The Monastery

The Monastery was a base created by a trio of players that went on to be infamous for its endurance throughout 2b2t history until February 2020. It survived without the need for reconstruction and was only found three times, which involved its griefing in 2020, the arrival of a retroactive core base member in 2016, and by an unknown player.

History
“The Monastery” base was the second base for a trio of players: marcus4761 (jared2016), ttfractal44, and asobl97. The first, called “The Bunker,” was established by the three of them earlier in 2012 which lasted only a few months due to its proximity to its nether portal. The sighting of an unknown player between the base and the nether portal caused marcus4761 to seek out and find a new site for a base.

The location marcus4761 found (around 15k away from “The Bunker”) was the island that became the core of “The Monastery” base. The first building erected around September of 2013 was the main building of the monastery itself, without the cloistered garden which would come later. The intention of the building was to serve as sleeping quarters, as well as the base’s center for item storage, enchantment, and brewing; a role which it served for nearly the entire existence of the base.

Shortly after the initial settlement, asolb97 quit the server, citing the annoyances of long distance walking, the server lag, and boredom with vanilla gameplay. Following this, two players, KobeBeast and Mr_KyleBeast (aka PapaSmurf) made the journey from spawn and joined The Monastery base. Another player, Superhomunculus, made the journey but lost interest soon after.

Unbeknownst to ttfractal44 and marcus4761, KobeBeast and Mr_KyleBeast built their own base directly underneath the monastery, down at bedrock level, with a hidden entrance at the bottom of a small pond in front of the monastery building. (Note: the rooms to this base are still extant underneath the floor of the large underground area beneath the monastery). Upon learning of the secret base, marcus4761 took it upon himself to excavate a massive amount of stone, matching the footprint of the monastery and the newly added cloister, down to the level of Kobe and Kyle’s base as a sort of retaliation for their secret base.

Wheat and Cows
After their bedrock level base was “found” Kobebeast and Mr_KyleBeast decided to move to some islands around 1k north of the monastery, where they made use of the large wheat farms surrounding the monastery to create a massive cow farm. This cow farm was used as the base’s primary source of both food and experience.

After marcus4761’s departure in mid-2016 and his relogging in 2018, the entire cow farm vanished only for it to be learned later that xapamaa (a future member) had slaughtered all remaining cows for experience.

Iron, Mobs and Gold
For most of the base's existence (up until Nov 2019) the base members did not use item duplication as a source of resources. Instead they supported themselves and their construction projects with large-scale farming, grinding, and with valuables mostly obtained by marcus4761 or KobeBeast in raids. When it came to automated resource generation, TTFractal44, the member with the most experience in redstone mechanics, was chief of mechanized resource extraction.

Some of these operations were reckless with regard to the server's TPS, unknown to them when we began. Using wheat from the large fields surrounding the base, KobeBeast and Mr_KyleBeast bred several hundred cows confined to one area which provided food and exp points. Marcus4761 built 6 artificial village cells with canals to collect Iron Golems in a disassembly chamber built by TTFractal44. Then an alt account of marcus4761, Damong25, was used as a bot logged in 24/7 allowing iron to accumulate, which became one of the most extensively used materials at the base. Every single iron structure at the base, with the one exception of the largest pyramid (which was built with donkey dupe iron), was collected by this grinder which ran continuously for years.

The first major use of the massive quantities of iron the farm generated was to create a monument in the style of the Washington Monument, dedicated to all the murdered iron golems. Its erection brought about a huge sense of accomplishment. The idea of building something like that in survival mode was a foreign concept previously to the base members, but now became reality.

What followed was two additional iron towers, each ascending slightly in height, dedicated to damong25, the alt of marcus4761 used to run the iron farm, as well as ttfractal44 who programmed the bot for use with damong25. Following this, the first iron pyramid was built across the water from the base in what was previously unused land nearby the base. Following that, the giant conical tower made of iron and white stained glass (all sand was harvested and smelted by hand into glass) was built.

In July 2015, TTFractal44 directed the construction of an enormous, 50x50, 8-level mob grinder right next to the iron farm, so it was also operating at all times thanks to the bot, damong25. These two farms, (plus the cows and the automatic chicken generator) may have been a significant but unknown contributor to the terrible lag on the server through late December 2015, although many other players on 2b2t at the time were known to create lag machines and other redstone contraptions which lagged the server as well.

In 2015, other friends were invited and joined the base such as BrydenP and WonderDave. Both of whom contributed to general improvements to the base, such as improved lighting and beautification, but they slowly lost interest.

