Do You Feel the Luck o' the Irish?

They're Baaaaacccckkkkk

That's right. Our favorite pesky leprechauns are here again!

Starting tonight and running through next Sunday evening (US Central (cujobear) time) our favorite little trouble makers will be on the hunt to steal your gold!

Mine gold (overworld and nether) to find special Leprechaun's Gold. But be careful, you may find yourself face to face with a leprechaun! If you can defeat them you may earn a shamrock! Other ores also have a slight chance to drop gold, luckily the drop rate is low enough the leprechauns won't bother you.

The Leprechauns have also taken to the skies! Be sure to sleep now and then (or not, if you are looking for more loot)

Other mobs (excluding creepers, which is odd since they are green after all) have gotten into the St Patrick's day spirit and have a chance to drop some collectibles.

Things to know:

Collectibles (the items mobs drop) can be traded in at spawn for currency

Armor and weapons taken from leprechauns will not be tradeable at spawn

There are 3 types of currency that can be used once the event traders arrive at spawn

Traders will arrive mid-late week (once padmins determine drop rates are correct and prices are set)

This will not be an easy fight. Leprechauns are small and slightly faster than usual! They are armed and pack a bit of a punch! Be prepared for an epic battle.

Happy St Patrick's Day! ~the padmins

Posted by Cujobear on March 16, 2025 in PvE

2025 Post NerdNu Fundraiser Update

Another year and another NerdNu Fundraiser is behind us! Nerd.nu was founded on the concept of fair play and the idea that when it comes to gaming, everyone should start with equal footing — and after sixteen years of operation, we haven't strayed from these important values. Many online gaming services allow users to pay for in-game perks or specialized access, but here at Nerd, we firmly believe that money should be given not for the in-game rewards it might bring, but as a way of showing your appreciation for and supporting the costs of the services we provide. As one of the oldest continuously-running Minecraft servers online, NerdNu prides itself on being funded entirely by donations from players, both former and current alike.

Our Appreciation

We'd like to give an extra-special thank you to:

• PPGOME, for finding and wrangling BattleArena, ArenaCTF, HubParkour, and many other plugins to fit our needs, and putting up with faz's constant "fixitfixitfixit" requests. He also custom-coded a new feature for the EasySigns plugin that made all of the "Pay Here" signs possible.

• Oxion_, for launching the servers Friday night and keeping them up all weekend!

• pez252, for finding and slaying a potentially game-breaking plugin interaction

• Deaygo, for his work on the nerd.nu donation site and in-game announcements.

• defiex, for her tireless advertising and getting the word out.

• marting11, for designing promotional images for CTF and all our minigames.

• Spook6, for making amazing promotional videos.

• Bardidley, who created the absolutely Gorge-ous CTF map.

• CARnivore_nds, for his input on the Flag Capture Zones.

• Andromeda4210, who set up the smash hit Mining minigame. He also gathered builders for our other games, such as:

• ghrey303, for bringing back (and carefully testing!) 7 of his parkour courses from previous revs.

• Za_Zaa, for building the beautiful ice boat track.

• iceberg76, for his Flop arena (and secret 8th parkour!).

• fluffhead555, who built our Thimble arena.

• All of the other staff who helped us test out the plugins in advance: Bluuefuzzy, buzzie71, CaptainWolfgang, cujobear, iNerd71, rukEEEa, TemporarilyAlive, ToddChavay, & many more (who’s names defi has likely missed, but we love you and appreciate you!)

And most importantly, all of YOU! Not just for your generous donations, but for continuing to play here and make this community what it is. The list of contributors can be found at http://nerd.nu/donate. If you wish to chip in, it's not too late; you may do so on the same page! Please note that any contributions at this time will go directly to NerdNu and will not be split with Child's Play.

Costs to NerdNu

Our goal at nerd.nu is to provide a high-quality multiplayer gaming experience embedded in a genuine, friendly community. However, hosting the servers needed to provide you with this experience is not cheap. We are currently spending $210 per month for a cost of $2,522 annually.

