Newsletter #32 for January 9, 2023

A screenshot of the game Minecraft showing a 2023 New Year's Parade occurring on a rainbow road. A Lego minifig of JoeHills presides with a trident.

Howdy, y’all!

Happy New Year! I’m launching into 2023 with help from our community Liaison ThatTommyBoii!

Final agenda for the Quarterly meeting

Our next Quarterly meeting is January 21st at 11am US Central time.

I will be on voice and screen-sharing on Discord, and Tommy will stream it on his channel as well. The VOD and minutes will be posted afterwards.

If anyone has feedback they’d like to ensure we see, please post it in the relevant channels in the #joe-hills-meta category.

  1. Creative work in 2023: episodes, streams, and songs
    1. Less freelance work, more creative energy
  2. Review patreon tiers and patreon community goals
  3. Vacation mode moving forward: how it will work and when to use it
  4. Minecraft Servers
    1. Long-term server reset schedule
    2. maintenance schedule – Brandon (netcropolis)
  5. Discord
    1. Image and embed functionality
      • Enable ability to share images in channels such as gaming-general and minecraft – Aviva
      • Text-only channels or categories
      • Spam channels clarification on posting non-user-created images.  – Tommy
    2. Channel culls and reintroductions
      • Follow-up: Review accessibility implications of screen readers and consolidated channels – Meep and Joe
      • Frequency of channel culling 
      • Adding channels back to discord 
    3. Review server emotes – Kindalas

New and returning channels under consideration

Here’s the current list of channel suggestions. If y’all have others you’d like to see considered, please share them between now and the Quarterly meeting in Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-more-channels

  • #dwarf-fortress
  • #food
  • #pokemon
  • #space
  • #spam-things-you-wrote
  • #spam-work-you-commissioned

New Year, new Pinball FX3 tournament series!

I’d like as many folks as possible to enjoy our weekly pinball tournament, so I’m kicking off 2023 with Fish Tales, a free download for anyone with Steam on their PC.

I hope to see you on the leaderboard!

Minecraft servers

Deep Slate Nine petitions

Petitions for January will be held on DS9 at 1pm Central on Jan 29th, followed by the Groundhog Day Parade!

Modded Server cliffside build competition

Looking for a long-term build contest? ToxxicGlitter wants you!

Build a home, city, post-apocalyptic society, or whatever dwelling you deem fit, in one of the sheer cliffs around spawn.

At noon Central on February 11th, I will be streaming a visit to the modded server to judge y’all’s work! I’m looking forward to it!

Rules and info can be found in SMP 1.19 Modded by ToxxicGlitter > #modded-cliffside-competition

Parade float build contests

Groundhog Day!

It’s Groundhog day! Again!

Team Redstone will be hosting our next Parade Float Build Contest on January 29th at 2pm Central!

If you’d like to participate, please sign up in Activity Sign Ups >  #jan-29-groundhog-day-parade

New Year’s!

Thanks to Team Radical for hosting the 2023 New Year’s Parade Float Build Contest!

Congratulations to our winners SuperStone and Dahlia!

Notable streams recently

Upcoming conventions

I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring! They should have registration info going live soon, so keep an eye on their website this week!

Until next time, y’all!

This has been Joe Hills with the ever-appreciated assistance of ThatTommyBoii!

Happy 2023, and keep adventuring!

Newsletter #31 for December 19th, 2022

Howdy, y’all!

Joe Hills here, with help per usual from our community liaison ThatTommyBoii!

This will be our final newsletter of 2022!

I think that these have been really helpful for keeping me organized each week, and I hope you’re getting something out of them too!

Please leave any feedback you have in Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-newsletter on our Patreon Discord!

Our first newsletter of 2023 will be on January 9th. We’ll be off the next week in observance of Martin Luther King Day,  and will resume our regular Monday publication schedule January 23rd.

Quarterly meeting for January 2023

Our next Quarterly meeting is January 21st at 11am US Central time.

More Discord channels

To ensure your idea gets added to the list to be considered at the meeting in mid-January, please post your suggestion with the following format.

[channel] Channel name
Overlap: justification for why this overlaps with my interests in a way that isn’t better left to be owned by a community member elsewhere
Plus: any other notes that can be read quickly during the meeting.

Channels submitted for consideration:

  • Dwarf Fortress
  • Food
  • Space
  • Spam things you wrote
  • Pokemon

Please add more!

The actual list will end up in the January 9th newsletter before the next Quartly Meeting, so please try to have your suggestions in by January 8th to Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-more-channels

Upcoming Community Events

December 28th: DS9 New Years Parade build contest

Team Radical will be hosting the Deep Slate Nine New Years build contest at noon US Central time on Wednesday, December 2022.

If you’d like a space on the parade route, please let us know in the Activity Sign-Ups >  #dec-28-new-years-parade channel.

