The 1.18 Update

On 12 December 2021 kira announced that, “due to inactivity”, he was shutting the server down temporarily for the update to 1.18. ¹ The next day it was back, and the announcement called it “the last major update for Axolotl S1”, since the group was running out of time. ² The update came with Java 17, a forced custom-textures datapack, and the promise of 1.18.1 once the mods caught up (see 1.18.1 Upgrade Postponed).

Kira tested the new world first (“im just testing 1.18 stuff”), made it public that night, and claimed to be the first Axolotl SMP member to go below y=0 in the overworld. ^{3 4}

The new world was not gentle. Chunk generation was so heavy that the server lagged hard, and prop put it down to “new chunks”. ⁵ Kart posted screenshots of caves that had opened where the bedrock used to be, and of himself trapped in the new deepslate depths and worried about mobs. Players also lamented the missing mods, among them Tweakeroo and VoxelMap (see Tweakeroo and Freecam), while prop turned up Xaero’s Minimap.

The earlier decision to keep the pregenerated world so that new terrain would appear beyond its edge is covered in Keeping the World for 1.18.