Playing with a large group is really frustrating.

So, about 2 1/2 weeks ago a group of us decided to start playing. A fairly even mix of new & seasoned players. I haven't played the game since 2020, over 3 years ago.. So I'm one of the new ones.

In total, we have about 10 active people on the server.. Which is where the problem starts. We're on day 280.. Yes, 280. And how many bosses have we killed? One. I've been ready to kill The Elder for over a week now.. I have full bronze armor and pretty much nothing left to do. I've even gone and killed Oozers to get scrap iron to build a stonecutting table, and started building with stone. The rest of the people on the server barely log in, and in our Discord the server owner asked if we were ready for The Elder and only 2 of us said yes.

I wouldn't mind as much if it seemed like people were actually logging in to play, but only 4 of us ACTUALLY LOG ON. And the rest are saying they want to wait.. So, what are we suppose to do? Server progression is agonizingly slow, even for somebody who's seeing literally everything for the first time ever.

(Myself and the other person who said we were ready killed The Elder in secret just so we could start collecting iron, and it's been 3 days and nobody has noticed the invasions yet so that tells you how much they're actually playing.) What are we suppose to do here?