December 29th: HermitFan UHC qualifiers

Our second and final HermitFan UHC qualifier will be held on Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 2:00 PM US Central time, and will be organized and run by Yirrgzmb, with Tommy streaming the action.

More details about the HermitFan UHC can be found in issue #28 of this newsletter.

Upcoming Stream Schedule

Thanks for your patience with the uncertainties of holiday planning so far this season. I’m still attempting to maintain my regular five night-a-week schedule as best I can, but here’s a few things to note this holiday season:

  • Today’s HHH will not occur at the usual time due to an embargoed Zedvancement group recording
  • This year’s Christmas Carol streams:
    • Stave I: Sunday, December 18th at 8:30pm US Central Time 
    • Stave II: Monday, December 19th at 8:30pm US Central Time
    • Stave III: Tuesday, December 20th at 8:30pm US Central Time (yes, I know I normally take Tuesday off, but the holidays are weird)
    • Stave IV & V: Thursday, December 22nd at 8:30pm US Central Time
  • No streams due to Christmas obligations on December 23rd, 24th, or 25th.
  • No streams due to New Years obligations the evening of December 30th, 31st, or the morning of the 1st.

One of the biggest take-aways from the Empires Crossover was the importance of streaming more when the Euro-crowd is awake, so I’ll be trying to do more bonus streams earlier in the day next year.

Pinball FX3 Weekly Tournament

Black Rose for December 2022

Congrats to Toxxic Glitter for his first win of 2022!

It’s also his final win of the year as week-long pinball tournaments have concluded for 2022.

1st: ToxxicGlitter. 2nd: Forgantly. 3rd: MagentaAvocado. 4th: Mr_Hardluck. 5th:WrexVerdi. 6th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 7th: Laxmi13. 8th: NJCoffeeJunkie. 9th: MisterLantz. 10th: Qwarkeh. 11th: Parker. 12th: Kindalas. 13th: DarkHorseAsh. 14: ChefNutmeg25. 15th: JoeHills.

2022 results

In 2022, Forgantly was our winningest competitor with 18 weekly wins!

Mr. Hardluck and Wrex Verdi tied for 2nd, with two weekly wins each!

Here’s the tables we played this year, and who won each. You’ll see some repetition as we played more games than there are tables.

  • Creature from the Black Lagoon: Parker
  • Monster Bash: Forgantly
  • Medieval Madness: Forgantly
  • Junk Yard: Kindalas
  • Getaway: High Speed II: Forgantly
  • Attack From Mars: Mr_Hardluck
  • Black Rose: MisterLantz
  • The Party Zone: Forgantly
  • Theatre of Magic: Forgantly
  • Champion Pub: Forgantly
  • Safe Cracker: Joe Hills
  • White Water: Forgantly
  • Hurricane: Forgantly
  • Red and Ted’s Road Show: Mr_Hardluck
  • Cirqus Voltaire: Forgantly
  • No Good Gofers: WrexVerdi
  • Tales of the Arabian Nights: Forgantly
  • Space Station: Forgantly
  • Doctor Dude and his Excellent Ray: Forgantly
  • FunHouse: Forgantly
  • Creature from the Black Lagoon: WrexVerdi
  • Monster Bash: Forgantly
  • Medieval Madness: Forgantly
  • Fish Tales: Forgantly
  • Junk Yard: Forgantly
  • Getaway: High Speed II: Forgantly
  • Attack from Mars: NJCoffeeJunkie
  • Black Rose: ToxxicGlitter

Pinball Tournaments in 2023

Our Pinball FX3 tournaments will resume the week of January 9th, 2023.

If folks have the chance to pick up the Williams Pinball FX3 packs cheap on the Steam Christmas sale, they can do so with confidence we won’t be switching over to the new mac-compatible Pinball FX for at least half a year.

Even if the new version’s steam launch surprises us by launching earlier, we’ll test its tournament-readiness with hour-long on-stream tourneys until the summer.

If it turns out that the new Pinball FX isn’t tournament ready by this summer, we’ll extend the Pinball FX3 tournament series deeper into the year and re-assess as appropriate.

Notable Streams this week

Upcoming conventions

I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!

Until next year, y’all!

Thanks so much for hanging out in 2022. I’m confident 2023 can only be an improvement!

This has been Joe Hills from Nashville, Tennessee. Keep adventuring!

Newsletter #30 for December 12th, 2022

Howdy, y’all!

Joe Hills here, writing as I always do from Nashville, TN!

We’re back on the HermitCraft server!

The HermitCraft Empires crossover continues as we welcome the Empires people onto our home turf!

Non-Denominational Lights event on Vanillish server

Ortsg, an NPC designed by Yirggzmb, is visiting Vanillish to host a Non-Denominational Lights event! Ortsg will have a simple task for folks to complete and earn points to get silly prizes!

