Tutorial:PvP

PvP, an abbreviation of player versus player, refers to multiplayer combat in Minecraft where players fight other players.

This guide covers Java Edition PvP in the most modern versions of vanilla Minecraft. It does not cover PvP from before the Combat Update, PvP in the Java Edition Combat Tests, or PvP in Bedrock Edition.

PvP terms

Melee attacking

• Combo: Continuously chaining attacks together whilst keeping the opponent out of range, done by letting the opponent land before each attack.
• Crit-chain/crit-chain state: Dealing a sprint-knockback attack and continuing to hold the sprint key, entering a state where critical hits become possible to do while sprinting until the sprint is cancelled.
• Crit-spam/c-spam: Repeatedly chaining critical hits together by continuously jumping.
• Half-swing: Attacking at a cooldown percentage lower than 100%, but above 84.8%, to attack faster while still being able to do critical hits and sprint-knockback attacks.
• Outspacing: Attacking an opponent at the very edge of the 3 block attack reach.
• S-tap: Pressing the S key to stop forward movement after connecting an attack.
• Sprint-reset/W-tap: Starting another sprint after hitting an entity to repeatedly do sprint-knockback attacks.

Melee defending

• Hit-select: Attacking immediately after your opponent attacks, causing you to touch the ground first and giving an opening for a combo.
• Jump-reset: Jumping at the same time as getting hit, reducing the amount of horizontal knockback received.
• P-crit: Dealing a critical hit using the vertical knockback received by an opponent's attack, rather than by manually jumping.

Mace-specific

• Breach-swapping: Switching to a Breach mace immidiately after attacking with a stronger weapon (such as a netherite sword), causing the attack to use the damage of the stronger weapon with the Breach enchantment from the mace.^[1]
• Stun-slamming: Attacking first with an axe before dealing a smash attack with a mace, stunning the opponent's shield and allowing the smash attack to connect.

Other

• 1v1: A PvP match in which there is only 1 player fighting only 1 player, or a request that participating players allow a multiplayer PvP match to come down to a 1v1.
• Air anchor: Placing an anchor, charging it with glowstone, and activating it with a double click while holding another anchor, causing a second anchor to be placed in the air while the first explodes.
• Double-toteming: Holding a totem in the mainhand in addition to the offhand in Crystal PvP to prevent death twice in quick succession.
• Quick-drop/quick-death: Dying early in a fight due to poor health management.
• Repairing/mending: Repairing armor enchanted with Mending using bottle o' enchanting.
• Toteming: Quickly re-equipping a totem of undying in the offhand after activating one.

PvP kit types

A kit in PvP is a pre-determined loadout of items. Kits function as PvP gamemodes, and require different skillsets from one another.

Sword PvP / OP PvP

• A type of kit revolving around sword combos and maneuvers.
• Some variants of this kit include food such as golden apples, and some include an axe.
• Included items:

Axe PvP

• A type of kit revolving around the use of an axe to disable a shield.
• Some variants of this kit include food, and some have the equipment enchanted.
• Included items:

SMP PvP / Diamond PvP / Netherite PvP

• A type of kit revolving around high-power gear PvP that does not include a mace, end crystals, or respawn anchors. Many SMPs ban the use of explosive weapons, which is where the kit gets its namesake.
• Some variants of the netherite version of this kit include Knockback I on the sword, or include two swords (one with Knockback I and one without).
• Included items (diamond):
• Included items (netherite):

Crystal PvP

• A type of kit revolving around the use of end crystals and respawn anchors as explosive weapons, the quick re-equipping of totems of undying, and the use of bottle o' enchanting to repair armor. It is notably one of two types of kits that includes Blast Protection on one of its armor pieces, sharing this distinction with Cart PvP.
• Some variants of this kit do not include an axe or shield, some don't include Knockback I on the sword, some include maces and elytra/rockets, and some don't include potions.
• Included items:

Pot PvP

• A type of kit revolving around the use of splash potions of healing to quickly replenish health that does not include ender pearls or a shield.
• Some variants of the diamond version of this kit include splash potions of regeneration.
• Included items (diamond):
• Included items (netherite):

UHC PvP

• A type of kit revolving around the game rule Natural Regeneration being disabled, and the use of cobwebs, lava buckets, and water buckets.
• Some variants of this kit include ender pearls.
• Included items:

Cart PvP

• A type of kit revolving around the use of TNT minecarts as explosive weapons, activated using a bow enchanted with Flame. It is notably one of two types of kits that includes Blast Protection on one of its armor pieces, sharing this distinction with Crystal PvP.
• Included items:

Mace PvP^{[note 1]}

• A type of kit revolving around the use of a mace and wind charges in high-power gear PvP.
• Some variants of this kit include other propellants such as elytra with firework rockets or a Riptide trident, changing the gameplay of the kit dramatically, and some variants include splash potions of strength and speed.
• Included items:

PvP equipment

A combatant's equipment is an important factor in PvP, as it determines survivability, damage output, and versatility. Having good gear does not guarantee success, as skill is far more impactful in the modern combat system. Becoming familiar with the usecases, strengths, and weaknesses different equipment is an important aspect of PvP.

Weapons

Swords

Swords are the best weapon for doing combos, as well as for breaking out of an opponent's combo, due to their high attack speed. While they also have the special ability to do sweep attacks, this is only useful when fighting an opponent's wolves. When all four melee weapons have maxed out enchantments, swords have the highest DPS and the third-highest damage per hit.

Material	Wooden	Gold	Stone	Iron	Diamond	Netherite
Attack Damage	4HP	4HP	5HP	6HP	7HP	8HP
Attack Speed	1.6	1.6	1.6	1.6	1.6	1.6
Damage/Second (DPS)	6.4	6.4	8	9.6	11.2	12.8
Durability	59	32	131	250	1561	2031
Lifetime damage inflicted	236HP × 118	128HP × 64	655HP × 327.5	1500HP × 750	10927HP × 5463.5	16248HP × 8124

Axes

Axes are essential for their ability to stun shields, and are the second-best weapon for dealing high-damage single hits. When all four melee weapons have maxed out enchantments, axes have the second-highest DPS and the second-highest damage per hit.

Material	Wooden	Gold	Stone	Iron	Diamond	Netherite
Attack Damage	7HP	7HP	9HP	9HP	9HP	10HP
Attack Speed	0.8	1.0	0.8	0.9	1.0	1.0
Damage/Second (DPS)	5.6	7	7.2	8.1	9	10
Durability	59	32	131	250	1561	2031
Lifetime damage inflicted	210HP × 105	112HP × 56	594HP × 297	1125HP × 562.5	7029HP × 3514.5	10160HP × 5080

Tridents

Tridents can be thrown as a projectile or used to escape threats using the Riptide enchantment. When all four melee weapons have maxed out enchantments, tridents have the lowest DPS and the lowest damage per hit. When all three ranged weapons have maxed out enchantments, tridents have the second-highest shots per second and the lowest damage per hit.

Attack	Melee	Range
Attack damage	9HP	8HP
Attack Speed	1.1	N/A
Damage/Second (DPS)	9.9	?
Durability	250
Lifetime damage inflicted	2250HP × 1125	2000HP × 1000

Maces

Maces have the ability to deal devastating smash attacks after falling, and are the best weapon for dealing high-damage single hits due to the Breach enchantment. When all four melee weapons have maxed out enchantments, maces have the third-highest DPS and the highest damage per hit, even without doing smash attacks.

Attack	Normal	Smash
Attack damage	6HP	12HP × 6 to ∞
Attack Speed	0.6	N/A
Damage/Second (DPS)	3.6	N/A
Durability	500
Lifetime damage inflicted	3000HP × 1500	∞

Bows

Bows are the best ranged weapon for dealing damage, and can also be used to quickly spam uncharged arrows to deal chip damage. They are also the only ranged weapon with access to the Flame enchantment, and are thus essential in Cart PvP for activating TNT minecarts. The Punch enchantment greatly helps with bow spamming, as it increases knockback, making it harder for the enemy to reach the player. When all three ranged weapons have maxed out enchantments, bows have the lowest shots per second and the highest damage per hit.

Charging time	Attack damage
0.1 s (no charge)	1HP
0.2–0.9 s (medium charge)	5HP
1 s (full charge)	6HP
Above 1 s (critical charge)	6HP to 11HP × 5.5

Crossbows

Crossbows are the best ranged weapon for spreading tipped arrow effects, and for the utility of having an instantaneous long-ranged shot that can be used at any time, so long as they have been charged in advance. When all three ranged weapons have maxed out enchantments, crossbows have the highest shots per second and the second-highest damage per hit.