This includes the following costs:

• Forums: $80 per year

• Domain: $90 per year

• Email: $24 per year

• Servers: $2,328 per year

During the weekend of the 2025 Fundraiser we raised a total of $7,257.20! $3,347.13 stays with NerdNu and we donated $3,628.60 to Child's Play with Paypal taking $281.47 in fees. After the contribution to Child's Play on February 28, 2025 of $3,628.60, an additional donation of $420.69 was made which brought the grand total of funds raised to $7,677.89 as of March 9, 2025 which means we reached our 2025 Goal!

With the additional donation, our NerdNu coffers are now sitting at $5,665.29 which leaves us well funded for the next two years of costs. The additional balance is thanks to Pez & Merp who have been paying the expenses out-of-pocket over the past two years.

We are aware that the Donation Page is currently showing different numbers than above and we are working to correct the page to show the "post-fundraiser page". You are still able to donate, but please be aware that any donations made will go directly to NerdNu and not be split with Child's Play.

Your thoughts

Now that this year's fundraiser has come to a close, we'd like to hear your feedback. What did you like? What did you not like?

We would also like your help with next year's fundraiser! Historically, we've always given to Child's Play and always gone half & half with the donations. We've received requests from players that wish to donate only to NerdNu with their portions not being split between the server and charity. Please take a moment to look at the attached poll and give us your thoughts!

Fundraiser Poll & questionnaire

Share & follow

For any inquiries, please contact one of the head admins: Andromeda4210, defiex, fazaden, & pez252

Instagram website YouTube Bluesky Discord

Posted by defiex on March 9, 2025 in Head Admin News

Modification of the Month #24 - February 2025

Welcome Back to Modification of the Month

Each month, we bring you the latest updates from the TAdmin team. In the past month, we've been busy with:

• Continuing our 1.21.x updates
• Running and maintaining the fundraiser
• Celebra— well, troubleshooting when things didn’t go as planned

Before we dive into the details...

NOTE: The list of updated plugins does not indicate 1.21.x Soon™, but we're hard at work to bring it as soon as possible!

Posted by PPGOME on Feb. 28, 2025 in Tech Admin

Modification of the Month #23 - January 2025

Welcome back to Modification of the Month where we review the last month's updates from the TAdmin team. PPGOME used the scheduling feature of the blogs last time so it was dead on, then proceeded to forget it existed so we're late again!

Before hopping in, I'd like to welcome Nels_Nelson back to the TAdmin team!

This month saw a couple of bugfixes while focusing on updating in-house plugins.

NOTE: The list of updated plugins does not indicate 1.21.4 Soon™, but we're hard at work to bring it as soon as possible!

General Change Log

• Ongoing - All Admins - Granting mods their access back as some lost their permissions during the update.
• January 12th - Oxion_ - Updated VehicleControl to 1.21.4 (1.2.1)
• January 12th - Oxion_ - Updated WingCommander to 1.21.4 (1.12.1)
• January 12th - Oxion_ - Updated BeastMaster to 1.21.4 (2.19.0)
• January 12th - Oxion_ - Updated AdminHunt to 1.21.4 (1.3)
• January 12th - PPGOME - Updated EntityControl to 1.21.4 (0.4.1)
• January 12th - PPGOME - Updated NerdFlags to 1.21.4 (0.7.4)
• January 12th - PPGOME - Updated StandMaster9000 to 1.21.4 (0.1.0)
• January 12th - PPGOME - Updated NerdSpawn to 1.21.4 (2.3.1)

Web Site Change Log

• radio static noises

Creative Change Log

• Nothing much.

PvE Change Log

• January 13th - PPGOME - Updated NerdFlags to dynamically grab wood types so certain interaction flags don't break.

Lobby/Proxy Change Log

• January 8th - PPGOME - Updated ViaVersion to 5.2.1 in an effort to fix 1.21.x clients experiencing a bug hindering instamine. Issue persists, unfortunately.

Posted by PPGOME on Feb. 3, 2025 in Tech Admin

Modification of the Month #22 - December 2024

Welcome back to Modification of the Month, where we celebrate the lack of fallout from last month's update! December consisted of some bugfixes from the major update at the end of November as well as some small tweaks/additions. But before we get into that...

Please welcome Oxion_ to the TAdmin team!