More details can be found in SMP: Vanillish By Yirggzmb > vanillish-general

NJCoffeeJunkie wins Attack from Mars Tournament!

This week’s Attack from Mars was incredibly competitive, with 19 players joining us! Congrats to NJ on the win!

1st: NJCoffeeJunkie. 2nd: ToxxicGlitter. 3rd: Mr_Hardluck. 4th: JoeHills. 5th: WrexVerdi. 6th: Laxmi31. 7th: Qwarkeh. 8th: RIX5.139th: Forgantly. 10th: ChloeTGAP. 11th: DarkHorseAsh. 12th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 13th: magentaavocado. 14th: kindalas. 15th: Parker. 16th: EdgeOfTheWorld15.17th: Kingu. 18th: samihiggins. 19th: Chefnutmeg25

This week’s pinball tournament will be played on Black Rose!

DS9 Vanilla server updated to 1.19.3

Update your jars like it’s picking season, the new version of Minecraft is here on DS9!

HermitFan UHC qualifiers continue

Our second qualifier will be held on Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 2:00 PM US Central time, and will be organized and run by Yirrgzmb, with Tommy streaming the action.

More details about the HermitFan UHC can be found in issue #28 of this newsletter.

Our first two contenders, Salem and Maahes0 were chosen in our first qualifying event! Congrats again to them!

Upcoming Stream Schedule

I’ll be attempting to maintain my regular five night-a-week schedule as best I can, but here’s a few things to note this holiday season:

  • No stream the evening of Saturday, December 17th due to family obligations
  • This year’s Christmas Carol streams:
    • Stave I: Sunday, December 18th at 8:30pm US Central Time
    • Stave II: Monday, December 19th at 8:30pm US Central Time
    • Stave III: Tuesday, December 20th at 8:30pm US Central Time (yes, I know I normally take Tuesday off, but the holidays are weird)
    • Stave IV & V: Thursday, December 22nd at 8:30pm US Central Time
  • No streams due to Christmas obligations on December 23rd, 24th, or 25th.
  • No streams due to New Years obligations the evening of December 30th, 31st, or the morning of the 1st.

Notable streams from last week

Upcoming conventions

I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!

Until next time y’all…

Thanks again to our Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii for his help with this newsletter!

This has been Joe Hills from Nashville, Tennessee. Keep ho ho holidaying!

Newsletter #29 for December 5th, 2022

Ho, Ho, Howdy, y’all!

December has arrived, so let’s just all get into that holiday spirit and acknowledge that things are going to be a bit more wild than usual schedule-wise for the next few weeks…

Upcoming Stream Schedule Aberrations

Between randomly imposed embargoes as we portal hop through rifts, friends and family in town, and a bunch of evening events I’ll be taking my kid to, there may be quite a few changes to the streaming schedule made with relatively short notice.

This week

  • My HHH stream for today (Monday, Dec 5th) is cancelled due to a recording conflict
  • My stream tonight may need to be a game other than Minecraft for embargo reasons.
  • This week’s Craft Stream (Wednesday, December 7th) will be broadcast with JaneyLaney instead of ZombieCleo
  • This Friday night’s HermitCraft 9 Live stream will be moved earlier in the day to 8:30am US Central time due to an evening commitment with my kid

Later this month

  • No stream the evening of Saturday, December 17th due to family obligations
  • This year’s Christmas Carol streams:
    • Stave I: Sunday, December 18th at 8:30pm US Central Time
    • Stave II: Monday, December 19th at 8:30pm US Central Time
    • Stave III: Tuesday, December 20th at 8:30pm US Central Time (yes, I know I normally take Tuesday off, but the holidays are weird)
    • Stave IV & V: Thursday, December 22nd at 8:30pm US Central Time
  • No streams due to Christmas obligations on December 23rd, 24th, or 25th.
  • No streams due to New Years obligations the evening of December 30th, 31st, or the morning of the 1st.

There’ll likely be other last-minute holiday changes to things as we go. Thanks for your patience!

HermitFan UHC Updates!

Thanks to ToxxicGlitter for organizing our first UHC qualifier on Saturday!

Congrats to our winners Salem and Maahes0w0, who have secured spots on the team that will represent our community in the January 22nd UHC!

Madelinesocks and Kindalas also were incredibly competitive, and have secured positions as fallbacks on our waitlist if any of our four contenders have an emergent conflict.

Our next qualifier will be held on Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 2:00 PM US Central time, and will be organized and run by Yirrgzmb, with Tommy streaming the action.

More details about the HermitFan UHC can be found in issue #28 of this newsletter

Snapshot server updated to 1.19.3rc2!

Our community snapshot temp world server has been updated to the most futuristic release candidate of Minecraft yet! Details on 1.19.3 rc2 are available at https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-1-19-3-release-candidate-1?2.

