Summary of Features for Civ Genre Veterans (No explanations of basic plugins except changes)

"Stamina" is similar to "mana" or "essence" in previous iterations, earned daily, but is used for a few more things (pearl upkeep as usual, plus reincarnating after a death, and for some key factories). You begin with 25 stamina, and it costs 1 to respawn after dying. You can get up to 3 a day by being active. If you have more than 25 stamina, you can turn any amount over 25 into enchanted golden apples, which can be traded, used for other things like pearl fuel, or eaten to turn back into numbers in your account.

Map: The world is hand-painted, hand-biomed, and has realistic climate zones. Spawning of animals is strongly reduced (protect and breed them! You will get rare egg drops for breeding in order to stockpile against attack as well), and skeletons, zombies, creepers are removed (their drops are replaced in other ways). Wolves are hostile unless tamed.

Mining Realm: There is a second world, similar to a nether, with more ores, deep oceans, and tons of stone. There are portals around the world that allow travel between the two through the bedrock.

Realistic Biomes: As originally intended, RB uses biomes that are exclusive to whole geographic regions of the world map in order to promote trade (and/or colonization) and specialization. Wherever you are on the map, it will be many thousands of blocks until you reach the nearest ideal biome for at least some other resources. Some crops also base their YIELD on their biome, not just their growth time (you always get 1 to replant some varying yield above that).

Bastions: Basically unchanged. Use a different icon and have fewer unnecessary sub components, but the cost is similar to civclassics as well as the vault/city setup.

Pearling [Not yet fully implemented]: When pearled, you will be banished to a mirror realm version of the main world, but with significantly worse crop growth and ore spawning (also perpetual night and no way to further isolate criminals). It is still much nicer than a traditional End, though -- more land, and some availability of most resources locally. You cannot visit without being pearled, but you will be able to send and receive items at matching map coordinates, for a small delivery fee.

Factories: The factory tree has been majorly changed. As usual, you can explore it using /fm in game. Broadly, though, there are similar bonuses to factory recipes as you may be used to (1.5x - 2x production over vanilla roughly). But more things must be made in a factory, and some strategic factories require stamina to maintain or for some recipes (like high end armor, smelting, bastions...)

Mining: Ores are not in veins, and we use hiddenore. Ores are distributed in some cases by biome, though (which, again, match broad geographic regions and can be very far removed. Not just a quick walk away from any spot). Mining is very tedious with primitive tools, but gets much much nicer with higher end tools--eventually at maximum technology, it should be as easy as in earlier civ genres.

PVP: Combat potions and pearl teleportation are disabled. [Not yet implemented:] Armor and weapon tiers will be scaled to provide geometrically increasing benefit per tier (~1.5x combined attack and defense from moving one tier up, or sqrt(1.5) benefit for armor and weapons separately per tier). Overall this will lead to about a 25x total overall range between lowest and highest tiers of equipment effectiveness, less than usual. [Not yet implemented:] Landing hits at 4 CPS will yield the highest DPS. Either faster or slower CPS will yield gradually diminishing DPS, ideally with a forgiving bell curve-like falloff. Some armor types will also be less effective if worn by someone other than their original wearer.

Citadel: The plugin has been modified a bit to allow some materials to get more or fewer breaks for the same reinforcement type as other blocks. This has been used to make many instabreak items like redstone dust to be much closer to standard block strength when reinforced, while also nerfing some blocks that used to be randomly stronger like glass. It has also been used to buff the reinforcement protection of some strategic blocks like chests, jukes, and farmland (but still significantly weaker than obsidian, so don't go planning farmland vaults).

Elevators: Gold blocks function as elevators, you can go up or down (right or left click while standing on one) -- it must have another gold block at the destination and 3 air blocks of space as well.

Castle Gates will be on the server.

Slower Start: There are many changes to the early, bare-handed gameplay to create more of a difficult tech progression while still being enjoyable. Some initial starter tips: punching leaves gives sticks, 2 sticks = a plank, you need tools to cut trees or mine reasonably, you can make primitive tools out of either flint or bone where ingots or cobble would normally go, and single block furnaces (i.e. non-factory versions) require hard clay not cobble to build. Friends help!

Slightly More Realistic Physics: It is a bit more difficult to bridge or pillar quickly. Mining can create unstable rock. Some types of blocks now fall: cobble, clay, and dirt.

TLDR: You need to read this...