NEW PVP - FACTIONS - MINECRAFT SERVER - Tales of a Failed Griefer

[Lallante]

Edit: I'm now using this thread to keep an occasional diary of my antics on the server.


This is discussed in the sticky, but since the sticky is 35 pages long and the server has only just been reset / restarted I imagine few 'new' people will bother reading it to realise that, hence a new thread to signpost it. (http://www.failheap-challenge.com/sh...))))-MEINKRAFT)

Server:
welp.me:25565


Dynamic (live!) Map:
http://welp.me:8123/

Details:
Vanilla Minecraft with "Factions" Mod. Factions mod allows a faction to claim chunks of territory in which only they can build/destroy blocks and they get a HP advantage.

Killing players in a faction, or them being inactive, reduces (temporarily) their ability to hold territory allowing you to fully "attack" someones territory if you dedicate yourself to it, but its not easy.

Creeper dmg and explosions are disabled inside claimed territory (but can damage claimed territory if they explode just outside).

Basically its like normal SMP minecraft, but you can protect your buildings / items fairly effectively, but on the flip side people are allowed to try and attack them and you. this makes it a lot more fun as you have to build defences, moats etc.

Come join - Ask me nicely ingame and I'll give you some shit to get started (some iron tools and some torches at least).

[cheeba]

Ill be dropping in... name ingame is cheebadon

[Lallante]

No whitelist and only started two days ago. note that chests are only protected within your own claimed land so create a new faction and claim some land in order to benefit.

[Alistair]

Will check it out.

[Lallante]

Fail Diary - Day 1

I log into the new server on Day 1, about 12 hours after it first comes up. Some helpful blighter has surrounded the entrance hall with signs explaining the basic "Factions" mechanics - you have a power rating between -10 and 10, it goes down when you die or are offline, it goes up when you are online or kill something. If your factions' power is less than the number of territories it holds, they are vulnerable to be stolen. Blocks in your territory cant be broken or placed, and chests cant be looted etc by non-faction members except using this mechanic (or, for pros, using TNT cannons and creepers from outside of the territory).

Signs read I drop down the convenient hole in the floor and fall for about 15 minutes until I hit the water with a splash. More signs. Fucksake I want to play already! These signs take the form of a sort of maze - a sign posts a question, you stand on a pressure plate for the answer. The right answer lets you into the next room, the wrong answer leads to a slow, burning death.

15 minutes and -12 power later I finally exit the building having learned that griefing is allowed but 1x1 towers and floating castles are not.

I immediately join Poppi's (aka Styx's) faction - though he is not pleased by the immediate -12 power but it soon regenerates to a safe level. Poppi has already built a cube base underground near the spawn, protected by explosions by a water shield all the way around, so I suggest we go inspect the competition. We assemble some boats and head off in the direction of the nearest claimed territory (minimap is a godsend here).

Arriving in the rough area we find a naturally spawned NPC village with some adjoining claimed land. Thinking this to be the base of Poppi's evil arch-nemisis Jon, we set to work ruining the village. I quickly come across a double chest in one of the buildings....outside of the claimed land! Delicious loot is quickly taken, and a waterfeature created to commemorate the fallen chest (translation - I decided to flood the house to add insult to injury).

Moving onto the claimed land we could tell from some cobble that there was some construction underground. We considered creeper-bombing our way in and are just waiting for nightfall when Poppi realises "my bad" this isn't actually Jon's faction but some other poor scrub. Back to the boats! (we obviously kept the loot though).

On to the next faction of which Jon is a member, named "Warehouse". Warehouse had rather idiotically begun building a huge church-like warehouse before building even basic defences around it. We strolled into the centre of the building shell to find two online players. The first was dead before they even realised we were there, victim of a well-lured creeper and some diamond sword antics. dropping down some exposed ladder into the bowls of the base Poppi squeels on TS as another guy attacks him. He cant hit back! IT turns out Poppi hasnt yet declared war on Warehouse so this guy is invulnerable in his base. By the time this is fixed the guy has logged off to escape (though fortunately this is later punished by the admins).

We set to work finding and luring creepers in through the open gate to knock out the precious chests. Boom! Loot taken, and admin appears. Apparantly creeper block explosions are supposed to be disabled in faction land but since we hadnt known (and nor had the victims), the admin doesnt revert anything.

A fine days plundering complete, we return to our watery lair to count our loot and mine some more diamonds. I manage to die two or three times on the return trip, at which Poppi only laughs.

