Getting Started

Welcome to the Summa Crossroads Minecraft Server! We're happy to have you joining us, and we've put together a little guide to help you get started.

Arrival in Dawn's Landing

When you first arrive in the server, you'll be greeted by the Swabby, aboard (and in the brig of) The Coming Sunrise. He'll tell you that you can head to the Quest Master for some jobs, and he'll even give you a package to take (and pay you for delivering it) if you talk to (right click) him. The full process to accept the quest is to right click the Swabby, say "1" in chat to select the quest, and then say "Yes" in chat to accept the quest.

From here, you'll want to head to the docks off the front of the ship or "the plank". You can either get a free boat from the magic boat button and start sailing down the river to begin your adventure, or have a look around and do some quests first. Head to the "Leaving Spawn" section if you want some tips for surviving out in the world.

Gearing up

You have a few choices for getting equipped before going out into the world if you want to do a little preparation. Here are the most popular options.

• Animals like to congregate around the river - find enough cows to kill for their leather and craft your own armor.
• If you follow the main quest line and do as the Swabby and Quest Master ask, you can get a full set of leather armor by helping the Fishing Newbie at the docks. The Quest Master will give you a fishing rod to do the quest with, too, so you don't have to spend the gold on one. Helpful players may also offer you their extras!
• If iron is more your style, you can try to beat wave 10 of The Underdome. The command to join it is /ma join underdome - you can bring friends to help you get farther! Every time you beat wave 10, you'll get 10 iron ingots. You also get 3 iron ingots for beating the boss at wave 6. If you're REALLY good, you get 1 diamond for beating wave 15 and 2 for beating the boss at wave 20. The Woodland arena offers greater rewards, but at a higher price and difficulty level. You can challenge it by typing /ma j woodland.

Leaving spawn

Stay away from land at night. Even if you have decent armor, avoiding mobs as much as possible during travel is a smart choice and the water is generally safe. The radius of protected area at spawn that you have to leave in order to be able to build is about 500 blocks, and you'll be informed when you have traveled far enough.

You have two choices for how you can leave - either by boat down the river or minecart at the train station. You are of course welcome to hike up and through the mountains, but you'll probably die on the way from hunger and it's not really worth the time it takes.

• The river lets you go northwest or south. Once you hit the open ocean, you can get to pretty much anywhere. Open up the live map and you can see yourself. Much of the landscape is still unexplored or uninhabited, so we recommend you pick somewhere you think looks cool and head out to start building your base, and maybe eventually a whole city!
• The train station (down the stairs just in front of spawn, next to the docks) lets you pick whether to go north, south, east, or west. It spits you out right at the border of the protected area, so if you travel just a bit further out from there you can get started. This option is not recommended because newer players will cut down trees and build houses of dirt or cobble and then never connect again. If you see such a structure, please inform an admin so we can beautify the area.

Establishing base camp

Make sure you thoroughly light the area surrounding your house / base. Monsters can and will spawn and try to kill you. If you don't light your caves, you will probably find yourself getting bombed by creepers and harassed by spiders quite frequently.

As you travel, and once you get to where you're going, use the /sethome command. This will allow you to use /home later. You get 1 home per world.

Minecraft is especially more fun if you travel together, so bring a friend and watch each others' backs!

First priorities

Summa Crossroads is a survival server, and gameplay from here proceeds relatively normally, with a few important changes. Rare monsters spawn in two tiers on Prosperus - veterans (blue names) and elites (pink names). It's possible to fight them, but they represent a significantly larger challenge as compared to Vanilla, and you should gear up before you fight them for the first time.

Your first diamonds should be spent on armor, not tools. Diamond armor has the "toughness" attribute which further improves survivability - iron does not. The less you die, the better of you'll be, and diamond tools will last longer, but until you're using enchantments, they don't offer any real gains compared to iron.

This article is a work in progress - suggestions and edits are welcomed!