Advice for beginners on PvP servers

[Shizai]

We're a group of 4 friends, and mainly only 2 of us are online. We started on a rather old? PVP server, like official-100-something.

We started to build our house in the swamps, since we thought it would be well covered. It turned out our house was pretty clearly visible from the skies, because it was rather high and not covered by trees.
Since it was mainly 2 of us, farming for both stone and metal turned out to be a pain. Especially when you need this long resource chain (berries -> narcotics -> taming) to get some mobility to be able to start farming metal in the mountains.
This left only half of our house made of stone/metal, and the rest still having wooden walls.

As you can guess, we we're attacked multiple times, altough I cannot say if by dinos or players. But since our house had multiple floors which had closed trap doors, most of the time only few things got stolen.

Last weekend, however, we virtually got all our stuff stolen. Dino cage was broken, 1 frog and 2 newly tamed trikes gone (all < level 30). Our main house was completely cracked open, with *all* our storage boxes empty, and all our bodies left with nothing.

This basically threw us back to zero. I lost quite a bit of motivation to carry on, especially since the place of the base seemed not so well suited, and obviously is known by other players.
However, I still decided to rebuild the base (alone), and I did so some bit away from the old location, in the woods (covered by trees). I managed to rebuild a smaller version, completely out of stone and some metal, which at least had all the crafting items we previously had, like smithy etc.

Now while I even dyed our whole base (including a rather large wooden spike fence) in GREEN color for even more cover, I noted that again some level 112 guy found our base, and actually began attacking it by bird or frog.

Now, to come to my actualy question:
What would be your advice for carrying on playing? I reached level 59 now, and restarting somewhere at zero again else just feels like more work, and more like everything was in vain. I feel like I'm having really a hard time playing mostly alone or with only 1 more guy, to even manage to get the very basic resources.

We dont want to play on a PVE server, or even some self managed server, because this would make the game really boring. I understand that one should not cry about getting raped on PVP servers, but shouldn't there be a way for smaller newcomer tribes to at least be able to play the game? I feel like its virtually impossible to survive on a older pvp server with established high end tribes.
Should we probably move to a younger server? If so, is there any server list which shows the age of the server, or even better, the tech level of the players/tribes?

[pkrhymes]

Man I posted something very similar.. You just have to build up and out slowly get the metal going .. Get a Stash spot to hide your more valuable material and get a bird and a frog one to make runs one to make cement paste.. You should be able to build up if you both put in some hours..

[Mike Rubik]

You;re level 59 already? and some guy who was level 112 was around? You;re not on an official server. 112 is way above the cap.
There are no (usefully) younger official servers.
You can try primitive servers, I successfully soloed to over 60 on one by keeping out of the way and not looking like I was worth robbing.

You got some determination carrying on, if you want to try primitive official come to the one we are on and we'll help you get started. message me.

[Paganizer]

It's a harsh world. The grind on official servers is (imo) crazy and so is the griefing/offline raiding.

I would strongly suggest you find a good UNofficial server - I was reluctant about this myself in the beginning, but after trying 2 normal and 3 primitive servers, all official, I eventually tried a well populated unofficial server with active admins and rules that prevent excessive griefing. Most unofficial server toggle pvp on (evenings) and off (nights and mornings) to prevent most offline griefing.
A 2x or 3x taming/harvesting server makes it more fun (while still being a challenge) and less stressful. You don't waste countless hours when you get raided and can get back on your feet relatively easy. And there is significantly less lag. The official servers are just horrible in their current state.

[Monsterlutz]

There is no chance to build up a proper base on O. Servers. Even if you come to the point where you can build turrets and metal walls... the big tribes ♥♥♥♥ you up.
Got raped 2 times on official and left to a private pvp server. Now i can enjoy this game.

[Gravetech(Kane)]

Find big Tribes Make Friends with them so they want to keep you around. or just make them angery so they run you off the server?

[Mike Rubik]

There is on primitive, live nomadic, just die and respawn and learn the island.
Once you get stone foundation pick a spot where stone is available. Start building, put two doors on everything. Have a maze of rooms and stashes everywhere. You never get completely wiped unless you;re a real ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[straykaiya]

My advice for a beginner on a pvp server, is STAY OUT OF OFFICIAL SERVERS. Come to one of the many many unofficial servers where you have an admin that keeps it fair and can address issues when the game glitches or bugs out. MANY MANY great servers out there

[Payne]

I played on 4 different PVP official servers. The last restart I made about 3-4 weeks ago, build form scratch up. Here are some tips for you:


- Stay hidden, if they don't know where your base is, the chance of getting raided goes down. That includes not cutting trees around your base, getting refertilizer early on… If you can see the sky, you are not hidden well enough.

