Shotbow

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Hey Shotbow! I'm Mistri and I'll be your host for this month's edition of Dentril's New Moon. This month was absolutely crazy — there were 2 full pages of announcements since the last newsletter. Let's jump right into it!

Updates
Network Updates
Recruiting
We're recruiting! If you've ever wanted to be on the Shotbow team, now's your chance! We opened up 2 applications for staff this month:

• Development Team - we've always had developer applications open, but we didn't have a form until now. This will stay open for the forseeable future, and if you lose track of it, we've also added it to the "Contact Us" form at the bottom of the page. We're specifically looking for Java developers who are proficient with the Bukkit/Spigot API. If you're interested, apply here!
• Localization Team - In conjunction with Shotbow's long-lasting efforts to make our content widely available across the globe, we're re-opening Localization Team applications. If you're fluent in a language other than English, we want you on our team to make our content available to those who natively speak your language. Interested? Read more here!

Rule Updates
We added a new rule to our network-wide rules page:
Also, thanks to the Localization Team's efforts, our network wide rules and our gamemode specific rule pages have been translated to the following languages: Deutsch, English, Español, Nederlands, 日本語, Türkçe!

Film Crew
The Film Crew is looking for your help with our next project! Now that the current season of Annihilation Clan War tournaments have wrapped up, we want you to think about your favorite moments from the tournament! Whether you participated or just watched the streams, we have had plenty of epic moments that would fit great into a montage. Along with our in-progress MineZ Community Montage, we also are dipping into the Annihilation scene to show off some of the greatest hits!

We posted a thread to the Annihlation forum looking for highlights. If you recorded your perspective and want to share that as well, feel free! Look back on the VODs, and get some ideas, and our team will begin working on it over the next few weeks. You can find the thread here — thanks everyone!

Technical Support
Over the last month, I went through the Technical Support forum and did the following:

• Removed old, out-dated threads from the pins
• Updated relevant threads with new information
• Resolved all issues on this thread, this thread, and this thread. Sorry for the delays: you can expect faster response times for these threads in the future!

Website Updates
The website has finally been migrated to our new host (Path), and we have resolved a ton of issues with website:

• Deliverability to Microsoft hosted email addresses (Outlook, Hotmail, etc.) has been resolved
• Thread timestamps can now be clicked to link to a specific post

However, we're aware of some issues remaining logged in to the website. We are investigating. If you are experiencing this issue you can clear your cookies for Shotbow as a temporary solution.

MineZ Updates
The long awaited update, MineZ: Origins, was announced and released this month. If you missed it, check out its stunning trailer here, and read the (lengthly) changelog here.

After the Origins update, we've made a concious effort to continue pushing out bugfixes and content updates much more frequently than before. Since release, we've rolled out 17 bugfixes & updates, which are being posted daily in our Discord and on this thread.

We also posted an update about the MineZ Map, and challenged our players to complete the hardest dungeon in the game for a prize. In case you missed it, read more here.

Finally, we rolled an update yesterday with tons of new changes: new legendary items, new builds, new dungeons, and tons more. Read more about it here!

When in Rogue Updates
Alpha Preview Weekends #3 and #4 happened this month, with tons of new content updates and a few public test sessions! If you missed out on the fun, be sure to stay tuned on the Shotbow forums throughout the next month for more tests.

Annihilation Updates
Content updates have been delayed while Annihilation is being updated to a 1.12.2 base version — which will come with improved stability and the ability for us to implement awesome new mechanics. Please bear with us as we make this important update!

However, the community-run Annihilation Clan War series continued this month, with matches 4, 5, 6, and 7 taking place on our YouTube channel!

Statistics
SMASH Rankings
The spring season ends soon, so be sure to climb up the leaderboards for ranked matches! Current standings are:

• 1st - Daggez with 1203 ELO
• 2nd - jiren74 with 1202 ELO
• 3rd - PUSEI with 1143 ELO

Network in General
Staff updates:

• Bjarn re-joined the team as a Jr. Developer
• AlecJ and Wayvernia re-joined the Full Admin team
• JACOBSMILE was promoted to Film Crew Lead
• M4bi joined the MineZ mini admin team
• Raku2316 and Outra were promoted to Jr. Localizer
• dLeMoNb has been promoted to SMASH Lead
• JACOBSMILE joined the Ban Appeal Counselor team

Other statistics:

• A total of 182,646,057 XP was earned by players this month
• There were 3,488 players banned in the last month
• This month we achieved a peak playercount of 719 on May 10
• 220 ban appeals were resolved in the last month
• 13,367 in-game reports were resolved in the last month
• (NEW) 187 Rank Upgrade Requests were handled in the last month

Player Peak
This month, if we can hit over 900 players online at one time, we will do a giveaway on our Twitter! This time, we'll be giving 10 lucky winners a 1-month subscriber package.

