Hello friends! We've been working continuously on the server almost every day last month. We've also had some downtime, taking a break from working on StoneHeart and focusing on outside. Everything is going ahead! We just need a break. So will be a little more spaced as we find the time to work on things. Sometimes projects like these need time, so we can come back with fresh optimism and drive. We have big plans and we hope you'll all stick around to see them!
This update is overdue, so it will be quite a large one..

Malls!
While we have player housing in Violet Hill. Trying to condense shopping can be a bit tedious with the large plots, so we went all out! Creating two brand new malls. One being a very elegant, modern mall. While another being a 'dead mall' satire take! Obviously, the elegant mall has more expensive plots, while the other mall has cheaper plots for newer players. These will be available very soon!
We've also built a plugin extension from the ground up so when player's shops are no longer being rented, instead of clearing their plot. It will disable their chest shops and place iron bars in front of their shop. The interest to rent again will rise incrementally the longer they abandon their shop. If they do not return after a certain amount of time, we will auction off their shops and their contents. (Gotta keep the malls alive!)

Lamplighter
Being one of the original cities in StoneHeart, we've decided to add a more accessible town for new players! Lamplighter will fill the void where new players can't buy plots in Violet Hill. Residential plots will be unable to host shops, but will be for anybody to live in a nice admin town~. There will be a shopping district near the Lamplighter Mall for players to build shops if they wish. Go visit The Pit Mall!

New Additions

• Custom Mob Spawners - We will have upgradable spawners of nearly every type of monster. While I've considered the legitimacy of vanilla farms, spawning from spawners is vastly less resource intensive instead of the game breaking mechanics players manipulate for the same reward. They will be very slow initially, but as they will be leveled by money. Turning into powerhouses! There is a custom spawner crate inside the adminshop! Use your votepoints there to potentially win expensive mob types! /warp adminshop
• Custom Enchants - This has been a difficult one. We've fiddled with some plugins before, but found their learning curve to be overwhelming. We've found one so far that seems useful and not totally game breaking. It adds some neat functions that are fun to play with. Setting up some custom enchant shops and vote crates!
• PVP - We've added a way to enable PVP in StoneHeart for players to fight each other. Right now it's not totally put together. Expect a overhaul in the future with plenty more things and objectives!
• Banking - It's been very punishing to players to have their money on themselves when they die, so we've added a bank where players can deposit their money and earn passive interest! This means that over time playing, your savings will multiply slowly.
• Mending Nerf - So players have tried very hard to gain mending books. Some will probably not enjoy this change, but we are a server without dropping inventory on death. We've had to create a way to make mending less game breaking, as tools are never dropped and can easily be repaired. This way works how repairing on anvils works. Where over time your repairs get progressively more expensive, until it's easier to just make new tools. Keeping up the economy of gear and enchantments viable. This takes a long time, so mending is still plenty powerful!
• Admin Shop - We've been progressively adding more additions to help players and add more custom rewards for players. We will continue to add more!

Server tweaks & countless bug fixes (as usual)

• Top to bottom performance overhaul. We've been rocking perfect uptime & TPS other than the rare crash or something we can't control. Feels good to finally have all that organized!
• Cleaned up some plugins & picked up sensible replacements. (everything is 'premium' plz donate)
• Some plugins with unique features & functionalities will add for donors as ease of life. (More info when we build more comprehensive donor ranks).
• Tempfly - a voting point feature that will allow players to exchange their vote points for fly time. We are being generally conservative with our rewards, but are going to give daily allowances to donors.
• Monsters at early daytime are cleared on the surface. This includes creepers & spiders. Allowing a bit less annoyance and save resources for player farms instead.
• A lot of testing and playing around with custom NPC skripts for future reference. Will likely add a lot more in the future. Adding all kinds of fun quirks~.
• We've added some ways to help with new players being killed by nighttime mobs and getting their footing to allow novices to have a easier time getting started and defending themselves.
• Grief prevention was very buggy and hard to work with, so we've moved to a better protection plugin for players. It should all be seamless and give much more control over plots!

To Do

• Donor Points & overhaul - We've taken our time and realized perks & cosmetics make more sense as something bought by personal preference. We're going to reward a defined amount of Points for each rank. This will allow donators to choose whatever goodies they want! Will build this out more. Some things will be defined only by certain ranks tho. This will also include a revitalizing of what ranks mean and what sort of perks they will achieve.
• Jobs Shop - A universal admin shop using Job points. We plan on having all kinds of purchasable things. This one has been very hard to balance correctly with far too little data. Some people are wizards with Jobs, while others have nearly no points. We're trying to find a healthy middle ground and stay out of line of exploits.
• PVP - We're looking at having plenty of fun things to do for players who enjoy fighting. Events, arenas, rewards, and objectives all sound like a interesting future. I'd like to have warzones people can join to fight over rewards and loot boxes. The primary objective of StoneHeart is not hostility. So PVP will not directly punish players, but add another thing to do for perks and bonuses.
• Spawn Apartments - This has been a very long one coming. Myself and some builders have spent a lot of time decorating the interior of most buildings in spawn. Their intention is to be completely livable with spaces for players to buy apartments. We will get this done soon!
• A Very Interesting Secret Project! -  We've been working on something very interesting! Adding a new layer of things to explore. This is a large work in progress so I'll keep quiet! For now.. If you like liminal spaces, you're in luck.