Oxion helped with fixing the DragonFight plugin for when the fight launched earlier this rev. It had some issues with spawning mobs and had a chance to softlock the fight, which he was able to fix for us! He's being slowly brought on and is now working with me on the 1.21 update.

But anywho, let's get the changelog for December rolling along!

General Change Log

• Ongoing - All Admins - Granting mods their access back as some lost their permissions during the update.
• December 1st - PPGOME - Players unable to boost in lobby and C with WingCommander.
• December 6th - PPGOME - Fixed moderators not being able to warn offline players.
• December 17th - PPGOME - Using litematica printer for admins no longer kicks for too many packets.
• December 17th - PPGOME - The moderator command /trace now works properly with BanManager.

Web Site Change Log

• December 6th - Deaygo - Fixed the 500 error on the logs page.
• December 7th - PPGOME - Disabled link sharing for the admin boards.

Creative Change Log

• Nothing much.

PvE Change Log

• December 17th - PPGOME - Moderators are once again able to run /unvanish in modmode.

Lobby/Proxy Change Log

• December 1st - PPGOME - Fixed players using the redditpublic IP address seeing the default lobby MOTD and icon in the server list.
• December 6th - PPGOME - Fixed servers in the server list showing the player count of all servers combined. P and C show their own counts and lobby shows the combined counts now.
• December 14th - PPGOME - Added /ping to the lobby (from lobby suggestion box)

Posted by PPGOME on Dec. 31, 2024 in Tech Admin

Modification of the Month #21 - November 2024

Welcome back to Modification of the Month to my 2 active readers, and welcome to all of our new readers who want to know how things previously worked and work now! This is where I endlessly ramble about Nerd's latest tech happenings. Come back every once in a while! I don't bite :)

There will be a TL;DR at the end for people not wanting to read through the last 4 months of confusion and pain I endured.

I'd like to begin by thanking Pez252 and Deaygo for the help they provided for this major update. I literally would have still been flopping around like a fish trying to figure out how to make the websites work >_>. I'd also like to thank the mod team and some players I kidnapped off of the street for helping me test everything.

The biggest question right now is probably: What changed? Which is followed by a close second place: WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY MCBOUNCER YOU MONSTER???

3 major systems were redone to modernize the very base of Nerd's functionality. This post will navigate each one in the order I discovered things were breaking, meaning we'll start with the very base of it all: The proxy.

The Proxy

BungeeCord has been replaced by Velocity. Bungee worked pretty well for a long while as we've used it for over a decade at this point. The biggest problem we had with it is that one of our plugins needed for version updates, ViaVersion, dropped support for Bungee entirely. The reason why that's so significant is because if we update the dev servers to 1.21.3, we also need to update BungeeCord to 1.21.3. But if PvE is on 1.20.4 and Bungee is on 1.21.3, nobody can join because of the version difference! ViaVersion would let us bridge those versions together so I could crash the dev servers repeatedly while you all played on P.

The update to Velocity has nearly 0 effect on you. It's a significant shift on the tech-end of things as our old Bungee plugins no longer work on Velocity. See where I may have problems? Disregarding the foreshadowing, the one thing you may see while playing is that the proxy no longer restarts. At all. It will be a continuously running network unless I need to perform maintenance on it. Now that doesn't mean the servers don't restart... ʸᵉᵗ

LuckPerms

But Gome, we already run LuckPerms! I saw it when I sneakily ran /plugins!

We do currently run LuckPerms, that's correct. However, it was a weird system. We had LuckPerms on each server and those each hooked up to their own H2 databases. Each server had an independent permission suite tailored to that specific server... except for moderator permissions?

Moderator permissions were handled by a different plugin, BungeePerms. This plugin ran at the proxy-level and gave staff the same permissions for certain commands regardless of what server they were on. I knew this plugin had to go as soon as I became a TAdmin when I ran the command to list the groups and it crashed my client multiple times, but this was the nail in the coffin. Why are our permissions so spaghetti-like? This was our chance to get rid of BungeePerms once and for all, so I did it! I ran rm bungeeperms.jar like it was nobody's business.