What can I do to help?
Play on Shotbow! During the COVID-19 outbreak, it's important to stay indoors to avoid spread of the virus — so invite your friends, and invite their friends too! Heck, make friends and invite them to Shotbow! Spread the word about our amazing games, and in return we'll work as hard as we can to make your experience the best it can possibly be.

Closing Words
I hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter as much as I enjoyed writing it! As always, comments are appreciated. I'm your host, Mistri — thanks for flying Shotbow!

Hello Survivors,

A little over three weeks ago, we released MineZ: Origins. This update gave our team a great foundation to rapidly improve upon the game and roll updates more routinely. In Origins, we introduced a wide variety of new rebuilds, layouts for dungeons, and the groundwork for new legendaries.

Legendary Tomes

Throughout the main MineZ questline, you may acquire certain knowledge long since forgotten. These tomes did not have a use at the time of release, but we intended to give them a purpose. Before this point, most items you received during questlines were completely cosmetic and served no real functional purpose.

These tomes are the beginning of a new design concept where items can serve multiple purposes: you could use them in the story or in the environment. These legendary tomes are very special and each have a unique effect when activated. They are currently a one time use.

This has been done to allow us to create potentially powerful effects and offset the problem of durability when it comes to books. Currently, the dungeons you need to beat to receive these are not updated to reflect their difficulty as an elite dungeon. It is possible that in the future, when these dungeons are changed, these legendaries will change as well.

Seal of Time

By right clicking this item, you will begin a countdown of 7.5 seconds. Your location will be marked where you clicked it and after this small countdown, time itself will be turned back for you. You will find that you have been brought back to the moment you used the item - your health, hunger and saturation being fully restored.

I can think of many uses for this item, and it can definitely have the potential to be very useful in combat.

Seal of Space

By right clicking this item, a circle of influence will appear around you. You control two points in space and after a given countdown, you will find that these points between space have been connected and you along with anyone in this circle have been moved up to twenty blocks.

Have you ever been locked in combat at one of the bridges in the gravel canyon? With this item, you could transport your entire team across the bridge!

Seal of Entropy

By right clicking this item, a circle of influence will appear around you. You harness the unpredictable nature of the universe. You are its conduit, and those around you will be moved in unpredictable and potentially debilitating ways. You do not want to get caught in this tome’s area of effect.

Seal of Gravity

By right clicking this item, you toss the book out like a flash grenade. After a short time, wherever it lands becomes the epicenter of a sudden change in gravity. You wield the force which attracts players towards wherever you choose and after a small countdown, anyone near that point is pulled inwards. This can be used to do incredible things, you just have to be creative.

Dungeons

In Origins, we introduced a new tier system to dungeons to allow for scalable loot to be placed in a variety of dungeons. While loot is not always static and can be updated throughout time, this tier system will remain.

This update includes three dungeons: two tier one dungeons and a new tier three dungeon. Tier one dungeons are meant to be intro dungeons that a basic player with almost no gear could do. The rewards for this reflect the difficulty of these intro dungeons and their close proximity to spawn regions. These two dungeons can be found in Grimdale and Carmi.

The new tier three dungeon can be found in the swamp and boasts a completely new and exciting legendary, but be warned - what crawls in the swamp may leave you feeling…nauseous.

Towns

If you thought Origins would bring the last of location reworks, you were mistaken. We have selected two locations which definitely deserved a rebuild and have reenvisioned them. They keep the general theme of their older version, but have been brought into 2020.

One location is an emerging, isolated gearing spot and the other is a western town that has been neglected for some time. We hope you enjoy these new additions to the world!

Patchwork, the town north of Romero has never existed, by the way. I believe something else has taken its place.

In addition, we've included a handful of areas we are looking for build submissions for. Below are five areas for anyone to use and create something that could potentially make it into the map!

Saens Rebuild

• A minor location in the eastern savannah biome. Provided is a range for what we're looking for rather than the build. You do not need to conform to the current style of Saens.

Possible Savannah Minor Build

• A range for a minor location in the eastern savannah biome.

Possible Savannah Medium Build

• A range for a medium location in the eastern savannah biome. This location would also replace Saens.

McIovinville Rebuild

• A minor location in the snow biome. You may choose to scrap all of McLovinVille and build something entirely different.