[Lallante]

Fail Diary - Day 4/5

We had discovered through reasearch and painstaking creative work that our water-wall base was vulnerable if any of our enemies were sneaky enough, so the decision was made to upgrade to base II - obsidian shield. I convinced Poppi it would be more intimidating to build above ground this time, though my initial desire for it to be on huge stilts was overruled. We sketch out the rough plan with dirt and I log off for the night. When I log back on, Poppi has finished! The guy is a machine... The base includes a farm, a nether portal and a huge chest room. I get to work mining for materials (though Poppi has also somehow had time to do a vast amount himself) and we are soon stocked up on iron, gold and a few diamonds (enough for swords and a pick for obsidian at least).

In need of amusement, I suggest we inspect a new faction's area in the jungle to our north. I quickly find an ingenious method of getting into the semi-sealed cave they have built, but after finding nothing of value I decide the area could use livening up. We quickly pop home for supplies and come back armed with a dozen buckets of lava. Jungle trees look awesome when covered with an orange blanket! The ensuing forest fire wipes out half the biome.

Being an idiot as usual I manage to get trapped inside the Faction's cave surrounded by at least 2 block high walls. Unable to place blocks, and with lava racing down towards me I come up with an ingenious rescue plan - Poppi climbs to the top of a relatively untouched tree and pours water, creating a stream that reaches me and provides a way to climb out. Phew! I die to a creeper and some skellis on the way home.

The next day I log on alone inside our base and decide to go survey the carnage. I drop out of our entrance hatch without looking and immediately find myself neck deep in lava. Fuck. Diamond sword, iron armor and lots of nice tools gone. Given that our lava-forest seems to have been repaired, this smells like the work of an admin (though no mechanics-bending was needed to place the lava... something we quickly protect against by claiming surrounding territory and digging a moat).

In revenge, I quickly die again trying to mine more diamonds from beneath a big pool of lava with no exit route. At -4 power for the day I decide it is safest to call it quits.

[Lallante]

Fail Diary - Day 8

Poppi isnt on, so clad in new armor and armed with a relatively cheap iron sword as I can't be trusted with diamonds, I go explore another nearby new faction (there are about 12 by this point). I find some interesting external works in the side of a mountain but am unable to find away in or see scope for lava mischief so I content myself with building a massive cobble "NOOB" sign outside in the unclaimed area adjacent. I later am thanked for providing this relic, which is subsequently claimed by the faction I built it in front of.

I decide I want revenge for the lava stunt, but as I cant attack admins, decide old foe Warehouse are a better target. I decide to build a comedy (though easy to repair) lava waterfall over their front door but while building the framework hear hissing.... fuck. -2 power! As im unable to reclaim my dropped gear in time I decide to leave revenge to the pros and get some resources.

Several mining missions go relatively well, and I find enough diamonds to stop my steady leeching from Poppi, so overall an ok day.

[Lallante]

Fail Diary - Day 9 and 11

Today a series of events were set off that resulted in a skirmish between our faction, "Warehouse" - a carebear faction who were attempting to run a "neutral" shop on the server and their arch-carebear allies "Dawnsong". Suffice it to say, Poppi and I were having none of this "neutral" nonsense from Warehouse and had no love for Dawnsong so things got heated quickly.

Day 9 - As a prelude to these events, its worth mentioning that around day 8 or 9 Poppi and I had managed to blow our way into Dawnsongs base, a large semi-underground castle perched on the top of a mountain biome - we had noticed (thank you Rei's minimap mod) while tunnelling around the edges of the base claimed chunks looking for mining tunnels to gain access - we found that by luck and several hours effort we came up against a man-made wall right on the very edge of their territory at about 30 blocks below the surface. 3 blocks of precious TNT (we had only got about 15 blocks at this point as the gunpowder cost is so high) were quickly ignited while I squeeled and ran for cover. BOOM. We were in - the wall turned out to be the edge of a spiral staircase in the centre of their base. We quickly explored all the accessable areas and noted a deep-buried room full of chests we couldnt enter because of two doors (unopenable in factions). On Poppi's suggestion we counted the number of blocks to work out exact xyz coordinates for the corners of the room and placed waypoints (thank you again Rei's minimap mod) at each one. Job done we exited the base, doing our best to seal up the hole in the wall (though I imagine it was still obvious as we couldnt rebuild the last layer of it as it was in the faction territory).

