Season 12 is Bring a Friend. Players from earlier UHCs brought friends along, and everyone formed teams of three ahead of time. Basket runs the game again and explains the Soul Crusher: when someone dies, there is a warning, then the border shrinks in. Every sundown after the first also starts a shrink if one is not already running. The title card reads "GopherCraft UHC 12: Bring a Friend to Die."
Team green
The lobby scoreboard lists all fifteen players. Basket's name is green, and so are Evil_Mech_Meru and FriarNurgle. Basket waits beside Evil_Mech_Meru in the rain for the countdown, and chat posts "Game started, go go go!" On voice the team tosses around names and lands on "the triplets."
Everyone starts with a compass, a clock and a leather helmet. pikerize asks in chat, "Diving Helmet?" and Basket answers "SURPRISE! :)". The tooltip shows Unbreaking X, Depth Strider III, Respiration III and Aqua Affinity, with the lore line "Limited Edition GopherCraft UHC10." Basket explains it is left over from command blocks built two UHCs ago. "It's just a leather helmet."
Wood, coal and sheep
The team spreads out to gather. There are no oak trees nearby, so saplings and apples are hard to come by. Basket picks up coal and stone and goes after sheep, then pigs and cows. The reminder that matters: there is no health regen, so no careless jumping. Basket also wants to keep an eye on chat this time, to answer questions as the host while still playing as a teammate.
Two deaths in a minute
Then chat posts "pikerize was shot by Skeleton." Moments later it posts "erynfaith was blown up by Creeper." Chat fills with "gg," and a yellow line follows: "Soul Crusher will wake in 2 minutes!" Basket: "I think that's the fastest couple of deaths we've had so far."
The talk turns to bringing one of them back, since it is still the first day. Bringing a player back would probably mean resetting the map, so the call is to roll with it this time. A couple of minutes later chat posts "Soul Crusher is coming!" with the border shrinking 138 blocks over five minutes.
Lost in the hills
The sun goes down while the team is still apart. Basket digs into a wall in the extreme hills and makes torches, and warns that a block that takes too long to break might be a silverfish. The other two head underground to meet up, and the three trade positions over voice. It does not go well. "The 100 that I was talking about was actually apparently north. That's how good I am at these coordinates."
So Basket keeps tunneling alone while the other two dig toward the same spot. Over voice they call out iron, then diamonds, and one of them loses half a heart to a silverfish after all.
End of day one
Basket checks the player list. Every team still alive is close to full health, with AngryK9 and PsychoSFK each down a little. Basket cooks at a pair of furnaces and keeps digging with a stone pickaxe and torches.
The server posts "End of Day 1. Players remaining:" and lists thirteen names, BasketMC among them. Basket is alive and still underground, not yet back with Evil_Mech_Meru and FriarNurgle, when the episode ends.