LavacastLands

Some people will call it a grief, for others it’s a cool thing and for the lavacast maker, Frozentime_m, it’s a build. LavacastLands is a landscape build and a land art, even if it’s using griefing material: lavacasts. The location of these lands is around Spawn, in average after 300 blocks and under The 1k wall. The area covered is around 950k blocks (95% of the area under 1k wall). The general shape of the lavacasts is close to a canyon.

Reasons of LavacastLands existence
Frozentime_m’s map of spawn of was supposed to show how spawn is changing, but there wasn’t a lot of things happening except for isolated structures and 0 0 base. Most of the people weren’t doing anything because of how fast spawn structure can be griefed. “Spawn wasn’t interesting enough” (Frozentime_m). After building the Nether Portal Tower, Frozentime_m wanted to change the spawn landscape considerably and make something historical. His first idea was about removing all water from the ocean biome at the West of Spawn. After hearing all the comments of new players saying how Spawn is small and easy to escape, the decision was made: he needed to build a new kind of landscape that would make spawn harder. Frozentime_m knew that the 1k wall wasn’t going to do anything, because it’s only 2 layers of cobblestone. However an area with no wood, no food and no easy blocks (dirt) for new players, would make Spawn way harder. And even if a player managed to escape that kind of area, he would still need food. Putting stone blocks by hand would take too long and would be easily griefed, so Frozentime_m decided to use lavacasts to build a canyon shape landscape that would look like a maze from ground perspective. He calls it “a new biome”.

History
Frozentime_m considered that the Ocean part was the easiest part to escape Spawn (no mobs during night), so he started there. However, that wasn’t completely true because of how close wood was on the East side. The first lavacast of the series, a test made around -350 350 next to an island, was build the 27th of June 2020. The Ocean is flat making training easier. Then he divided the region with a lavacast chain. The small sections helped to forget how huge the area was and avoid lose of motivation. Then, the West area started to be lavacasted. One day Frozentime_m wanted to try something else: a lavacast with geometrical shape. Build started at -666x. Then, looking back to his map, he saw it could be interpreted as a W mirrored with the axis. That lavacast changed his perception of spawn, he didn’t only needed to create random lavacasts but could add shape to them. He decided that This W lavacast would be one of the 4 cardinal directions.

Around the 29 July 2020, Frozentime_m ended the first part of the nether portal tower story because of how time consuming it was becoming. That helped to improve the speed of lavacasts, but at the same time people started to see what was happening. Worley was the first person to react: “What's the abomination to the west of spawn?” and was one of the only players who started to be scared of that. Viper69420 started to hunt Frozentime_m without real success. It didn’t last long because Viper left the server 1 or 2 week after this.

6th August 2020, most of the Ocean part at the West has been covered with lavacasts. This is a big step and this is the day where LavacastLands’ name was introduced to the community with only one public goal: making spawn harder (hidden goal were not explained to avoid people having too much interested on it).

After a small break to think about how to deal with the land, Frozentime_m came back to spawn and noticed a water cube starting from the outside and going into the LavacastLands. After reflecting, he realised that cube could become a threat if people start to do that around spawn or between the lavacasts, so Frozentime_m removed the water cube without saying anything to avoid giving people bad ideas. Then he started a long series of deforestation, in particular at the jungle biome. Erazer_cat helped a little bit by creating 2 medium lavacasts and smaller ones. E and S cardinal lavacasts have been build and spiky valley in order to change a little bit the landscape. The biggest threat happened when TNT dupe was back. If anyone wanted to nuke the lavacasts before the end of the build, spawn would still be hard to escape, but the lavacasts would be destroyed. Frozentime_m decided to secretly test the server: during 1 week he would leave spawn and grind netherrack (main building material for the lavacasts) by finishing the 125k nether sideway. If, when coming back, the lavacasts were heavily destroyed he would have stopped the project. However, it didn’t happen, so he decided that LavacastLands project will continue.

The general idea was to build LavacastLands inside the 1k wall, however the 1k wall project had been cancelled after the 1.16 update released. In order to continue, Frozentime_m finished the 1k wall and HazmattMC came to help putting lava above the wall for the inauguration day.

At this moment, Legend_Angels decided that it was too much and that he had to helped new players by putting trees and creating tunnels. Frozentime_m knew that the best thing to do was to ignore him and repair everything later when LavacastLands would be almost finished. A war would cost too much time. Moreover, Legend_Angels put trees at places where they would be not useful (for instance, a tree 10 blocks away from the 1k wall with a tunel right next to it and trees right after the 1k wall). This is the reason why Frozentime_m considered that Legend_Angels was more so trying to annoy him than really trying to help new players. Legend_Angels started to hunt Frozentime_m when he was doing his lavacasts like Viper69420 did, but without success. Frozentime_m predicted after 1 or 2 week Legend_Angels would stop and move on, and it happened. Viper69420 stopped after 2 week and Legend_Angels too (even if that wasn’t for the same reason). Thanks to Legend_Angels‘s tunnel at x+ (not confirmed information), FrittenfriseurLPs made his canal, connecting spawn to the outside.

The last section of the build was the North of spawn with the N lavacast, and a big square 300 blocks large in order to do something cool inside. Calvi_vicio helped filling water spaces of the square part. During the construction, Frozentime_m stopped his lavacasts at every SatanSpike in case anyone wanted to hunt him for the end part. The 4 remaining corners allowed Frozentime_m to build in a less predictable area and increase his safety. These places were the last ones to be lavacasted.

Before doing the last lavacast at -900 900 corner, Frozentime_m removed all the bridges in the sky to make LavacastLands cleaner. Thanks to the zoomed map of spawn, Frozentime_m has been able to track every tree inside the lavacasts that have been put by Legend_Angels and other players. Most of the tunnel from Legend_Angels and the Mole Society have been filled. Some tunnels haven’t been touched: the canal at +x axis, the tunnel at -z that was at the origin a cobble path, and the overworld highway at -z axis.

For the inauguration day of LavacastLands, Frozentime_m decided to put lava above every particular lavacasts and above the circular lavacast at the old Nether Portal Tower place.

Special lavacasts

 * The first lavacast: is unique even if there isn’t a real shape for the design.
 * The lavacast chain: thin but long lavacasts.
 * The cardinal lavacasts: 4 lavacasts at every 666 coordinate and an axis, they have the letter of their direction that is mirrored (E for East, W for West, S South and N North) and a small geometrical addition linked to them.
 * The Spaceship lavacast: random symmetrical lavacast around -50 350.
 * The F lavacast: to symbolize it is build by Frozentime_m
 * The spiky valley: hexagonal branch of lavacast with lot of small spikes around it.
 * The square: the largest structure in LavacastLands with 300 blocks long and symbols inside it.
 * The LL lavacast: in reference of the area name LavacastLands.
 * The heart lavacast: symbolize the nostalgia of doing the last lavacast and the efforts to make the lavacasts looking as good as possible.

What happened to old spawn and structures?
Frozentime_m didn’t touch the close spawn region (mostly under 300 blocks from 0 0), because he wanted new players to spawn in a normal region and see the lavacasts from the outside, so they would have to think about a strategy to escape.

Every structure (most of them are already griefed) is under the lavacasts now. The remaining structures that haven’t been buried are: Dirt hotel, Derven’s Dragon, the cobble fir and SatanSpikes. New structures, hidden or not have to be expected in the future.

Consequences of LavacastLands
Not only LavacastLands is making spawn harder, but spawn look older and bigger too. It’s hard to predict the future but a war for trees at Spawn seems to have started after the end of the build.