Ammunition type	Attack damage
Arrow	7HP to 11HP × 5.5
Maxed Firework Rocket	11HP × 5.5 to 18HP × 9

Armor

Armor is essential to have for PvP, as failure to equip any armor will result in near-instant death. Different armor material types have differing amounts of armor points, armor toughness, and durability. The armor material types with zero armor toughness are extremely frail, and thus require high levels of Protection to be useful.

Armor points

Material	Full set	Helmet / Cap	Chestplate / Tunic	Leggings / Pants	Boots
Turtle Shell	2 ()	2 ()	N/A	N/A	N/A
Leather	7 ()	1 ()	3 ()	2 ()	1 ()
Golden	11 ( × 5.5)	2 ()	5 ()	3 ()	1 ()
Chainmail	12 ( × 6)	2 ()	5 ()	4 ()	1 ()
Iron	15 ( × 7.5)	2 ()	6 ()	5 ()	2 ()
Diamond	20 ( × 10)	3 ()	8 ()	6 ()	3 ()
Netherite	20 ( × 10)	3 ()	8 ()	6 ()	3 ()

Armor toughness

Material	Full set	Helmet / Cap	Chestplate / Tunic	Leggings / Pants	Boots
Turtle Shell	0 ()	0 ()	N/A	N/A	N/A
Leather	0 ()	0 ()	0 ()	0 ()	0 ()
Golden	0 ()	0 ()	0 ()	0 ()	0 ()
Chainmail	0 ()	0 ()	0 ()	0 ()	0 ()
Iron	0 ()	0 ()	0 ()	0 ()	0 ()
Diamond	8 ()	2 ()	2 ()	2 ()	2 ()
Netherite	12 ( × 6)	3 ()	3 ()	3 ()	3 ()

Durability

Material	Helmet	Chestplate	Leggings	Boots
Turtle Shell	275	N/A	N/A	N/A
Leather	55	80	75	65
Golden	77	112	105	91
Chainmail	165	240	225	195
Iron	165	240	225	195
Diamond	363	528	495	429
Netherite	407	592	555	481

Shields

Shields are an essential defensive tool, as they block 100% of melee, ranged, and explosive damage when active, and block in a 180° arc infront of the user. When using a shield, there is a 250ms delay before the shield becomes active. Shields that are in the active state will become stunned for 5 seconds if hit by an axe, regardless of the axe's attack cooldown percentage. The durability loss a shield endures is dependent on the strength of the blocked attack, with attacks dealing 3HP or more taking durability damage equal to the strength of the attack rounded up. They have 336 durability.

Food

A combatant should make sure they have a full hunger bar during a fight, and entering a fight with full saturation is advised. Reaching 20 ( × 10) hunger after eating food causes health to quickly regenerate at the cost of saturation. Health also passively regenerates slowly when hunger is at 16 ( × 8) or above, and stops when below that amount. Additionally, if hunger dips below 6 (), sprinting becomes disabled.

The best food types are those that have provide high saturation when consumed. Golden carrots, steak, and porkchops are the food sources with the highest saturation that are still able to stack to 64. Golden apples and enchanted golden apples directly provide Regeneration and Absorption alongside having good saturation, making them the best food types.

Blocks

Blocks are useful for obstructing attackers and making escapes. They are especially useful in tight spaces like tunnels for blocking off a pursuer. They can also be used to pillar up to safety in a fight, at the cost of becoming vulnerable to being knocked off by projectiles. Some blocks have unique properties, such as high blast resistance, flammability, or being openable. The openable blocks such as chests or barrels can be used to counter cobweb or lava users by having them open the block when they try to place cobwebs or lava.

Potions

Potions apply a variety of useful effects. These effects can strengthen allies and harm enemies when thrown as splash potions. In addition, lingering potions allow for a larger potion radius, but do not deal their effects on impact, and are expensive to brew. Drinking a regular potion takes time and leaves the user open, while splash potions can be used in quick succession. In the middle of a fight, it is most practical to splash them at the user's feet, especially when using splash potions of healing. Lingering potions are useful for either making an area inaccessible for a while or allowing everyone in a team to heal together. Using negative splash potions and lingering potions as throwable projectiles is not advised, as the throwing distance is short and each projectile takes up an entire inventory slot; tipped arrows are optimal for this instead.

Ender Pearls

Ender pearls can be used to escape opponents, allowing the user to heal, or to pursue a fleeing opponent. Ender pearls inflict damage to the user when landing, damage that can be reduced by Protection and Feather Falling. Ender pearls can be used to scale walls, done by placing a block below one's self upon landing into the wall. A ender pearl stasis chamber can be used to teleport out of a dangerous situation if activated remotely.

Water Buckets and Lava Buckets

Water buckets can be used to obstruct opponents, buying more time to escape by slowing them down. It can also be used to avoid taking fall damage, destroying cobwebs, putting out fires, and traveling up walls.

Lava buckets can be used to damage and slow opponents, as well as to create small barricades. The Protection enchantment greatly reduces the effectiveness of lava as a damage option, making lava buckets more practical for low-power fights.

Redstone

Redstone can be used to create traps and TNT cannons. Building a trap in a strategic location and luring the opponent into it can be an easy way to win a fight. However, constructing traps or TNT cannons using redstone in the middle of a fight is highly impractical, and thus traps and cannons that are easier to build and do not use redstone are preferred.

End Crystals

End crystals can be placed on obsidian or bedrock, and when punched cause an instant powerful explosion. They can also be placed and exploded rapidly, but in order to do full damage and knockback on an opponent, the user must first knock the opponent up near the end crystal. As long as the user is at least 1 block below the exploding end crystals, the user takes little damage from the explosions.

Respawn Anchors and Beds

Respawn anchors when given a piece of glowstone can be right clicked on for an instant powerful explosion. Unlike end crystals, respawn anchors do not require a block for them to be placed, allowing them to be placed right at an opponent's feet without having to hit them up. However, respawn anchors cannot be activated in rapid succession and cannot be used in the Nether, unlike end crystals. Respawn anchors also pose a higher threat to the player using them than end crystals do, and thus it is recommended to place a block between the user and the respawn anchor before activating it.

Beds are the Nether counterpart to respawn anchors, and have the benefit of not requiring a fuel source to activate.

TNT and TNT Minecarts

TNT can be used to build traps or deter opponents from approaching or chasing. TNT can also be used in specific formations to launch other TNT towards opponents. TNT minecarts can be used offensively in a similar way to respawn anchors, and are activated instantly with a bow enchanted with Flame.

Flint and Steel and Fire Charges

Flint and steel can be used to alter the battlefield by setting surfaces on fire. Due to the Protection enchantment, fire damage is largely negligible and is instead useful for the movement disruption inflicted by it. The screen effect incurred from being on fire also obstructs a player's field of view, however this can be circumvented by use of a low-fire resource pack. Fire charges are identical to flint and steel when used as an item, but can also be fired by dispensers. Flint and steel has only 64 durability, and is therefore used up in the same time as a stack of fire charges. However, flint and steel when enchanted with Unbreaking becomes the superior option.

Cobwebs

Cobwebs slow any player caught in them to a crawl, trapping them and make them easy targets. Ender pearls are the best way to escape from cobwebs, and water buckets can also be used to destroy them. They can also be destroyed with a sword, however being inside a cobweb whilst not being grounded causes mining speed to decrease dramatically, making this a poor escape option. Cobwebs can also be placed on one's self to act as a barricade against attacks, so long as no part of the player is exposed.

Totem of Undying

When held in the offhand, totems protect the player from a lethal hit (except from the void), and grant them temporary Regeneration, Fire Resistance, and Absorption. Totems can be quickly re-equipped by hovering over one in the inventory and pressing the F key. The severity of the screen obstruction that occurs when a totem activates can be reduced with a resource pack.

Pickaxes, Shovels, Hoes, and Shears

Mining tools allow for modifying the terrain, tunneling away, and destroying defenses. They are most useful when enchanted with Efficiency, as this increases their mining speed. Shears also disarm tripwire traps without triggering them.

Elytra

The elytra can be used to travel long distances at high speed, surprise attack enemies, make quick escapes, and become difficult to hit. Wearing elytra dramatically reduces damage reduction due to taking up the chestplate slot. Having Mending on the elytra, as well as a supply of experience bottles, is recommended for sustained use. Elytra can be used in tandem with a mace to deal smash attacks with better precision and safety, however the elytra must be unequipped the moment the smash attack is dealt for the smash attack to activate.

