GLDesert Colonial Information Thread This is the information thread for the Spacebattles colony on the PVP server GLDesert. Veteran Spacebattlers and those they vouch for are hereby invited to join in our goal to wreak havoc and triumph against overwhelming odds by our guile, grit and internet superiority! Update As of 1 March 2012, the server is going to be transitioning to 1.2 (great timing, I know). Be vigilant as this may break shit and remember to back up your client to keep playing on the SB server (which will presumeably not be updating). Important Links The Website and Server URL: http://gldesert.com Live Map/Chat of the Server: http://gldesert.com:8123/ Try your best to get this to work as it is of great value in terms of intelligence gathering. Server Rules: http://gldesert.com/forums/showthread.php?95-*-Server-Rules-* Donator Powers: http://gldesert.com/donate/info/ Know what people with various fancy-coloured names are capable of. Donator Rules: http://gldesert.com/donate/rules/ Know how these people are or are not supposed to use their powers. Being able to screenshot at a moment's notice is important in keeping these folks honest because abuse does happen. It's not rampant, but it's inevitable. Introduction GLDesert is a PVP server. Unlike the usual Spacebattles fare, it is perfectly legal to kill, steal from and grief other players as well as deal with the consequences of such acts if any. Generally speaking, I specialise in the stealing, concealment and intelligence gathering parts of the equation whereas Kerrus is currently our specialist in killing folks. The main feature of the server setting it apart from other pvp servers is its custom map – the entire surface of the world outside of towns and a few oases (controlled by those who donate money to keep the server running) is sandy desert, making food and wood harder to come by. On the other hand, iron, gold and especially diamonds are much more common than normal. Selling diamonds to the server shop is the backbone of the economy. The server runs a slew of plugins on bukkit, chiefly Towny, McMMO and iConomy. It is fully compatible with vanilla Minecraft. Our objective is to build up a highly resilient Towny Town and then we'll see who's intersted in sticking around and what we enjoy doing most. Rules Here I will amplify some of the server's notable rules. No Hacking, X-Ray or Glitching This is sort of a no-brainer. As Kerrus said, the server's policing of this is decent and there is an emphasis on their part in hunting down people who use X-Ray textures or client mods. Nevertheless I recommend that everyone build their out-of-town bases under the assumption that X-Ray's will be used and to defend against them. Lava is of particular importance in that it, as far as we know, blocks line of sight on all extant X-Ray mods. No Spawn Killing This is not as heavily enforced so it does happen. Leaving the main spawn town on foot is dangerous. Make use of teleportation whenever possible. "/tpa" is available (never accept unless you absolutely know who it is and are not in a sensitive area) and "/home" will send you to your last bed. There is also the town spawn which is accessed by "/town spawn" but this is not available while you are in Wilderness. To warp to the town spawn while in the wilds, do "/warp spawn" first. If you're hanging at the border and some dude in diamond gear follows you around, most likely they are waiting for you to cross over into pvp-land to kill you. People hanging around spawn are aware that most victims are carrying little of value and mostly do it for fun. If they are following you around the spawn protection border, take multiple screenshots of them hanging around you near the border as you move about and report their ass in the forum provided. Even if nothing ultimately happens at least they'll have to halfassedly defend themselves privately to some mod. No Lava or Flint-and-Steel Killing However you are allowed to use them defend yourself if both of the following are true: 1) You are defending the town against raiders; and 2) Wartime is turned OFF. Knocking people into lava or fire is fine so long as you didn't obviously place it down just now. Having them die via previously laid traps based around either element is also fine. I should add that while I don't want anyone to break rules (we have an image to maintain!) fire and lava are extremely powerful in light of McMMO which means that established players often have a huge advantage over you. Make use of ambient lava, fire, numbers and good old gravity to even the odds when/whereever it is legal to do so. Note that it is forbidden to use lava in town defense when Wartime is ON. No Brewing Without a License They consider potions overpowered. A brewing license is a physical item purchased at the shop for 100,000 and is something you should keep safe, yet you do need to have it on you when you are using potions or brewing. Netherwort is also quite hard to come by