New clay generator
To keep the landscape of Kingdom untouched, clay mining was disabled (just like mining other ores outside your own town). Until now, RedBricks could only be bought from the shop at a price that wasn’t exactly friendly for larger builds.
This problem has been solved by a brand-new dam in Mining Colony. The dam is periodically drained and refilled with water and sand once every in-game day (always at sunset). Besides sand, new clay deposits also appear here; clay is used to craft RedBricks. There are three sand layers… The top layer holds 10–20 clay spots, the middle one usually 30–40 spots, and the bottom layer as many as 50–60 spots. Mining the top layer is obviously easiest, while reaching the lower layers requires diving in. Although a minecart track runs above the dam, its stop is a bit farther away, so you have to walk through the forest to reach the dam.
RedBricks have therefore been removed from the shop, giving traders on the market a chance to sell this new commodity at their own price.
The clay generator is powered by a unique GateCraft plugin you won’t find on any other server.
Feeding sheep
Until now, getting wool was quite a hassle. The ideal solution was to head to the public animal farm, which has its own sheep spawner, and kill them on the spot. Now, however, sheep can be fed with grain, wheat, or even bread. The better the food, the faster the wool regrows.
After shearing a sheep, simply take food in hand and left-click to feed it. But watch out: once a sheep has been fed, another left-click will slap it as usual.
Sheep with natural wool colors (brown and shades of black) regrow wool of the same color, while dyed sheep regrow only white wool.
Fire, little lady
A bug that persisted from alpha to beta was non-functional fire. Previously, fire dealt no damage and could only be started by placing active Redstone Dust under a Netherrack block.
Both issues have been fixed; you can now light your own fire (it won’t spread). To allow fire in your town, use the command /town toggle fire.
Bone Swamp dungeon update
Although there is still only one dungeon here—and new ones should be created—this dungeon is not only the first but also vital for Nether Wart, which can be obtained at its end. Previously there was just a single endpoint, but now the dungeon is much more branched and Nether Wart can be found in several places.
While this change sounds simple, building such a dungeon still takes time, and behind its walls lies clever redstone circuitry that randomly regenerates Nether Wart once every in-game day. Big thanks for this update go to agent Phoenix_52 ;)
Website update
The website mainly gained new sections about PvP arenas, including descriptions of individual Warzones. The world list was also updated. On the technical side, a JavaScript submenu was added for quicker access to our “wiki,” and the dynamic map was updated (unfortunately, north is now on the right).
To serve and protect
A few days ago, player Sumeesh was promoted to Sheriff, so he’ll help us keep order :) …he already has his first notch on the sleeve in the form of a shot-down in-game spambot. Our anti-hacker security system was also tested—hackers who obtain items dishonestly. Sadly, the first two foreign players arrived with client-side hacks, but we measure everyone by the same standard, so both received bans for cheating :)
And finally…
…on behalf of the GateCraft server, we wish all miners the very best for 2012 and plenty of free time for Minecraft ;)