Tips to not get griefed?

Hey everyone

For quite a while I was planning on setting up my own little outpost in the wilderness of one of the other SMP servers
I never really have because I've heard loads about griefers on EMC and it has kind of discouraged me since. What kind of measures do you take to reduce grief-ability? What I hope to do is travel by boat or horse for a few days in game and hopefully it will be far enough out to not get a bunch of traffic.

Best thing to do is start in the nether, build a path out- hide it well. Go about 5000+ blocks in the nether and you'll be set.

Have a well hidden track/entrance to the outpost and as said before the beginning to it in the nether. Also lock all the chests you put there. You could also put a sign up saying "[Outpost name] members only" Ik they would probably ignore that but u never know

cover small starter homes in trees never and i mean never at all cost make your outpost blatantly obvious ex make a giant hole 1000 by 1000 chunks but only in the beginning after u make a decent outpost it won't matter inviter people u can trust i learned that the hard way

There seems to be a lot less grief problems than there used to be. In about 20 minutes you can easily be far out of reach by normal griefers. Start by choosing an outpost. Go out a small ways and build a somewhat hidden nether portal. Continue through the nether tunneling through for a while and build another portal. Finally, set up a locked chest and get it claimed/protected.

Make sure that as soon as you leave town you do /map hide
This will make sure that people cannot use the live map to discover the path to your outpost and the location of your outpost. This is very important, because just by watching the direction you head from the outpost on the live map they can discover not only the path, but the location of your base.

I've studied grief in Minecraft for years after I gained my passion to psychology.

From encountering a grief of my own builds on Empire Minecraft, I wonder about the person's mindset to inflict grief.

There are many causes of griefing and reasons people grief.

I can also talk about various theories I've had for grief:

hatred, jealousy, fun, trolling, inequality, inferiority/superiority, greed, instant gratification, etc...

i have not had a base out in the wild for a long time, it has been at least 3 years.. but when me and my best friend would have homes out there.. we would be 100% under ground with an entrance 100% hidden.
you wouldn't be able to see it at all..

we'd dig straight down 10 or so blocks/cover the hole and starting a house under the ground. it worked out very well.

i have never been griefed either.

Most of the griefings i have personally seen have been to outposts that do a couple of things:

1. Have flashy /map presence where they have giant structures that simulate things like stadiums, arenas or giant pixel art.

2. Have easy access via the nether. This is hard to get past but one thing is for certain, tunnels at the top of the nether get griefed far more than tunnels at the bottom of the nether(in my experience) If you build your tunnel from /nether and its easy to find, you are gonna have a bad time. Try instead going to a "directional outpost" in the overworld ex: /wild n, /wild s, /wild e, /wild w. From there go out a little ways, make a portal that will be easy for you to access but hard to find, probably underground. You will likely get linked to someone elses portal, try to get out of "their area" without causing any damage and if you accidentally break something leave a sign explaining what happened. link your portal in the overworld to the nether and then dig out from that directional outpost in the nether in any direction, personally I like going diagonal for at least a few hundred blocks to get away from anyone elses tunnels, before going straight n/s/e/w. This does several things, people can't access your base from /nether. people can't access your base from running around right outside the safe area next to overworld outposts and putting your tunnel at the bottom of the nether, keeps it off of livemap.

3. Advertising the presence of the outpost or talking about it in town chat regularly. Some outposts and wild builds are designed to be public, these places will inevitably suffer more griefing than outpost that are for personal use.

4. Not using /map hide

5. Telling people that you have large farms or lots of high value items. Greed gets the best of us at some point. Keep your things that are valuable in locked chests and in "secret" places that are not obvious.

In my experience doing/not doing these things is going to give you the best protection from griefing.... and guess what, the longer you have your outpost, the more likely you are to get griefed anyways. I have lived off and on at my outpost for the better part of a year and a half and I have had only two griefings in which any real damage was done. The griefings most of the time were to my nether rail, nobody wanted to ride all the way out to the outpost and it really isn't even that far.

Underground would be your best shot....

Don't be. As the others said above it all boils down to secrecy, and that can be relatively easily managed. Also note that /map hide can work differently per server; which is why I'd also suggest to play survival on another server than you normally play on. Depending on how you set things up this could save you the trouble of having to go back & forth to town all the time: /smpx and you're playing in your outpost. And when you're done use /smpy to get back to your normal server & town again.

But key is secrecy and moving away from a good distance from the spawn area.

Also... Not the solution you're looking for: Utopia. As much as I hate to admit it I'm pretty much convinced that the griefing incidents on Utopia are far less than those on other servers. I've seen specific builds in the wastelands, easily noticeable from the outpost and using more expensive items (like tracks and traincarts) and no one laid a hand on it.

But as to griefing....