as well. As an extension of the rule, you cannot give potions to anybody else even if you do have a license, unless of course the receiver also has a license. The Map GLDesert's main distinguishing feature is its custom map, the "Great Light Desert" limited to a size of 7km x 7km by the Border Guard mod. Outside of terraformed towns and oases controlled by server donators, the entirety of the map is sandy desert. The map is broadly separated into two parts and I will go into detail for a few other features as well. The Core stretches from origin out to 1.68km and is the older part of the map likely dating to 1.8 or before. It is a blasted waste of sand and barren rock interspersed by countless ruins of fallen towns and settlements. Numerous areas are massively blasted out, making for difficult terrain. Hellevators – small player-dug holes in the sand that lead to lethal falls – are a common sight. Oddly enough, The most prominent features are the massive husks of fallen major cities whose walls of obsidian stand out against the light coloured dunes. Resistant to explosions, they slowly corrode away as they are mined for obsidian. In several regions, there is snow cover and the Core remains the only source of harvestable snow. The Core contains no Testificate villages but has the lion's share of the towny towns, including most of the largest ones. This area is target rich but also very dangerous as people do troll around for others to kill. It is perfectly possible to hide and this is usually done by being in plain sight. With so many unnatural tunnels, ruined buildings and stray torches, it is almost impossible to distinguish what is occupied and what has long been abandoned. Being detected here usually involves having your nameplate spotted from above by passing players, which is a reasonably common occurrence as the traffic levels and player density is high. Not everyone is dangerous however – the area is also populated by noobs or recently killed folks with no gear trying to make their way back outwards again. As you go towards the outer edges, the Core turns more and more Periphery-like. It is worth noting however, that all of the surviving major cities in the Core are those located practically at the border with the outside. The Periphery is a more recent map expansion out to 3.5km and is largely virgin desert. Resources are less tapped out and player density and traffic and much lower. Hiding in the Periphery is a matter of camouflage and concealment, especially using natural features. Generally speaking, the Periphery is much safer and emptier than the Core though it has been filling up. Occupation of the outer areas is ongoing; numerous towns are founded and many fail almost immediately. Nevertheless, the number of towns increases on average by about one a day based on my observations. We will obviously not fail anything like almost immediately. Testificate Villages The map expansion contains spawned villages. Most have been looted to some degree but a few are virtually intact. These villages are important sources of wood and emergency food. Ruins There are a number of major ruins throughout the map of major cities with terraformed interiors. They are an important resource so visiting them to harvest is of great importance. Perhaps the most important of these is the former city of Stratford centered at roughly 1300/1300 which fell within the past week of gameplay. Despite heavy looting it is still an absolute treasure trove of resources that are rare elsewhere, including glowstone, wood, obsidian, cloth and plentiful food from animals spawning on its vast expanses of grass (though it'll be easy enough for us to set up our own pig spawners). It's not exaggeration to say that relative proximity to Stratford was an important consideration in the siting of Neo-Tokyo. The Nether All Nether Portals send you to a location in the Nether where you drop down into water and can go from there to explore the 500m x 500m Nether. Besides being dangerous, it is heavily tapped. Plots generally cannot be acquired or protected in the Nether. Not being a potion brewer I haven't ventured much into there myself either. Notable Resources I am leaning towards collecting taxes/donations in kind rather than the server currency. Food This is not as hard to come by as you might think. A visit to Stratford will quickly fill your inventory with meat, for example. A pig spawner costs 5000 dollars which is roughly equal to acquiring 50 iron on a normal server and that will generate all the meat one needs when placed on a few tiles of grass. Melons Melons, reconstructed from nine slices, sell for just over 30 dollars each. An intensive, multi-level melon farm may well be a viable method of generating income. Diamond Diamond has roughly the distribution of iron on a normal map – nodes of 8 at any underground level. Shit revolves around diamonds except when it revolves around obsidian. Iron A very important source of income as well – do not dismiss its importance. Cooking it into ingots yields best results. Note that selling individual ingots to the shop is tedious but yields more cash for some odd reason. Its abundance is roughly equal to coal on a normal map. Coal I'm not sure if it is as abundant or somewhat moreso than on a normal map. The greatest danger is having everyone assume that because it's so common that someone else is mining it so that they don't have to. Gold Normal distribution and as a result is worth more than diamond on the market. Be careful of selling it all off as golden apples are important in PVP. Glowstone Most glowstone is found in ruins and unprotected bases. Glowstone blocks are worth 50 each so they are definitely worth looting. Redstone Normal distribution. Aside from mechanisms, redstone is valuable because it can be used to cast obsidian. Note that obsidian cast in this way is "natural" and would still need to be broken and relaid for best effect. Obsidian (and Super Breaker) Because of how War works on this server, Obsidian is vital for town defense. Those cities have massive walls of obsidian for a reason. While we are aiming for a city core that cannot be penetrated without abuse or human error, we still must build major features like floors out of obsidian in the event something goes wrong. The paradigm of city construction on this server is to surround cities in massive walls of obsidian to the skybox. We will diverge from that somewhat and try to get as many things built of obsidian as possible so that when shit gets real, we will be refinishing rather than reconstructing our efforts. As such, obsidian is vital and will never be in plentiful supply. Super Breaker Intimately tied to obsidian's value is Super Breaker, an McMMO ability. Activate it by holding a pickaxe then rightclicking. The chat will say "You ready your pickaxe" at which point, when you click on a pickaxe-related block you will break it almost instantly and get increased drops. Super Breaker lasts for a limited time but lasts longer the more you increase your McMMO mining skill. It also costs your tool double durability while in use. After finishing, the ability has a cooldown lasting about 200 seconds. The ability, in its current form on this server, also has an important anti-abuse feature: it cannot affect "placed blocks" in any way. Mining an obsidian block in ten seconds vs almost instantly is, needless to say, a huge difference. Always always milk this ability on obsidian. We will always need more obsidian. If there's one resource we as a town should pool, it is obsidian. The more things we build of obsidian, the more things are impervious to the explosions of war. Most towns (when they don't have masters using creative mode) are satisfied with an underlayer of obsidian and some walls and leave it at that. We can go further. We are building from bedrock up. At the very least we can make floors out of obsidian so there aren't holes to jump around when we fix shit. Placed Obsidian Placed obsidian is invulnerable to Super Breaker. This is an important advantage should the worst happen and towny defense goes down for whatever reason. Most things worth building out of obsidian will likely be worth building out of placed obsidian. Natural Obsidian Besides the lava-and-water stuff occurring naturally on the map, "natural obsidian" covers two critical categories: obsidian placed in Creative Mode and cast obsidian. Because these are the easiest ways to do things, they are very common in the walls of ruined cities. This obsidian is vulnerable to superbreaker. This is where we will source our obsidian, by taking advantage of their laziness so we can build shit properly!
No client side mods needed. It's pretty fun, and merciless if you die (which you will). But because of the setup you can recoup your losses and eventually get to a point where you're pretty good at stuff. The towny town setup helps if you have a town going, but it's possible to survive without it. There are various rules- you can find them on their forums, but it mostly comes down to not cheating or X-raying or using hacked clients or the like. They've got anti-cheat protection and seem to be fairly decent with it, but there's not much to be done against x-ray texture packers. Well aside from hiding out in the boonies and building bases under lava flows. Ultimately it's quite fun, and there's a definite sense of accomplishment in building stuff and keeping it safe from the very real enemy threats. there's also a town vs town wartime thing, but with how we're setting our stuff up, we *should* be reasonably safe from that. Provided nobody teleports anyone into our town (the tpaccept/deny plugin is on the server)
Client-side mods won't interfere with joining a vanilla server, so you won't need to make a whole new installation if you've already got a modded one.
Took a step out into the wilderness. Was instantly murdered. Pick a location first, then we can head there.
