Survival Introduction

This is intended as a guide, by no means should it become religious phrase, material of sexual fantasy or quoted text in a ban appeal.

Let me start off by saying Survival is not an overly friendly place. While players form alliances in time and find some measure of security through partnerships with clans or through dominance in PvP (see: weizbox), life for a new player can be tough.

Survival is based around a player vs player (PvP) style. Whether you attack your opponents with swords, bows, ingenious traps, or (if you really feel like trolling) feathers, it's ultimately a game of competition and survival.

Where to build?

One of the first decisions you will ultimately be faced with on survival is where to build your home. Given that players mostly congregate around the center of the map...

THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR YOU TO BE

While it is tempting for a new player to want to live near a road or spawn, those areas being easily accessible and easy to find, a new player should also not live in those regions for the exact same reason. Roads are the first place most players will look to find players to kill, and might be camped by players wearing iron armor with a diamond sword as per standard PvP kit (More on that later).

Ultimately, there are two gameplay styles a player may choose on survival:

1. live far from a road and far from spawn, or
2. live close to a road or close to spawn.

Your location of settlement on the map really depends on your play-style and experience with the game and the server.

Option (1) allows you to build up a base and gather resources in relative peace, allowing you to choose when to interact with other players, but ultimately may feel very similar to playing single-player. (It's also a long walk from spawn if you die!)

Many players have found success with option (2), building a house right off the road and/or as close to spawn as they can possibly build. Such a location gives you easy access to your supplies (and players to kill!), the ability to show off your buildings. It's a very exciting style of play, but can be quite challenging for new players to maintain.

Where should new players build then?

Far, far away! The farther away from spawn and roads you are, the less likely people are to stumble across your base and hence the less likely you are to be killed by another player. If you're interested in play-style (2), building your home even 200 blocks off the road is often enough to stay away from most players, while keeping you close to the action.

So how should I get started?

Your first priority should be to find a place to build, consistent with your desired gameplay style. Picking a random direction and walking for a minute or two is generally a good method to find a nice spot. Always do a quick check of your surroundings, making sure no one is already building there, and the area is sufficient to build on. Make sureto write down the coordinates of your base using F3! ( X and 'Z are the ones you are interested in )

Next, follow the same game as you would in single player - mine! The sooner you acquire resources, the faster you are on your way to becoming a good PvP player. Your first priority should be to defend yourself (with at least an iron sword and chestplate) before you worry about defending and securing your base.

Starting a renewable source of food, such as a wheat or mushroom farm should shortly follow establishing a base. The sooner you have a constant stream of food, the less you'll have to make unplanned trips out of your fortifications.

The Secure Base...dun dun dunnnnn

Just like there are many ways to pick a base location, there are many ways to secure it. We're not going to tell you which way is the best way to secure a base, but here are some ideas to keep in mind.