Connection info for $10+/mo community members is available in Realms And Servers > #snapshot-tempworld

Weekly Pinball Tournament

Getaway: High Speed II results

Congratulations once again to Forgantly!

1st: forgantly. 2nd: ToxxicGlitter. 3rd: Mr_Hardluck. 4th: JoeHills. 5th: Qwarkeh. 6th:CurtisDoesADig. 7th:ButterflyGirlKMC. 8th: WrexVerdi9th: parker. 10th: Kindalas. 11th: Kingu. 12th: Chloe TGAP. 13th: Laxmi13. 14th: Drewbacca81. 15th: QueenDarkLady

This week: Attack From Mars!

Take the fight all the way to Mars with Attack From Mars in the Pinball FX3 Williams Volume 2 pack! Details in the #weekly-pinbally-challenge channel!

Big streams last week

Upcoming conventions

I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!

Until next time y’all…

This has been Joe Hills from Nashville, Tennessee. Keep adventuring!

Newsletter #28 for November 28, 2022

Howdy, y’all!

Joe Hills here, writing as I always do from Nashville, Tennessee with help from our community liaison, ThatTommyBoii!

HermitFan UHC announced for Noon Central on January 22nd!

Several Hermitcraft communities are organizing a cross-server UHC!

This “Hermitfan UHC” will be a group event, with four players from each community playing as a team against the other communities for bragging rights.

Player Selection for our Community

Every community may determine their own criteria for selecting their players.

This community will use the following criteria:

  1. ToxxicGlitter and Yirggzmb will each host a UHC between now and the end of the year, in which only contestants who will be available January 22nd may compete.
  2. The top two players from each event will win a slot in the HermitFan UHC.
  3. The next two runners-up from each UHC will serve as alternates in case any of the winners availability changes before the big event.
  4. Entry is open to $10+/mo patrons

Toxxic’s qualifying round has been scheduled for December 3rd at 11am US Central time, with details in Activity-Sign-Ups > #dec-3-uhc-qualifier.

Yirggzmb’s will be later this month with details to come.

Tommy or I will try to stream those two events for all to enjoy!

Participating communities

The current list of fan communities/patreon servers participating (subject to change):

  • Cubfan
  • Etho
  • GeminiTay
  • Impulse
  • JoeHills
  • Mumbo
  • Scar
  • Vintagebeef
  • xBCrafted
  • Zedaph

Empires adventures continue!

Weekly Pinball Tournament

Junkyard results

Congrats again to Forgantly!

1st: forgantly. 2nd: mikelaposata. 3rd: DarkHorseAsh. 4th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 5th: @JoeHills. 6th: MrHardluck. 7th: Parker. 8th: Kindalas 9th: WrexVerdi. 10th: Laxmi13. 11th: chefnutmeg25. 12th: queendarklady

Getaway: High Speed II

This game is not subdued, it’s as intense as Steve Ritchie can make it!

Minecraft Servers

Everstorm Obituaries

  • While trying to set up in spawn village, a zombie broke down the door and stabbed Chefnutmeg in the back with a pickaxe.

This week’s big streams

Dracula!

Crafts!

Upcoming conventions

I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!

Until next time y’all…

This has been Joe Hills from Nashville, Tennessee. Keep adventuring!

Newsletter #27 for November 21, 2022

Howdy, y’all!

Joe Hills here, writing as I always do from Nashville, Tennessee!

Last week’s planned newsletter was initially postponed so we could share the results of a staff meeting we had with guest accessibility expert Joanna Blackhart (and then more stuff happened), so let’s start there!

Accessibility feedback process review

I hired Joanna Blackhart, an accessibility expert in gaming and media, to join the staff and I for a meeting to review our existing processes for handling accessibility needs and requests.

The big take-aways were:

  • Accessibility processes are most effective when they are pro-active rather than reactive, so it would be better for us to ask for accessibility feedback about anything on the agenda for next quarter before decisions are made.
  • There is going to be diligence required before we act on any given request. The burden of that diligence ultimately falls on me, and while myself or my staff may ask follow-up questions of the folks making requests to speed up our research, we need to communicate clearly that they are not expected or required to provide that information for their request to be considered.
  • Moderating the feedback on requests from other members of the community may require a more hands-on approach to ensure folks sharing their own experiences aren’t framing them in ways that invalidate the experiences of others.
  • In the long term, having a staff member with a specialized role taking responsibility for the items above would be optimal, and I’ve approved a couple hours of research time for QueenDarkLady to draft what a position like that would look like in our community in more detail.

If you have thoughts on all this, please provide it on the Discord in the Joe-Hills-Meta > #feedback-accessibility channel.

What’s Tommy got to do with it?