Firework Rocket

Fireworks can be used to boost with an elytra. Fireworks made with firework stars can be fired as explosive projectiles using a crossbow, with higher star counts resulting in higher explosion damage.

Horses

Horses can be used to travel around the map quicker, as well as to reach high places using their high jumping. While getting hit on a horse prevents knockback to the rider, horses are not recommended for direct combat. This is because horses have a random chance to be stunned when taking damage, making themselves and their rider vulnerable. They are also quickly killed by attacking players, and are outclassed by elytra for travel. When using a horse, having a supply of hay bales to heal it is recommended.

Wolf

Tamed wolves will aid the player in combat by targeting the last entity that was hit, or the last entity that hit their owner. Meat food types can be used to heal wolves and cause them to breed, making more wolves. Equipping a wolf with wolf armor is highly recommended, as failure to equip wolves with armor causes them to die quickly to attacking players. When using wolves, having a supply of armadillo scutes to repair their armor is recommended. Due to the way wolves jump when attacking targets, they often miss their attacks. This in combination with their low movement speed, damage output, and health pools causes wolves to be poor allies in combat.

Enchantments for PvP

Enchantment	Description	Used on	Strategy
Sharpness, Power, and Breach	Increase the damage output of their respective weapon types.	Sword and Axe (Sharpness), Bow (Power), Mace (Breach)	Sharpness increases damage dealt by 1HP for the first level, and by 0.5HP × 0.25 for each subsequent level. This results in Sharpness V giving a total damage increase of 3HP. Power increases damage dealt by 50% for the first level, and by 25% for each subsequent level. This results in Power V giving a total damage increase of 150%. Breach decreases the effectiveness of a target's armor by 15% per level. This results in Breach IV giving a total armor effectiveness decrease of -60%.
Density	Increases the damage of a mace smash attack.	Mace	Density increases the damage of a mace smash attack by 0.5HP × 0.25 per block fallen. Density is a must-have in kits revolving around repeatedly chaining mace smash attacks. However, for kits that do not offer wind charges or an elytra, Density is completely outclassed by Breach.
Fire Aspect and Flame	Set the target on fire.	Sword and Mace (Fire Aspect), Bow (Flame)	Fire Aspect sets the target on fire for 4 seconds per level. This results in Fire Aspect II inflicting 8 seconds of burning, dealing 1HP each second for a total of 8HP over time. Flame sets the target on fire for 5 seconds per level. This results in Flame I inflicting 5 seconds of burning, dealing 1HP each second for a total of 5HP over time. Burning damage does not take effect when the target is already taking damage from other sources, such as melee/ranged attacks or explosions.
Knockback and Punch	Increases inflicted horizontal knockback.	Sword (Knockback), Bow (Punch)	Knockback increases the amount of horizontal knockback inflicted on the target by 2.586 blocks per level. This results in Knockback II dealing 6.724 blocks of knockback without doing a sprint-knockback attack. Punch increases the amount of horizontal knockback inflicted on the target by 3 blocks per level. This results in Punch II dealing 8.792 blocks of knockback. Knockback is not a recommended enchantment for the majority of PvP kits. The enchantment makes it more difficult to combo in PvP that doesn't have netherite armor, and makes it easier for your opponent to back out of combos even in PvP that does have netherite armor. The Knockback enchantment's only usecases are in Crystal PvP, where Knockback I is used to knock opponents into end crystal explosions when spam clicking, or in netherite SMP PvP, where Knockback 1 can be used to combo more effectively at the cost of combos being easier to back out of.
Protection	Increases damage resistance.	Armor	Protection increases damage resistance 4% per level. This results in a full set of Protection IV armor giving a total damage resistance increase of 64%. Protection is required in all forms of PvP, as armor without any Protection enchantments is incredibly frail.
Blast Protection	Increases explosion damage resistance and explosion knockback resistance.	Armor	Blast Protection increases explosion damage resistance 8% per level, and explosion knockback resistance by 3.75 per level. This results in a Blast Protection IV armor piece giving a total explosion damage resistance increase of 32%, and results in two pieces of Blast Protection IV armor completely negating knockback from explosions. Having a piece of Blast Protection armor is required in Crystal PvP and Cart PvP, as not having any Blast Protection results in instant death to two crystal explosions even with a totem of undying equipped. Having more than one piece of Blast Protection armor is not recommended, as having only two pieces of Protection armor will result in dying quickly to Strength II-boosted melee weapons.
Fire Protection and Projectile Protection	Increase fire/lava damage resistance (Fire Protection); increases projectile damage resistance (Projectile Protection)	Armor	Fire Protection increases fire/lava damage resistance 8% per level, and decreases burning time by 15% per level. This results in a Fire Protection IV armor piece giving a total fire/lava damage resistance increase of 32%, and results in two pieces of Fire Protection IV armor providing complete immunity to fire damage. Projectile Protection increases projectile damage resistance 8% per level. This results in a Projectile Protection IV armor piece giving a total projectile damage resistance increase of 32%. Both Fire Protection and Projectile Protection have no usecases for PvP. This is because sacrificing Protection for one of the two is never worth it, regardless of the type of PvP kit.
Feather Falling	Increases fall damage resistance (including ender pearl damage).	Boots	Feather Falling increases fall damage resistance by 12% per level. This results in a Feather Falling IV armor piece giving a total fall damage resistance increase of 48%. Feather Falling is not mutually exclusive with any other enchantments, so it is always worth having.
Thorns	Chance to inflict damage on attackers when receiving damage; increases armor durability loss.	Armor	Deals 1HP to 4HP randomly to attackers, with the chance of activation increasing per level. This results in a full set of Thorns III armor giving a 100% chance of dealing 1HP to 4HP damage upon being attacked. An additional 2 armor durability is lost when Thorns activates. Thorns is not a recommended enchantment for PvP, as the damage of thorns becomes inconsequential against the Protection enchantment, while still massively harming the sustainability of your armor. In addition to this, when Thorns inflicts damage on the opponent, it will grant them knockback immunity for 0.5 seconds, as all indirect damage sources do, which disrupts combos.
Infinity	Causes arrows to not be consumed when used (does not effect spectral arrows or tipped arrows).	Bow	Infinity causes arrows used to not disappear from the inventory when fired. It does not effect spectral arrows and tipped arrows, and it is mutually exclusive with Mending. Bows are virtually never at risk of breaking in a PvP fight, so Infinity is always preferred over Mending in a PvP environment.
Unbreaking	Gives a random chance for durability to not be consumed.	All	Unbreaking gives a random chance for durability to not be consumed, with a chance of 50% at Unbreaking I, ~66% at Unbreaking II, and 75% chance at Unbreaking III. Unbreaking is essential to have on armor, as armor durability is a key factor in high-power gear PvP. Excluding shields, it is not as important to have Unbreaking on other items, as they are very unlikely to break from full durability in a PvP fight.
Mending	Consumes gained experience to repair durability.	All	Mending repairs 2 durability for each experience point received. Mending, like Unbreaking, is essential to have on armor, as armor durability is a key factor in high-power gear PvP. It is important to omit having Mending on equipment other than armor in a PvP fight, as repairing armor using bottle o' enchanting must take priority over repairing other equipment.
Loyalty	Causes thrown tridents to return to the thrower.	Trident	Loyalty causes thrown tridents to return to their owner, with the return time decreasing more for each level of enchantment. Loyalty is not a recommended enchantment for PvP. This is because tridents are poor weapons for damage-dealing, leading to the utility of Riptide being far more useful.
Riptide	Launches the user when attempting to throw a trident while in water or rain. Replaces a trident's throwing functionality.	Trident	Riptide launches the user by 9 blocks at Riptide I, 15 blocks at Riptide II, and 21 blocks at Riptide III. Riptide is the main reason to use a trident in PvP, as tridents are poor damage-dealers, resulting in the utility of Riptide being their best usecase.
Curse of Vanishing	Deletes the item on death.	Anything	Curse of Vanishing deletes the enchanted item when the user is killed. Curse of Vanishing can be useful for preventing opponents from collecting your gear in a team-based PvP fight.
Quick Charge	Decreases the charging time of a crossbow.	Crossbow	Quick Charge decreases the charging time of crossbows by 0.25 seconds per level. This results in a Quick Charge III crossbow having a charge time of only 0.5 seconds. Quick Charge is an essential enchantment for crossbows, as it drastically increases their DPS and rate of spreading tipped arrow effects. Spamming arrows with a Quick Charge III crossbow is a viable strategy, as it will repeatedly damage an opponent's armor and make it difficult for them to approach.
Piercing	Causes fired arrows to pierce multiple targets, as well as shields. Arrows under the effect of Piercing can be picked up and fired again.	Crossbow	Piercing causes arrows to pierce targets, letting arrows hit additional targets, and causes fired arrows to ignore shields. Piercing arrows can be picked up and fired again, rather than sticking to the target. Piercing is most useful in low-power PvP kits, as the utility of letting a crossbow ignore a shield is very helpful. Piercing also acts as a pseudo-Infinity enchantment that works with tipped arrows, however the arrows have to be picked up again manually. Piercing becomes less useful as gear becomes more powerful, as Multishot begins overshadowing it for the utility of spreading tipped arrow effects when the crossbow itself stops dealing meaningful damage.
Multishot	Fires two additional arrows to the left and right of the center arrow. Increases crossbow durability damage.	Crossbow	Multishot adds two additional phantom arrows to the left and right of the center arrow. The two side arrows cannot be picked up, and have the same damage and effects as the center arrow. Multishot increases the durability consumed by 2 for each use. Multishot is incredibly useful in high-power gear kits for the utility of spreading tipped arrow effects. It also by nature makes it easier to land arrow shots, and drastically increases the effective coverage of shot firework rockets.