Next we built a small base of operations at the foot of the cliff and dug down to the level of the chest room. We quickly excavated a small room level with the chest room waypoints as close as we could get (about 7 blocks away), exploded 4TNT on the edge of our chunk and then I built a 4 TNT cannon. FIRE IN THE HOLE. The charge exploded but the shot itself did not seem to (but still disappeared) - did I get the wiring wrong? We fiddled a bit and then fired again. Same result. Poppi redid the wiring from scratch and fired one more. Again - no shot and now 12 TNT gone. Totally out of TNT we decide there must be some unknown anti-TNT protection on, perhaps preventing TNT explosions in faction territory while the owners were offline. We dismantled the cannons and made the room appear more "natural" before removing our torches and heading nack to the surface. We buried a couple of chests full of materials, waypointed them, and vowed to be back once the admins confirmed how TNT mechanics should work.

That's the background. Onto the fun:

Day 11 - The escalation began when Poppi decided to pay Warehouse a visit and noticed that although their chunks were faction claimed and thus not damageable directly, they had built their huge Warehouse (note: apt faction name) very close to the edge, and it had a huge wooden roof. Some jungle sapplings and bonemeal later and suddenly he had a nice organic fuse leading up to the roof. Poppi lit the fuse with inevitable, burnt results.

When he saw what had happened Conmara rage-unclaimed all of his chunks and instead claimed a near-complete box of chunks around Poppi and my base. This stops us, for example, from mining outwards. He left a small gap (as to do otherwise risks admin intervention) and logged off. Poppi queried on the server forums if Conmara's butthurt behaviour fell foul of the "griefing" rules, and quickly got into a war of words with arch-carebears Dawnsong (yes, the guys we were setting up on earlier).

After poppi logged off I got a message from an admin explaining the TNT mechanics. We had also spent the previous day building and using a huge vertical mob farm to stock up on gunpowder and now had a stack of TNT. I decided to surprise Poppi with a gift and shut the Dawnsong noobs up - so I went back to our secret stash by their base and rebuilt the cannon room (in fact expanded it, to 4 larger cannons evenly spaced facing their chest room. Now all I needed to do was wait for Tyriael to log on at his customary time and hit the joint fuse. BOOM. It took maybe 3 shots per cannon but the result was a hole in the wall and 6 dead large chests, which I quickly looted. I decided to leave the cannons there as a mocking trophy of what had happened. I finished the job by leaving a little note apologising for the mess in the flame thread.

[Lallante]

Day 12

Devec had recently joined the server and set up a "meighties" faction, claiming chunks and building a pirate ship just offshore of our base. Poppi and I decided a little boarding-party action was called for. While Devec was mining we quickly built a smaller "Somalian Inflatable Pirate Dinghy" next to his ship just outside his chunks, and a covered gangplank back to shore. I set up 3 cannons on the dinghy with some complex wiring to make them fire both simultaneously and also to ensure the timing of the fired shot was perfect to ensure it exploded before dropping into the sea (which would have prevented any explosion). "Leave it to me" I told poppi - he sounded amused and incredulous but I was confident.

We summoned Devec to the surface ("come see what we built") in order to give him a chance to defend, (and if we were lucky, hit him with a good shot), but after several minutes he didnt seem to be coming ("dont say we didnt warn you") so we pulled the trigger. BOOM. epic failure - the front end of the dinghy (and 2 cannons) exploded in a shower of wood and dirt as I'd obviously messed up some of the wiring. The third shot was not so bad and blew a nice hole in the side of the boat and exploding a chest (one of several). We swam over and in and looted it, but then noticed incoming arrows from Devec who was up from his mining and angry as hell! We retreated to the remains of the dinghy and quickly built some fortifications and began shooting back and forth. We had been farming ender pearls in the newly opened End and decided to use them to our advantage, teleporting ontop of him at close range. Before I could even swing my sword Poppi had finished off Devec and looted his gear. We decided to retreat to our base with our spoils despite only limited damage to the pirate ship.

Later that day, we noticed a few TNT holes at sea-level in our mob farm tower but none had hit a chest - probably Devec's revenge. I quickly patch these up and build a big "creeper face" in coloured blocks on the roof of the mob farm tower facing Devec's ship as a mocking gesture.

The next day Poppi and I are playing with some noobs at spawn with our armor off and then decide to go and see what Devec is doing. He has repaired the hole in his boat (albeit with ugly cobble!) and seems to be in the process of adding water and obsidian defences against TNT cannons. We fire a few friendly bowshots from the remains of the Somali Dinghy and Devec returns fire but we are in good cover. Then, suddenly, Poppi is dead. "I forgot I wasnt wearing armor so ignored the couple of arrow hits on me" haha. I grab his diamond sword and other goodies and make a run for the shore. Devec somehow catches me just before the safety of our base (perhaps ender pearl?) and I go down, again without armor. 2:1 Devec - serves us right for mocking him without armor on! We decide fair is fair and no immediate retaliation is necessary. Also its bedtime.

