the Great Panda Heist

first event on the Patreon Minecraft server i play on!

the concept: we're not allowed to explore too far out in order to limit the server size and keep it stable. one of the things not found within our borders is jungle. this event was the temporary opening of the nearest jungle, mostly so we could get cocoa beans, but the event was a race to be the first team to bring a baby panda to spawn.

since i have loads of diamonds i don't do much with, i offered to "sponsor" the event by providing prize money. so i put a chest with diamonds some distance above the ground and made a dinky little panda head out of wool on top of it to make it visible. that panda head ended up serving as the semi-official finish line, and the server owner even said i did a good job on the setup!

i competed too, mostly because i came up with the name Team Panda Trans-port, because i'm trans and i'd be transporting a panda. no other trans players happened to join the event so it was just me. i was probably the first to find and breed up pandas and tried to bring back just the baby... but it grew up along the way. i ended up promoting it to my teammate.
i was the first to bring a live panda back to spawn, but only because the team ahead of me accidentally killed theirs. another team gave up and reskinned one of the players to a panda. the server owner was taking her time with two adult pandas (which i went back to help her transport) and did sort of end up winning, because she had two adult pandas to breed and was therefore the only one who had a baby panda at spawn.

early-ish game decorative beacon

so i decided, for absolutely no reason, that i wanted there to be a rainbow beacon at the spawn town of the patreon server. i never do anything with beacons and i would not have expected to be the first on the server to acquire one. i don't need a beacon for any practical purpose, i literally just wanted it there to look pretty. so:

• culled the zombie pigman population in the Nether that was filling up the mob cap
• collected three wither skeleton skulls
• went on a shopping spree to gather equipment, particularly a smite sword and like 18 totems of undying
• summoned and defeated the wither (and only used up like 2-3 totems)
• built the beacon
• went on another shopping spree for coloured glass
• rainbow-colourised the beacon beam

it looks really nice! it makes spawn town look just that little more alive and fun (although i will probably have to move it somewhere where it's slightly less in the way in the future). i really love that community.