In the past, if something isn’t someone else’s job already, I’ve tried to do it myself. Given the workload I’m facing at the moment, I can’t ensure a speedy turnaround on random things that just pop up, and so as community liaison, Tommy is taking point on tasks that don’t necessarily fit under anyone else’s purview at the moment.

As the community grows and changes, there will probably be a lot of emergent roles that will need to be filled immediately on ad hoc basis before we can figure out what they look like more formally and appoint someone else to do them.

I appreciate your patience with Tommy and I as we face new challenges. We encourage y’all to share your thoughts and concerns in the relevant feedback channels to help us better establish structured processes and roles to handle the tasks we are improvising responses to at the moment. Thank you again!

Still trapped on Empires!

Weekly Pinball Tournament

Medieval Madness results

We had a fantastic showing this week, with 17 participants! It might have helped a bit that I streamed playing the table for almost three hours on Friday night.

The results are clear, despite my best efforts, Forgantly has taken the crown with 122million points! Congrats, Forgantly!

1st: Forgantly. 2nd: Hardluck. 3rd: JoeHills. 4th: Mikelaposata. 5th: RIX13. 6th: Laxmi13. 7th: SamiHiggins. 8th: QueenDarkLady 9th: WrexVerdi. 10th Drewbacca81. 11th: Kindalas. 12th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 13th: NJCoffeeJunkie. 14th: ChloeTGAP. 15th: Parker. 16th: Mike. 17th: Chefnutmeg

Fish Tales

Forgantly wins again with 254 million points in Fish Tales!

1st: forgantly. 2nd: RIX513. 3rd: Joehills. 4th: MrHardluck. 5th: MikeLaposata. 6th: Laxmi13. 7th: ButteflyGirlKMC. 8th: NJCoffeeJunkie. 9th: Parker. 10th: QueenDarkLady. 11th: Kingu. 12th: kindalas. 13th: superstone. 14th: ChloeTGAP. 15th: ChefNutmeg

This week’s table: Junk Yard!

This week’s table is Junk Yard, in which you find junk to build a craft capable of space flight, despite not being a billionaire! An angel and a devil are there to guide you as you break into a man’s place of business and throw toast at his dog! It’s a tale as old as time!

Minecraft Servers

Everstorm October closes

Our October Everstorm using the Ledger mod is now closed. If you have feedback about how being able to see what anyone changed around you felt and how it would affect your gameplay on a longer-running SMP server, please let us know in Joe-Hills-Meta > #feedback-everstorm.

Obituaries and Survivors

  • SuperStone died after being clown-cannonned by the ender dragon.
  • MisterLantz fell victim to the assassin enderman that had it out for him.
  • Kindalas survived despite Tommy’s insistence that I be exposed to danger.
  • MagentaAvocado: Supply short one pearl / Into the portal we dove / Victory was claimed
  • Laxmi13 made it to the end and back, literally, thanks to the help of friends and overpreparedness.

Everstorm November opens

ToxxicGlitter’s new Everstorm is a friendship adventure through hell. Get started in Realms-and-Servers > Everstorm-November-2022

Obituaries

  • While trying to set up in spawn village a zombie broke down the door and stabbed Chefnutmeg in the back with a pickaxe.

Petitions

Petitions for Deep Slate Nine Vanilla, Vanillish and Modded were held last week, and you can find all the details at: https://joehills.net/petitions-november-2022/

Other notable streams recently

Crafts!

Dracula!

Upcoming conventions

I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!

Until next time y’all…

This is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN, joined by ThatTommyBoii, our fantastic community liaison!

To those who celebrate, Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels this week!

Keep adventuring!

Newsletter #26 for November 7, 2022

Howdy, y’all!

Joe Hills here, writing as I always do from Nashville, Tennessee!

I’ve returned from about a month of traveling and am back at the reins of the newsletter this week, with Tommy assisting me.

Thank you very much to Tommy for working on the newsletter while I was away and thanks to everyone on the Discord for being flexible with our vacation mode experiment. I haven’t seen a lot of communities try something like this, so I’ll be writing a standalone blog post on how vacation mode went as a resource to others that you can expect later this month. I’m in the outline phase of that draft, and will be reading the feedback y’all share in Joe-Hills-Meta > #feedback-vacation-mode as I evaluate where the experiment succeeded and fell short. If you have questions or feedback you’d like to see considered as I write, please try to share those in the #feedback-vacation-mode channel by the end of the week.

We are out of vacation mode and the channels on the server are writable again, but that five-week break was only my first step as I work on shifting out of crisis-mode and re-focus on long-term planning. The last few years have been incredibly stressful for many of us, and I’m proud that with y’all’s help, I’ve been able to keep things going day-to-day despite many wild uncertainties.

It’s time to move past day-to-day survival, though, so I want to thank folks for their continuing patience through January as I use this quarter to reflect, re-visit, and re-evaluate in preparation for future strides.