[Lallante]

A cool, auto-updating Factions map can be found here:
http://welp.me:8123/

I will give a full set of iron tools and some torches to anyone who joins the server to help get them started.

[filingo]

might join and try to help sir devec

[Dirk Magnum]

How do the factions work? Is there a faction that FHC people are joining?
edit: I'm getting terrible latency and frequent DC's on this server. Is that server-side, and is it common?

[Lallante]

How do the factions work? Is there a faction that FHC people are joining?

Most factions are currently 1 - 3 people (maximum set is 5). Most people create a new faction for themselves/their mates when they join and about 1/2 - 2/3 of the people on the server (including all admins) are FHC vets. There aren't any major non-FHC factions, most of the non-FHC people are noobies but fun to play with. Server activity has grown steadily since launch 2 weeks ago and theres now usually 3 - 5 people on most of the time but its picking up fast.

Factions claim chunks (16x16 blocks that stretch from sky to bedrock) to build on and have block, chest and door protection in their claimed territory (but not protected from fire or TNT cannons or lava while online (not sure about offline - experiment)). Clever base defences are a necessity.

Players have a "power" between -10 and +10 - it recharges while you are online (about 1 power per 10 minutes), drops 4 every time you die and drops 1 every day you are offline (i think). If your factions' players' combined power is less than the total territory claimed by your faction, an enemy faction can run in and claim your chunks (and therefore steal your chests, place TNT, build crude penis sculptures above your bed etc).

With the minimap mod and the dynamic map I linked to above its easy to find other people's faction territory if you want to fight / play around with them. There are also mining notifications so you can tell if someone is mining ("Console: Lallante has found 6 gold ore") etc.


Yesterday Poppi and I built a noobzoo complete with cages and lured unsuspecting noobs into it before closing the door - as its on our chunk they cant open the door or dig / build their way out! We let them go eventually :P

[sand]

God, I've no idea what I'm doing

Haven't played Minecraft in forever....but hey, I'm surviving.

[Styx]

You can download the free eBook "101 deadly Minecraft situations you may find yourself in" authored by Lallante along with the opportunity to purchase for the low low price of $9.99 the accompanying eBook "101 ways to get out of those otherwise deadly situations" authored by myself, Poppiholla.

[sand]

Well I claimed land.....somehow I think that was a bad idea

[sand]

Wow, I hadn't played Minecraft in awhile - just found my first abandoned mine full of monsters and chests with goodies. Pretty neat.

[Devec]

might join and try to help sir devec

It's Cap'n Devec now. But nobody else can see it because i'm the only one in Meighties ._.


The fight for pirate ship waterworld - that terrible Kevin Costner movie was a good but short battle. Here is my side:

Mining in peace and quite to get the weapon stocks up I get summoned by Lallante to come back up to the surface. Saying they had build something, my spidey senses were tingling and my fear soon became realisation as I arrived back at my boat in stealth mode. They had built what seemed to be a multiple TNT cannon setup. As I was looking right around the edge of my boat I was observing both of them wait and jump around. Deciding that going head on while they were so alert. Trying to get into the boat would lead them to fire it I presumed so I was looking on for a little while. Tired of waiting they fired the cannon and shot my pride and joy to smithereens. As Lallante seemed to move off I dove and tried to get behind them but not before being spotted. A few sword strikes had me retreating because I couldn't out damage Poppi. I swum back to my boat and went in hiding below deck. I entered the boat only to have them teleport into it, in the heat of the moment not understanding how they did it, I retreated below deck. They moved off and I tried once more. This time I decided it was fight or flight and I decided to have another go and try and take out of them. Without potions it was foolish but I wanted to give them a fair fight so I tried... and died. Dropping some of my precious mining goods, but they deserved them fair and square for my boldness.

After waiting for my power to regen I made my way back to my boat, foolishly having not placed a bed yet. As I arrived I picked the bow up that I looted from Shirazz and friends, in their failed boarding attempt, and went up on deck. Only to see Lallante and Poppi dancing naked in front of my boat. This kind of insolence could only be met with one thing. Arrows. A mexican stand off took place as suddenly Poppi perished to one of my arrows. Seeing as how Lallante didn't have any armour I jumped into the water and sprinted after him. I caught up to him and drove my diamond sword through his body as he too feel to the crew of Waterworld - that terrible movie with Kevin Costner. Now I decided the game was on. Waterworld was disbanded and Meighties, the new Meight coaltion was born.

[Lallante]

I still dont get how you caught up to me, but I am p. bad and had to stop to get poppi's loot so maybe you weren't actually far behind. Was gg though!


