😨An Ominous Weekend

Hey everyone! The Arcanum research team has been quietly investigating some recent ongoings, and we have news from them to share with you. Something ominous is stirring in Silver Springs, bringing both danger and new possibilities!

🌀Surges & Boundaries

• All content listed here launches Saturday, July 26th, 2025 at 12:00 AM PDT, alongside the Ominous Rush.

The ominous energies have paved the way for the return of Runic Surges, allowing for the acquisition of Boundary Shards, small pieces of the condensed Boundary Fragments we collected during the Runic Shift event.

These Surges are mostly similar to those from the Runic Shift, but with a few key differences. A full overview of this system can be viewed here.

• 😨 Entering an uncorrupted Rune Locale with Bad Omen active consumes it to trigger a Runic Surge. Multiple locales can surge at once.

• 🔋 Surges have 5 difficulty Tiers, determined by the initiating Bad Omen level, increasing the general danger and difficulty of the event.

• ⚔️ If the apex is slain, all participants receive Runes and 1-5 Boundary Shards, scaling with the Surge Tier.

• 💎Boundary Shards have many uses, such as:

  • ⚫ The boundary void below the Arcanum accepts offerings, consuming Shards to corrupt certain items, such as Runic Tomes into Corrupted Tomes.

  • 📖 Use Shards at the Arcanum to wipe enchants from items.

  • ... And more! Read the full post for details.

• ⚠️ As you may expect, it's hard for our small team to properly playtest content like this, so please be patient with the early balance of Surges, and work with us to make them an enjoyable, permanent feature of SSS.

⏫Surges will begin alongside this weekend's Ominous Rush, which has the following bonus effect:

• Ominous Vaults, Pillager raids, and Tier III+ Surges can award Badges of Valor.

📝General Updates

• Impetus of Dionysus now gives 50% mcMMO XP for hand brewing.

• Ear Collector no longer gives ear stacks for non-hostile mob kills. This was never really intended, but we let it go on too long, so apologies there.

🫶

📝General Updates

Hey everyone! I know the pings have been frequent lately but we’ve been getting a lot done. 😎 Got another batch of updates and fixes for you. As always, report any feedback or issues. Thanks!

💎Socketing:

• Horse armor, wolf armor, and harnesses can now be socketed.

  • All can be increased to 11 armor and 2 armor toughness, the same as Diamond Horse Armor.

  • Horse and wolf armor can hold 4 stat gems, while harnesses can hold 6. Gems of Agility socketed into harnesses instead increase fly speed.

• Gems of Tenacity now additionally grant +5% stun resist. This means full tenacity armor reduces stun durations by 80%.

🎮Gameplay:

• You can now capture Happy Ghasts in eggs.

• You now have 64 block reach in the creative world by default. This can be toggled off with ‘/toggle creative_world block_reach.’

• The Hawking Warp can now be used anywhere outside of parkours, though no longer goes through walls.

🖥️Commands:

• Added ‘/map’ to get a link to the live server map.

• Added ‘/toggle sounds combat_end’ to enable a subtle sound when you exit combat.

• Added ‘/vaporize <player>’ as a new simple command (Fine!)

🪲Bug Fixes:

• Fixed Impetus of Hades allowing you to stealth in view of players in PvP arenas.

• Fixed Mulching still giving seeds when used with Magnetism.

• Fixed Noclip warping you when sprinting towards a ladder on a thin wall.

• Fixed display copy pasting not always working for displays of items with custom stack sizes (cakes, potions, etc.)

🫶

⬆️Chase the Skies Update & Live Server Map

Hey everyone, we've got a couple nice updates for you today!

👻Chase the Skies Update - 1.21.7

• The server is now live with 1.21.7, the Chase the Skies game drop! This drop primarily includes the Happy Ghast, a new tame Ghast variant that you can fly around with friends. See here for more info.

• We've made Happy Ghasts meaningfully faster than in vanilla. Note that Dried Ghasts can be crafted with 8 Ghast Tears and Soul Sand.

• Saddles are now craftable, so we no longer buy them in the Server Shop.

• The two new music discs work with Walkman leggings.