1. Hide your base! - The most secure base is the base no one knows exists. On chaos servers, players often hide their base by digging a player-sized hole into the ground or into the side of a mountain, and sealing the entrance. Some of the most secure bases on survival were a fortress carved out of a mountain in revision 4, with a maze on the inside so intruders would get lost, and an underground base with an underwater entrance on revision 5. On survival, you can lock your chests, so you don't have to worry about your supplies getting stolen. But anything that keeps your base hidden - or keeps the entrance hidden, even if the base is visible - keeps you safer.
2. Create bottlenecks for PvP. - Forcing players to use a long ladder to get to you in your base gives you plenty of chances to attack them before they get to you. Know the ways people can get into your base and make sure you can defend them. Adding a 1 block wide bridge or ladder allows arrows to easily be shot from somewhere outside the bottleneck at the invaders. Even a floating base may not be secure - a player can still build a 1x1 tower into it. Building underground is the most reliable thing to do, and easiest to bottleneck. They won't dig a 1x1 shaft down, because fixing it would be impossible, and they would have a hard time mining into it if it's well hidden, and even that would be a pain for them to fix, especially if you line your base with the best materials (see below). Building a presence on top of the surface with the majority of your base underground is often a good method, as it resolves land claim disputes easily and also takes attention away from the hidden entrance to your main base.
3. Use traps. - PvP servers are the place where clever traps really shine. While there are some restrictions in place on what you can use (for example, TNT can't do block damage), there are many good options available for traps. Just remember that if a trap doesn't kill a player, they are allowed to grief to get out if necessary.
   1. Building a bridge to your entrance with redstone-triggered trapdoors
   2. Placing random holes around your base
   3. Trap players somewhere where you can shower them with arrows (perhaps from dispensers)
   4. Trap the player between iron doors
   5. Use pistons with pressure plates to open huge holes or release lava
   6. Placing cactus around your base area not only helps to keep mobs down but can also provide buffer zones when placed properly.
4. Use alarms. - Even an open base can be safe if you always know when someone's coming. Use pressure plates / switches in combination with noteblocks (and doors/trapdoors for added sound) to give yourself a warning when someone enters your base.

Building materials. - As discussed in the rules below, players can grief into your base if there is no other safe way in, but they must fix the griefing ASAP (ideally on the way in). So the materials you choose to build your base can have a huge impact on how players try to get in.

1. Bad choices: materials that can be broken and replaced without any tools. Examples: dirt, planks, fences, wool.
2. Okay choices: materials that can be broken and replaced with cheap tools, like stone picks. Examples: cobblestone, sandstone, iron doors.
3. Good choices: materials that can't be replaced unless you bring replacements with you. Examples: smoothstone, glass.
4. Great choices: valuable materials that are very hard to break and even harder to replace. Examples: obsidian, brick.

Lava can also make it harder for players to break in. You can use buckets to place water and lava, but this lava will be static - you have to /modreq to request it be turned into flowing water/lava. Note that it may get turned down if there is the setup is deemed too griefable.

The Rules (and those grumpy mods)

There are a number of rules that govern the Survival server that you should be familiar with. A complete and likely more current version of the rules can be found at this page

Some of the static rules are general politeness, such as not using homophobic words like fag or racist words designed to insult people. Other rules you should know about is our strong stance on griefing and the use of hacked clients. Griefing is currently not tolerated on any of the nerd.nu servers. (Chaos is the exception, but is currently not available.)

Griefing is the act of placing or removing blocks in other players' structures without their permission. This includes (but is not limited to) breaking glass, wood, stone and all manner of blocks, placing chests/furnaces on someone else's land, spamming obsidian, etc. The only time you may break anther's creation is for the purposes of PvP (more on that in a minute).

Hacked clients include any mods/hacks that give a player an unfair advantage on the server. These include (but are not limited to) x-ray hacks / wireframe texture packs, mini-maps that show player locations or hidden caves, auto-click hacks, reach hacks, fly hacks, and speed hacks. Flying and speed hacks are usually an immediate ban from our servers.

As mentioned above there are special occasions where you are allowed to break blocks of another user, for the purposes of PvP, if there is no safe entrance in. In such a situation you may break blocks in your effort to get into a base/house to kill someone on the proviso that you repair the damage immediately. Should you fail to repair the damage, you will often be given a warning from a staff member and given a chance to fix the damage, repeat offenders may simply be banned.

Logging in or out to gain an advantage is not tolerated and will quickly earn you a bad reputation with other players, and can quickly lead to warnings and bans. It is best to log out away from other players, inside your own base if possible.

Now there has been a lot of talk about the staff but little to explain what they are.

The staff are comprised of 5 levels with varying permissions, hierarchy, and experience: Mods, Tech Admins, Server Admins, and Head Admins.

