S3 Launch Night

Axolotl SMP Season 3 opened on 31 May 2024, and its seed was a deliberate act of defiance. A day earlier prop had announced that, despite the seed poll, “we will be moving forward with a random seed”, with the reasoning “same seed = boring faster = server dies faster” ¹. The server would be set up that weekend and upgraded to 1.21 once it fully released ².

Launch day itself was a scramble. prop got a plain “good ol vanilla 1.20.6” server running on Pterodactyl with Java 21 ³ and posted a screenshot to prove it worked, then summoned the group with “brothers… its time” ⁴.

The first spawn was bad, so prop announced “im deleting this world” and reset it several times ⁵. At 16:38 the final world started, and at 16:39 prop pinned the seed, 8273052579893931433, along with an approximate biome map ⁶. prop, Levi (DeathHack127 in game) and kira began the survival run, while IRIS is also listed among the night’s participants.

The first death arrived within about ten minutes. Levi was shot by a pillager, and prop celebrated: “first death lets goo” ⁷. Land claims followed through “dibs” messages and a hand-made claim map in which red marked private regions and green marked community areas, including the huge Community Nether Portal.