We have had a large growth in our member base since taking inn new people this year. One of the first members to be approved were Goldminer which has been a fantastic addition to our team. He has contributed a lot over the past months and we wanted to appreciate him by sharing his interview.

1) Where are you from and how old are you?
I am from South Carolina, but I currently live in Oregon. I am 19 years old as of writing this.

2) How did you first discover Minecraft, and what drew you to it?
I had first heard about Minecraft around Spring of 2014 while overhearing a conversation waiting for bus after a school day ended, and first played around Summer of the same year. The first actual version I played was on the “Pocket Edition Lite” which I believe was preinstalled on an old IPad given to my mother as a gift, I had immediately loved the game, and I eventually got the actual pocket edition sometime later with the Xbox 360 Edition on my 10th birthday near the end of the year.

3) How did you become a builder for Project Zearth, and what motivated you to join?
I had learned about Project Zearth by looking for “large city maps” on Curseforge. I had spent countless hours exploring and whatnot on the map soon after (I’ve counted well in excess of 100 hours looking at stats for old save files, some of which are lost to the recycle bin), I only learned they had a discord community later on. With the countless hours exploring Zearth, I had amassed a large amount of knowledge regarding lore/locations/quirks for Zearth, I had eventually stopped being just a lurker and decided to post some of what I had found, and kept posting, completing challenges, etc. until I had become the defacto person to go to if you needed to find something on the map. During this I had been keeping my eye on the Apply page for the PZ website for awhile not sure if the “Applications will be open in spring” was old news until Xoy suggested I join the build team when applications open confirming it wasn’t old news, and I joined the build team the second applications opened.

4) Can you share a memorable or challenging experience you’ve had while working on Project Zearth?
One of my more memorable moment was finally moving past “Test Member” and getting access to command blocks and world edit.

5) What architectural styles, themes, or projects do you find most inspiring and enjoy working on?
I quite like arcane/erudite building styles, which unfortunately isn’t very common on PZ, though I was able to incorporate the style into one of my builds hidden on the map. I also tend to like terraforming, with me having done most of the cliffs and shoreline in a new city called Altamer among other things.

6) How do you collaborate and connect with other builders within the Project Zearth community? Could you share a successful collaboration story?
Not all PZ builders are good at all types of building, some are better with interiors, while some exteriors. A task coming from a Project manager will define what a build should have/be and where it should be, usually the task is for either exterior or interior (or terraforming but theres only like 2 people that do that currently), and members who build, let’s say a house, generally aren’t required to build it’s insides unless prompted to do so, the interior design of said house will be given to a different builder, or marked with orange wool by the Project manager who gave the task to be completed at a later date. Occasionally multiple people will work on a build at the same time, such as with me and Lil_Bee, where we worked on a secret cave under a house in Santoria that “relates to bees” in a superhero inclined way (this literally started with a stack of bees riding each other generated by a command).

7) What’s your favorite thing to do in Minecraft outside of building?
Outside of just building in Minecraft, I tend to either play modded survival or play on Hypixel with some of the other PZ members.

8) What is your favorite accomplishment or proudest moment during your time on Project Zearth?
My favorite build was definitely “The Immortal Font of Knowledge” which was for a building contest, I creating the lore and everything. You will mostly likely find the entrance somewhere in the Nova region.

9) How has your experience on Project Zearth influenced your real-world creativity, if at all?
As my build skills improve in PZ, I’ve seen my work in other games also improve similarly.

10) Looking ahead, are there any new Minecraft features, updates, or directions you’re excited to explore?
Honestly the newer features are overshadowed by some of Microsoft’s decisions with the game, with me being very hesitant to even update the game past 1.18 unless Microsoft backs down on their stupid rules.

11) Outside of Minecraft, what are your hobbies and interests? Do they influence your building style in any way?
I don’t really have any other hobbies other than gaming, with my main games being Minecraft, Stellaris, From the Depths, and Terra Invicta, though I also watch youtube occasionally. My building style is probably most influenced if at all by From the Depths.

Thank you Goldminer!