Status effects for PvP

Positive status effects

• Strength
  • Increases melee damage by 3HP per level.
  • Strength II can be used to out-damage golden apples in kits with full Protection IV netherite armor.
• Speed
  • Increases movement speed by 20% per level.
  • Speed can be used to combo more effectively, better dodge attacks, and better run away to heal. With Speed II, it is faster to not sprint-jump and instead sprint without jumping.
• Fire Resistance
  • Provides immunity to lava and fire damage.
  • Fire Resistance can be used to circumvent the damage of Fire Aspect, Flame, lava buckets, and the fire placed by respawn anchors. It can also be used to avoid the movement-stuttering knockback caused by them.
• Instant Health
  • Instantly recovers 2HP per level.
  • Instant Health can be used to rapidly regenerate back to full health using multiple splash potions of healing.
• Weaving
  • Lessens the movement slowdown from being in a cobweb by 25%.
  • Weaving can be used to better deal with cobweb spam in kits that include them.
• Regeneration
  • Provides passive health regeneration, with the speed of health recovery increasing by 100% per level.
  • Regeneration is most useful when applied using golden apples, as carrying potions to apply Regeneration is generally not worth the inventory space.
• Haste
  • Increases melee attack speed by 10% per level, and increases mining speed by 20% per level.
  • Haste can be used to combo more effectively, and increases DPS. It can only be received through beacons, and is thus not a usable effect in the vast majority of PvP scenarios.
• Absorption
  • Provides 4HP per level, temporary hearts that once lost cause the effect to be removed.
  • Absorption is only obtainable through golden apples, and is useful for increasing sustainabilty.
• Water Breathing
  • Provides immunity to losing oxygen underwater.
  • Water breathing can be useful for extended underwater fights, allowing for the user to effectively camp out their opponent by staying underwater.

Neutral status effects

• Jump Boost
  • Increases jump height by 0.5 blocks per level, and reduces fall damage by 1HP per level.
  • Jump Boost can be used to quickly tower up to escape or reach an opponent. However, Jump Boost effectively decreases movement speed, as it reduces the effectiveness of sprint-jumping. It also effectively reduces DPS, as it makes it take longer to land and thus makes chaining critical hits together far less effective. Jump boost can be used to perform smash attacks with a mace from the ground.
• Slow Falling
  • Causes the user to fall slower, provides immunity to fall damage, and prevents the ability to do critical hits and mace smash attacks.
  • Slow Falling can be used to circumvent fall damage in situations where water buckets and ender pearls are not given. However, Slow Falling effectively reduces DPS, as it makes it impossible to do critical hits and mace smash attacks. It also makes the effected player far more susceptible to being comboed, and makes them far more susceptible to repeated end crystal explosions.
• Resistance
  • Increases damage resistance by 20% per level.
  • While Resistance on its own is a purely positive status effect, it can only be received on its own through beacons, and is thus not a usable effect in the vast majority of PvP scenarios. Potions of the turtle master can be used to apply Resistance without the need of a beacon, however these potions come with the massive downside of decreasing movement speed by 60% at level 1, and 90% at level 2. This causes the potion to be extremely exploitable, as an opponent can simply run away for the duration of the effects, rendering the Resistance effect useless.

Negative status effects

• Weakness
  • Decreases melee damage by 4HP.
  • Weakness can be used to drastically decrease an opponent's damage output. In addition to this, Weakness can be used to outright prevent an opponent from dealing any damage or knockback if their weapon deals 4HP or less (if the opponent's weapon has Sharpness on it, they will still be able to deal knockback even if they do not surpass 4HP of damage). Like all negative status effects, it is best applied via the use of tipped arrows.
• Slowness
  • Decreases movement speed by 15% per level.
  • Slowness can be used to hinder the opponent's ability to combo effectively, hinder their ability to dodge attacks, and hinder their ability to run away to heal. Like all negative status effects, it is best applied via the use of tipped arrows.
• Instant Damage
  • Instantly deals 3HP per level.
  • Instant Damage can be used to increase the damage output of ranged weapons using tipped arrows of harming. If the base damage of the ranged weapon exceeds 12HP × 6, Instant Damage will not provide any damage increase. This causes tipped arrows of harming to be most useful in combination with crossbows, and in combination with uncharged bow shots.
• Poison
  • Passively deals damage, with the speed of damage dealt increasing by 100% per level.
  • Poison can be used to deal light chip damage to an opponent during a fight. It is most useful in kits with lower levels of Protection, as kits with higher levels of Protection will render Poison damage useless.
• Infested
  • Gives a 10% chance for 1 to 2 silverfish to be spawned when taking damage.
  • Infested can be used to spawn silverfish on an opponent to knock them around and damage their armor. It is best applied via the use of tipped arrows from a distance, so that the silverfish always target the opponent.

Useless status effects

• Glowing
  • Causes the user to glow through blocks, revealing their location.
  • While Glowing seems useful at first, sacrificing the use of tipped arrows to use spectral arrows is never worth it, and the duration of the Glowing effect is rarely long enough to be helpful in PvP.
• Night Vision
  • Increases vision in darkness and underwater.
  • While Night Vision seems useful at first, it is never worth an inventory slot in PvP because its effects can be replicated permanently using a fullbright resource pack.
• Oozing
  • Spawns two slimes on death.
  • Oozing has limited usecases for PvP, as it could be used to deal damage to the opposing team after death in team-based PvP. However, there is nothing stopping the slimes that spawn from targeting teammates, which can render the potion harmful. In addition to this, it is never worth an inventory slot in PvP.
• Wind Charged
  • Spawns a wind charge on death.
  • Wind Charged has no usecases for PvP.

PvP settings

It's important to determine the best settings for you. Settings don't improve your fighting skill rather they make your fights more comfortable. It is discouraged to constantly change your settings to try to find the "perfect" setting that will magically make you the best. Get settings that don't limit your gameplay and get skilled with them.

Having more FPS is incredibly important if you have a low-end system. Tone down most of your graphics, such as setting it to "Fast", turning down your render distance, and turning your FPS cap to unlimited are some examples that can somewhat improve your FPS. Additionally, you can also turn off particle settings as some particles are too obstructive such as the crit particles and totem particles, but this also means you need to listen to your sounds more carefully due to lack of a visual sign that is usually seen in these things.

Next are your controls. First, modifying your keybinds is totally up to you. Using the default 1-9 isn't recommended, as the numbers past 4 or 5 are inconvenient to reach. Although using the scroll wheel in your mouse can be helpful, keybinds are faster and more accurate than using the scroll wheel if you become good with your keybinds. Your mouse sensitivity is also dependent on each player and choosing one that you're comfortable with is essential with getting better aim. With a high sensitivity, your crosshair would start becoming shaky and you won't accurately track your opponent as your mouse is too fast, while if your sensitivity is too low, your rotation is too slow, thus you won't be able to track your opponent that moves too much and too fast. Other settings to change are turning Auto-jump to off and turning your sprint to "Toggle".

An ideal FOV is any FOV above 80-85, letting you see enough so that enemies can't strafe behind you easily but not making opponents too small if they are at the edge of your reach. Its best to turn off FOV effects as well as Damage Tilt completely, as they cause your screen to warp and shake during fights that makes aiming much harder.

Texture packs or resource packs (whatever you call them) are optional but sometimes they make your PVP experience more comfortable. Some vanilla textures in the game obstruct your vision too much, such as food, explosion particles, swords, fire, and offhand items, so texture packs reducing the size of those (also known as overlays) are definitely recommended.