Nerd is now overseen by LuckPerms entirely. But in a different way! Each server still has LuckPerms running on it, but there's also a LuckPerms instance on the proxy. The proxy-level one communicates with all of the server LuckPerms to make sure things are in check and working, while we now have one central database for all of the permissions! We no longer have upwards of 4 different databases keeping track of targeted permissions. It's all under the one database using the beautiful context system. If I want players to be able to run /sit on P and C but not the lobby, I can have a single permission node for that and specify that it's true in all cases except on the lobby. This makes figuring out permissions insanely easier and also reduces the chances of broken permissions or, as some may have seen recently, stray past moderators!

MCBouncer, My Beloved (And Also LolNo)

Now is the big part. This is realistically the only part of this update that affects you, the player.

MCBouncer has supported Nerd's punishments for a long, long time. Longer than most of you have been playing here. 13 years is an insanely long time, but we need to send it off into retirement. Thank you to Deaygo for maintaining the servers that hosted MCBouncer for all of these years.

Nerd has never needed anything too fancy. We issue notes, occasional warnings, kicks, and sometimes bans, too. MCBouncer provided us with all of that, and we needed nothing more.

MCBouncer started showing signs of decay some time ago. Bit by bit, very small things started breaking. Near the end of its time on Nerd, it had stopped sending mods a message when a player joined with notes. Not a huge downside, but it still was a bit of a loss. That note mechanic was mostly useful for when MCBouncer was widely used and we had players joining from other servers that we could be alerted for. Nerd was the only remaining user of MCBouncer at the time of its removal.

We had no reason to keep using a shared punishment system. We were the only ones using it and weren't reaping any of the benefits it used to provide. Additionally, it was being used at the proxy level on BungeeCord, which we now just killed. Whoopdeedoo, I need to update this sucke- nevermind that code is old and scary and I don't want to. Because it was on the Bungee level and due to how basic its commands were, CommandHelper actually completely carried it. All commands mods used to interact with MCBouncer were sent through Bungee messaging channels that started at CommandHelper to ensure that you stayed banned. This broke a lot of things, so it was no good.

A discussion was started a few years ago to see what the best options were for replacing it. The conversation mostly fell flat as no alternatives at the time provided what we needed. A few years later, we found one!!

Welcome the new intern: BanManager

BanManager has a classy, modern new website at https://bans.nerd.nu. We were able to import every single bit of information we had from MCBouncer, so all bans and notes remain in place. You thought you could wait those notes out? Not anymore! Active bans are still visible, as are all previous notes, but under a new name: warnings.

We've also had a weird setup for all of our punishments: This is a list of the plugins that handled punishments and what they handled:

• MCBouncer - Bans, Notes.
• LolNo - Mutes.
• CommandHelper - Warnings, MCBouncer crutch.

BanManager handles all of them under one roof, and more! The new system allows for better handling of punishments, easier management of them, and an infinitely friendlier UI.

As a result of this, LolNo will no longer be around. Its other core functions will be merged into NerdMessage at some point.

You, the players, still have access to all the same information you had before like active bans and notes (which are now warnings), but you now have a few extra things to see: past bans, current mutes, and past mutes. MCBouncer stopped displaying bans once removed, but this will keep them around for longer.

THE RULE ABOUT NOT DISCUSSING BANS STILL APPLIES FOR BOTH PRESENT AND PAST BANS.

You will also notice a big button that says "Appeal". This will be used at some point in the near future, but, at the time of writing, we will still be using nerd.nu/appeal.

We salute you, MCBouncer. You served us well.