I’m also trying to use the extra energy and focus provided by the channel culling to improve my creative output. If y’all have any thoughts on how my creative work in October and November compared to that earlier this year, I’d love to hear it in Joe-Hills-Meta > #feedback-creative

Our next quarterly meeting will be held on January 21st, 2023 at 11am US Central Time, and the current agenda is:

  • Creative work in 2023: episodes, streams, and songs
  • Vacation mode moving forward: how it will work and when to use it – Joe
  • Review accessibility implications of screen readers and consolidated channels -Meep and Joe
  • Frequency of channel culling – Joe
  • Adding channels back to discord – Joe
  • Review server emotes – Kindalas

If you’d like a topic added to the agenda, please submit it via Joe Hills Meta > #next-quarter-new-business-agenda-requests.

Empires Crossover

Grian’s Rift has stranded us on Empires SMP, but I’m figuring things out as I go anyway with a little help from my friends:

I appreciate False extending an invite to the Hermits to participate in the EmpiresSMP segment of this year’s Love Tropics fundraiser benefitting Project Seagrass. Over $8,000 was raised during our two-hour segment alone toward a weekend total of over $25,000! Thanks to everyone who stopped by and contributed! It was fantastic seeing so many familiar names in the donation queue.


Minecraft Server News

Categories created for each SMP server

Our server operators Yirggzmb and ToxxicGlitter requested new categories and channels for their SMP servers, and I delivered! You can find those in the category list directly below the S9 server categories.

Upcoming Petitions

  • Modded: on-server, Sunday November 13th, at 11am US Central
  • DS9: on-server,  Sunday November 13th, at noon US Central
  • Vanillish: asynchronous via SMP: Vanillish by Yirggzmb > #vanillish-petitions

Weekly Pinball Tournament

Monster Bash Results

Congrats to Forganty for securing a sweet Halloween victory on Monster Bash!

1st: forgantly. 2nd: WrexVerdi. 3rd: Mr_Hardluck. 4th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 5th: JoeHills. 6th: Laxmi13. 7th: Parker. 8th: NJ. 9th: badgerspanner

This week’s tournament: Medieval Madness

This week’s table is one of my favorite of all time, and I hope you have the chance to play it yourselves someday!

The exploding castle is incredibly cool in real life, but Pinball FX3’s simulation of it isn’t bad either! This tournament is open through Sunday night, and details for joining are available in Activity-Sign-Ups > #weekly-pinball-challenge

Other streams this week:

HermitCraft 9 – Empires too

Don’t forget, VODs of my Minecraft streams will no longer appear as uploads on my YouTube channel, but will instead be added to the Minecraft Streams playlist which you can find at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7On8E0_x1tqPDjC8GzcujZnxr5hLYr53

Crafts with ZombieCleo

Dracula: Chapter XIX feat. BadgerSpanner

Upcoming conventions

My schedule is pretty light for the time being, but I hope to see some of y’all in March for Tennessee Game Days Spring!

Until next time y’all…

This is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN. Thanks again to Tommy for assistance on this newsletter as always!

Keep adventuring!

Newsletter #25 for October 31st, 2022

Howdy folks!

It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty!

First and foremost, Happy Halloween! If you celebrate with costumes or confections, tricks or treats, scary cinema or spiced coffee, I hope you have fun! For those who don’t celebrate there’s still discount candy to look forward to!

Now let’s get into the news!

Pinball FX3 Tournaments

Creature From The Black Lagoon results

A previous champion rises from the dark, congratulations to WrexVerdi!

1st: Wrex. 2nd: Mr_Hardluck. 3rd: JoeHills. 4th: forgantly. 5th: ButterflygirlKMC. 6th: kindalas. 7th: Parker, 8th: Laxmi13

This week: Monster Bash

Who will be the victor this week? Hopefully not just Frankenstein! Get into the Halloween spirit with this table, information to join can be found in Activity Sign Ups > #weekly-pinball-challenges

Minecraft Server News

DS9

The Halloween build contest has concluded! Thank you to Outpost Not Kansas for hosting, and congratulations to MagentaAvocado with Team Earth Kingdom and Elijah for winning first place!

If you’d like to see their float, along with all the other participants, you can view this VOD of the contest and judging.

Information on the next holiday parade float build contest will be available soon. Stay tuned!

Everstorm Obituaries

There aren’t any obituaries to report for the week, phew!

If you have yet to check out the Everstorm server, you can find information on it in Realms and Servers > #everstorm-october-2022

Modded 1.19 Fall

ToxxicGlitter has announced the date for his first ever server petitions! Join the server or send in a proxy on Sunday November 13th, at 11am US Central Time! For the mod list and information on Toxxic’s server you can check Realms and Servers > #modded-1dot19

Discord Server News

Today’s the day! We’ve made it to the end of our first vacation mode! Joe will be unlocking all of the channels, and I look forward to chatting with y’all again!

