Welcome! The Wild is an almost-vanilla survival Minecraft server, hosted in the UK but with players from around the world. This FAQ is intended to help answer the most common questions new players have, so please have a read - chances are whatever you want to know is already covered. If not, ask in-game - we have a friendly community and active staff team; even if it's a quiet period and nobody appears to be in-game, there may well be people on IRC ready to help.
Server address: the-wild.tk, usual port (25565)
The Wild is a UK-hosted close-to-vanilla survival Minecraft server, which has been up since 2012 and has a decent, mature mod team and a friendly community. We stay as close to vanilla Minecraft as possible, with the addition of Grief Prevention to allow builds to be claimed to prevent other players griefing your build or stealing your stuff, and a few administrative plugins for a smoother experience.
If that sounds like the kind of server you want, you can join us by pointing your Minecraft client at the-wild.tk (on the default port 25565) and enjoy!
Short answer: you can't, we consider travel part of the challenge of vanilla survival Minecraft, just like it would be in single-player vanilla Minecraft.
However - we do have some teleportation commands:
When you first start out, to get to an unclaimed area to build, your choices are to:
There is some free food available in several locations to help you get settled in:
These are to be used if you require a little food to help you get started. Please don't beg for free food (or any other items) - it's against the rules and may get you banned.
Once you've played long enough to get a basic base set up, you can easily start farming your own food (potatoes and carrots are dead easy to grow), or capturing some animals and breeding them for meat and leather.
No - because we consider gathering resources, crafting your tools and equipment and getting established to be part of the survival challenge.
However, we do have some food dispensers, for basic provisions, and there is a charity chest in the black and red carpeted tunnel through the mountain found at the end of the East (blue) tunnel from spawn, just a little bit further along than the food dispensers room there.
Which way you choose to go is entirely up to you. If you need some food then read the free food section first - once you've got some you can carry on in that direction or use /spawn to return to spawn and go a different way.
You may find it helpful to look at the dynmap to get an idea where you might want to settle, particularly if you favour particular biome types.
To leave spawn, just drop down the hole, then take one of the tunnels (marked with N, E, S and W for directions), or take the ladder down in the corner to reach the subway, and right-click the rails for a free minecart. The rails take you quite a way out, quite quickly.
There is no "random teleport" type command - we consider travel part of the survival challenge.
To avoid hassle from griefers (those who intentionally try to ruin things for others), we use a grief prevention server mod. This allows you to "claim" land as yours; within a claim, no other players can place/break blocks, open doors, open chests, operate buttons/levers etc (unless you grant them permission to do so - see below).
Once you build your first chest, you can safely store items you're not using in it; a small (10x10) land claim around this chest will be automatically created for you, meaning other players cannot access or break the chest or anything in the claimed area. (Before then, you can use a public enderchest; enderchests have an individual inventory for every player, so although access to the chest may be public, nobody else can access the items you put in it, nor can you see or access anyone else's stuff. There's one at spawn, conveniently.)
When you later want to extend your claim to protect more land, or create additional claims elsewhere, you will need to craft yourself a golden shovel. When you switch to the shovel, a link to a helpful video describing the claiming system will appear, which illustrates how it works simply. You should also automatically receive a "how to claim" book shortly after you first join the server. You will also receive a free golden shovel the first time you vote.
If you want to allow other players to access/use your claims, you can use /trust and other comands to trust other players.
You can see the position and size of your claim later by right-clicking the ground within it with a stick. You can also get a list of your claims and their co-ordinates with the /claimslist command - which can be useful to re-locate claims you've forgotten the way to. It will also show you how many claim blocks you have available to you. You earn more claim blocks automatically while playing, and can win more by voting for us too.
Note that to start with, your claim will only reach a certain number of blocks lower than where you placed the claim; it will automatically extend downwards if you place any blocks lower down.
If you want to allow other people to access your house and/or use your bed/enchanting table etc, you can trust them, using various trust levels - while standing in the claim you want to give them access to, use one of the following commands:
If you want to let people in to your house but to have containertrust on only some areas, or achieve similar finer-grained access control, it is possible to do that with subdivided claims.
If they then use the trust you've given you to grief your build or steal your stuff, that's on you and the staff won't be able to help you as you gave them the ability to do it, so be careful who you trust.
If you want to give others access to only a part of your claim, it's possible to create a subdivision within your claim, using your golden shovel, by typing /subdivideclaims. When you do so, a link to a video on subdividing claims will be sent to you, which should help explain the process. Creating a subdivision works just like creating a new claim, except it must be done entirely within your existing top level claim. Once done, you can stand in the subdivision and grant trust using the usual commands (see How do I trust others) but those permissions will apply only to the subdivision.
This sometimes seems to play up - if you get a "subdivision created" message after the first click, then it's given you a 1x1 subdivision. Stand exactly on that block, use /abandonclaim to remove it, then try again, standing further back from the block you're right-clicking. This seems to a bug in Grief Prevention, but try again - it will work.
