Hello all!

It has been a long-time ambition of mine to help raise player retention rates and grow our community. Having been present since 2015 (with some years of inactivity interspersed in between), I have tried and failed multiple times to help bridge the numbers gap between new players joining and players who stay for the long run.

I'm currently working with a team of two architects to design a 199x199 public island, which will hopefully break from the traditional terraformed grassy plains and mountain islands in lieu of a more thematically cohesive multi-layered build. As the server has recently announced plans to expand their social media presence onto sites like Reddit, I'm aiming to produce something which can be used as a resource for new players to help them navigate the sprawling maze of rules, social conventions and gameplay nuances that make Skyblock the lovable(?) mess that it is.

Although I conceived this island as a public benefit location, since part of my motivation for building this stems from personal desire to have a pretty home, I am hesitant to ask for donations. Instead, I ask that you contribute your ideas on how to make such a build more accessible and practical, with the objectives of usefulness and sustainability in mind. If you do wish to assist in a material way, I may accept once I have exceeded my allotted budget. In particular, I will probably need help with keeping the island's consumable resources stocked (I assume our friendly neighborhood redstone engineer has some tricks for making this easier).

Finally, I plan to have a segment of the island dedicated to helping people complete both the tutorial and 'basic' challenges in sequential order, displaying both instructions and shops with the necessary materials all in one place for convenience.

Questions on my mind currently:
1. Why do new players quit after such a short time?
My previous projects(in collaboration with some other community members) have tried providing a newbie island with accessible early-game resources like cobble, food, iron, bones, ice, seeds, assorted saplings, etc for free/cheap, as well as facilities like enchanting table/anvil/nether portal/public mobgrinder. Another attempt used pre-made shulker kits packed with enchanted iron armor, tools and instructional written book to help them through the "help I can't get anything" phase of the game. Despite all this assistance, more than 85% of these players quit within a week.

2. What stuff do new players need the most?
Looking for item suggestions to stock for free as well as things to stock for low/affordable prices(little to no profit margin compared to the average market rate).

3. How can we efficiently impart information onto new players without overwhelming them or boring them?
Many new players I meet do not take the time to read through forum guides when provided links; they barely have the attention span to read a single sign display, much less a whole written book. How might I word/arrange tutorial things so they can gain all the important details without getting overwhelmed by complexity?

Or is this an impossible task, and should we just accept as fact that some people are just not compatible with this style of gameplay and vice versa? If this is true, how can we identify and support new players who may one day become pillars of the community?

4. What are some good early/mid-game grass-making methods?
This past week, I've met and helped three or four new players extensively, helping them acclimate to the server, answering questions, providing resources and telling them a bit about SB history. However, having been a rather privileged late-game player for the majority of my Skyblock career, I seem to have lost touch with the struggle to climb up from nothing. I find myself at somewhat of a loss when asked for advice on how to make grass and passive income.

Thank you for reading,
GAMER1232012

TLDR: ME BUILD ISLAND HELP NOOB SO NO QUIT. HELP LAZY PLAYER DO CHALLENGE. YOU GIVE IDEA, ME GIVE INFORMATIVE REACT. GOOD IDEA GET WINNER REACT. IF WANT HELP, DONATE AFTER ME BROKE, THANK.

 

Maybe by writing a guide per book n quill with a lot of useful information for beginners? You can just hand out the book and the greenies could read it step by step / whenever they want to.

 

Thanks for the reply! I tried this with KingJonSnow and a few others in 2022, we distributed about 60 different shulkers packed with supplies and written book of instructions, and almost none of them bothered to read the book and just asked in chat questions that were already answered in the first few pages. I'm thinking building a physical location to look at will be more palatable, but I'm not sure how to write and how much to write without making it look like a literal wall of text; I also wish there were a master-link page of easy-to-read forum guides I could just copy paste(any volunteers )