The last major project in late 2015, with the impending removal of the ability to craft enchanted golden apples, a gold farm was built around 6k away from the base (due to the nether portals employed). After the real KobeBeast became inactive, his account was borrowed by TTFractal44 to create a second bot running this gold farm.The status of the gold farm remains unknown as its coordinates were accidentally forgotten by marcus4761 and ttfractal44.

Following Years
In early 2016, marcus4761 based at KinoGrad Base, following an invite from SilverKrownKing. See: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bHsKMY5pUQo (the building with a wheat roof was his (38 seconds in)) After the base was betrayed and destroyed, and with him the only remaining player active at the Monastery base, he lost interest in 2b2t totally, and quit. The Monastery Base then fell dormant.

In 2018 marcus4761 logged back in, after almost two years, just out of curiosity, only to find the base not griefed (as was expected), but massively improved upon, and a large list of new base mates, (some of whom were at KGB, interestingly enough) was added. It was within this time gap the base was renamed from “The Monastery” to “Gape Haven.” Strangely, a tower built as a replica of one previously built by asobl97 and ttfractal44 on a private creative world located between the monastery and iron pyramid was torn down. This tower, complete with an iron and lapis flag, was called “The Terra Infinitum Memorial Tower” and acted as a lookout tower over the base, as well as a monument to that old creative server. Also torn down was a partially built iron tower which planned to become a version of the Transamerica Pyramid located where the Indian style stepwell later was.

Another one of the greatest mysteries of the base is still unanswered today. After the hiatus when marcus4761 and ttfractal44 were not active on 2b2t, it found that the mob grinder was completely and cleanly gone by the time they had returned just as if Hausemaster himself had world-edited it out due to server lag. Not a single shred of evidence for its existence remained at the base, and Xapamaa denies ever even knowing of it.

Unfortunately, by the time marcus4761 logged back in all the listed players on the member board were inactive. Xapamaa a player who joined just prior to the first Rusher video in 2016 had wandered randomly and by chance stumbled across  ́The Monastery’. He decided to simply make it his own base as he realized it was not griefed, but abandoned. By this point he was the only active player of the base. The fact that names like Caleesi and victor96, both members of the previous “Legion Gape” bases from many years ago were listed, and that the base was later renamed to “Gape Haven,” was certainly intriguing. As was the appearance of a building called the “Gape Embassy” which was entirely built on top of the location of the home of BrydenP (which was torn down to make space for it).

Xapamaa, as the only member at the base, worked alone for all his projects. As he thought himself the only player left, he decided to give the base a makeover into a more “oriental” theme as he described it, with the hope of then expanding into a future style city where the mega pyramid was. Xapamaa had done massive terraforming to make the base easier to zone and build. He had planned in a single survival world to divide the base up into sectors which would share different build themes and in his vision, hoped to "make this the largest, most historical and low kept base on the server." Xapamaa even went further in dismantling what was the old and cramped subway system and embarked on the creation of the new state of the art metro network incorporating 9 different lines which would link up all over the base, complete with a metro system map given to base members.

The discovery that the base had been improved upon led to a renaissance at the base, with marcus4761, the new member xapamaa, and even ttfractal44 returning and becoming active again for the final few months of the base’s life. It was during this time the large empty space under the monastery building was beautified with columns and a terracotta floor, with plans to include a Greek style temple at one end. Also, one of the donkey dupes was employed to generate massive quantities of iron blocks so as to build the final pyramid, this time stretching from sea level up to the height limit, the largest and final build the base would have.

Finale
Ever since rusher in 2016, it was thought guaranteed the base would quickly be found and destroyed. Yet, it survived. It was found only three times: Once by an unknown player who left a sign that they were just passing through, once by Xapamaa who went on to be a valued base member, and lastly, it was found by its griefers, the Backstreet Boys, in February of 2020.

The two rules for joining the base were simple: be known and trusted IRL, or, find the base on your own. That was it, and it kept the base an incredibly well kept secret for years. By an estimate by marcus4761, prior to griefing, less than 15 people who ever played on 2b2t even knew of it. Little information of the base was ever published publicly, if ever.

The primary method of security, other than telling no one about the base was to have the nether portal over 4k away, and farther from the -z axis than the base itself. This, marcus4761 reasoned, was effective as base hunters were less likely to search in that direction from a portal than in the other directions, as well as how the route from the portal to the base involved crossing an entire desert biome, plus an ocean biome. It is also entirely likely that due to the distance of the base being too far to reasonably walk from spawn in the overworld, but far too close to spawn in the nether for base hunters to bother searching, the base was given an extra layer of unlikely protection. With these precautions in place, the base survived this close to spawn, just over 100k overworld, for almost seven years.

Trivia

 * The Monastery also featured an extensive minecart transit system