I know I’ve said it before, but I want to again thank everybody in our community for being so patient and understanding with our need to have vacation mode. You are all amazing, thank you so much!

That being said, I would also like to remind folks that we strongly encourage feedback! Please let us know your thoughts and any questions, comments, or concerns over in Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-vacation-mode.

I’d also like to request some feedback on the last few newsletters, as I have been writing them solo for the duration of this vacation mode. Please direct all thoughts on that topic to Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-newsletter. Thanks!

HermitCraft Episodes and New Short

If you’ve been out of the loop, something big has happened on Hermitcraft… It’s a lot to unpack, so I’ll let Joe’s new short open that can of worms for you!

If and when you’re up to speed, here’s some new HermitCraft episodes to enjoy!

Meet-ups and Conventions

Music City Multi-con has ended! If you missed it and would like to plan ahead to see Joe at a convention, we’ve got one confirmed event next year!

We’ll keep you posted if anything new gets added to the list!

Upcoming conventions

So long for now…

Thanks to everyone who stays up to date with the newsletter! I’ll be back with Joe next week for more newsletter-y goodness. I hope you have a great day!

This has been TommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty.

See you around!

Newsletter #24 for October 25th, 2022

Howdy folks!

It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty! We’ve got a lot of things to share today, and I couldn’t be more excited, let’s get into it!

HermitCraft Charity Stream Event

On October 23rd, GoodTimesWithScar organized a charity livestream event benefitting Gamers Outreach.  They provide children’s hospitals with gaming carts to give a sense of normalcy and joy to kids.

The original goal of the stream was $25,000. As I currently type this, we have reached over $435,000.

This is bigger than huge, it is absolutely incredible. To everyone who donated, watched the stream, spread word about the event and who support the hermits in general, thank you so much!

This was all because the Hermitcraft community is one of the kindest and most supportive communities you could find. Thank you again and again.

The donation page is still open, if you missed the event and would like to donate you can do so here.

Additionally, Joe pledged to shave his beard on stream if we reached $250,000 and I am very pleased to be able to link you to the VOD of that stream now!

Congratulations Joe and Badger!

Speaking of Joe, congratulations to him and BadgerSpanner! For those who may have missed it, Joe proposed to Badger and they are now engaged! The community extends all their love and support to the two, and we hope they have a happy and wonderful life together.

You can see the engagement photos over here at Badger’s twitter.

Congrats again, and much love!

Pinball FX3 Tournaments

FunHouse results

The fun doesn’t stop, Forgantly takes another win!

1st: Forgantly. 2nd: Mr. Hardluck. 3rd: ChloeTGAP. 4th:Laxmi13. 5th: Misterlantz. 6th: WrexVerdi. 7th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 8th: Parker

9th: Marwood7. 10th: JoeHills

This week: Creature From The Black Lagoon

To get into the spirit for Halloween, we’ve got a spooky themed table from the Universal Monsters Pack! Can anybody end Forgantly’s reign of terror?

Minecraft Server News

September Everstorm Survivors

  • WizardOfDocs made several daring supply runs under the six noses of two Withers, and then moved into Gem’s castle and got distracted by skyblock.
  • MJ used Zedaph’s lab as a base of operations and found Evil X’s stash of Totems of Undying while under the not careful watch of two Withers!
  • Laxmi13 didn’t die because people who came before her created a safe place to hide from the wither.

October Everstorm Obituaries

  • mercurialvoid overestimated their ability to take on a group of skeleton horsemen
  • WizardOfDocs made a valiant effort to help MagentaAvocado with their phantoms.
  • Darth_Skellious was hunting for skeletons and one knocked him into a hole that had two creepers in it…he did not survive.
  • Qwarkeh helped make some weapons, and then got complacent and turned her back to the woods. HISS, BOOM!

Modded 1.19 Fall

ToxxicGlitter has updated the modded server! There has been some patches as well as additions, you can find all the information in Realms and Servers > #modded-1dot19.

Toxxic will also be holding his first minecraft server petitions!

For those unfamiliar, our minecraft petitions involve the players having a meeting with the server’s creative lead in which they bring their woes, grievances, annoyances, or any other sort of issue they might be having.

They may request a solution from the server lead, which is open for discussion to the community members attending the petition. You can also send in a proxy if you are unable to attend. The results vary greatly depending on the server lead.

If you would like to attend there is a poll in Realms and Servers > #modded-1dot19 to select a date that works best for the players. Make sure you vote and keep an eye out for the results!

Discord Server News

As many if not all of you are aware, the discord has been in vacation mode for a few weeks now. We are quickly approaching the end of this vacation mode, and you can expect to see the discord back next week!

