Great Wither Fights

The title Great Wither Fights collectively describes a series of 8 historical events, which took place from July 2013 to January 2014. At each Fight, members of the server gathered at the Desert Village to summon and fight a, and subsequently placed the. The first 4 beacons were placed at Platz des Ursprungs, and the other 4 at the main hub. To make beacons work in the Nether, we holes in the bedrock ceiling using.

Beacon effect
The effects for the beacons at PdU (Strength & Regeneration, Resistance Ⅱ, Jump Boost Ⅱ, Speed Ⅱ) were discussed in this reddit thread, and those at the hub (Haste & Regeneration, Speed Ⅱ, Resistance Ⅱ, Strength Ⅱ) were proposed by on the talk page without any further comments. The Strength & Regeneration beacon at PdU is often changed to Haste & Regeneration instead.

How to donate
Note: This section is outdated.

If you want to donate a Wither skull to the Great Wither Fights, go to the main hub. Find the tunnel to Desert Village (the second tunnel to the left on the North wall of the hub), and place your skull on one of the two fence posts at the start of the tunnel. If both fence posts already have skulls on them, keep your skull and flip the lever. A written book will be dropped, follow its instructions for starting the next Fight.

First Great Wither Fight
''Date: 2013 Players:, †, , Beacon location: Platz des Ursprungs North-West Beacon effects: Strength & Regeneration''

For the first wither fight, we picked a location which was far enough away from most civilization, but already had a Nether portal: the Desert Village. We built a small shack near the portal to store our gear, and filled most of the lakes with solid blocks. We then proceeded to spawn and kill our first Wither, and set up the Regeneration and Strength beacon at Platz des Ursprungs.

Second Great Wither Fight
''Date: 2013 Players:, , , † Beacon location: Platz des Ursprungs North-East Beacon effect: Resistance II''

This time, we went for the Resistance II beacon. After the fight was over and the beacon was set up, posted this image to /r/wurstmineberg.

Third Great Wither Fight
''Date: 2013 Players:, , , † Beacon location: Platz des Ursprungs South-West Beacon effect: Jump Boost II''

This was the first Wither fight after the start of the Achievement Run, and consequentially, and  were fighting over who would place the final Wither skull. In the end, placed the skull, but to everyone's surprise, both  and  got the achievement “The Beginning?”. During the fight, walked into 's sword and died, so until the fourth Fight, only  had the achievements “The Beginning.” and (after placing the beacon) “Beaconator”. @wurstmineberg tweeted this image by.

Fourth Great Wither Fight
''Date: 2013 Players:, , , , * Beacon location: Platz des Ursprungs South-East Beacon effect: Speed II''

The music disc Cat was played during this fight, which was thought to be the last at the time. None of the players died, enabling everyone (except, who didn't have The End.) to get the missing beacon-related achievements. This time, posted the image of the beacon to @wurstmineberg.

Fifth Great Wither Fight


''Date: 2014 Players:, †, †, *†, †, † Beacon location: main hub North-West Beacon effect: Haste & Regeneration''

The fifth Fight was triggered by on 2014. It took 4 days for and at least two other players to show up. The fight was a catastrophe, with a total of 66 player deaths during the 1 hour and 13 minutes long fight. The players present when the Wither was spawned (,, and ) tried again and again with different strategies (including using iron golems to distract the Wither), but eventually gave up and unloaded Desert Village. After asking for help in chatsync, and  joined the Fight. The team (except for who had to leave) took additional steps to prepare and went in again, finally managing to kill the Wither, but not without leaving Desert Village partially destroyed.

Sixth Great Wither Fight


''Date: 2014 Players:, , , *, Beacon location: main hub North-East Beacon effect: Speed 2''

The sixth Fight was announced by shortly after the fifth Fight was over. In contrast to the previous fight, this one took less than 7 minutes and no players died.

Seventh Great Wither Fight
''Date: 2014 Players: †,, *, , , , Beacon location: main hub South-East Beacon effect: Resistance 2''

The seventh Fight was announced by on the same date that the fifth and sixth Fights took place. It took less than a minute (not including preparations), and only died.

Eigth Great Wither Fight
''Date: 2014 Players:, , , *, , , , Beacon location: main hub South-West Beacon effect: Strength 2''

Shortly before the 7th fight, announced that this last fight would take place immediately after it. As a preparation, shut down the server and restored a backup of the stat files for  and, so that  would be able to get The Beginning? and The Beginning.. (The two had empty stat files as a result of snapshot weirdness at the time.) The fight took exactly 40 seconds with no deaths. During the fight, was the only of the 8 participants who was not in the TeamSpeak call, so he would constantly ask about things that were being communicated there, such as the reason for the server restart. This turned into a meme, as can be seen here.

Symbols
* donated the third head

† died during the fight