• We currently have the locator bar enabled. Let us know what you think of it.

🗺️Live Server Map

• At long last, we've launched an SSS live map! It can be found at https://map.sssminecraft.com/. A quick overview of the features:

• There are maps for spawn, the three survival worlds, and the creative world, which you can swap between in the sidebar.

• You can see who's online in the sidebar, and the map live updates with player positions and world changes.

• Hovering shows coords in the bottom left, and the controls in the top-left can toggle visibility of players, world borders, and the world spawn.

📝Other Updates

• Aphelion of Earth's tendril attacks and Abomination are now treated as magic attacks, letting them synergize with Impetus of Hecate.

• Vanilla rendering updates allow glows to work with shaders, which importantly means you can see ores sensed with Abyssal Armor with shaders on!

• When Transmuting to clay, you now get clay balls instead of clay blocks.

Thanks friends 🫶

📝General Updates

Hey everyone, just a few quick general updates.

• ⬆️We plan to update to 1.21.7 within the next day or two. Get your updated clients ready!

  • Note that saddles will be removed from the shop when we do this, as they are now craftable. Sell any you have off now if you'd like!

• 🌍The resource world has received a few updates

  • Biome warps now generate with more randomness, and the warp names are now more generic. For example. "ResCold" warps to a semi-random cold biome, like frozen peaks, and "ResForest" warps to a random large forest, like jungles or dark forests. The desert warp is still a mainstay.

  • Warps should be much more likely to generate further apart from each other.

  • This is experimental, so let us know what you think of the general idea!

• 🌏Your creative world inventory now persists between visits.

• 😴Insomnia no longer resets if you die in non-survival scenarios.

• 🍯Signs can now be unwaxed by right-clicking with an axe. This returns the honeycomb 50% of the time.

• 🛡️Impetus of Athena effects are rebalanced. Warfare attacks now damage in a cone, while ambush only empowers the attack used to exit stealth, so it is now single-target, but it temporarily shreds 50% of their armor. Stare additionally costs +1 Aegis versus players.

• 🗓️Reminder that the Greenhouse build contest is due next weekend, and that you can submit entries as early as you'd like!

Please leave feedback on any changes in ⁠💌feedback-and-suggestions, thanks🫶

⚔️PvP Events & Paragons

Hey again everyone! Here to notify you about more PvP tournaments this weekend and some general updates from the past week or so.

🤺BYOG PvP Events

@MrJoned will be holding more bring your own gear PvP events each day this weekend. These events times are visible on our calendar. This will include another 1v1 bracket tournament and some misc events like free-for-all fights.

If you want to participate in the 1v1 bracket tournament, please reach out to Jon in advance. This isn't required, but it will help him prepare the brackets in advance and schedule the matchups.

• 📅Event Dates: Saturday, June 28, 2025 11:00 AM PDT and Sunday, June 29, 2025 11:00 AM PDT

• 🏆Prizes: Badges of Valor and a free copy of the Sanguine Phial charm.

  • This is the charm awarded to the recent build contest winners and which will become generally available soon.

📝General Updates

⚔️PvP Balance

• The Film Reel charm no longer reduces spell cooldowns in PvP arenas.,

• The Aegis runic tome spell now has a 10 second cooldown and lasts 5 seconds in PvP arenas.,

✏️Miscellaneous

• The mcMMO archery, mace, and trident skills now grant far more experience.,

• Weather no longer resets from sleeping.

  • This was changed during the River Rush, but is a general change we're testing. Let us know what you think of it.

• The sell price of tropical fish has been increased dramatically (from 200 silver to 2000), but ones dropped by slain tropical fish are no longer sellable.

  • This is intended to buff tropical fish earned via fishing to the appropriate value relative to their rarity.

• All Valor quests will now have a 4-hour cooldown during rushes rather than just A Vexing Situation.,

• The Moments spell of the Runic Tome is now quieter and ages up animals faster.,

Looking forward to seeing everyone online for the Lucky Rush this weekend 🫶

⏫Rush Weekends & General Updates

Greetings everyone! It’s time to formally announce our Rush Weekends and give a few fun general updates!