The TL;DR

As promised, here's a breakdown of what's changed:

• The proxy has changed from BungeeCord to Velocity
  • The proxy will no longer restart. Not much else that will impact players.
  • Some plugins have been replaced
    • BungeePerms -> LuckPerms
    • BungeeResourcePacks -> VelocityResourcePacks
  • Some plugins have been updated
    • ViaVersion
    • ViaBackwards
  • New plugins
    • CommandWhitelist - Replacing "CommandBlock" on the main servers
    • MiniMOTD - Gives us a cooler multiplayer menu look B)
    • Maintenance - Allows for individual server shutdowns when work needs to be done. Has a separate whitelist and timer functionality
• LuckPerms was set up in a more efficient way
  • Hooks up to one central database now instead of 3 smaller ones
  • Relies on LuckPerms' context module for specific permission scenarios
  • Solves the issue of past staff randomly getting their permissions back
• MCBouncer has been replaced with BanManager
  • Accessible at https://bans.nerd.nu
  • All data was able to be imported from MCBouncer
  • Players can now see active bans, warnings, and mutes as well as past bans and mutes. DO NOT DISCUSS BANS, PAST OR PRESENT, AT ANY TIME.
  • Appeal button is present on home page. Not to be used, see https://nerd.nu/appeal.
• PvE, Creative, and Lobby had LolNo and CommandBlock removed.
  • Functionality of both have been migrated into new plugins:
    • LolNo -> BanManager and NerdMessage
    • CommandBlock -> CommandWhitelist

Ping PPGOME in discord if a server, or multiple, go offline, permissions break, or https://bans.nerd.nu goes down. Do not ping in any other scenario. Make a modreq so we can triage the problem properly.

The path has been paved for great things.

Thanks for reading, PPGOME

Posted by PPGOME on Nov. 29, 2024 in Tech Admin

Modification of the Month #20 - October 2024

Welcome back to Modification of the Month where if you placed bets on how late I'd be this time around, you all owe me money! I'm now 1 moneys richer (Thank you one person who knows these blogs exist)!!!

We're entering the final phases of the first phase of the overhaul project. This project will be modernizing critical backend infrastructure and mod tools, while also removing the cage that the modern server software landscape has placed around me. Please help me.

This is a major change to the servers and there will be a decent bit of downtime involved to get everything in place, reconnect all the thangs, and make sure it all works properly. We're hoping it will be sometime during November, but in any case we'll provide you with plenty of heads up.

And since this is the tech blog, this is where I'll repeat what the HAdmins have shared in discord. Please do not contact any of the TAdmins directly for each bug you find. Please make a modreq and we'll load it into a new system we have to keep my pebble of a brain from forgetting it exists.

Additionally, until this big overhaul is released, bug fixes will no longer be put out for any of the servers unless they're genuinely critical. That doesn't mean you shouldn't report them to us, though! Phase 2 will be a lot of bug fixing and I'll need whatever you come across. Just make sure to provide as much information in these modreqs as you can.

General Change Log

• October 23rd - Pez252 - Set up HelpHelp to be way easier for server admins to update server info whenever they need to.
• October 27th - PPGOME & Pez252 - Introduced new system to streamline the bug/feature/documentation process.

Web Site Change Log

• October 27th - PPGOME & Pez252 - Introduced new tools for admins to keep better track of tasks across their respective domains. Gome's ADHD approves.

Creative Change Log

• Nothing much. Your time is coming C, I promise

PvE Change Log

• [pretend there's crickets here, the website doesn't like emojis] Cricket noises intensify

Yours truly, the guy down there ↓↓↓

Posted by PPGOME on Nov. 1, 2024 in Tech Admin

Modification of the Month #19 - September 2024

Welcome back to Modification of the Month where we predicted my inability to catch the date correctly from the get-go! We're only a week late, though. Taking bets on how late we'll be next time.

Not much this month, either, as we continue to work through infrastructure improvements and cool new things.

General Change Log

• September 2nd - PPGOME & Pez252 - Moved the development servers to their own network under a new proxy that's being tested.

Web Site Change Log

• Nothing much.

Creative Change Log

• Nothing much.

PvE Change Log

• September 1st - PPGOME - Updated MobLimiter to now house the mechanics of KeepBabyMobs and LimitSpawnEggs under one roof.
• September 1st - PPGOME - Removed KeepBabyMobs.
• September 1st - PPGOME - Removed LimitSpawnEggs.
• September 20th - PPGOME - Managed to carry dragon fight over without crashing the server in horrendously terrible ways!

Posted by PPGOME on Oct. 7, 2024 in Tech Admin

Nightmare at the Fair!

The custom dragon fight is here!