- Section your base into as many rooms as you can. Make it pricy and tedious to raid you.
- Use plant turrets and auto turrets inside before you use them outside (most auto turrets should be shooting at players, not dinos)

- Make elaborate building plans with secret 1x1 rooms that you wall-off when you logout.
- Get dodo and dilo egg farm as soon as you can, you should have eggs ready before you can even make a saddle.
- Socialize, talk with people, show them that you are friendly and make trades. You are more likely to get raided if nobody knows what kind of person you are.
- Place walls, even roofs over dinos when taming. Avoid that pesky sniper. And don’t leave them alone (you need at least 2 players)

- Upgrade to 2x2 or 3x3 metal room ASAP.
- Make double ceilings (pillar method – you place a pillar inside your main metal room in a way that it sticks out a bit on the roof, you can snap another ceiling there without needing to extend your house for 1 wall height)

- Accept that you can be raided if somebody really wants to spend a ton of material and time to raid you.
- Don’t keep large stockpiles of materials in your house when you logoff, spend all.

I love official servers, no rules, no admin abuse, gets updated fast, doesn’t disappear, pure sandbox experience. Now that hacker problem is slowly getting resolved, there is no reason not to try vanilla servers.

[JasonCGuitar]

My clan and I moved to Official 67 on the advice of some players. They have a "no kill noob" policy till you get to Stone pretty much. Its a nice friendly server with some great people. The 3 big main tribes keep the other tribes in line and prevent them from griefing noobs. My tribe )4 of us) moved there last week and I am already level 67, Wife is in her 50s (she works a 9-5) and our friends are in their 40s. We haven't been raided yet, we haven't been ♥♥♥♥♥♥ with. In fact most of the larger tribes help out the newcomers. GOOD official servers are out there. You just have to find them.

[Shizai]

Thanks alot for all the feedback, much appreciated. So maybe its really time to move to another server.

I'm okay with unofficial servers, really, as long as its fair and you can have a good time there. I would really like to see some endgame stuff, even with only few people in the tribe.

Can someone suggest a good unofficial server, with the above mentioned noob-friendly rules? (like better taming, raiding timeframes and such)

Also, and suggestions for a good starting point? I started west 3 / in the swamps so far, but maybe there is better places to get started?

[JasonCGuitar]

99.9% of Unofficial servers have admin cheaters. Its not worth it. Also about 75% of them dont last more then a month or 2 then you are back to starting all over again.

[jlmaples0206]

Honestly, best thing I've done is find an abandoned half demolished base.. the bigger tribes knew they quit and never bothered going there. I managed to gather enough stuff to make a 20x20x5 base all closed rooms while using pestal and mortal/present bin even compost and plots lol. Other than that stay low radar. I only play solo on pvp and I stash things around the map killing others and looting them for my supplies. No sense having a base it will get raided anyway so no sense in not making people angry :) tip. Screw hp. All out fortitude. Else you will get locked up xD

[jlmaples0206]

Also.. as a solo player. Beacons and player loots are your best bet. Simply because they both may contain something you need that you can't make :D

[Lifeshatter]

It's all about finding an official server with a good community. You need to shop around for a server a bit, figure out what's going on on the server. Talk to people in chat and get a feel for who's who and what's going on. Is the server over-run by a large tyrant tribe? Have all the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tribes been run off the server? Find out who who and if the community is worth sticking around.

Best advise is to be social and make sure people know you. Be helpful to the larger tribes whenever possible. Screw all this hiding crap, it won't do you any good but delay an eventual raid. If people know who you are and you're active in the community there's less of a chance of you getting attacked with the threat of a larger tribe retaliating or defending you.

Tldr: Find a good official server, be social and active in the community.

A few good officials I know of are 359 and 67.

[the unknowable one]

take it underwater yo, grab yerself a cave, go to the mainland only to resource gather, tell no one where you are located no matter how nice they are, dont make enemies also in the underwater cave use metal dino gates to seal it off, tame a mega for meat hunting, blowing up metal is possible but highly resource heavy so not really worth attacking metal unless u got some serious man power to restock. but if u dont wanna do that then tame only useful dinos on land

anklyo=metal from metal spawn rocks, and flint from normal rocks
mammoth=wood and hella tons of berries
trikes=thatch and berries
doedicurus=hella stone from regular rocks and hella obsidian from obsidian rocks in the mountains

frogs and scorps=tranq arrow/dart savers and frogs=cementing paste from bugs.

and once you get to the point where you can tame a quetz and throw a platform saddle on it just go to the edge of the ocean as far as u can go, then go as high up as u can, build a base and just live in the sky.