Desert Savannah

• An area for a minor / medium sized location in a biome otherwise completely inhabited by dungeons.

Closing

Since the release of Origins, we have been hard at work fixing issues with the servers and the map. We would like to thank you for your patience as we sift through the issues that pop up from time to time. We are committed to being transparent on all changes we make to the game and have been constantly updating them here.

I’d like to give credit to Builder IvanDoomy for the two town rebuilds, _frostie (formerly known as PineFrost64) and Tannatron for the tier 3 dungeon and one of the tier one dungeons, ACrispyTortilla for the tier one dungeon at Carmi, Pichu2002 for help on dungeon redstone, Doc for working hard to bring us these new legendaries while sifting through server issues, JACOBSMILE for helping QA test these dungeons and providing ideas, and Marine_PvP for working to balance the loot along the way.

There are many exciting things planned for this summer, and we are looking forward to releasing more content to you as we progress through the summer.

As always, thank you for flying Shotbow and remember, there is no dungeon beneath the dock.

This weekend preview will start Saturday @ 9am CST and will be Public until Saturday night at 9pm after that we will resume with a premium only period until Sunday night @ 9pm at which point we will shut down until the next weekend. Why so short? Well to be honest it's because we need some time to work on stuff but we still need your feedback!!!

Last week we challenged you to defeat the jungle on hard mode. Out of the 2,968 dungeons run, only one team was able to vanquish the spiders, calm the Flame Elemental, and escape Yateveo! Congratulations to JTGangsterLP6, JonnyDvE, MissHilevi, and DJ_Pedro for braving the bugs (and the bugs...) and coming out victorious!!!

Gosh, it feels like yesterday we were running alpha weekend #3... However here we are with another week's worth of toil. This one has mostly mechanical changes as we are working diligently on some serious content (read: Jungle Boss), for which our wonderful Hvba has built an incredible world to encounter it in.

The biggest change this week comes in the form of a cheat code: INFINITE LIVES!!! On standard difficulty, when a dungeon has 2 or more players so long as one of you is standing, the whole crew can be revived with no cost to the team. I think the least fun part of running a dungeon is having to sit out and watch after lives are out, and want to remove the whole "Should I give this person one of MY lives?" question to make teaming up with strangers easier. Reviving no longer heals you to full health. Lives still apply when running in hard mode, as well as on solo runs.

Some feedback indicated that life percentages were hard to make out, so we brought in floating health bars above your teammates heads! Now you can tell at a glance who is aching for that last lingering potion (or who you are hurting the most by hogging it).

With the massive change to revives, we've finally put out the torches. The equipment slot that was formerly used for your friendly neighborhood lighting device is now home to a stack of bandages. Right click to heal yourself after a revive, or left click to heal a teammate if you're feeling generous. Expect more to come with bandages, including a likely ability tree expansion. Those who miss torches lighting the way are still free to pick them off of builds in the dungeon (looking at you, Shrauger).

Speaking of Shrauger, last week I neglected to acknowledge Shrauger's work in producing the gigantic plinko board! I hear you have been having a blast with it and want to make sure you know who to thank for the gigantic moose that decides your fate.

Without further adieu here are the full patch notes for last weekend and this week, I hope you're looking forward to joining us in the deep dungeons of the stronghold and jungle once again!

Patch notes:
- Fixed issue getting stuck between floors.
- Ensured boss bars properly clear
- Made Skeleton king's bones not magnetic...
- Fixed plinko board to work with lots of players
- Fixed quest tracking for artifacts
- Fixed chat symbols in town
- Added hover text to in game chat.
- Fixed an issue where artifacts would (visually) duplicate when switching classes.
- Added explanatory lore to valuables
- Moved to infinite revive for standard difficulty
- Revive no longer heals you all the way
- Swap torches for bandages, with a gear upgrade path for more bandages
- Moved artifacts to Jungle level 8 && 9, to match stronghold's 3 && 4 (Sorry Jonny)
- Added votekick for afk party members (/votekick)
- Fixed creeper quest tracking for artifacts
- Added iframes for warrior's charge
- Converted teammate health indicator to hearts above their heads
- Added a sidebar with info on your class, gold, mana, kills, and lives (if applicable)
- Added unvanish delay for Shadow's backstab so you can slip away quickly after a stabby stabby (don't forget to unlock the ability).


Puzzle rooms might make their return this weekend, including introducing a puzzle supplied by Deadspeck and juj, but there's a chance that slips to next weekend preview.