Tutorials/Multiplayer PvP bases

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. 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 or /kit basic 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, completely ignore it. There is a 99.99% chance that everything is looted, the villagers are killed, and the town is griefed. If you want to spend your time on it, go ahead
 * If a desert temple is found, then the same story at the NPC village.
 * If a jungle temple is found, same thing.
 * Grab up to a stack of cocoa beans if you travel through a jungle.
 * If night comes, then you may or may not keep traveling. about 75% of PVP servers have so many players that you will never see a mob. If that's the case, the keep moving. Some servers have as many or more mobs than single player. If you think you can handle the mobs then keep moving. If not, then you can dig a hole for yourself in the ground with enough room for you to stand. You can then wait all night, or disconnect from the server and do something else for 7.5 minutes.
 * Make sure you have at least one seed and one sapling. You don't know what resources your home will have.
 * Ocean travel is generally superior to land travel anyways. If you come across an ocean, even if you have to turn 90 degrees to go across it, then you should try to get across because you will make much more distance. You travel faster, you don't consume hunger (very important!) You don't have to deal with mobs or players, and you always can travel whatever direction.
 * If you keep walking, eventually you will have to deal with a world border. On 99% of servers, There is a point around 5000 or 10000 blocks on server which nothing can go past. This is to encourage raiding so people don't keep walking for millions of blocks and never get raided. It is important to not make a base right on the edge of the world border. Many people find faction bases by walking around the very edge of the map. Go about 300 blocks away from the world border and make your claim there.

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, You should usually keep going until you find land. However, if you already have everything it's much better to make an underwater base in the middle of the ocean (discussed later) 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 Honeydew 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. The absolute best wall is a lava-filled obsidian wall, because even if enemy factions dig through the outer layer, they will be burnt to a crisp by the lava. Get a bunch of wood, build a load of pressure plates, and place them all around your base in a fake minefield. If that is too expensive and time consuming, then use cobblestone. It's cheaper and doesn't burn. DO NOT USE STONE BRICKS! They are just for decoration and they will burn out all of your fuel. Even if you aren't planning on making that much TNT to bury in the ground, the mere thought of that many explosives under their feet will scare away just about anyone. It is suggested that you do not put TNT under the pressure plates, just for the fact, someone will think it's fake, and walk right over it. This will cause the TNT to blow up them, your base, and possibly, you!

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

II. The Flying Base
So, you want your base high in the sky. Well, there are some pros and cons to this idea.

PROS
 * People will strain their eyes trying to see your fortress.


 * If someone tries to get inside via a pillar, you can smack them off and probably terminate them.


 * If it's well lit, don't expect attacks from interfering mobs.


 * It's nearly impossible to access.

CONS


 * It's nearly impossible to access.


 * One wrong step while patrolling the exterior means you can have fun trying to get back up there... WITHOUT anyone seeing you.


 * It's pretty easy to see if you look at it right.


 * There will be a huge shadow under your base, so someone right under it will know what's going on.

If you REALLY want to proceed with this, then continue.

Picking a Spot
Selecting a spot for this is hard. As previously stated, don't make this thing in an extreme hills or jungle biome. If it's high enough over an ocean, plains, desert, etc.... then it will take a while to notice and often be obscured by clouds. If it's over an extreme hills or jungle, anyone getting materials from a tree or climbing a mountain will look up and think, "oh, look, a flying base. I'll go tell everyone." You don't want that. Big no-no. Instead, build it over a valley... in a plain... below sea level. That should help disguise your place.

Getting Up There
This is pretty hard. You want to get up in the sky. You don't want anyone to know you're in the sky. Now, your only real option is to pillar up there. But how will you get down? The answer: nether transport.