Mods are also important and some of these are tailored for PVP combat. Sodium and FPS-increasing mods are incredibly essential and PVP clients like Lunar, Badlion and Feather feature modules that significantly help in combat.

PvP locations

The location where PvP takes place affects general gameplay and can affect strategies.

Types of terrain

Natural terrain

This is when two players fight in the naturally generated terrain of Minecraft. In this type of fight, players decide on a designated area or may be unexpectedly attacked (underground, caves, cliffs, or strongholds). One can also add custom features into the natural terrain, normally player-built structures.

Custom terrain

This is PvP that takes place in a unique area or challenge map. Players that are friends may decide to create or use a challenge map that facilitates PvP. The players may choose to divide themselves into multiple groups, enjoy a free-for-all, or any other distribution of players that fight among one another.

Players may prefer to build an arena for the sake of organization or aesthetics.

Types of arenas

• Spawn: Many servers have a PvP area at spawn or even around it. Be warned though, because you usually can't place or break blocks.
• Vanilla: PVP out in the wilderness of naturally generated terrain.
• Ancient: Build a Colosseum inspired by the ancient Romans with fights against animals and perhaps some blood (redstone dust) on the floor — use stone or different kinds of stone brick for walls, grass or sand as the floor, and planks for decoration and breaking the stone up.
• Survival games: A huge arena that's in a dome and often has multiple biomes incorporated into it. The walls must be obsidian, bedrock or barrier. Supporters and spectators can send in messengers with food, armor etc. The battle goes on until there is a last player standing!
• Multi-leveled: Have several floors on the arena with random holes; make sure the sides are made of glass so spectators can see all the gravitational action.
• Spleef Twist: Who says you have to do the dirty work? Let lava below the map do it for you (tell combatants before the match to avoid having to pay compensation)! Run around stabbing your opponent while removing the floor from beneath their feet.
• Bridge: Players attempt to cross a narrow bridge, killing enemies and/or scoring points at the other side. Players can hit their opponents using eggs, snowballs, bows, snow golems, etc. until they fall through the void or the lava, To defend yourself from falling use shields, pearls and some blocks.
• Bedrock formations: This area is just made out of bedrock formations, it makes PvP a lot more interesting and makes movements more challenging. It is usually used for Crystal PvP.

Terrain impact

• Inclines: Inclines are hills and slopes that spawn naturally all over the vanilla world, where the terrain moves up by a block every couple blocks or so. It's important to be able to play around them since most practice servers do not have them. If your opponent is ever trying to move up an incline by jumping up one block, hit them just before they jump. This suspends them in the air and prevents them from jumping, making them weirdly stuck. You can and should do this repeatedly.
  • Lower Ground: Usually in PVP you want to keep the lower ground. Because your head is lower than their, you can hit them from further away, an effect that is made even more extreme if you crouch. Try to use KB hits to hold them back so that they can't get to the same level as you. If they do, just drop back another level to keep the low ground.
  • Higher Ground: Having the higher ground makes it much more difficult for enemies to chase you uphill, and lets you hit them away from you further. It's very easy for you to rush them by no-KB critting towards them, as your fall will be extra long, giving you a longer window where KB hits are inefficient. Additionally, by stepping off of a ledge, you can get a critical hit without having to jump, which requires fairly precise timing but is very strong if you can pull it off fluidly.
• Walls: Walls can be a cave wall you're in, a steep slope nearby, or a tree you've wandered in nearby. All of them force the fight to be closer range and put cobwebs in the spotlight, making Headwebs available on every hit.
  • Playing Against a Wall: Being backed up against a wall in a fight certainly... doesn't sound ideal, but considering it, your only two disadvantages are that you can't run and you can be headwebbed easily. If your opponent likes to headweb you, treat a wall like a hazard and stay away from it. If you are pushed into a wall, put a block above your head so they can't headweb you, or pre-water the wall. If headwebs aren't such a big concern, then as long as you aren't at an HP disadvantage and need to run, walls are pretty good! You take no knockback if you get hit into a wall, meaning that you can crit or pcrit your opponent to no end.
  • Pushing Your Opponent Into a Wall: Crit them out, since you won't be able to deal knockback anyway. Your goal is to drop them and make it akward and in the end, costly or impossible for them to escape and heal. The only exception is if you also have the low ground: if they can't run and can't advance past your KB hits, they will be trapped in a position where they have lower reach. And finally, headweb them whenever you think you can. It's okay to preplace the web and then hit them into it if they aren't moving them from their spot.

Terrain hazards

A hazard is any area that's dangerous or disadvantageous to be. Most likely its a lava pool, ravine opening, or for a particularly experienced player, even just a wall that's easy to headweb against. In any case, both players want to stay away from it and force the other player into it. When playing around a hazard, strafe around your opponent constantly and stay low to the ground, letting you move more effectively to put them in between you and the hazard. Whether you're successful or not, you'll need to push your opponent back and gain ground. To do this, disable their shield and don't let yours be disabled, at all costs. Use techniques like Shoving to advance forwards consistently without taking much knockback or Uppercutting to gain lots of ground very quickly. If your opponent crits you, Sidesweeps are a viable option (only if you're losing) to run around behind them and flip the scenario on them.

• Cliffs and holes: The goal with these is always to hit your opponent over the edge, making them stack or water back up to you and possibly take fall damage. Feather Falling reduces your fall damage down to 20%, making cliffs not a danger but just a piece of terrain that's one way. When your opponent attempts to come back up, use this opportunity to KB hit them back off and force them to waste lots of time and resources to come back up to you. Also not a bad time to use a punch bow, which especially helps drain their armor.

• Water pools: Water pools that spawn in plain biomes or the like are a mixed bag. Being in one prevents you from critting/jumping and slows you significantly, basically trapping you. However, while in one, you have the lower ground and are immune to lava/webs. If in a water pool, dig down one block and enter Swimming Mode, making you fast and making your hitbox comically low and small. Essentially get KB hits past their shield and come out ahead in damage, then safely exit the pool once they heal. If you are pushing somebody in a water pool, get very close and place blocks below you to allow you to continue to crit them.

• Lava pools: If both players have Fire Resistance, treat a lava pool as a water pool where you can't swim. Lava pools massively slow and damage the player in them and due to the constant damage ticks make it hard to swim out of them. If your opponent is in a lava pool, try to keep them in the pool and don't take too many hits; let the lava kill them. Place blocks on edges where they are attempting to swim out.

• Mobs: Most mobs don't do enough damage to be important in PVP, but you can still let them do some work for you. During the nighttime, notice if a spider, skeleton or creeper has aggroed on your opponent. If so, play passive with shield and continually hit them away until they're eventually forced to distract themselves with killing the mob. Simply run intil out of range if a mob decides to attack you.

• Rivers and Oceans: Entering a river or ocean to heal is often a good option. Water makes fire, lava, and cobwebs impossible to use, prevents critical hits, and shrinks your hitbox, making offensive play difficult. Having Depth Strider on your boots is essential for this, otherwise they will easily catch up to you and hit you. Also note if either player has Respiration, since if not, you can keep track of their air bubbles and go under to heal when they need to surface.

PvP context

It is important to note the context in which PvP takes place.

Friendly PvP

Friendly PvP is when two or more players agree to PvP for friendly practice and training ONLY. Friendly PvP is great to play on LAN. It is the least hostile option for PvP as it:

• Avoids grudges.
• Stops property loss from thieving player drops.
• Encourages cooperation.
• Allows players to use any type of weapon without worry

Organized PvP

In organized PvP, players agree on the circumstances of their fight, and then battle. The victor may be agreed to receive anything, from diamonds and emeralds to proven superiority to nothing at all. This type of PvP can be highly competitive and players may need an impartial judge to moderate.

Unorganized PvP

This is when someone surprise attacks you without warning. Keep your weapons ready for this! This is mainly common in SMP PVP.

If you have better equipment than your attacker, you will likely be able to kill them. At this point, there is no better time to give it your all. Utilize anything and everything at your disposal to destroy your opponent — any method that Minecraft provides, you should exploit. (Combat-logging, hacking, and other out-of-game methods are unacceptable except on select servers.) Always carry extras. You never want to be stuck in battle without a weapon. Therefore, extensive measures must be taken to ensure that equipment can be readily replaced in a fight, such as enchantments, extras, and consistent resupplying.

Press any advantages you can, and consider fleeing if you don't think you can win. There's little point in being honorable, and more point to staying alive.