You start out with enough claim blocks to make a reasonable sized claim. You steadily accrue more claim blocks as you play, meaning the longer you've played, the more land you can claim. (Only active play counts; time spent AFK does not accrue claim blocks.)
You can also win bonus claim blocks as a prize for voting, if you want to, although that is not required.
As this is a PvP-enabled server, sooner or later you'll have a run-in with PvPers - they're just another, slightly more dangerous and intelligent (well, some of them) type of mob, essentially.
The immediate spawn area is PvP-protected, but outside that, there could be PvPers. It's advisable not to walk around with too much valuable stuff on you lest you be ambushed, and to build a secure base.
Some tips for a secure base:
IRC is Internet Relay Chat, a popular, widely used, very old type of decentralised text chat network.
We have an IRC channel, #the-wild on QuakeNet which is linked to the in-game chat, so that anything said in the channel is relayed to in-game chat and vice-versa. That lets people not currently in-game chat with those who are. Mods are often watching IRC even if they're not actively in-game.
You can connect to Quakenet with any IRC client of your choice (a few popular ones include mIRC, XChat, irssi, Pidgin), by connecting to irc.quakenet.org and joining #the-wild (or using irc://irc.quakenet.org/the-wild if your system is correctly configured to understand irc:// links), or you can use our quick and easy web chat interface instead.
The server owner is SMC (smc87 in-game).
We have a team of helpful mods to watch over the server and check things run smoothly.
Full team:
PlayerMods help moderate the community, dealing with spammers and annoying muppets. Mods have additional powers to use visit mode to come help people, to use logblock, etc. LordMod and Admins have further powers to help keep the server running smoothly and deal with various issues.
The team is made up of people who were noticed to be regular, helpful players with the right attitude and who were invited to join us. We don't accept "applications" or requests to join the staff, but we notice regular, helpful players and keep them in mind to invite to join us when we require additional staff. (See also the How do I become a mod... answer).
In the player list and in-game chat, you'll notice a few different colours. Here's what they mean:
The special colour is applied immediately when the PvP protection is applied, but is not removed immediately when it expires, to stop PvPers spotting immediately that it expired and coming after you.
NOTE: the "newbie" colour is based on your playing time from the server's stats. The stats were reset May 28th 2016 when we switched to a new stats module - so everyone's playing time is reset at that point, and you will appear purple again until you've played for a bit.
When we require more staff members, we invite people we've noted to be long-standing regular players who've stood out as being helpful.
We don't accept applications or requests to join staff, but if you stick around and are helpful to new players, we'll notice.
We don't accept applications to join the team because most of the time, the people who ask to become staff/mods are the type of people you don't want - people after the power rather than genuinely helpful people.
Also, a server that would give staff/admin rights to unknown people who've just joined is really not a server you'd want to be on - that way leads to stupidity.
If, after having read the above, you still wish to submit an application, then go to this form.
Oh, do us a favour, we're not idiots.
Get a better, less widely used and pathetic social engineering trick.
Any server that will op a player just because they ask for it or claim to be from some well known site isn't a server anyone wants to play on.
Anywhere you like which isn't already claimed by another player.
Pick a direction from spawn, and explore out until you find unclaimed land you like. You can tell if land is claimed by right clicking the ground with a stick. You'll also get a message if you try to place/break a block.
You may find it helpful to look at the dynmap to get an idea where you might want to settle, particularly if you favour particular biome types.
Yes, the area very close to spawn is quite densely populated by players who have been here longer than you - that's to be expected on a well-established server. Travel out a bit further (remember¸ travelling is part of the challenge of vanilla survival) and you're sure to find a spot you want to call home.
As this is a PvP-enabled server, being further from spawn isn't a bad thing anyway - the further out you are, the less you'll have to watch your back for PvPers (although some of them will travel quite astonishing distances for a kill, so still build secure).
"Hacked clients" and any client-side mods/plugins which provide an unfair advantage are not allowed. This includes anything that gives abilities normally not available to a legitimate player, such as kill auras, auto-eating, x-ray vision, minimaps showing player locations, etc. Standard mini-map plugins which do not display the locations of other players are acceptable.
We monitor clients for suspicious behaviour; any behaviour indicative of a hacked client or unauthorised client mods may result in a ban.
Client-side mods which are fine to use:
If you want to use something that's not listed but which you don't think provides an unfair advantage, please speak to one of the mod team before using it, and we'll add it to the "OK to use" list if we agree it doesn't provide unfair advantages.
There are three end portals. Two of them are publicly accessible. They're all within a relatively short distance of /oldspawn - eyes of ender will lead you to them as usual, but make sure you start from /oldspawn - they're a long, long way from /spawn!
When you go through a nether portal, the game looks for a suitable destination portal already existing - the game calculates the destination location by dividing the X and Z coords by 8 (if going from overworld to the Nether) or multiplying them by 8 (if going from the Nether to the overworld), then looking for an existing active portal close enough to that point - if one is found, it will be used.
