As you are probably all aware, 1.20 has been released to the public earlier this month and we are excited to finally update our survival server. As already hinted in a previous post, this update will be a lot bigger for survival than a usual version update. So let’s have a look at the changes!
TL;DR
- New 1.20 content now available
- Border of main world increased from 7,500 to 12,500
- Bosses and custom pets temporarily disabled
- All limitations to mob spawning and breeding removed
- Anti afk system and rules removed
- New content in the works (details tba)
Read the whole post, lazy! 
The update will hit the live server this Saturday, July 1st 
Minecraft 1.20 
In case you’ve been living under a rock, here is a brief and uncomprehensive list of new features in Minecraft 1.20:
- Cherry groves biome with new cherry trees
- Sniffer & camel mobs
- New bamboo wood & hanging signs
- Archeology & pottery
- Fashionable amour trims
- New emojis and fonts
Image sources: Mojang and Mojang
World Border Increase 
As with every major version update, we are increasing the border of our main world to let you explore and build bases in the new biomes and to accomodate new players and new projects. Since this is the very first border expansion of the season, we are going big! The border will be increased from 7,500 blocks to 12,500 - more than doubling the size of the main world!
This should give all of you the option to find a cherry grove to settle down in if you so choose!
Update on Bosses and Pets 
As we have discussed together in my previous post, the performance updates (see below for details) unfortunately require us to remove custom mobs for the foreseeable future. This was a hard decision for us since the custom mobs were such an integral part of our map 4 and we know that those of you who use our resource pack will be very sad about this loss. 
However, we believe that this step will greatly improve the quality of gameplay and your feedback has supported us in this decision.
That being said, we are committed to bringing back custom mobs as soon as the conflicts in the code can be addressed. Thanks for your patience!
Introducing Region Ticks 
Minecraft 1.20 is exciting and all, but the main reason why this update is such a big deal are our new system changes.
Some of the more tech-savvy players in our community are surely familiar with the concept of ticks in Minecraft. In fact, one of the main reason big survival servers are plagued by lag issues is the fact that ticks are shared between the whole server. This often results in the tick rate (tps) dropping if certain players use up too big of a chunk of a tick and in consequence, the game starts to lag for everyone else.
The new technology - called Folia - that we have now adopted splits the map into many smaller regions and assigns each region its individual tick. This means that you will no longer be affected by all lag machines and big farms across the server and you should generally expect more stable tick rates and smoother gameplay. 
For more technical details, read here and for a general overview of the Folia project, read this article.
Of course, this does not mean that lag is completely eliminated from the game. If you build unreasonably large farms or breed 2,000 frogs in your base (shoutout to last season!), you will still experience lag in the direct vicinity. The difference is that you will no longer share your suffering with the entire of the server. In fact, we strongly encourage all of you to use the border expansion and build all of your big farms far away from spawn. By doing this, you will help reduce lag in the center of the map while simultaneously increasing your farms’ output.
New Mob Spawning Rules 
As far as I can think back, survival has had rather strict regulations on mob spawning and breeding. This has made some items unnecessarily difficult to get, and made some very cool vanilla farms completely (or partially) useless.
With careful optimism in our new system changes, we are removing all caps to mob spawning and are going completely vanilla. This should drastically increase the output of all mob farms across the server and even enable some previously infeasible farms to finally work. Whether you need a trident, a beacon, or just more rockets for your elytra, this change will be perfect for you!
That being said, we are aware that this will have a massive impact on the survival economy, and we reserve the right to tweak spawning behaviour or forbid certain types of farms going forward. In particular, we do not want afk gold farms to come back into the meta. Furthermore, we reserve the right to remove farms and large quantities of mobs if we feel they cause unneccessary lag for your direct neighbours. Again, this can be avoided by finding remote locations for your big farms and industrial districts.
Furthermore, we are also removing the afk kick that was added earlier in this season along with all rules concerning afking. Since we are not as concerned about lag anymore, you may now afk wherever you like and for as long as you desire. Just keep an eye on your (parents’) electricity bill… 
We will be monitoring the effect of these changes very closely and are ready to revert changes if it becomes necessary. Please do let us know what you think of them!
Bug Reporting 
While there are already quite a few changes in this update for the players, there are even more changes ‘under the hood’ because of the size of the Folia project. It rewrites many systems that our server is built upon so it is inevitable that some bugs make their way into the server. While we have tried to catch and fix as many of those bugs as possible, we depend on your help to get them all sorted out.
If you come across a bug, please do not try to abuse it, but rather report it to a staff member asap. If possible, try to communicate the following information:
- What is the bug?
- How do you reproduce the bug? / What did you do to cause this bug?
- Did this bug occur before 1.20 or is it new?
Of course, we are mostly interested in new and impactful bugs, but encourage you to report any bugs that you come across. Bug abuse will be punished by jails or bans depending on the severity of the abuse, while proper bug reports (following the format above) that result in a bug being fixed will be rewarded with (mini) crate keys depending on the severity of the bug.
Please note that Folia is still a brand new and experimental technology that we will be one of the first servers to adopt. So we ask you to please excuse any small bumps along the way.
New Content Soon 
While I cannot tell you more at this point, I am wrapping up this post with a little teaser. 1.20 gives us many new opportunities for brand new survival content and we have some very cool projects cooking right now.
This includes new crates, new types of accessories, and survival exclusive tags (and badges) utilizing the new 1.20 font updates. As soon as we are ready to share more details, you will hear from me again!