Make sure to understand your disadvantage if you are attacked unexpectedly. Your opponent likely has applied potion effects or eaten golden apples in advance, giving them saturation and absorption. To stand a chance against them, you'll need to do the same. Keeping combat healing items, ender pearls or potions on you as well as in your hotbar can save you in those situations.

Kit PvP

In this type, 2 players spawn in a set map with an arranged set of equipment, thus the name of PVP. Practicing kits are important in learning the basics of PVP. And the kits can also be customizable depending on the server.

Minigames

Minigames are typically played on dedicated minigame servers. Some popular ones include Bedwars (where each player/team has a bed that allows them to respawn if it is undestroyed), and Capture the Flag (where each team tries to steal a banner/wool from the other team). Many other variations of these games, and some more niche minigames, also exist. Each minigame will typically have its own set of rules, as well as a shop or class system (although this is not true for all minigames). To gain experience in this kind of PvP, it is recommended to try different kinds of minigames, and find one/some that you enjoy. Minigames are technically a form of Organized PvP, but are normally on a dedicated server.

Melee fundamentals

The majority of PVP is melee based combat: using your sword, axe and shield to damage your opponent directly. Swords and axes are the strongest and most damaging non-crystal PVP weapons in the game, apart from maces which are typically restricted to their own gamemode. Choosing your offhand item is an important decision, with the most popular choices being a shield, totem of undying, or food. There are two main avenues and essential concepts for attacking: sprint-knockback attacks and critical hits.

• Sprint-knockback attacks: Sprint-knockback attacks are dealt when the attacker is sprinting, and doing one cancels the sprint. The goal of focusing on sprint-knockback attacks is hitting the opponent up and out of their 3 block attack reach. Sprint-knockback attacks are essential to doing combos, and benefit from letting the opponent land before doing the next sprint-knockback attack. Note that hitting someone's shield does no knockback even with a sprint-knockback attack, so disabling the opponent's shield is essential for creating combo openings. To successfully combo, be as close to the edge of the 3 block attack range as possible and attack with minimal vertical aim variance.
  • Counters: Jump-resetting the opponent's attacks reduces the effectiveness of their sprint-knockback attacks and allows escaping combos. Backing out after being hit by a sprint-knockback attack can also help to escape a combo.
• Critical hits: Critical hits are dealt when the attacker is falling. The goal of focusing on critical hits is to overwhelm the opponent with high-damage attacks. The player can jump 1.6 times per second, which allows doing sword critical hits 1.6 times a second. Because critical hits deal less knockback than sprint-knockback attacks, being as close to the opponent as possible is the best strategy for critical hit spam, rather than attacking at the edge of the 3 block attack reach. Ordinarily it is impossible to critical hit while in a sprint, requiring the user to release the W key or press the S key before attacking. However, by continuing to hold the sprint key after connecting a sprint-knockback attack, the user enters a crit-chain state where it becomes possible to do critical hits while sprinting until the sprint is cancelled. While this strategy can allow the user to get an advantage against other crit-spammer, it is naturally exploitable due to requiring the user to retain their sprint.
  • Counters: Because critical hits require the attacker to be airborne, they are naturally telegraphed and easy for the opponent to react to. Jumping also hinders the attacker's lateral movement and flexibility, and a crit-spam combo can be escaped by dealing a sprint-knockback to the attacker when they're on the ground. Focusing on critical hits also effectively reduces attack reach, as it requires the attacker to look downwards at the opponent due to the constant jumping.

Techniques

There are many techniques and maneuvers you can use in PVP to give yourself a large advantage. This is the next step in complexity in PVP up from just critting and shielding.

• Crit-spacing: When you try to crit a more experienced player, you will find it is often hard. If you jump at them while too close to them, they sprint in and hit you early in your jump, easily deflecting you. If you jump too far away from them, they just back out. Using proper crit spacing, you can crit them so if they try to back away, you get a free hit, but if they hit you, you are at the end of your jump and you are hit into the ground, taking very little knockback and you are still able to crit them.

• Crit-deflection: Crit deflections are a viable counter to being crit. Don't hit your opponent immediately. While in the air, your opponent is holding down W and sprinting and will therefore take very little knockback, until they touch the ground (after they crit you). They will take large amounts of knockback because they had to cancel their sprint to crit you. Exactly when they touch the ground, KB hit them and then pull back a little bit to begin a combo.

• Punish-crit (p-crit): P-crits are basically using the hit of your opponent to make a crit, since you're attacked, knockback would be applied to you and you would rise to the air momentarily. By using this short timeframe, as you're falling down and hit somebody, you make a crit. P-crits are useful pretty much anytime that you are able to perform them, because they give you the 1.5x damage. Most notably they can be used after you get crit, since your opponent will be close to you and their crit deals very little knockback. To p-crit you want to be close to your opponent. If you p-crit them every time they crit you, you will go even and overall things won't turn out too bad. The biggest problem is that most players shield right after critting, so your hit will be blocked constantly if they have shield.

• No-KB crit: A No-KB Crit is immediately holding W into your opponent after critting them, even before you hit the ground. It lets you stay close to them because you take less knockback if you are sprinting or holding W. It's a good technique to use if you want to stay very close and crit them out, but is especially powerful against Crit Deflections. If the opponent tries to Crit Deflect a No-KB crit, they might not be able to hit you far away enough and you can Pcrit their hit, or KB hit them back if you prefer.

• Double-crits: Double critting is jumping to your opponent for a crit, then using a p-crit to do a second crit. It works very well against No-KB critting because they can't hit you away: they're too close to you. It does lots of damage very fast and turns a situation where you are being crit into a situation where you are even, critting each other out.

• S-tapping: Quickly tapping S to back away right after KB hitting your opponent, increasing the chance that you back out of their hit and maintain good spacing for a combo. If you are too close to them, they will just hit you while in the air and break your combo.

• S-holding: A technique that can be used to get out of combos very very easily by... holding down the S key. You will take a huge amount of KB and definitely miss your next hit, but be hit far away from your opponent, letting you escape a combo. S holding makes it very easy for you to be crit, so be careful here.

• Circle strafes: Circle Strafes is holding either A or D constantly, strafing a wide circle around your opponent while comboing them. It makes it harder for them to aim at you and allows you to maintain very good spacing, since you can turn a little to the left or right to move a little farther or closer to them.

• Uppercutting: Uppercutting is sprint jumping at your opponent and KB hitting them as you are still going up. It's an unusual technique, and can be used to catch your opponent off guard, since you burst forward with your jump faster than usual. Because of this you can also hold a combo with them if they try to back away and S hold. Additionally, if your opponent is using good Crit Spacing and you don't think you can reach them early enough in their jump to hit them away, uppercutting can be a good compromise to trade hits instead of getting crit. It's also a great counter to Jump Resetting, because your hit timing is irregular and hard to react to properly.

• Hitselecting: If you knockback hit someone while taking knockback yourself, the remainder of the knockback you have take is massively reduced. This is intentionally using the mechanic of hitselecting to take less knockback while trading sprinthits, giving you an opportunity to combo your opponent or set them up for a crit. In general, the less knockback you take, the better!

• Autohitting: Autohitting is done by spam clicking with your weapon while holding up shield. You won't attack with your weapon because you are holding shield, but if your shield ever drops (because it was disabled) you will instantly attack. If you do this, you just traded your shield for one hit, so you need to back up, possibly using items like cobwebs to slow them. This is especially good if you want to use a defensive play style.

• Shoving: This technique is extremely powerful, not particularly hard to employ, and gets harder to counter the better you get. Shoving is holding sprint into your opponent once you get close, holding shield and dropping it to KB hit them or sweep hit and continue to hold shield. The advantages are that you can keep your opponent off their feet and stay close to them, making counterplay very difficult. All pcrits or deflections will be blocked. If you are hit back, you can pcrit. If your shield gets disabled, you can crit deflect them away to avoid being punished. With total control over the spacing and movement of both players, Shoving is best used to feed into another technique. If used for too long your shield will be disabled and the Shove will end. You can transition into a Stun, Combo, No-KB Crit, Sidesweep, Backstab, and many other techniques easily by using a Shove as a setup.

• Walkthroughs: Walk or jump through your opponent, without turning around. Hit them while you are physically inside their hitbox. If your head is in the back half of their hitbox, you will hit them regardless of their shield. Extremely difficult to time, but can also get you free hits when both players are low. Like Backstabs, these work well while Shoving.

