Last update: 9th of August, 2015 Hi gang, We're seeing a lot of new players lately which is really cool. But I also noticed that many new players are sometimes a little surprised about the derelict time-out. So I figured; time for a mini-guide. Note: I'm perfectly aware that this issue is well documented within the new player guide and on the wiki, it even gets mentioned in town chat every so often. Still, IMO some topics are worth to get a little extra attention every once in a while. What is the idle time-out? The idle time-out, or derelict time as we call it on Empire Minecraft, is the time which you have left before you will be marked as inactive and/or idle. After that happens you risk that your town residence(s) will be declared vacant. You can check for this timer by using /p while on your residence or by using /p <player name>: Status of a player who helped me out with some pictures. Pay attention to the derelict status in the picture above. That indicates the maximum time which your residences will be kept safe while you're offline. So in this case: if this player goes offline for longer than 30 days then they risk that their residence(s) become vacant. Or, in other words: that they go derelict. What happens if you go derelict? A player who went derelict. If you went derelict then your status will change as seen above. But that's not all. Your residences are now also declared vacant (derelict) which means that anyone is entitled to claim them. This can be done through force claiming. At the cost of 5,000 rupees you can claim another players residence when they have become derelict. Note that this is actually free for new players who have only been on the Empire for less than 5 hours. If you perform a force claim then the residence will be reset to default (all currently placed blocks will be deleted) and set to your name. Of course: you can only claim a residence if your residence list allows for this. You can check that by using the /res command. But even if no other players claim your residence then you're still not off the hook. Eventually the auto-reset will kick in which means that your residence will reset to default, removing everything on it. After that it will be marked available. At this time it can be automatically assigned to a new (random) player who joins the Empire for the first time. When do you go derelict? In the examples above I've shown the status of a player who has 30 days worth of derelict time. However, Empire Minecraft uses a specific derelict policy where new players get less derelict time than regular players: Every player who starts playing on Empire Minecraft will begin with a derelict time of 10 days. So after your first visit you will be deemed inactive if you don't log on within those 10 days. Next up the ladder: if you log on the next time after 10 days of your first visit then the time will be raised to 15 days. This is actually still open to my research, but to my knowledge so far: after the previously mentioned 10 days of activity, so your first Empire sign in was 10 days ago, then the time gets raised to 15 days. And finally, on the top of the ladder, the 30 day derelict time-out which applies to all regular players on Empire Minecraft. To my knowledge so far (see previous point) this will be set if your first Empire sign on was 15 days ago. Fighting off the derelict timer! ;-) There are a number of ways to prevent the derelict timer from running out and you risking to lose all your stuff. First: come online and play with us! Sounds simple enough, if you come online you'll reset the timer and also collect a nice (daily) sign-in bonus as well. Win-win situation if you ask me! Up next: vote for our server! Voting for the Empire gets you a nice reward in the likes of rupees and tokens (and much more if you manage to build up a streak) and it also raises your derelict timer by 7 days. So if you really don't have the time to come online and play then voting can be a good way to buy you some time. All it takes is 5 minutes... Finally: become a supporter! Supporters are fully protected from the derelict timer so they don't have to worry about losing their stuff. Better yet: they'll even get their daily sign in bonus automatically handed to them as well, talk about convenience! Why do you want to take my stuff away?! Actually we don't. We honestly don't want to see you losing all your stuff and instead would really prefer to often welcome you back as an active member of our community. But the thing is: we only got limited space on our servers. And this has recently already led to a forced town expansion. And although we really sympathize if you do end up on the wrong side of the derelict timer, we also need to keep the new players in mind and those who are regularly active. Would it really be fair if a new player comes online, decides that they don't like our server (hey, each to their own!) and after 10 minutes of playing their residence stays occupied for 30 days right from the start? What about those players who often come back and might actually be interested in that particular space to expand on their own projects? Or worse: what if we run out of room and new players are left with no safe place to live? That's not very fair either... But please note: this is a very sensitive topic and one which really can't be explained in a 'right' versus 'wrong' kind of way. But trust me when I say that Empire Minecraft is doing the best to their abilities in making this whole process as fair and easily to understand as possible. It might not be perfect for you, we respect that, but its also the best which can be done at this time. Derelict timer policy change Around the 21st of August 2015 the derelict policy is changing. In the old situation the derelict timer would reset to its maximum (30 days for regular players) when you voted for the Empire. This will now be reduced to 7 days. So basically: voting is a good way to give you a little extra time before going derelict, 7 days in total. However, coming online will be the preferred way as this will fully reset the derelict timer. Pro tip: Protecting your most valuable stuff... Is the derelict timer still getting the best of you from time to time and are you worried about eventually losing all your stuff? Maybe you're already considering to store your most previous promo's on a friends residence? Or maybe you're still not sure if you can really trust them? Then I may have a another solution for you: /vault. /vault It's not only useful for transferring your items between servers, it can also be an ideal (and safe) way to store those items somewhat 'outside' of the game. If you go derelict and all your residences have gone up for grabs then you'll still have the /vault at your side. And since every player can easily get an extra vault page (use /vault expand, it'll cost you 10,000 rupees) it could be the perfect alternative for all those valuable promo's which you really want to keep around! Ender chests (thanks Elfin!) Every server has a public Enderchest at the town spawn (use /town or /spawn to go there) and an Enderchest works just like the /vault: it's a private storage which won't be reset. Therefor you can also visit all the SMP servers (1 to 9) and stuff the Enderchests with your items. So there you have it, lets fight that derelict timer guys!
Three extra notes for derelict protection. 1) Enderchests are NOT impacted by a derelict coming into play. The only way they can be impacted is if a player is permanently banned and wins an appeal (inventories are reset at this point generally). If life gets in the way and you're concerned that something might come up, then stash your valuable stuff in your vault and start server hopping. Each server gives you access to one SC of storage because each enderchest is locally based. So in essence, you can throw 5 DCs of items in reserve across the 10 enderchests you have access to. Smp1 can be your promos. Smp2 your diamonds/other ores, etc. 2) If you have WAY, WAY too much stuff to stash in the enderchests, sell the items. They convert to rupees which you keep for life (unless you get pinged with a permaban and win an appeal). They're going to be lost either way, so might as well convert the materials into a reserve. This way, you can get back up on your feet pretty quickly once you return. 3) Frontiers bases are unaffected by any form of derelict timers. If you're in a gambling mindset you can stash your materials there and pray nobody finds it before you get back. This is probably the riskiest option though, so I suggest caution. Lastly, DO NOT (generally) permit people to store your items in a "vault" on their res. This is a really easy way to have your items stolen from you and staff will generally not intervene in such situations. It's better to either stash them yourself or convert.
As people who know me know (that sounded weird): I don't like bumping. But doing so several days after the facts.. I think this thread could be of interest to someone and considering we had a lot of new players recently... Here goes one single bump (no more, no less)