Moderators

Mods make up the greater staff population. They are people who have dedicated a lot of time to the servers, and have been deemed to be trustworthy. To contact a mod or ask for banned items such as flowing water/lava type "/modreq [short sentence]" into your chat, no quotes needed. This will add your request to a queue which will be completed when a staff member is next available to help. Note that your /modreq stores the location where you are standing when you make it.

Tech Admins

Tech admins are the ones responsible for a lot of the features of the servers (including the server hardware), such as writing/implementing plugins and bugfixes to make the game more fun for everyone and the running of the server itself. Should there be technical problems, they will be the ones to fix them. Though they carry some extra responsibility than any other group of staff, they also administer the servers the same as mods.

Server Admins

The server admins are the head staff members for a specific server. These players have the full range of in-game powers for that server, and are often asked to handle the most difficult conflicts on the server (moving locked chests, land disputes, etc.). While server admins cannot make rules, they can interpret them to situations or scenarios, which moderators then follow. They are also allowed to extrapolate on current rules. On survival, the current admins can be found here here. They are very approachable so don't hesitate to message one in game if you feel a moderator has treated you unfairly.

Head Admins

The head admins deal with issues such as moderators abusing power and generally just provide an overview of the server. Any problems you face that a moderator cannot resolve will be bumped up to an admin to look at. Any problems with a moderator should be reported to admins. Also, Head Admins make rules and have the final say on the Server Admins' interpretation of rules and their extrapolations of current rules.

A complete list of staff can be found here.

The staff of the server play a vital role in keeping it clean of bad players looking to make your gaming experience a bad one, but also deal with things like the placing of banned items for you.

Banned Items

An up-to-date list can be found here.

Static Water and Lava blocks are placeable by players with buckets. Flowing Water and lava may be placed a mod through the /modreq system. For example, use"/modreq need water here" to request water to be replaced. Other uses for /helpreq include reporting griefing, and settling land disputes.

I'm banned!!? what do I do now?

Should you find yourself banned, the best approach to getting back on the server as fast as possible is to create an appeal at nerd.nu/appeal. Please remain calm and helpful through this process; using proper grammar and full sentences will go a long way to getting you unbanned. The appeal process can take time, so please do not bump (post recursively) in your appeal thread until you have been responded to by a moderator. Only post if you have new information to add to your appeal.

If you have not had a response from a moderator within 2 days you may "bump" your appeal. To do so simply post a comment with the line "bump - no response within 2 days" and we will rush through your appeal to the banning moderator, if that process is unsuccessful an admin may take over your appeal.

Provided you keep a cool head and you are apologetic in your appeal, the chances you will be allowed back on the server are extremely high.

Clans

Clans are a large part of survival, they can range from just a few people to 15 or more. Clans are not an official part of the server - if you would like to join a clan, you simply need to contact the leaders of that group. Rather, they have emerged naturally over the history of the server. There are advantages and disadvantages to aligning with a clan.

Advantages

1. Protection - often clans will have a large area of land walled off with secure entrances, as well as other members on to help you out should an attack come your way.
2. Shared resources - a lot of clans have community chests, where people may take and use resources acquired by the clan, such as iron for armor, coal etc. Often a well-coordinated clan can construct in a day what might take a single player weeks to build.
3. Direction - while it may not seem like a huge deal for newer players, a well-coordinated clan is often a great way to learn about Survival.
4. PvP coordination - PvP-ing with a large group, coordinated by leaders, is some of the most fun you will ever have on the server. Try it! This also trains you to become a better PvP player.

Disadvantage

1. A clan base, while offering protection, also attracts a lot of attacks from rival clans or singular players. The larger your clan, the more likely someone in your clan is online at your base, making that base a magnet for PvP.
2. Drama often follows clans, with leadership issues and people associating bad views of a clan with you.

Your decision to join a clan or not is entirely your own, most clans will welcome you with open arms, and its generally helpful while you're still starting out on Survival.