Now, I'm not claiming that it isn't a problem at all but I do think the risks can get a little over exaggerated here and there. I can't go into too much details right now (convenient, I know) but I've started a little experiment some weeks ago to test the griefing risks a bit by building a somewhat obvious structure in the wastelands. Nothing over the top, so no baiting with using gold and diamonds, but still relatively close to a waste spawn and waited for what happened next. Roughly: something easily spottable at night, and a little bit hidden during the day (trees).

We've had a few small incidents but so far I can trace most back to newbies (if your small build is suddenly filled with soulbound torches then that becomes a bit obvious, right?). And even though there's also coincidence at work here I also experienced something odd: I've had no issues after someone had removed my "camouflage".

But the amount of incidents may very well surprise you: 3 within roughly 6 - 7 weeks time:

• Build filled with soulbound torches.
• Acacia floor removed (we replaced it with a stone variant).
• A tree & 2 glowstone blocks removed (not replaced yet).

I can't share more because then I'd risk revealing too much. Lets just say that the floor incident was surprising because they left a lot of other materials alone. Someone out for stealing would have taken all of it (and then I would have also reported it).

I'm not claiming that we don't have a problem at all, but I am saying that it's also not as bad that if you build something nice then you'll always be confronted with griefers the very next day.

Griefing is a problem but it's mostly concentrated around spawn and at public builds.
To decrease the chances of being griefed
1. Build at least 40k from spawn (I personally prefer a minimum of 80k unless it's a public build)
2. If your going to have rail/path out to your base/outpost go through the nether to do it; not only is it cheaper and faster to build roads in the nether but even if you tunnel under ground in the overworld their is a chance someone will be able to see it on livemap if you dig through a black zone (any block placement/removal in area blacked out on livemap will cause the area to show up on livemap and if your digging through a large black zone you will have a line leading to your base)
3. Use command "/map hide" when at or traveling to/from your base; you show up on livemap by default
4. Don't tell/hint to people where your base is at unless your making them an outpost member. Don't give any landmarks, say what you have out there, tell them which direction from spawn your base is hidden, and most definitely don't mention coordinates of your base or anything near it.
5. Build underground or make platform over the top of your build with dirt and trees so it looks indistinguishable from the surrounding forest on livemap.

I don't personally follow all of these but I highly recommend 1-3 as the best precautions. In my experience griefers are usually lazy so distance and secrecy regarding how to get there (especially if you have a rail) are your best weapons in protecting your base/outpost.

Make a decoy base/portal in the middle of the netherrail, and make the cart stop there. Then just continue you rail to your base

Ah thanks, It's been a while since I started. I was part of an outpost a while back but found the area it was in really boring, nothing to fight, everything was basically given to you on demand save for stuff underground, it was too easy. It was cool, but not for my taste. I made my own about 10k away from there because there are obvious nether rails going from there so if someone found them they'd need to walk 2-3 in game days to find me.

It's a nicce floating town rn

I see this repeated over and over, go out 20k+ 30k+50k+ or some other arbitrary number that basically means "far" from spawn. my base is only 13k from spawn. It's not exactly right next to it but it is as close as I could find a place to put it to the spawn in a short amount of time and with utilizing the things, and outright ignoring some others(making it more griefer prone) I have had two major incidents in a year and a half. So, I don't agree that going out far is as important as others, as long as you play it smart ;-)

Were mostly suggesting good minimums but yea it can be summed up "as far as your willing to go". To contrast with your experience I have a base that has been up for a similar length of time as yours that's past the 80k distance mark that has never been griefed. I picked that distance because it's beyond the distance that a new player (the group responsible for most incidents griefing) could go within the average play session.

On the other hand the people who build closer to the spawn act as nice buffer against malicious griefers for anyone who builds further out; if we all made our builds beyond a certain distance from spawn it would probably result an increase in malicious griefing incidents for everyone beyond that point &/or an even higher rate for public build (for accessibility public farms need to be close to spawn or have a fast transportation system).

Note: I'm not saying the majority of new players are griefers.

i got a funny tip: apply 4 staff, become mod and then make sure ppl know u build it ^.^

but also: ocean. if ur further out in ocean and build some stuff there (also below ground) then it will be harder for ppl to find.

when u start make a X-ray shield (cover your base with lava)above your base if it is under ground it will not help with chest eps or base finder but it will help

Personally I think a lot of these recomendations are a bit much, 80k is a long way to go.
I have been out in the wild for the past 4 years. Unfortunately greifing is a part of being out in the wild. That being said I don't think you should take things to extremes to prevent it, it is fairly rare, and usually quite minor honestly. I recommend getting some distance from spawn (5k is fine, 15k is better, really up to you) keeping in mind as you go further your chances of a greifing go down. I also recommend building with cheap materials. Use wood and stone rather than diamonds and quartz. The issue of live map on and off depends on how visible you are. I have a big outpost, it is hard to miss on live map. Having live map on is not a bad idea for me, greifers don't like people and will tend to stay away from you if you are visible.
If you are really looking to stop all greifing build as far out as you can stand, build underground and be invisible at all times.
But again, I recommend moderation.