Anyway, another tale I missed from my diary that is one of the 101 situations Poppi (aka Styx on FHC) alludes to:

Day 10? - Fail diary

On a previous adventure Poppi and I had found the End Dungeon (mainly we were able to do this because the mods had helpfully labelled it a warzone on the faction map). While exploring, I also took the opportunity to investigate a nearby castle tower ( you can see the warzone and the faction land claimed by the tower guy in the desert biome on the centre-left of this map http://welp.me:8123/). There was no obvious way in, but several glass-paned windows at ground level. While creepers dont explode on faction-claimed space (no creeper bombing, anymore at least!), they DO explode just outside it. I noticed on of the windows was really close to the edge of the faction chunk, so I waited till nightfall and lured a creeper into place. BOOOM. window neatly smashed, I was in.

It quickly became apparant that the tower was a giant mob spawner feeding a glass tube at ground level. I killed the accumulated mobs for 10 or so levels of EXP (I was at 1 from an earlier drowning. I seriously die so often) and continued to explore. While exploring I came across a bed, and thinking nothing of it I right clicked expecting a fail message due to faction protection. WRONG. I lay down. Damn I thought, I'll need to build my own bed to rebind at some point. I promptly forgot all about this.

Fast forward to a day later - I am killed, probably doing something dumb like trying to juggle lava, and promptly wake up...inside the tower. Only the window I had previously enterred through has been boarded up. Gulp. I quickly find the only way out is up a ladder to the roof, a good 30 blocks (and therefore certain death) above the desert floor. As usual, I beg poppi to come and rescue me, and to his credit he does so....the first time.

By the third time over three days I've died and needed saving from the tower poppi is getting a bit annoyed. Each time he has rescued me Poppi has used a different method to get me down and this time is the most fun (jumping into some water he has placed 30 blocks below). He sort of needs to save me each time (or kick me from our faction) or I'll keep dying from the fall and our power will drop below our territory and we will be vulnerable to enemy factions. We finally get around to go sheep hunting, and get enough wool for our own bed to end the vicious cycle.

This example basically explains what poppi and I spend most of our time doing. I get hilariously stuck somewhere, he comes and rescues me.

[Devec]

I still dont get how you caught up to me, but I am p. bad and had to stop to get poppi's loot so maybe you weren't actually far behind. Was gg though!


Anyway, another tale I missed from my diary that is one of the 101 situations Poppi (aka Styx on FHC) alludes to:

Day 10? - Fail diary

On a previous adventure Poppi and I had found the End Dungeon (mainly we were able to do this because the mods had helpfully labelled it a warzone on the faction map). While exploring, I also took the opportunity to investigate a nearby castle tower ( you can see the warzone and the faction land claimed by the tower guy in the desert biome on the centre-left of this map http://welp.me:8123/). There was no obvious way in, but several glass-paned windows at ground level. While creepers dont explode on faction-claimed space (no creeper bombing, anymore at least!), they DO explode just outside it. I noticed on of the windows was really close to the edge of the faction chunk, so I waited till nightfall and lured a creeper into place. BOOOM. window neatly smashed, I was in.

It quickly became apparant that the tower was a giant mob spawner feeding a glass tube at ground level. I killed the accumulated mobs for 10 or so levels of EXP (I was at 1 from an earlier drowning. I seriously die so often) and continued to explore. While exploring I came across a bed, and thinking nothing of it I right clicked expecting a fail message due to faction protection. WRONG. I lay down. Damn I thought, I'll need to build my own bed to rebind at some point. I promptly forgot all about this.

Fast forward to a day later - I am killed, probably doing something dumb like trying to juggle lava, and promptly wake up...inside the tower. Only the window I had previously enterred through has been boarded up. Gulp. I quickly find the only way out is up a ladder to the roof, a good 30 blocks (and therefore certain death) above the desert floor. As usual, I beg poppi to come and rescue me, and to his credit he does so....the first time.

By the third time over three days I've died and needed saving from the tower poppi is getting a bit annoyed. Each time he has rescued me Poppi has used a different method to get me down and this time is the most fun (jumping into some water he has placed 30 blocks below). He sort of needs to save me each time (or kick me from our faction) or I'll keep dying from the fall and our power will drop below our territory and we will be vulnerable to enemy factions. We finally get around to go sheep hunting, and get enough wool for our own bed to end the vicious cycle.

This example basically explains what poppi and I spend most of our time doing. I get hilariously stuck somewhere, he comes and rescues me.

TL;DR: Poppi is Mario, Lallante is Princess Peach