Suggestions for Clan Leaders

1. Play by the rules - clans who have even a single cheater get an automatic bad reputation on the server. Enact clan discipline and boot out players who cheat, exploit, log during PvP, and engage in other taboo actions on the server.
2. Medium is good- small clans can't sustain protection and builds. Large clans are unstable and lead to the most drama.
3. Be very selective with adding clan members - don't start a clan with new players who will quit the next day, or people who you don't recognize and have experience with. Talk to them on mumble, get a few friends on there, and make sure you trust them entirely, especially if your clan is communist/anarchist with community chests and/or no defined leaders.
4. Keep track of who is in the clan, a wall of signs is often really helpful to the staff of the server as they can check who should be building in your base and who should not.
5. Get in mumble! ( " Mumble Server: mumble.nerd.nu port 6162 )It is a lot easier to coordinate with people when you can all talk to each other, building becomes more defined, and pvp is a lot more fun.

PvP - do's and dont's

While everyone has their own views on the best way to attack players/bases there are some generic rules that are worth keeping in mind while you discover your personal style.

Weapons

PvP is often settled by who has the best gear

A standard PvP kit for street fighting will normally include something like:

1. A diamond kit (You will usually want it enchanted to full protection IV)
2. A diamond sword (Ideally sharpness IV or V, having fire aspect is also a huge plus)
3. A bow (usually you will want power III/IV/V to do any decent amount of damage against another player in diamond)
4. Potions, the core potion load-out usually looks something like: 2 regeneration (extended), 2 strength (tier 2), 1 fire resistance (extended), 3 speed (tier 2), and 8-12 health potions (splash, tier 2)
5. Diamond " sword
6. Food, ideally you want a food source that provides a lot of stamina so that you don't have to stop and eat frequently. Cooked Steak is great but bread or cooked potatoes will do in a pinch
7. Enderpearls, you will want to carry 3-4 stacks with you both to get around quickly and to get out of tricky PvP situations quickly. Enderpearls also often allow you to get into enemy bases with ease.

How you decide to arm yourself is entirely up to you, some players simply craft a stone sword, some go all out with diamond armor. Play around with potion combinations and hotbar management, find what works for you.

Blocks While it may seem like an odd thing it is extremely useful to carry some blocks with you on your PvP raids.

1. Smoothstone - to repair damage when entering a building, sometimes glass too
2. Dirt - for scaling walls or navigating drop tunnels; at the moment leaves work even better, as they will naturally decay away after being paced
3. Pick - Easy to make and allows you to enter through a lot more blocks. A stone pick allows you to break and replace many blocks like cobblestone and brick. A diamond pick is necessary to break and replace obsidian, but is also very expensive to carry around for PvP.
4. Lever || Redstone torch - entering through iron doors with no button/lever - a great option since it allows entry without having to replace doors/blocks later.

Navigation

While it is tempting to follow the roads when traveling to your attack destination it is also the most likely place to encounter other players and/or scouts should the base your attacking be well prepared. Keeping off the roads will often allow you to sneak up on your target a lot easier, seeing as you will not be approaching from the normal direction.

Choosing your target

It may be fun to attack everyone you come across often it is good to think about who your target is, there are lots of friendships on the server, some unspoken, and killing the wrong person can gain you unwanted attention while you are still starting out. You're going to get attacked eventually, but if you keep away from clan bases while you are very new it gives you time to practice your PvP skills on less organized folk.

Don't complain when you die

It happens to everyone, and will only hurt your chances of making friends. Take it on the chin, congratulate them if they did a really nice job. Then walk back to your base, if they are still there then hang around the area but best not to enter again until they leave, its no fun having to walk back again, if you have another chest with items gear up and try and reclaim your items while you have the advantage of the home ground. Also, complaining about any sort, especially about camping, is like asking for more camping and to be killed more often.

