Tutorials/Multiplayer PvP bases

This page was originally written by StarkiIIer, a veteran of PvP Factions servers. He has spent the past two and a half years honing his skills in faction servers and PvP.

A server with the factions plugin installed plays quite differently than most any other server. In factions servers, players team up to dominate the map. This can lead to some epic fights, as well as much fun. This is my personal favorite kind of server. However, players that are new or are simply uninformed can be quite befuddled by the different playstyle. With people in enchanted diamond armor camping spawn, all blocks within a 10,000 block radius of spawn inhabited, and most of the resources within a 20,000 radius stripped bare, simply getting started can be a nightmare. But never fear! With the right knowledge, and a little bit of luck, you too can create a dominant faction that can rule the map!

Starting Out
Time: 60-120 seconds As soon as you enter a server for the first time, type /f list into chat. This is a command that will list the factions that have been made. There are 10 factions per page, and subsequent pages can be viewed by placing a number after "list". However, just worry about the first page. First off, note how many pages there are. The more factions there are, the further you must travel to reach uncharted territory. A good rule of thumb is 1000 blocks per page of factions. Secondly, look at the top three factions and take note of their membership and numbers. The numbers represent, respectively, land claimed, current power, and max power. If the current power is 0 or negative, then you can claim over their land. If the land claimed is 0, then they have no territory (though they still probably have some basic gear). This isn't necessary for where or how far you want to go, but such information is always handy. Most servers also give players a set of stone tools (although some give far more than that) to start with. If you don't have anything, then type /kit. If that doesn't give you anything, then /kit starter should work. If it doesn't, then that server doesn't give any tools to beginners. No problem, just have to deal with it.

On the road again...
Time: 30-60 minutes Once you have information on how many factions there are, as well as your set of starting tools, it's time to head out. If anyone is anywhere near spawn, start sprinting in the opposite direction or don't leave spawn until they leave your view range. Either way, you should be good/safe after a couple hundred blocks of running. At this point, stop sprinting to conserve your hunger. Just walk the distance (this WILL take a while!) that's recommended for the number of factions. As you hike, make sure to do all of the following: After 4000-5000 blocks, you might come up to an ocean. It is extremely recommended that you build a boat at this point, because this is more or less an infinite ocean (45 straight minutes of boat travel hasn't carried the author completely across one to this date), broken only by small islands that occur once in every 10,000 blocks square.
 * Kill all animals you find.
 * Harvest any wild sugar cane and pumpkins.
 * If a village is found, loot the forge, take the bookcases and furnace, and pillage the farms.
 * If a desert temple is found, loot the chests and then take the TNT from the floor.
 * If a jungle temple is found, loot the chests, then take the dispensers and all the redstone items, especially the sticky pistons.
 * Grab up to a stack of cocoa beans if you travel through a jungle.
 * If night comes, dig a hole large enough to hold a bed plus you standing up, then sleep for the night (especially useful if you're the only one on the server).
 * Make sure you have at least one seed and one sapling. You don't know what resources your home will have.

Choosing a Location
Time: 0 seconds - 1 hour

Once you have reached your recommended distance, it might be worth it to keep travelling depending on where you are and what your ambitions are. If you're in the ocean, keep going until you find land. Read the following recommended setups and skip to the part of the guide that applies to you.

1) A vast aboveground stronghold. If these are your ambitions, it's recommended that you travel to a plains or snow plains biome.  If this applies to you, then skip to part II of the guide. 2) A skybase in the heavens. Most places are good for this, but for the love of god please don't build in a jungle or extreme hills biome, otherwise people WILL still see your base. If this applies to you, then skip to part III of the guide. 3) An underground bunker worthy of the great Simon himself. Just about anywhere will do, but don't go down via caves (people will find your base too easily).  In addition, digging from the bottom of the ocean down will almost guarantee that your base will never be found.  If this applies to you, then skip to part IV of the guide.

Total time spent in Part I: 31 minutes to 3 hours

Planning
Time: 0-5 minutes in minecraft, 5-15 minutes offscreen

You have a bunch of food from all those poor animals you killed, you have a source of trees and wheat, you have a bed, now you need somewhere to put it all. Not so fast! The most crucial part of any project is planning, so spend some time off the server wracking your brain for what you want. Do you want a large base with self building walls, enough wheat capacity to feed half the state of Ohio, and all the bells and whistles? Or do you want a smaller base that can easily be hidden under a hill? Do you want walls of obsidian that are immune just about anything, or cheaper cobblestone walls? All factors must be thought of before deciding to build a base.

Terraforming
Time: .5-3 hours

No matter what your plan is, you're going to need flat land, and lots of it. Stone shovels are the best tool for clearing out tons of dirt, since they're quick, cheap, and easily replaceable. Likewise, stone pickaxes are best for the odd clump of rocks. First dig out the perimeter of your base, then start digging in. Keep a lookout for hostile mobs or even other players that have shadowed you - extreme distance is a good defense, but it's not infallible. Also, make sure to plant that sapling, and use some bonemeal to grow it quicker if you have any bones. By the time this is done, you should have a TON of dirt left over. If the server also has a shop plugin, great - all that dirt you dug up is probably worth a couple diamonds. If not, then keep it on hand just in case. You never know when a cheap, unburnable, gravity-defying filler material will be useful.

Physical Defenses
Time: 1-5 hours

You have your space, now it's time to secure it. You have a ton of dirt, but that's nowhere near good enough for a wall. At minimum, you want multiple layers of cobblestone. Now's a good opportunity to start a shaft mine or even a quarry. If you want a self-building wall, make sure to get at least 4 stacks of redstone and a couple stacks of iron to build the pistons and wiring necessary. If obsidian is your thing, it'll definitely be cheaper to haul the lava up in buckets, put them into a dirt mold, and then pour water on it. This not only doesn't require diamonds, it saves hours from digging up that much obsidian and basically guarantees your safety. Get a bunch of wood, build a crapload of pressure plates, and place them all around your base in a fake minefield. Even if you aren't planning on making that much TNT to bury in the ground, the mere thought that much explosives under their feet will scare away just about anyone.

Getting Ready For the Fight
Time: ???

At this point, you've gotten past the limits of this guide. Your adventure to be the top dog is up to you now. If you still don't know where to go, then some suggested steps are:
 * Expand your mine and keep hoarding diamonds and iron
 * Use all your spare cobblestone to make an experience farm
 * Sell any spare cobblestone and dirt to make stupid amounts of money
 * Go to the Nether to acquire the vastly important resources there
 * Recruit people into your faction to speed the process up as well as improve defensibility

Total time spent in part II: 2-8.5 hours Total time spent in total: 2.5-11.5 hours

(The guide will be continued, I promise. Please don't add anything until the guide is complete, thank you.)