Starting Friday night after event (approx. 9:30pm Eastern US) you will be able to earn an elytra by defeating the Dragon and the 10 bosses that protect it. This is a custom fight, and will not be easy.

To summon the dragon you must place 4 end crystals on the 4 sides of the exit portal in the end. All crystals will be invulnerable once spawned. Each crystal will summon a boss mob that you must defeat before you can do any damage to the dragon.

The player that places the fourth end crystal to spawn the dragon (the fight “owner”) will receive the prize box when the dragon is defeated, even if they’re off-line. If your inventory is full when the dragon dies and you own the fight, the plugin will record your victory and you can claim it later by running /dragon prize. You can check the current stage and owner of the dragon fight by running /dragon info.

Fights that are abandoned by a player unable to defeat the bosses will have ownership transferred by admins to a player willing to complete the fight. If you feel you cannot defeat the dragon solo, please ask for help or ask someone to take over before logging out. Admins can change ownership of the dragon fight for you. If there are no admins online, please run /dragon info and /seen on the fight owner, take a screenshot of that info, then modreq that the fight was abandoned (with an imgur link to the screenshot) BEFORE killing the dragon. Otherwise we cannot look back to see who to contact about the prize box.

The Prize box will be 1 of 20 different shulkers. Prizes will include the dragon head, elytra, and other goodies.

Want to be the Ultimate Dragon Slayer? Trade your dragon heads in for a dragon egg with the number of dragon fights completed as the egg name. Hang the egg in an item frame to show your DragonSlayer level! (DragonSlayer levels will start at 5 dragons killed, for higher levels you will need to trade in your lower level egg plus additional dragon heads)

A few more words from the padmins:

• The DragonFight plugin was developed by totemo, and the bosses were designed by cujobear with help and suggestions from staff.
• We reserve the right to adjust the difficulty of the fight and to make any changes as are necessary to correct any problems discovered. We will factor your feedback into this evaluation.
• We also ask that you be considerate of other players and allow everyone an opportunity to obtain a set of elytras before you start trying to speed run the dragon fight.

We strongly suggest

• Be well prepared with good armor, lots of food, arrows, shield, etc
• Be sure to have at least 30 mins to fight (first time will most likely take longer)
• Try the battle with a group, and take turns summoning the dragon
• Sleep in a bed near the end portal before entering the end to fight
• Keep spare armor, extra food, and weapons somewhere safe nearby

We ask that players be respectful of each other and the arena. Please clean up the arena after your fight including killing left over support mobs, putting out fires, and picking up blocks, boxes, and shulkers.

And finally, I want to thank everyone for their patience.

~cujo

Posted by Cujobear on Sept. 19, 2024 in PvE

New PvE Feature!

Players can now request Easy Signs!

Players can now request a limited number of easy signs to be added to their town or event.

We tested the idea with OleToothless' Escape from Pompeii event, and now we are opening the option up to all players! This is a great way for towns and builders to add seek and find type event to their builds. or just a great way to give a souvenir to those that visit!

Easy signs requested by players are allowed 2 actions only:

• Max use 1 - this limits the sign use to once per player
• Give held - this will give 1 item to any player who clicks the sign

To request a sign you will need to provide the following information and items -

• the sign written as you want it to look and waxed (dye and glow are optional)
• the item you request to be given (see below for more details)
• 32 Nerd Tickets

More information about the items you can give away via an easy sign:

• You must turn in 64 items per easy sign to give away. (or 54 for non-stackable items, 2 shulkers)
• The item must be named via anvil to EXACTLY how you would like it named for the easy sign
• There will be no text color, lore, or enchants added to the items by padmins, they will be given to the player exactly as you make them in game

If you are requesting multiple signs for an event, use a book and quill to list the coordinates of each sign and place that at the first location. Then at each sign location place a chest/shulker/or barrel with the items & payment for that sign. This way only one modreq is needed.

Other Notes:

• Max number of signs per player will be set at 20 for now.
• All normal server rules apply (no NSFW, etc)
• Make sure to check how your sign looks in vanilla, as some mods change text size and text will show as cut off for vanilla players.

Padmins reserve the right to deny any sign request

Posted by Cujobear on Sept. 2, 2024 in PvE