Don't log out during PvP

Everyone has the temptation to keep their items by avoiding a PvP battle, or prematurely ending one, by logging out. Don't do it. It makes you and your clan get a bad reputation on the server, and admins start thinking about banning you. A 5 second delay from the time you press the log out button until the time your player entity actually leaves the game has been enabled on the server to prevent logging during the middle of a battle.

The Arena

The arena is very different from casual street PvP because everybody is bringing their best gear. The arena is usually run by admins or mods and when it is open you will be able to use the /spawnme command to get to it (along with the /leavearena command to leave it). When you type /spawnme you will be teleported to a PvE zone that allows you to watch the fights. The admin or moderator will typically control who fights by teleporting people from the viewing stands into boxes that enter on to the PvP field. Here is a quick guide on how to prepare for a typical diamond armor fight in the arena:

Armor: You will want to bring at least 2 suits of armor, your whole kit should be protection III or protection IV (Prot III will last a little longer but prot IV obviously protects you better). Always bring one extra helmet and one extra pair of boots. Those are what will break first. Put Unbreaking III on all of your armor pieces. Be very careful not to get the thorns enchant on your armor, it causes it to break faster.

Weapons: How you enchant your sword will vary from person to person. Some PvPers like knockback swords but the wider consensus on S is that knockback impedes your ability to get combos so it would probably be best to avoid it. You want either sharp IV or sharp V on your sword. Don't ever use a sword with less than sharp IV. In a normal street brawl a sword with fire aspect gives you a huge advantage but most sensible people in an armored arena fight will know to have fire resistance potions so fire aspect is pretty useless.

For a diamond armor arena fight it's recommended that you don't bother with a bow. Even the most high powered bows do next to nothing to damage a player in protection IV diamond armor.

Potions: There is some subjectivity in what potions you should use because how you use potions depends largely on your fighting style. However, you will want (at minimum) Regeneration, Strength and Fire resistance potions.

It's almost guaranteed that if you go into a fight without regen potions you will lose. NEVER USE REGEN II - always go for the extended regen and drink it when the fight starts. Regen II will run out too fast and even if you carry 3-4 regen IIs with you they may not last the whole fight.

You would also be wise to bring a couple strength II potions. They don't give you a huge edge but every bit of damage you can deal counts.

Fire resistance extended goes without saying. You should only need one fire resistance per fight but bringing two just in case wouldn't be a bad idea.

Many PvPers like Speed II because it makes it very difficult to hit someone who is strafing. Speed extended is good too since that means less time spent drinking potions. There is obviously some subjectivity with what potions you use whichever speed type you feel is best.

The only other potion that is important are health splash potions (tier II). Keep at least 3 of those on your hotbar at all times because if things get messy those things will save your ass (health potions are the soup of the modern age!). Keep in mind that when you are running away from someone you will want to throw your splash healths at the ground slightly in front of you to prevent your opponent from getting any of the health. Splash potions will also give more of their effect when thrown at a wall in front of you than when thrown at the ground below you so if you are fighting near a wall this might be something good to keep in mind.

If you are REALLY good with aiming splash potions you can try using negative potions against your enemies. Poison extended is probably the only really damaging potion you could use in a diamond fight but slowness potions can also be a help. Most fighters will want to avoid using dangerous potions because more often than not they end up hitting you too.

Food: A proper PvP diet is often overlooked. Never bring weak foods to a fight. You want foods that give you the most stamina possible so you will have to spend as little time eating as you can. As with street fights, cooked steak and cooked pork are the best foods to have in a PvP fight. If you can't get either of those then bread is probably your next best bet.

Another edible that is often brought out in diamond armor arena duels is golden apples. These are extremely powerful but generally you should save them for when you are in trouble. If your armor is about to break or your health is low then that is the time to eat one. Thankfully they are so expensive that only the richest S players are able to bring more than 1 to a fight. But if you can afford them they are certainly a good investment.

Finally, you will want a stack of pearls on your hotbar. Use these whenever you need to get away and eat/re-potion/replace broken armor. Remember that pearling out during a fight can result in a disqualification though!

