Season 3: Caves and Cliffs

Season 3 of the Nyx SMP was among the shortest-lived worlds in the lineage, and probably the one with the biggest gap between hype and attendance. It was a 1.17 survival server with the new cave-and-cliff terrain switched on early, it opened on 2021-06-09, and within days its owners were telling each other it was dead. Its main legacy is what it led to: the group’s first 24/7 server, and the road to the Axolotl SMP.

The vote

The seed of the season was a vote. On 2021-06-02 prop posted an “Important Vote” in #s2-voting-channel. With 1.17 about a week away, the group could stay in Mekanism 1.16.5 and push toward nuclear reactors, or finish Season 2 by killing the Ender Dragon together and start a mod-free Season 3, played as a Dream SMP-style roleplay with no fixed lore. ¹ On 2021-06-06 he announced the result: the group would move to 1.17 once a stable server version existed, and Mekanism would carry on until then. ²

The same morning prop had a new idea for “season 3”: 1.17 had a datapack that unlocked the new world generation, so why not play normal survival with all the new stuff? ³

How it began

Nobody expected the wait to be short. In the announcement that opened the season prop said 1.17 had come out the day before, and that the Fabric server and performance mods, which he had thought would need about a week to catch up, were already ready to play. ⁴ A follow-up explained that the server would run the CavesAndCliffsPreview datapack, enabling the new world generation and the extended height and depth, so it was “not exactly running in Pure Vannilla 1.17 … but more like 1.18 snapshot”. ⁵ The world was Fabric 1.17 with the Lithium performance mod, as the opening announcement put it. ⁴

Setup was not smooth. prop hit a server error and called for “coder bois” (nYx and kira); kira’s diagnosis, as the chat has it, was that he needed Java 16. ^{6 7}

By the morning of 06-09 prop was saying “we putting datapack”, and then “server on” with nYx to update the IP. ^{8 9} The season was declared officially begun that day. ¹⁰ The server was hosted by nYx, and the IP was posted in what is now #asmp-s1-ip-updates. A power cut that same day was met with a quick “ip is same”. ¹¹

Plans and a base

For about a day, there was real enthusiasm. kira argued that if everyone was going to base together this season, people should split into those in charge of building, redstone and grinding, and pitched his own vision for the shared megabase: an “ISS like structure in one of the massive caves”. ¹² prop volunteered for a bit of everything, preferably something other than grinding. ¹³ See ISS Megabase.

The one build that definitely happened was prop’s. On 2021-06-10 he showed off a base in the town, “literally right next to spawn base”, and said it was going to be his base in the town now. ^{14 15 16} It is catalogued as prop's Town Base.

“This server so ded”

The decline was quick. On 2021-06-12 kira posted the verdict in #asmp-s1-general: “this server so ded”. ¹⁷ Kart said he was kind of disappointed in 1.17 caves and cliffs, and nYx laughed that the server had been up since 9am and nobody had even peeped in. ^{18 19} The next day prop offered to try hosting the server 24/7 if someone gave him the files. ²⁰ On 06-14 kira was still explaining it to the world: “nobody playing because we still busy”. ²¹ Kart, chiming in, said he was playing Terraria, “not potato smp”, which Fili answered with “nobody asked”. ²²

The coffin nails came that day. prop wrote in #announcements that they would ditch the server since nobody was playing. ²³ Suresh (BotFragx) agreed it was better to ditch it, because everyone was busy with exams and other games. ^{24 25} This is the story told in 'This server so ded'. prop’s own diagnosis was that people would have played more if there had been another modpack. ²⁶

What came next

prop floated Terraria, then the Create Together modpack, a Forge 1.16.5 pack. ²⁷ That evening he announced he would try hosting it 24/7 on his laptop. ²⁸ On 2021-06-18 the server went to kira’s Ubuntu box as “legit 24/7” Create Together, which is where the story continues in Create Together. ²⁹

Legacy

Caves and Cliffs is a footnote in server history, but a telling one. It was the last of the seasons hosted by nYx on his own machine before hosting moved to kira, and the first time the group found out that a shiny new version was not enough to keep people logging in. By early July prop was wishing for “a hermitcraft style server with ppl actually not quitting for once”. ³⁰ What followed that wish, after the Create interlude, was the vanilla 1.17.1 Axolotl SMP. Of this world itself, what remains is a handful of screenshots, a base next to spawn, and an ISS-shaped megabase that only ever existed as a pitch.