This means that if you build a portal in the overworld that's within 1024 blocks of someone else's and go through it, there's a good chance that you'll come out of someone else's existing portal. Likewise, the same will happen to others - so bear that in mind when designing a secure base. An unprotected nether portal within your house could ruin your day if a PvPer arrives through it when you least expect it, so it's sensible to have your overworld portal in a separate room or even building, with a door that would require someone to have access trust in your claim to open.
To be sure to come out of your own portal, you should build your nether portal at the right "matching" coordinates. To find these, take the overworld coords of your portal, and divide the X and Z coordinates by 8, but leave the Y (height) coord unchanged (so, x/8, y, z/8). So, if you had a portal at 20000, 64, 25000 in the overworld, your "matching" nether portal should be at 2500, 64, 3125 in the Nether. If you're trying to do the reverse (given a Nether portal, work out where the corresponding overworld location would be) then multiply instead of divide.
It does not have to be 100% precise, as long as you're close enough. Of course, if you're out by a fair amount, and someone else builds a portal closer, then what worked for you might suddenly stop working.
NOTE: some people claim the Y (height) coordinate isn't considered when looking for a matching portal. This is not true, but it has less impact due to the x8 scaling of X and Z. Howver, if you build a portal around the correct X and Z location but 20-30 blocks off on the Y, it will work fine - until someone else builds another portal closer to the correct Y coordinates. (If you've claimed around your portal, though, that shouldn't happen, in theory.) It's best to just get all three coords as close as possible, then you know you're fine.
Minecraft can "remember" the matching portal it found for a portal for a short time, so if you've built a new one but still get taken to the wrong one, wait a minute or two then try again.
Remember that if your overworld portal takes you to someone else's Nether portal which is within a secured Nether base you can't get out of, you can use the public Nether portal at /spawn (down a ladder in the corner) to get to the Nether, then make your way to the coords you worked out following the advice above.
Crafting recipes/instructions for everything in-game are easily found on various wikis and sites - you'll find what you want if you Google for it - for instance, if you want to craft an anvil, Google minecraft anvil and links to the Gamepedia and Wikia wikis will be found easily.
The following sites may also be useful to bookmark:
Any of them will tell you what you need quickly and easily, with no need to be lazy and annoy people in the in-game chat.
Voting for us on the various server listing sites helps us get more exposure, attracts more new players, thus helping to build the community.
As a thank you for voting, we have Votifier installed, which will reward you with various prizes for voting - some rare but very valuable, some more common.
The list of links to sites to vote for us is at http://the-wild.tk/vote - vote on any or all of them as you wish. On most sites you can vote once a day.
This usually means you didn't enter your in-game name correctly when voting - you must enter it exactly as it is in-game, and it's case-sensitive - so if you're SomeCoolDude1 in game, then you must enter exactly that when you vote - somecooldude1 will not work.
If you did enter your name exactly correctly, it could be a problem with the vote record tranmission from the voting site to us. If you keep seeing it happen, please speak to the staff - but there's nothing we can do for individual one-off occurrences.
If you were not in-game when you voted, your rewards should be waiting for you next time you log in - you should be able to use /vr claim rewards to get them.
In some circumstances, claims belonging to players who've not been on the server for some time, or who are permabanned, may be dropped.
To request such a claim be dropped, please post your request to the claim removal requests forum thread. Please include accurate X,Y,Z coords of the claim, the player's name, and why you would like it dropped.
To be eligible to be dropped, the claim owner must have been offline for over 3 months (longer for previously long-time players and big builds), or permabanned. Either way, removals are at the staff's discretion.
Removal is more likely if the build is particularly ugly, or is in your way of expanding your build, and less likely if it's just a "I want to raid their stuff".
Generally, claims will be dropped silently at some point in the future, so that the first person to stumble across it after it's unclaimed will get it, rather than people asking for everything they find to be unclaimed just so they can take any loot.
The server is running 1.16.1
This means you'll need to use a 1.16.x client to access it.
For instructions on how to change which client version you run, please see https://help.mojang.com/customer/portal/articles/1475923-changing-game-versions
We upgrade to new Minecraft versions one we're happy they're ready to use - see when will the server upgrade to the new Minecraft version
We prepare to upgrade to new Minecraft versions once they've had a bit of a shakedown period for the bugs that Mojang miss to have been discovered and fixed or patched around, and plugins we use have been updated where necessary.
Once we're fairly happy a new version is ready to use, we test it on our test server, then upgrade the server if all seems fine.
This conservative approach has proven itself time and time again with new Minecraft versions, where there are often sometimes serious bugs in the early days which could bite players or ruin the experience (or, worst case, lead to item loss, corrupted world data etc!).
Please feel free to volunteer to help test the new version!
There are a variety of different rewards available via voting.
To find out what they are, or what you get for a specific reward, use the /vr rewards command in-game.
At the moment, there's the forum, and this FAQ, and also a simple landing page intended as a quick info page and to help people find us via search engines.
We now have the plugin CompassEx installed, for extra compass functionality, which is very useful while exploring. It allows you to control where your compass should point, some useful commands are:
You can find more about it from CompassEx on dev.bukkit.org or CompassEx on GitHub.