That touches on all of the basics when it comes to diamond armor arena fights.

To summarize, a good kit will look something like:

3 Diamond Helmets (Prot IV, Unbreaking III) 2 Diamond Chest Plates (Prot III/IV, Unbreaking III) 2 Diamond Pants (Prot III/IV, Unbreaking III) 3 Diamond Boots (Prot IV, Unbreaking III, Feather Falling IV)

1 Diamond Sword (Sharp IV/V)

3 Regeneration Potions (Extended) 3 Strength Potions (Tier II) 2 Fire Resistance Potions (Extended) 2 Speed Potions (Extended or Tier II) 8-12 Health Potions (Splash, Tier II)

16 Cooked Steaks/Pork Chops 2-3 Gold Apples (Block Golden Apples, not ingot)

32 ender pearls

Best of luck in the arena! (And never forget to strafe!)

The Map

The map usually consists of a center spawn area with other rounds leading out from and/or around it, the roads are not only for navigation but give a kind of direction to building, with many people having small shacks along the road, and other players building their main base off the road.

Building on the road comes with some advantages, it's easy to get to, allows people to find you easily and sometimes offers you with easy attacking distance to surrounding bases.

The disadvantages often outweigh these points though, for the exact reason its good to build on the roads it is also a bad reason. While easy access for you may be nice keep in mind that it's also easy access to everyone else, being able to find you easily makes you a target and an easy attacking distance can also work against you, should your neighbors take a liking to attacking your base.

Farms

Users are allowed to take from farms, they just have to replant. Generally, the rules for doing so are as follows:

• Wheat, Cocoa Beans, Potatoes, Carrots, Nether Warts: Replant on every square you break. Make sure to till any soil that reverts to dirt.
• Melons, Pumpkins: Take as many melons and pumpkins as you want, just leave the stems alone. You don't need stems to create seeds (you can craft them from the melon slices and pumpkins directly.)
• Cactus, Reeds: Leave the bottommost square of the plant, allowing it to continue to grow.
• Mushrooms: Probably best to leave alone. If you do take some, take only a few, and never a majority.
• Farm Animals: Unlike on PVE, all farm animals are fair game to be killed on Survival. However, it's generally a nice courtesy to leave behind at least 2 of each type, such that the owner can re-breed later.

Recommended Sequence for Starting on Survival

The following is a recommended step-by-step guide to go from starting with nothing, to having full PVP kits, ready on Survival. This has been tried and tested many times on many revisions and proven to be effective.

Phase I: Setting Up

In this phase, which begins the moment you start the revision, your goal is to gather just enough resources that you can set up a hidden, underground base, where you can hopefully assemble your PVP equipment in relative obscurity. The most important thing to do in this phase is keep a low profile. Right now pretty much anyone on the map will be able to kill you, so it's generally not worth investing a lot of time in PVP gear yet. Stay away from spawn and off the roads as much as possible, never carry more than you have to, and don't stress if people kill you. Set up some locked chests to store the stuff you're gathering.

• Supplies to gather:
  • Lots and lots of wood
  • Renewable food sources that are easy to farm. In the early game, your best food sources will likely be melons, carrots, potatoes, wheat/bread. Scavenge from farms near spawn and off the roads (just remember to replant).
  • Some reeds (to make a farm and eventually books)
  • Some sand (to make glass bottles, much later)
• Find a ideal place to set up a hidden base. You're generally looking for a location that is:
  • Far away from spawn, roads, public nether portals, and (if possible) other players' bases - we're talking edge of the map, here
  • Unknown to everyone else - MAKE SURE no one follows you there
  • Deep underground (remember, players can see nameplates at ground level, unless you're very deep)
  • In a cave system (makes the mining you'll be doing later much easier)
  • (optional) Near farm animals at ground level - if you want, you can lead these down into your hidden base (safely) to start hidden mob farms
• Set up your hidden base. Make sure it's completely invisible from above - usually the best way to set it up is to have the entrance be a single block of dirt/grass you have to break, with the coordinates marked down. All you really need in your hidden base to start with is:
  • Lots of chests
  • Some underground farms to generate food and reeds