• S-hold crit: An S hold crit is a counter to Pcrits and Crit deflections. Hold S while in the air toward the end of your crit, allowing yourself to back out of their Pcrit or Crit deflection hit. When doing this, it's very easy for them to dodge your hit or hit you away in the air, so you have to predict that they will Pcrit or Crit deflect.

• Sidesweeps: After being crit, you can surprise your opponent by moving into them and strafing to their side, releasing W and sweep hitting them to deal very little knockback. You strafe so quickly around them that they are forced to miss their next hit, setting them up for an aggressive push. This works best against No-KB crits.

• Axe bait: Hold up your shield at the start of an exchange. Drop it just as they run toward you; 8/10 times they try to disable your shield. While they're wasting their time spam clicking you with their axe, go kill them.

• Backstab: Get close to your opponent while they are shielding and sprint around them to their side and behind them, hitting them from behind and therefore ignoring their shield. It must be done faster than they can react and turn to face you. Works well against players that run when you disable their shield or crit deflect shield stuns, and can get you free hits.

• No-KB disable: Perform a No-KB crit with your axe, with the intention to disable their shield (if they do not block, you get a free axe crit). When they hit you back, you will be knocked into the ground since you are still falling, keeping you very close to them, making it very easy to push them now that their shield is gone. This is one of the best counters to Autohitting in the game.

• Turnback movement: This strategy is very underused and simple in theory. If your opponent has good spacing to crit you, but is more than 3 blocks away from you, you can turn away from them and sprint away, then turning back, usually to crit them. It fixes your disadvantageous situation and nobody can stop you, not even if they call you "cringe".
• Mirroring: When your opponent gapples in Nethpot, you do the same as well, this usually gives you +1 healing, allowing you to survive longer than your enemy.

Advanced

These are some more complicated and high level techniques. Many of them build off of other techniques and are more useful against better players, used to counter other more basic techniques.

• Falling sprinthit: You can perform this easily by sprint jumping at your enemy and intentionally not letting go of sprint when you hit them, causing you to KB hit them while falling. If your opponent plans to Pcrit or even Crit Deflect you, they will be KB hit away to their surprise, giving you a free hit.

• Spam-clicking: Spam clicking at your enemy with a KB1 sword hits your enemy away, even by small amounts, without having to wait for your attack timer to come back. It can be used against combos to push your enemy back or against Pcrits, to push them barely out of your reach.

Spam clicking can also be used to break your opponent's sprint if you are running around each other and make your opponent easy to hit. S tapping away after doing this makes them easy to combo.

• S-hold p-crit deflect: A possible counter to No-KB crits. Pcrit the first attack while backing out, and crit deflect their second hit. This is very similar to a Double Crit. You will most likely come out even and escape a bad situation.

• Swight gambit: Breaking someone's shield while they are falling, intentionally letting yourself get crit by an autohit. This allows you to pcrit them and get off more crits from the shield disable.

• P-crit deflections: If you are both Pcritting eachother, hold W into them until the moment before they Pcrit you, then hold S to take more knockback. Crit deflect that Pcrit and back away, sending them far enough away to stop them from hitting you back or letting you combo hit them. Therefore you come out a hit ahead.

• Offensive double crit: Critting your opponent and then backing up, pcritting or falling sprint hitting their next attack and instantly backing away out of their next hit. After the initial crit, hold S until you touch the ground so that their pcrit or hit will deal higher KB, letting you back away from them. After that, if they haven't hit, hold W so that they can't land a crit deflect. Go for a crit after the technique is successful, since it's likely they swung at you and wasted the attack and can't retaliate.

• Crit deflect bait: If your opponent likes to crit deflect your crits often, predict this and do a normal crit but hold S just before they hit you, taking too much knockback for them to reach you and combo you for your next hit. You crit them and they do not crit you, so you come out ahead.

• Early critting: When you and your opponent both jump to crit eachother, hit them as early as you can (only once you start falling though. We still want to get a crit). KB hit them as soon as you can afterward; if you crit them first you will also get the KB hit in first and they won't be able to hit back.

• Trade p-crit: By jump resetting AND hitselecting during a trade of sprinthits, you can get close enough to your opponent to Pcrit them. Catches pretty much anyone off guard, but requires you both to push in and sometimes a little ping.
• Switching to a no-KB sword: In SMP, you're automatically given 2 swords, one enchanted with knockback 1 and the other has no knockback. The problem with only using a KB 1 sword is you can't crit chain effectively as they're knocked farther away from your reach, while a no-KB sword wouldn't allow you to combo your opponent. In this tactic, you would use your KB 1 sword to apply pressure and after the enemy tries to retreat, you would crit chain them with your no-KB sword.

Defensive techniques:

• Deivi popping: When your effects (Strength and Speed) are about to expire, swap your offhand gapples with a totem and prepare your hotbar with around 3 healing potions, a strength potion and a swiftness potion. Then, charge at your opponent and attack them until your totem activates, before using your potions. This usually catches the enemy offguard, though this strategy only works best when you and your opponent are at around the same health.

Shield fundamentals

Shields protect all damage and knockback infront of the user when active, aside from arrows from Piercing crossbows. Shields have 250ms delay between being raised and being active. They are disabled for 5 second when hit by an axe, regardless of the axe's attack cooldown charge.

Disabling

Disabling the opponent's shield is a huge part of SMP kit, giving a 5 second window where they aren't able to protect themselves effectively. To disable a shield, hotkey to your axe and spam click 2-3 times, then immediately swap back to sword. Later in this section are some special ways to disable your opponent's shield to give you an advantage. Don't wait to charge the attacks: axes are inefficient at dealing damage. You can attempt to disable either when you see them put up shield, which requires fast reactions and good hotkeying, or by predicting when they will shield. While fighting, try to watch their shield patterns and learn them so you can predict them in advance. In addition, most players will shield with the following patterns:

• After eating a gapple
• After trying to disable your shield
• Right as their shield comes back from being disabled, especially if they are down HP
• If they blocked your last hit
• Right after the first hit of an engagement
• To block a Critical Hit or to block a Combo Hit

Be careful when your shield gets disabled. Did you shield in a predictable pattern? They might have learned that pattern. Be careful before repeating it.

Follow-ups

Once you disable their shield, you have a 5 second window where they cannot block any hits. To take advantage of this, you can use 2 different follow ups.

• CRIT FOLLOW UP: Try to crit them out, blocking KB hits with your shield to get close and crit them. They won't be able to block a single crit, so you deal massive damage very quickly. Consider using an ender pearl to pearl close to them, or using a cobweb/placing water on them to trap them. If you want to use a crit follow up, it's fine to only click their shield once when you disable it. That way you won't hit them away from you if you successfully break shield.
• COMBO FOLLOW UP: Combo your opponent. Because they can't block predictably timed Combo Hits with their shield, they are easy to combo while their shield is down.

Countering a disable

When your own shield is disabled, you are very vulnerable to crit or combo follow ups. By far one of the most effective ways to play while your shield is disabled is KB hit trading. Back away and try to bait your opponent. Trade KB hits with them, holding S after each hit to get too far away from your opponent to be comboed. This is a very slow playstyle and your shield will come back up soon. The reason it works so well is that if your opponent attempts to block your hit with their shield, you can easily either disable it or back away from their hit before they lower their shield, rendering their shield advantage useless. Another trick you can use when your shield is disabled is literally to pearl out and heal. If you can safely get the pearl off, you might avoid a very costly encounter. It might seem sort of hacky or cringe, since you're just running away whenever you're at a disadvantage, but your opponent can't do anything besides cry about it. Don't do this if you are going to get crit out while the pearl is in the air.

Techniques

Here are some shield related techniques you can use. Some of these are very difficult to perform, and some of them delightfully simple, but they can give you a significant edge in getting more effectiveness out of your shield.

• Crouch Stun: One of the most well known stuns from the Axe gamemode, but still effective in SMP, Crouch Stuns are simply crouching just before you hit your opponent. Since your stun hits them up and you bob down, you make yourself further from them and hopefully dodge under their crosshair.

• Uppercut Stun: The Uppercut Stun is, obviously, stunning your opponent during an uppercut while rising up into the air. It's similar to a basic sprinting stun, but utilizes the element of surprise. By jerking forwards, you stun your opponent before they may be prepared to hit you back. Instantly hit out of your range, they will hopefully miss. Otherwise it isn't particularly effective.

• Sidestep Stun: Holding A or D during a shield stun lets you very finely enter and exit the very edge of your opponents range, and ideally be just barely too far away from them when their autohit happens. It can also make them miss, especially if done with Speed II.