Rush Weekends

Rush Weekends are a new permanent feature of Silver Springs. They run every weekend for the full 24 hours of Saturday and Sunday, in Pacific time. The first will begin this Saturday, June 21st.

Each rush activates a set of shared Core Bonuses to help you enjoy the weekend, as well as a random Wild Bonus from a list. Below are the Core Bonuses of each rush (every weekend!), as well as the Wild Bonus for the first rush this weekend - the River Rush!

✅Core Bonuses

• +25% to earned Trial Points, mcMMO XP, and Boardwalk tickets, and to rune drop rates

• The quest A Vexing Situation has only a 4-hour cooldown

• mcMMO diminishing returns cap at 0.5x XP instead of 0.25x

🐟Wild Bonus - River Rush!

• It’s not SSS without rain and community fishing! During this rush, rain lasts longer and you’ll hook fish a bit quicker.

General Updates

🧍Armor stands:

• Updated the Armor Stand Customizer which is accessed by sneak right clicking armor stands:

  • The smallness toggle has been replaced with +/- buttons to modify the armor stand's scale between 0.2x and 2x.

  • Added a "Swap Armor" button to swap all armor the armor stand is wearing with your own.

  • Added a lower interface with editable slots to control equipment. This lets you put anything in their slots, including the hand slots for ones with arms.

• Added ‘/rotate info’, which allows punching an armor stand to view all of its current rotations.

📖Runecrafting balance, largely in preparation for the PvP tournament this weekend:

• Reduced the PvP damage of the Avatar of Wardens sonic blast from 5 ❤ to 1.5 ❤.

• Reduced the damage of Gatling's additional arrows by 50%.

  • This is harsh, but we believe justified. It too quickly outscales options like Multishot, and some of its power comes from the sheer projectile count, which increases reliability and proc rates, so it doesn't need best-in-class damage within a few shots. It still scales into being the strongest DPS spread enchant.

• Halved the duration of Adrenaline Rush's reduced speed and gravity in PvP.

• Fixed Ice Aspect and Plague Aspect applying their effects even when the hit was blocked.

✏️For those who were interested in the design behind the Arcanum expansion, a large post detailing the process is available here: Designing Boundaries of the Arcanum

✨Added the ‘/paragon’ command for viewing info about the existing Paragon items.

🪲Fixed mcMMO XP diminishing returns going down to 0.05x instead of our intended 0.25x. mcMMO was bugged and ignoring our config for this field.

Thanks, friends! Please leave feedback for any of this in ⁠#💌feedback-and-suggestions as usual. 🫶

📚Contest Winners and General Updates

Hey again everyone. Time to announce the winners of our Shrine contest, and one quick general update for an important fix.

🪔Shrine: Build Contest Winners

This one was very interesting! We had many extremely competitive entries, leading to multiple ties. Sometimes, ties at higher placements can push out lower placements, but to celebrate how great the entries were, we're awarding all entries at the top 3 scoring brackets. These winning entries all averaged a score of at least 8.5 out of 10 across judges - all well deserving of the awards, IMO, so great work!

• 1st Place: A tie!

  • @Starmarsh™, @J_, and @໓คriค! Your warp is set as Shrine1.

  • @nate! Your warp is set as Shrine2.

• 2nd Place: Another tie!

  • @J1mbers! Your warp is set as Shrine3.

  • @Maidl, @TroyTheCrafter, @Shotdown01, and @Hollow! Your warp is set as Shrine4.

• 3rd Place:

  • @beccc! Your warp is set as Shrine5.

Thanks so much to everyone who entered. Your prize money has been distributed (split evenly where necessary), your prize items are in a bundle in the submitter's ender chest (Star, Maidl, and ElectricSparx for the joint entries), and as usual the winners may request a free warp rename if desired.

The winners will additionally find one Sanguine Phial🩸charm per entrant in their award bundle. This charm heals you on combat exit based on the number of enemies slain. If you slayed many enemies that combat, you will additionally be granted a reward from a small loot pool - spoils of war from the god of war himself!

General Update

The crossbow form of Aphelion of Pluto should now behave properly with Bolt-action and should no longer disappear when trying to swap it while not wearing the Aphelion. Apologies for everyone this burned!