Phase II: Mining

In this phase, you should be spending basically 100% of your time underground, in and around your hidden base, mining and upgrading your equipment. Some players recommend mining in a different location from your base, since mines have a large profile, and can easily lead people to your hidden base. It's up to you, but both should be well hidden (see above).

Here's a recommended mining sequence, from the very beginning:

• Make a wooden pick.
• Mine a bunch of cobblestone - use this to make furnaces and a bunch of stone tools.
• Dig a tunnel down to y=11 - even though you won't be able to mine gold/diamond/redstone yet, there's still lots of coal and iron down there, too. Might as well start finding the valuable stuff while you're ramping up.
• Mine a bunch of coal (to make torches and smelt) and iron. Until you have iron armor, be very weary of trodding into dimly-lit and/or mob-infested areas.
• First priority for the iron should be an iron sword, then iron armor. Immediately put on the iron armor, as this will make it much easier for you to safely navigate the dangerous tunnels. Spring for the iron tools (which let you collect gold/diamond/redstone) after that. Make sure to make a few buckets.
• Switch to focusing on mining for diamonds (though obviously keep collecting the other stuff). First priority for the diamonds should be a diamond pickaxe, then a diamond sword, then diamond armor. Save the diamond armor for PVP - it's usually overkill for mobs (keep using iron armor for that).
• At some point, use the diamond pickaxe to gather at least four obsidian. With 2 diamonds and a book from your reeds, make an enchanting table, which you'll need next.

Phase III: Enchanting

At this point, you have diamond armor, diamond tools, and an enchanting table. Once you have generated enough reeds from your reed farm to make bookshelves, you have everything you need to start enchanting.

In vanilla Minecraft, this is a very tedious process. Thus, on S, we've made two changes to the gameplay to make it less obnoxious:

• XP drops from mobs are buffed (as of right now, x8), to speed up gaining XP levels.
• If you get a "bad" enchantment (see below), you can run the /unenchant command while holding an enchanted object to remove its enchantment. This way, you don't have to craft a brand new sword/helmet/etc just because the enchantment was bad.

If you've found any dungeons with mob spawners, it's highly recommended you build mob grinders around those spawners, such that you can quickly farm experience. There are lots of tutorials online for building mob grinders, and lots of players on S and P with experience building them who can advise you.

To get your money's worth from your enchantments, you want to select the highest-level enchantments whenever possible - up to level 30. To do this, you want to have at least 15 bookshelves within 2 blocks of the enchantment table (at the same y-level, or one above).

These are the enchantments you want to be collecting, with their corresponding equipment:

• For diamond pickaxes: Most important by far is Fortune (up to III), as this will rapidly speed up the collection of diamonds. Unbreaking (up to III) is also great, as it can double, triple, or even quadruple the life of your pick. Efficiency (up to V) is nice for speeding things up, but not essential.
• For diamond swords: Most important by far is Sharpness (up to V), as it simply makes you sword, much, much more powerful. In top-tier PVP, I'd never bother with a weapon much worse than Sharpness-III-or-better diamond sword. Fire Aspect (up to II) is great for adding damage, but not nearly as essential (and it can take a while to get lucky with an enchantment that includes both). None of the others are really that useful. Knockback sounds nice but actually makes your weapon worse - you'll land many more hits, more quickly, if you're not knocking away your opponent every time you hit them.
• For diamond armor: Most important by far is Protection (up to IV), as it allows your armor to absorb so much more damage. Though it will wear out the armor more quickly, it is almost essential to manage your health in top-tier PVP. (Consider carrying an extra helmet and/or boots, because those will break first.) Having Feather Falling (up to IV) on your boots and Respiration (up to III) on your helmet is also nice, but not at all essential.