First, get enough obsidian and/or molding supplies to make two portals. Next, make sure there's no one in a 100-block radius of your soon-to-be base. Then, pillar up about two hundred blocks: not really necessary, but it's a nice height. Sure, you can't really see the ground, but people will need a LOT of dirt to get up there. After that, make a nether portal up there. You then want to go about sixty-four blocks away from your location. Make another portal. Go through it, and back in the overworld, cover it up using dirt or something to make a convincing, small hill. Go back through your portal and make a walkway to easily get between your portals. You may wish to disguise it, but it's fine for now. Go back through your sky portal and you'll end up on top of your pillar. Smash your pillar and make a big platform. You're ready for the walls.

NOTE: Many, if not most, servers, allow you to set a "home" that you can return to at any time. If this is one of those servers, you can skip the portals and instead type /sethome (or /f sethome to set your whole faction's home), and /home (or /f home) to return to the exact point you used /sethome (or /f sethome) at. Set your home up in the base, and then have a pool of water to fall into right below your base. Then, when you want to get up, just type /home!

The Finishing of the Base
Well, you're a trooper for getting this far. You're almost done. Now, you have two approaches to this. One, you can go for the walled castle look. It makes pillaring from the side virtually impossible. It's also good for stopping mechanisms that chuck TNT up straight at you. But, it's more resource-intensive and potentially easier to spot.

Otherwise, you can build a sort of "village" up there, with several separate buildings with no fully surrounding wall. It's not as resource intensive, and it can reduce visibility, especially with a short wall of snow and a snow platform. However, if you have one unguarded side of your base, pillar raids are much easier than if there was a wall. Also, cannons that shoot TNT upward at high velocities are exceedingly deadly, because with some aiming, they can shoot right onto your platform.

Whichever you choose, this kind of base is good because it protects you from your foes BEFORE they see you. Of course, it has weaknesses in the fact that it is tricky to set up in the first place and can be somewhat hard to defend, depending on how you build it.

III. The Massive Cave Base
For a video example of a massive cave base, Go to:

Youtube, and search "Ronnygoboom PVP Base"

Keep in mind, this base was made on a server that has explosive damage and ender pearls disabled.

PROS
 * Can be hard to find
 * Easy access to ores and caverns
 * Self-sustainable

CONS
 * Can also be easy to find if you're near a very large cave system (or even a stronghold)
 * Digging it out and get it running will take a very long time (and a few dozens of stone pickaxes)

Starting Out
The first thing to do is deciding where do you want to build your base. The best location would be an ocean, far away from the shore. Once you have located a good spot, create an airshaft and start digging down. You usually want to build the base at layers 10-20 so you can mine for diamonds easily. Get ready for LOTS of spare cobblestone, and you will eventually run into coal and iron, and if you're lucky, gold or even diamonds.

First part: the core/main base
Once you are at a good depth, it's time to begin digging out the base. Don't start tunneling just yet! Dig out a square (4 blocks of height are recommended) big enough to contain all the basic rooms of the base (crafting room, enchanting room, forge, furnace room, storage room, and others). 25x25 should be more than enough, though you can expand it as you wish. Build walls and start decorating the basic rooms.

Second part: the outer ring/add-ons
Once your main base is estabilished, then you can begin tunneling. What will you make a tunnel to is of your choice. It can be a wheat farm (same design for carrot and potato farms), a tree farm, a mob grinder, a mine or quarry, it's up to you.

Third part: secret rooms/basements
This step is optional but recommended. It's a good idea to have a secret door that leads to a basement located at an even lower depth than your main base. There you can keep a secret storage room to stash your valuable resources in (be sure to leave some of your iron/gold/diamonds in the main base. If enemies break into your base and find no resources, they'll probably figure out there's a secret room), and also a library to store books containing information on enemies and their bases.

Finishing
If all is done correctly, you'll have an underground fortress deep below the middle of the ocean. Be sure to cover the airshaft used to access the base, or disguise it to make it look natural, hiding the trapdoor. This can seem like paranoia but it's always good to have more stealth and safety. Your base will take a very long time to be found even if enemies are hunting you relentlessly.