🫶

📝General Updates

Hey everyone! Hope your shrine builds are going well. Normally I try to keep the general updates to once/week, but there were enough changes recently or missed in prior announcements that I wanted to get some info sent out. Without further ado!

⚔️mcMMO

• Added 5 new potions brewable at the upper Alchemy tiers:

  • Level 625: Glow Berries brew the Potion of Glowing.

  • Level 750: Shulker Shells brew the Potion of Levitation.

    • Note: AoE Levitation potions have intentionally low durations for combat balance.

  • Level 875: Hearts of the Sea brew the Potion of Conduit Power.

  • Level 1000: New tier! Resin Blocks brew the Potion of Luck, and Totems of Undying brew the Potion of Heroism, granting Hero of the Village.

• Fixed missing names on custom potions. This causes newly brewed custom potions to have new ‘/iteminfo’ IDs', so you'll need to update shops selling them (sorry!)

Terminology

• Going forward, all past and future unique items won by players (via Splurges, etc.) will be referred to as Paragons, to highlight them as unique, ultimate items. You're all pretty good about using our designated terms, so I wanted this to be known!

Miscellaneous

• Added ‘/display background <r> <g> <b> <alpha>’, each 0-255, for setting text display background colors.

• Updated Impetus of Zeus to display a progress bar towards your next lightning shot.

• Updated unwaxing copper blocks with an axe to refund honeycomb 50% of the time.

• Updated levitation chambers to play subtle sounds and prevent activating Rocket Boosting by sneaking while within.

• Advancement completion is now announced for vanilla ones of Goal or Challenge tier or certain SSS ones. Let us know if you enjoy this change!

• Fixed Absorption health sticking after the effect expired. Sorry, but this was not intentional.

🫶

⚒️Build Contest & Updates

Hey everyone. Time to start our next build contest and announce a few more general updates!

🪔Build Contest: Shrine

A holy place made to worship the divine. Many deities have recently touched our world; what do you worship?

• 📅Due Date: Monday, June 16, 2025 1:59 AM (in your local time)

  • This event is also listed on the calendar, for those interested.

• ✏️Prize & Submission Info: See ⁠⚒ Build Contest Overview

• 🏆Special Prize: The top 3 entrants will receive +1 Charm slot and a unique charm themed to a Greek deity.

  • This charm will be released widely in the future, but these winners get first dibs.

📝General Updates

✏️Miscellaneous

• Fixed standard color codes (such as &9 or &n) not working in text displays.

  • Note that text displays also support hex codes, e.g. <#ff0000> for red. This isn't new, but stating for visibility.

• You are now auto-equipped with Swift Sneak V leggings in the creative world to help speed bridging while building.

  • This can be disabled with '/toggle creative_world swift_sneak' if desired.

• By popular demand, the Greater Impact mcMMO Axes skill has been disabled.

• Fixed the Potion Launcher not properly firing lingering potions.

📖Runecrafting

• Equilibrium and Adrenaline Rush should more reliably catch your health when activated, and are less likely to get you stuck in a pseudo-death state.

• Coyote Time should work as desired when sprinting down stairs or over grass/flowers.

• Disabled ability to activate Rocket Boosting by jumping while ‘/fly’ is enabled as it conflicts too much with toggling flight.

Thanks friends!🫶

📚Contest Winners and General Updates

Hey again everyone. It's been an exciting few days - we've jumped from 8 discoveries to 19 in the few days since our last announcement! There are over 50 enchants total, so still tons to find, but great work so far! It's time to announce the build contest winners, and give a few more days’ worth of general updates.

🔭Observatory: Build Contest Winners

Thanks much to all the entrants, these were really fun to judge! Here are the top 3 entries:

• 🥇1st Place: J1mbers and Krashafa - A perfect score from all judges! Your warp is set as Observatory1.

• 🥈2nd Place: Starmarsh and Daria! Your warp is set as Oculus as requested.

• 🥉3rd Place: A tie!

  • Maidl and TroyTheCrafter! Your warp is set as Observatory3.,

  • TheJ_Team! Your warp is set as Observatory4.