If you're truly at a top-tier level, you can use a combination of anvils and enchanted books to add the Unbreaking enchantment to your weapons, and armor, too. This is extremely helpful, especially for armor, but a bit beyond the scope of this guide.

Phase IV: The Nether Run

At this point, you have the top-level diamond equipment, and enchantments - but no potions yet. You're most of the way there now, but you're still likely to lose against an opponent well-equipped with well-enchanted gear AND a stockpile of potions. To get those yourself, it's time to venture into the Nether.

The objective of your Nether trip is to get in, gather the supplies you need, and get out as quickly as possible. Because the Nether portals are pre-built and static, they are all high-traffic areas, especially for the top-tier PVPers you're still trying to avoid (as they can use them for fast movement across the map). You want to spend as little time as possible near Nether portals.

Here's a checklist of things to bring with you:

• Stack or two of planks (to craft the stone picks you'll need to navigate the netherrack, and potentially bowls for mushroom soup)
• Stack or two of cobblestone (for the stone picks)
• Workbench (to craft things like stone picks and mushroom soup)
• Lots of food (enough for several hours in the nether - though you can make mushroom soup, that should probably be an emergency measure)
• A few chests (to stash/lock loot - you'll want to do this if you're about to die, or if you've gathered so many supplies that you don't want to risk carrying it all back at once) - if you've managed to get yourself an Ender Chest or two by this point, it can make this trip much less risky
• Diamond sword
• Bow and arrows (for killing ghasts)
• Enchanted iron armor or diamond armor - it's up to you which to use. Iron is fine against most mobs, but you'll still struggle with blazes, and you're at risk of PVP. Diamond armor makes you safer, but it can't protect you from Nether dangers like fall/lava deaths - so this may be wasteful.

Here's the list of things you need from the Nether:

• Lots of blaze rods - from killing blazes
• Nether wart - if it's very early in the revision, you may find some in a nether stronghold, especially if it's well hidden. Otherwise, you may need to take some from a player's farm, in the nether or main world (remember to replant!)
• Ghast tears - from killing ghasts. This is optional, but highly recommended, as this is an extremely valuable potion ingredient. I generally try to attack a ghast anytime I can safely kill it and recover any drops.

Phase V: Brewing

After your successful Nether run, you're ready to almost complete your PVP kits via brewing! Use the blaze rods to make some brewing stands, and smelt the sand into glass to make potions.

Here are the potions you're going to want to make:

• Strength: Makes you much more powerful. The Level II version is recommended.
• Swiftness: Makes it much easier to catch opponents. The Level II version is recommended.
• Regeneration: If you can afford to make them, these will keep you alive in the midst of a fire fight. Either the Level II or Extended version will be extremely helpful.
• Fire Resistance: Nice to have one of these on hand, as chugging it makes you immune to lava and, more importantly, fire damage from a Fire Aspect sword. The Extended version is recommended.
• Splash Health: You'll want a whole pile of these to heal yourself in the heat of battle (make sure you're not standing near your opponent!) Having it be splash is important, because it avoids you having to sit there defenseless while you drink it. The Level II version is recommended.
• Splash Poison: You'll also want a pile of these to throw at your opponent (make sure you're not hit, too!). Either version works well.

Phase VI: Ready to go!

With this, you're basically ready to take on the world. The one last thing you'll want is a pile of ender pearls, but once some end grinders get built, these should be abundant.

If you're feeling up for it, claim a plot of land right near spawn or on a road, and build an elaborate stronghold! Just remember to never carry too much stuff at once - use Ender chests judiciously - and don't stress out if you lose. The only way to get good at PVP is to practice, practice, practice!

Above all else the best advice we can give you is to just 'Be Chill'. Have fun playing on Survival!