The location is roughly 1000/3000 I'll get the exact coords when I get home tonight. For the time being, people wanting to head out and strike a start in the sand are recommended to go to coordinates positive x and positive z. Do NOT stick around in the spaces between the major cities. Make sure your coords are at least 1500+ on one of the axis. The further you go, the safer you are.
I'll join. Hopefully I will reach somewhere without getting killed. What do the plugins do? Also: Sand, eh? Makes it kind of hard to hide shit.
Made it to 1000X / 3000Z, nada around for at least 100 in any direction. Note I have enough string to make a few bows, and looted a few arrows from the desert as well.
1370 / 2990, started to mess around (yes, it is underwater, and yes, it's ladder-down). Dig through the sand to the new passage, and you'll find a way to a long-drop ravine with a Mine Shaft (seemingly unexplored) and vast quantities of lava beneath.
Made it to where Dranchyench was talking about, but out of food. Going into not logging stasis to preserve health until given a location to head to. Have a little iron, starter gear, and some saplings. EDIT: How do you sell things? I warped back into spawn to buy food and ran out of money. Also, are we allowed to steal from protected areas?
I can give you some food the next time you arrive. I packed up shop earlier specifically to reduce frontage / odds of being found by non-SBers, so am living under a lava flow with a chest full of something like 50 apples. EDIT: Mal, I have practically a stack of diamonds at this moment. Helpful for gathering funds? EDIT: Forget practically, I have a full on stack and am flowing past such.
Here are their server rules: http://gldesert.com/forums/showthread.php?95-*-Server-Rules-* I'll edit them into the OP post as well. The server is most notable for what's not on the list, which include Stealing, Griefing and Killin' Folks but there are a few points worthy of note. As for selling things, use /warp market to take you to the marketplace. One side of the market (on the right if you enter via the corridor) is devoted to selling. Leftclick on signs to do so. Lapis, Gold and Diamonds all sell for a lot. Selling diamonds is supposed to be the backbone of the server's economy and this is true for the most part. As for protected areas, there are several kinds. Donators at VIP level or above can protect their chests, furnaces and signs. This will show up as a "magical spell" and generally is not a defense that can be defeated. Higher level donators can protect large sections of land entirely. By far the most common form of defense is Towny which prevents you from opening the town's chests or doors. However, towns become vulnerable to explosions during wartime. High level donators can then use a power that lets them cast explosive entities (a legal use of this power) and lead assaults/blow up otherwise unprotected chests inside towns. In all cases, if you can get away with it without hacking or glitching, go right the hell ahead. As for funding, we are okay for the time being. I suggest going ahead and selling them. Bear in mind that you can sell a diamond for 100 and buy a diamond from the shop for 101 - a mere 1% insurance rate even if for some reason we can't get a chestload of diamonds to outfit everyone with tools and gear.
i stumbled upon the aftermath of a creeper attack while heading to those coordinates... so somehow i've managed to loot a full set of diamond armor and 108 diamonds after 10 minutes on the server lol
So, would there be rules on stealing from each other in the SB town itself, or are we just going to skip the middleman and go full Rapture post New Years Eve 1959 here?
There will absolutely be no stealing from each other. We aren't going on here to be Rapture, we're going on here as an army and as a team.
Thats COMMUNISMS! I wont be joining you, but wouldn't the best way to simply keep your own tools and everything else is shared?
We can hash it out as we go. Towny has a tax function which is intended to let towns maintain their towny upkeep but I'm not going to impose it immediately because I know there's gonna be a lot of adjustment. Eventually though, we'll need to lean on everyone to keep things going. I don't want to have people share more than they're comfortable with - we all thrive on freedom. Obviously, the more we work as a team, the more successful we'll be. Plus, it's probably smart not to have everything thrown into one basket. As for tools, they aren't going to be an issue. Diamonds are as common on GLDesert as iron is normally. I'll outline a list of resources that is absolutely beneficial for us to share as a group though. Obsidian, especially.
Seeing as my abandoned mineshaft has lots of sitting lava pools, we could make money real quick if need be.