Congrats winners! For all entrants, your prize money has been distributed (split evenly where necessary) and your prize items are in a bundle on the bottom row of the submitter's ender chest (J1mbers, Star, and Maidl for the joint entries). Winners, feel free to request a free warp rename if desired.

📝General Updates

• 💎Socketing

  • Gem socketing now works for custom helmets!

  • Note that Runecrafted enchants can be applied to custom helmets. This isn't new, but stating it for visibility.

• 🪙Shops

  • Updated the stock and price of items sold at ‘/warp buyables’. Notably, we now sell Creaking Spawn Eggs, Gilded Blackstone, and Reinforced Deepslate.

  • You can sneak + punch to bulk sell to the server shop. This was changed a little while back, but listing it for visibility.

• 📖Runecrafting Event:

  • The enchant research quest board now displays % progress of ongoing projects, and a board has been added for new discoveries from this expansion.

• ✏️Miscellaneous

  • Fixed potions brewing directly to their extended state and sometimes not granting mcMMO Alchemy XP.

  • You can now cleanse candles in a cauldron to undye them.

  • Added a toggle in /toggle sounds to disable the sound that plays every jump with Avatar of Slimes.

🫶

📚Contest Reminder & General Updates

Hey again everyone. Another week gone! We've had 8 enchant discoveries so far. It's been great to see everyone's theories about what's to come. Time for a quick reminder and to summarize the main updates from the past week!

🔭 Build Contest Reminder

Reminder that there are just over 48 hours left in the Observatory build contest, and that the top 3 entrants get 2 Boundary Fragments. Good luck!

📝General Updates

• 💎 Valor & Trials:

  • Added a new Silence Tonic (seen below) to the Artifact Trader for a water bottle and Rune of Echoes. Use one on an entity to silence it. Each has two uses.

  • Fixed bugs with the Asteroids Hawking class and adjusted its boss fighting prowess. The bonus warp damage to bosses is lower, but it now generates Entropy when damaging bosses with warps or the black hole.

• 📖 Lexicon:

  • Added `/lexicon by_rune <rune>` to view all enchants whose recipes use the rune. This replaces the list in each `/rune` entry.

  • Updated `/rune` to show the rune's main *meanings*, the spell it casts in the Runic Tome, and a link to its `/lexicon by_rune`.

• 🪄 Enchantment adjustments:

  • Buffed the hunger/saturation restored by Taste Test.

  • Added rooted dirt and gravel as low-value transmutables for Transmuting shovels.

• 🌎 Rune Locales:

  • Increased spawn rates in Skatheim (Chills) and The Allforge (Moments), and increased the strength of The Allforge's copper golems.

  • Added corrupted variants of Arkose (Mortus) and Plimmýra (Tides). Thanks beccc!

• ✏️Miscellaneous:

  • Made poisonous potatoes compostable in a composter.

  • Fixed `/sit` and similar commands not working in chome...

  • Many other minor balance tweaks, bug fixes, and general optimizations.

Thanks friends! 🫶

📚Trusted Promos and General Updates

Hey again everyone. Hope you're all enjoying the event so far! We've had two discoveries so far - Mulching by JenoSnowconeIce, a hoe enchant which automatically composts surplus seeds, and Pestle by skelud, a mace enchant which crushes enemies into primordial dust which can be used to dupe gems. Excited to see more discoveries start ramping up!

We've got a decent batch of people we're promoting to [Trusted], and some general updates and fixes from the past week.

🤝Trusted Promos

We've got a big build up of people who have been around a while, play quite often, and have consistently shown good behavior and community involvement. All of the following players are now [Trusted] rank - congrats and much love to you all!

• Bunniworth

• ElectricSparx

• JenoSnowconeIce

• MareeAM

• Mishiaria

• MrHollowPoint99

• Shotdown01

• skelud

📝General Updates

• We've made many general optimizations to improve performance. Lemme know if the TPS feels better on average!,

• The boardwalk now sells a Creaking modulator, and the clairvoyant's hint is now for a random undiscovered spawn secret instead of always your next one.,

• Fixed Bane of Arthropods not working on Shulkers, and Kuiper Shulkers duping using the vanilla mechanic. These combined should make Kuiper less annoying!,

• Displays:

  • Many cases now show useful info when omitting arguments. e.g. /display brightness with no extra args shows the brightness of your selected displays.