October 31st is the day we shall be transitioning back, I hope everyone is excited!

As always when we try new things, we greatly welcome feedback. Once the discord is fully open members will have access to Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-vacation-mode to let us know what they thought.

I would again like to thank folks for allowing us to have vacation mode. Thanks for your patience, see you on the other side!

HermitCraft Episodes and Stream VODs

Some folks may have noticed a change in Joe’s youtube channel. In an effort to tidy things up, Joe has created four new playlists for stream VODs. Now you have a convenient playlist for craft streams, Minecraft streams, Dracula reading streams, and pinball streams!

The King story concludes!

With the story of Ren the King coming to an end, we felt the need to share RenDog’s episode, as it starts off with an epic poem crafted by Ren and Joe! If you missed Ren’s video, you can check it out here!

Joe’s HermitCraft episodes

Meet-ups and Conventions

Pinball Expo seemed to be a lot of fun based off the chatter folks in attendance were having! If you’re interested in a meetup, you can catch Joe at the following conventions!

Upcoming conventions

So long for now…

This past week has been fantastic, there is so much love here y’all. I have never been more proud to be a part of such a lovely community. I can’t begin to express my gratitude, so let’s just continue being excellent to one another!

This has been TommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty.

See you around!

Newsletter #23 for October 18th, 2022

Howdy folks!

It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty! Sorry to keep y’all waiting, it’s tricky getting all the report-worthy news together in a timely manner!

Joe has hopefully been enjoying his vacation so far, so it’s my turn to write the newsletter again. Let’s see what’s in the news!

Pinball FX3 Tournaments

Space Station results

Another victory goes to Forgantly, how stellar!

Space station leaderboard. 1st: Forgantly. 2nd: Mr_Hardluck. 3rd: Laxmi13. 4th: WrexVerdi. 5th: RIX5.13. 6th: JoeHills. 7th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 8th: Kindalas

9th: MeinsEins. 10th: Parker. 11th: NJCoffeeJunkie. 12th: Winter83. 13th: marwood7

Doctor Dude and his Excellent Ray results

Double congrats to Forgantly for the win, most excellent my dude!

1st: forgantly. 2nd: WrexVerdi. 3rd: Mr_Hardluck. 4th: ChloeTGAP. 5th: ButterflyGirlKMC. 6th: Parker. 7th: NJCoffeeJunkie. 8th: RIX5.13

9th: Laxmi13. 10th: JoeHills

This week: FunHouse!

If you’re like me you’re a dummy who’s waited too long to try out the pinball challenges, come join in the fun this week in FunHouse! Details to join can be found in Activity Sign-ups > #weekly-pinball-challenges

Minecraft Server News

DS9

Our first parade float building contest following the B’hala build contest is quickly approaching! Join us on Saturday, October 29th at 10am US Central Time to participate in our Halloween parade, hosted by Outpost Not Kansas!

There are still 4 spaces available for folks to reserve a spot, otherwise feel free to ask to join somebody else! Sign ups can be found in Activity Sign Ups > #oct-29-halloween-parade

DS9 Petitions

Our September petitions for the flagship vanilla server was held on the 1st of the month, if you’d like to see how that went you can do so over here.

The next petitions will be held on November 5th at noon US Central time.

Everstorm

There aren’t any obituaries to report for the week, phew!

The server will be resetting today, October 18th. This is an exciting iteration, as we are test driving some server side mods that would serve the same function as plugins such as CoreProtect. Be sure to keep an eye on the Realms and Servers > #everstorm-october-2022 channel!

Modded 1.19 Fall

After many discussions and testing, Toxxic’s modded server has launched! Some of the features include the ability to request to teleport to another player, additional advancements, concrete slabs and more! There are even mods developed by Toxxic himself, so be sure to check it out!

You can find the full mod list and see how folks have been progressing in Realms and Servers > #modded-1dot19-fall-next

Vanillish

Trick or treat! Server operator Yirggzmb has certainly done a cool trick to give players on the Vanillish server a treat! In celebration of this spooky month Yirggy has declared that sweets are actually good for you! Cookies, cake, and pie will all fulfill more hunger and saturation until the end of the month!

You can join Joe’s discord and gain access to all the servers by becoming a Minecraft Player tier patron over at Joe’s Patreon.

HermitCraft Episodes

Meet-ups and Conventions

Joe held a few impromptu meetups over the course of October, hopefully all the folks able to make it had fun! If you’d like the opportunity to see Joe with a scheduled time there are a few conventions he’s planning to attend below.

Upcoming conventions

So long for now…

Thanks to everybody who reads the newsletter, it means a lot! I hope y’all have been enjoying the more relaxed vibes of vacation mode in the discord, we appreciate being able to have it!

This has been TommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty.

See you around!