So in preparation for the New Friends of 3.0, I've decided to make them a guide that provides some general knowledge of the plug-ins and terms in Civcraft.

Terms

• New Friend: That means you, who has no idea what they're doing and just got here.
  
• Reinforcement: The plug-in that keeps griefers from tearing down your house. Part of the Citadel plug-in.
  
• Groups: Part of the Citadel plug-in. Lets you talk in a group chat. See Citadel plug-in for more info.
• Shards: The different areas of the map, each containing different terrain and resources.
  
• Factories: part of the Factory plug-in. Increases efficiency when producing most materials, see Factory plug-in for more info.
  
• Snitches: sneaky little devices that record your ever move, if you're not part of the group they're reinforced under.
  
• Bastions: devices that prevent those who are not part of the same group from building, using ender pearls, or destroying.
  
• Pearled: this means you're imprisoned in an ender pearl. Part of the PrisionPearl plug-in.
  
• The End: where you go when you're pearled. Imagine Hell, only with some tall guys that don't want you to look at them.
  

So those are just some basic terms to remember and to refer back to so you aren't lost in a conversation, but without context of the plug-ins, you'll probably be lost anyways. So...lets talk about the plug-ins.

Realistic Biomes

Realistic Biomes is a plug-in that changes anything you can grow. Certain crops will only grow in certain biomes, or will grow better in one biome over another, or may not even grow at all. The easiest way to figure out what grows where is to left click the ground while holding something you plant. This will either give you a growth rate or an amount of time needed to grow.

That's about all there is to Realistic Biomes, so now I'll move onto some of the larger plug-ins.

Citadel

This plug-in is what keeps Civcraft from being a server full of headless chickens. This plug-in is how Civcraft has large nations with functioning government. This is the plug-in that you, as a new friend, only need to know the basics of.

I'll cover the two major things you need to understand about this plug-in in more depth than the terms themselves. First, Reinforcement. As explained above, this is how you stop people from tearing down your buildings. There are several tiers of reinforcements, but for simplicity, Ill only mention the basic stone reinforcement for this guide. Using stone you can reinforce blocks to give them durability. Just stone reinforcement means you have to break the block 50 times to actually break it.

Now that's handy and all, but you need a group to reinforce under before you continue. You can create a group yourself, but more than likely you'll be invited to a group by someone else. You can use /help in game and select the Citadel plug-in to learn all the commands for groups if you really want, but you should start out by joining another group.

Now for the commands you'll be using for building. Use /ctr <groupname> with stone in your hand to begin reinforcement, then just left click the block you want to reinforce. Or you can use /ctf <groupname> with stone in hand to reinforce as you build, but it will end if you run out of those materials. Now say you accidentally misplace a piece of stone reinforced obsidian. Instead of having to break it 50 times, just use /ctb to bypass the reinforcement, you'll only have to break it once and you'll get your materials back.

So now you've got a nice looking dirt hut that's reinforced with stone. You log off for the day, and when you come back, its all gone. Now you have two choices, rage-quit the server or learn about snitches. Snitches are how you keep track of people who enter your area. To create a snitch, reinforce a note block or jukebox, then name the snitch with /janame <name>. A note block will alert you anytime some one who isn't in the group you reinforced under walks within range of it. A jukebox will do the same, but will keep a record of what that person did within it's range. You can check the logs of a jukebox snitch with /jainfo. Make sure to keep a snitch out of sight, because they can be broken and you'll lose the information on it.

There you have it, the basics of Citadel, now you're ready to go build that house and make sure you know when someone tries to tear it down....or are you? Making every block in your house reinforced takes quite a bit stone, and smelting 10 stacks of cobblestone takes some time, if only there was some way to reduce that time....oh yeah, factories.

Factories

Factories are going to be your new best friend New Friend. Imagine you've gone mining and you've got a nice stack of iron ore. Now imagine that 64 ore turning into 100 ingots. Have 4 stacks of cobblestone you need turned into smooth stone? Factories will do it in a fraction of the time it'd normally take, and give you an extra two stacks just to be nice. But first you have to build them.

All factories start with the basic factory, but even that takes some set-up time. You can use /fm in-game to see how to make and upgrade all factories. This is a bit advanced for New Friends, but its important to be able to identify and use factories. Factories will always look the same, from left to right they are built from a furnace, crafting table, and a double chest. The easiest way to identify which factory is which is to left click the crafting table with a stick, this will bring up an interface that lists the recipes the factory can use. You can then select which recipe you want, then left click the furnace to start the factory.

Now that'd be grand if that's all you needed to do, but you cant create something from nothing; the factory needs fuel and resources to operate.

First off, factories only use charcoal, normal coal wont work, and recipes all have a set number of charcoal they use. Luckily there's a factory that turns wood into charcoal, but that's a ways up the tech-tree.

Now for those resources. Every recipe a factory can use has a set number of a material needed before it will run. An ore forge factory wont smelt your iron until you have 64 iron ore in the chest. But once you have that many ore in the chest and enough charcoal in the furnace, you can let it run and get 100 iron ingots from it. Factories will keep running the same recipe until they run out of charcoal or resources.

Quick recap: Left click the crafting table on the factory to select your recipe, put your resources in the chest and your charcoal in the furnace, then left click the furnace to start it. Use /fm to figure out the exact numbers for each factory.

Now lets see...am I missing something? I told you how to get resources more efficiently and how to make that dirt hut of yours more sturdy....OH, I forgot to tell you what happens to those who try and break your dirt hut, or what could happen to you if you doing something bad.

Prison Pearl

Now here we have the incentive to not be a bad New Friend. Being killed by another player when they have an ender pearl on there bar will put you inside of that pearl. Being inside of that pearl will put you and keep you inside of the end. Of course, you don't want to be there unless you're gathering ender pearls.

So, easy enough. Don't be bad, don't get pearled, right? Well, unfortunately, no, anyone can pearl you for no reason, most people wont, but raiders wont care. Now they've stored you away in a chest somewhere and no one knows where to find you to rescue you. But don't fret, use /ppl to get your pearl location.

Now lets go to the alternative scenario where you've pearled someone, the pearl will appear in your inventory and will stand out because it will glow and have the name of the playing when you scroll over it. Now when you have some ones pearl, there are several commands you should know. /ppr will release the person without wasting the pearl. /pps will bring that person back to your location, but they wont be freed from the pearl.

What you're going to want to do with a pearled player is give them to someone with access to your nation's vault, there they can store them away for as long as desired. Keeping someone pearled in a chest drains fuel however, something to keep in mind when you have multiple people who need to be kept imprisoned

What You Can Do

Well New Friend, ready to take on the world of Civcraft? Well maybe you are, but I'd like to give you some advice to help you move up in the society of Civcraft.

When you join a nation, you're going to be doing grunt work, so take the initiative and go out and get some resources for the factories. Mining is the most obvious choice of action, ores are always in demand. Remember that some shards are going to be more abundant with certain ores than others, just ask around. Don't want to head underground, go out and chop some trees, or farm some of the farms, just remember, always replant what you harvest.

Use common sense and be respectful when speaking to others. While conflict is inevitable on a server with many different nations with different ideals, we'd like to keep it minimal.

Now that's all I have to say, whether you or not you decide to stick with us for your time on Civcraft, just remember this long post is here for you New Friend.