    • Note /display info exists to show all info about selected displays.

  • When setting a text display to fixed billboard mode, it now turns to face your head so you don't lose it.,

• Fixed mob scarecrows not placing correctly.,

• Buffed Ground Pound by ensuring it uses pre-roll damage.,

• Various bugs and compatibility issues fixed, notably for Cerberus and Wrath (still more work to do for them...)

Thanks all!

⛏️1.21.5 Gameplay Changes

🪄Rune Locales

The Great Runic Shift has fully transformed the following locales:

• 💨Gusts: New locale - Aethryn, the Helm of Terados. Floating islands holding an old observatory. Once used for navigation, now only the Breezes call it home.

• 💎Stones: New locale - Ruit, the Shimmering Grotto. A cave of geodes beneath a giant tree, with magical waters that empower the Silverfish within.

• 🐝Vitality: New locale - Thriaechor, the Amber Eaves. The bees in this canopy of the great tree above Ruit do not take kindly to visitors!

The following locales are also affected by the Runic Shift:

• ❄️Chills: Now housed in Skatheim, the Winter Bastion (previously the Mortus locale).

• 🔥Cinders: Now home to Blazes instead of Wither Skeletons.

• 💀Mortus: Now housed in Arkose, the Crimson Crypt (previously the Stones locale).

Additionally, the following changes are applied to all locales:

• The base rune drop rate is increased from 3% to 5%.

• The most difficult and frustrating locales have been toned down - lower stats, shorter levitation from Kuiper shulkers, and no Thorns on the Mystic Grove witches.

• In exchange for the above, some locales have more spawners to make them harder to cheese.

  • Also note the Extinction changes in the Enchantments changelog, which reduces the ease of farming runes late game.

• We hope this combines to make farming runes more enjoyable and less polarizing.

✨Luck

Now affects many areas of gameplay:

• Increases the odds of high-value rolls from Bottom Feeder, Schrödinger’s Thumb, the boardwalk claw machine, and the Tip Jar charm.

• Increases the activation odds of Hot Rod, Hands-On Learning, the Juniper Sprig charm, and the Runic Compass charm.

• Increases the average drop count from Trawling, Tithing, Cultist bosses, and the Opulence Runic Tome spell.

• Increases the chance of Rune and Gem drops in survival worlds and duping the Shiny Gold Coin.

• Reduces the odds of hostile mob heads during whack-a-staff.

• Increases the drop rate of heads. (This isn’t new, but stating it for visibility)

• Increases the quality of fishing loot. (This is vanilla, but stating it for visibility)

💎Socketing

• A new Gem of Favor has been added, granting +0.25 Luck per gem. These can be obtained in the same way as all standard stat gems.

• Armor now only has 4 sockets. Gems are not buffed to compensate - this is an intentional nerf to give room for power in more interesting areas.

🔱Tridents

• Can now be crafted using 3 Twinkling Sea Crystals, 1 Nautilus Shell, and 1 Prismarine Shard.

• Riptide is now more compatible with other trident enchants, including Runecrafted ones, and so is now only exclusive with Loyalty.

• Note that Loyalty tridents are already buffed to return if they fall into the void and generally return faster.

🛡️Shields

• Shields can now parry by blocking <=0.3 seconds before a strike. Parrying an attack stuns the attacker, while parrying a projectile reflects it.

• Shields can now bash by quickly double blocking, pushes enemies away in a radius in front of you.

• Axe attacks now only disable shields for 1.6 seconds rather than 5.

• We intend these changes to make shields more considerable as a primary accessory into the late game.

📝Miscellaneous

• Applying splash or lingering potions to targets other than yourself now grants mcMMO Alchemy experience.

• Projectiles now bypass invulnerability frames.

• Stuns are a more present mechanic from various items and enchants. Stuns prevent the target from acting, but are broken if they take direct damage.