the dragon.
seanard shot the moon and then landed in the void.
Gritmonger got blown up by a creeper while campfiring-up random villages to provide safe havens for people using return horns from the end.
The survivors of August’s Everstorm share these final reports:
Centuritron logged on to check out the server, didn’t know what to do, then logged back off alive.
SalemOleander was briefly enthralled with the random mining gifts, and made it out in one piece.
DottyMatrix decided that Everstorm was the right place to learn how to endbust for the first time, and returned with her own wings to tell the tale.
quilavabucket used this Everstorm to get over a fear of hardcore and successfully ran a deep dark city and fought the dragon.
Kindalas successfully built a starter house on the ruins of Magenta’s Starter House.
Laxmi13 needs to take more risks because she didn’t die building a house, mining, or fighting the dragon.
Mantuamaker found a hole and just kept digging.
MJ missed the Dragon fight because of sushi.
WizardOfDocs spent several happy hours mining for loot chests, and for all we know is still there to this day.
September Everstorm opens
Since August’s Everstorm was so well received Joe has resumed his creative lead role with more assistance from his 10 year old kid providing creative input! Together they have prepared 2 months of autumnal excitement for you to enjoy!
One feature already announced is use of the Horse Buff mod! With the server-side version you can expect to see fixes to horse movement when running up blocks and inclines. If players install the mod client side as well it will increase the speed at which blocks are broken when on horseback, so that’s cool!
PVP is off but no other details have been released. Joe keeps saying something about this being the most terrifying Everstorm ever, and that things are glitchy and weird. I have no idea what that all means; Can you figure out what’s happening there?!
Better be quick about it too, as this iteration ends on September 28th!
Pinball FX Weekly Tournament
If you’re interested in the tournament standings you can find that here. These placings are calculated on a player’s best 15 scores out of the whole series, so come and see how you can do! Here’s how folks held up in August’s weekly tournaments results!
August Winners
Week 5: Whirlwind results are available here and the winner was ToxxicGlitter!
Week 6: Junkyard results are available here and the winner was ToxxicGlitter again!
Week 7: Black Rose results are available here and the winner was ButterFlyGirlKMC!
Week 8: The Party Zone results are available here and the winner was Laxmi13!
Congrats to our winners for their awesome pinball skills! Here’s what you can expect to play during September!
September Tables
Week 9: The Machine: Bride of Pin•Bot
Week 10: Theatre of Magic
Week 11: Safecracker
Week 12: Champion Pub
Week 13: White Water
Do you have what it takes to join the ranks and climb to the top of the standings? Play pinball with us to find out!
HermitCraft 9 Videos
If you missed the episode that came out before the Bedwars video, no worries! Here’s episode 69!
Streams
Upcoming Streams
If you’re looking for a place to find out when Joe is streaming, have I got the answer for you! You can see a calendar of all Joe’s upcoming streams over at this page over here!
Update! Music City Multi Con ticket sales are open now! Get your tickets over at their website here so you can join in the fun!
TGD Fall registration is closed but you can still join their waitlist if any spots open up! Spring dates for TGD have been confirmed, so folks interested in attending can start putting that on their calendars!
I hope you enjoyed our first monthly newsletter! I think the structural changes it provides gives a more concise way to access information at once. It’s certainly easier to write it this way!
As always we welcome feedback under Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-newsletter. I look forward to writing for you next month!
This has been TommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty.