• Close-Sidestep Stun: A close-sidestep stun is, again, holding A or D while stunning and is, again, far more effective with swiftness. The difference is that it is done as close as possible to the target. Instead of moving in and out of their range, you run out of their crosshair for the window that you are vulnerable. It's best used in low health, shield dancing scenarios and is particularly deadly because of how close to your opponent you are and how therefore easy it is to follow up.

• Combo Stun: Extremely effective kind of stun, especially in SMP combat. First you must KB hit your opponent. Typically they will hold shield to block a Combo Hit, and if they do, you strike. Because of the principles behind Combo Hits (Explained in the Foundation section) the stun will deal extra knockback and prevent them from hitting you. If you S-tap after the stun, it's easy to follow up with more Combo Hits. Because of this, a Combo Stun is devastating if you can predict your opponent's shield usage.

• Shield delay bait: You can abuse the 250ms delay on raising your shield to trick your opponent into trying to disable a shield that isn't really there. If you raise your shield quickly, for less time than the delay, your shield never becomes active but appears on screen, making your opponent think that they can disable it. If they fall for it they will be axe-spam-clicking your body and accomplishing nothing, making them easy to crit out.

• Hit delaying: Hold up your shield and wait until your opponent hits you, then immediately hit them back. Due to shield delay they won't be able to get their shield up fast enough and you get a free hit on them. The only danger of this method is that if you hold it up for very long, most opponents will disable your shield. You will need to precit your opponents hit, which is easiest if they jump at you. Most times, since they jumped, they will be desperate to crit you and will hit into your shield while falling, hoping that you will drop it. Just wait for their crit to be blocked, and hit them immediately after. This method is especially powerful in UHC, where losing your shield isn't as easily punished. Its very easy and is best at countering over-aggressive players.

• Cooldown trick: By swapping to your axe at the exact time you hit with a sword, you can perform a sort of bugged sword hit that deals full sword knockback and damage, but can disable shields. It has to be done extremely fast, but can be incredibly powerful when you don't want your hit blocked.

• Shield sacrifice: This is essentially autohitting in SMP kit, where you plan to let your shield be disabled in exchange for a hit. The advantages are that you get a free hit and take no damage or KB from their hit, possibly saving you from a bad situation. However, having lost your shield for just one hit, you need a strong understanding and a plan for how you will play with your shield down. Shield Sacrificing is actually a very powerful and important technique. It can be frustrating to punish and confusing to play against, but to employ it, you MUST be using it in high-impact situations and avoiding any disable follow-ups.

• Pre-firing: Lowering your shield has a delay similar to raising it, its just much faster (this can be tested in singleplayer). If you predict when your opponent is going to lower their shield and hit, but are afraid of your shield being disabled and don't want to use Hit Delaying, KB hit before them. Your hit will go through first if you lower your shield before them. You won't be able to block their hit, but by KB hitting and S tapping or strafing, you can dodge their hit. Congratulations on your free damage. Keep in mind that if you fail, hitting first will result in your opponent Hitselecting (explained in the Techniques section) your hit automatically. Either plan around that or make sure they aren't able to hit you.

Ranged fundamentals

Bows and crossbows can be used to attack and snipe at a safe distance. Learning how to use bows and crossbows effectively is an important aspect of PvP. There are various styles to shooting such as jump shooting, aiming upward and strafing to the right/left, spamming uncharged shots (bow only).

Shooting

Strafing from left to right when shooting is the optimal way to shoot from mid-range, as it can help you avoid an opponent's shots. To hit a moving target, lead the arrow ahead of them some blocks depending on their distance and ping.

Sniping

Sniping is attempting to hit targets at long range with a bow or crossbow. Done well, sniping can deplete a weak target's health or knock them off a cliff. This tactic by itself can be ineffective if not followed up with melee combat, as shields and healing are certain counters to the exclusive use of bows and crossbows. However as a method to drain your opponent of resources, such as armor durability and food, sniping them can make a difference. At further distances, the level of precision needed to have a good hit rate increases, and the innate randomness value of arrow shots becomes a problem. An 8-degree pitch shot with a bow will hit a target between 47 and 52 meters out, and a 37-degree angle can put shots out to around 120 meters. The pitch of your shot can be viewed using the F3 screen. Generally, aim 1 degree up for every 4 blocks away your target is assuming they're at level ground with you (Pitch = (distance - 18)/4), compensating for their movement appropriately. For example, to hit a target 50 meters away, aim up by 8 degrees. 62 meters away, aim up by 11 degrees. 74 meters away, 14 degrees. If a player is higher than the user, a simple way of compensating is to look them in the face and set that as your zero. This works for relatively flat shots that aren't at an enormous range. If a player is 9 degrees up from the user and appears to be around 60 meters away, a 19.5 degrees pitch is a good approximation of where to aim. Sniping is a skill that becomes feel-based at higher distances, making practice essential.

General fundamentals

Longer term, overall strategy during fights to make the most out of your PVP skills. This section will detail how to heal yourself properly, win fights when outnumbered, heal your armor, and use your utility items properly.

Healing

You can heal faster by having high saturation, or by consuming a healing item like a golden apple or a potion of Healing. Foods with high saturation such as golden carrots are preferred as more saturation translates to a longer period of faster healing. Since healing by eating normally takes some time and slows you down you want to do it while sprint jumping away if you can't ender pearl, preferrable after separating from your opponent as well as possible. KB hits, cobwebs, and blocks can all help you get away. If your opponent is healing, make the most of that time. Crit them out to drain them of resources if they are close. If they aren't close enough for you to reach this, do something else such as healing or refilling your hotbar. Just running at your opponent doesn't help you. Its also common for players to KB hit their opponent on the last hit while their opponent is healing. This sets their opponent up for a combo when they finish eating.

Outnumbered

When you meet with multiple people that have the intent on killing you, the best option is of course run or negotiate for peace. If that's not an option though, you'll need to figure something else out.

• Try to separate them before going in. Wait for one to run and heal, run away until one falls behind, or KB hit one into a ditch and then 1v1 the remaining one.
• The best way to winning outnumbered fights is by targeting them one at a time. Target the weakest one first, or the one that's least skilled. If you have no good options, target the player that's least consistent about healing. Your goal is to win by dropping them, since you'll lose any drain fight.
• If you get a kill on one of them and they drop their stuff, grab anything like healing, XP bottles, or spare armor. Pick up anything useful from them, and if the other enemy is near, burn/hide their stuff so the other enemies cannot get it. This way, you'll be left with a gear advantage and will be able to last against the remaining enemies.
• If you and your enemies all have the same gear and the same armor trims (or none at all), then you can try to splash an invisibility potion on them in the heat of close combat to hide the nametags and confuse them so they don't know who's on whose team. It is highly unlikely that they will carry a bucket of milk specifically to counter invisibility. There are enemy teams that will carry a specific item to identify each other (such as colored wool) but having to switch to that takes time and gives you some breathing room to heal up or plan your next move.
• During a frenzy, especially a 1v2, focus one target while strafing around them, keeping them in between you and the other opponent. This essentially uses them to shield you from their teammate, keeping the damage you take to a reasonable amount.

Utilities

Utilities are your backup weapons in a fight. The most effective way to use utilities is to have just a couple in your hotbar and become quick and experienced with using them so you can constantly bombard your opponent with effective secondary attacks.

• Proper usage of ender pearls is important. When escaping, you should throw your pearls not too close to the enemy, as they can easily chase you and kill, but not too far as pearl teleports aren't instant and they will have enough time to inflict massive damage or finish you off. An important game mechanic in Minecraft combat is known as the i-frame, or invincibility frame, wherein if a player took damage, they'll appear as red for 0.5 seconds. During this time, they cannot take knockback from anything other than explosions, so by using the damage done by an ender pearl teleport, you can get right into your opponent's face without taking knockback from their attacks. This is called pearl flashing and is best done when you need a tempo advantage over your enemy, which is why sometimes you see pro players use their ender pearls on their opponent for no apparent reason. Keep in mind that any form of damage will grant i-frames, which includes fall damage, poison, hazardous blocks like cactus, fire, and magma, and hostile mobs. If those things are around and you're in a position where taking knockback is much less preferred than taking some damage, it would be wise to run into those hazards on purpose to decrease your odds of being knocked around.

• Cobwebs are another great utility to use. Cobwebs can either be used defensively or offensively. In defensive play, they're used to slow down a chasing opponent, useful to heal momentarily or manage your inventory. In offensive play, place a cobweb on someone and repeatedly strafe and crit someone out, or if you have harming arrows, pepper it on them by using a bow or a crossbow enchanted with Quick Charge III. Be aware though that cobwebs are also easy to escape, either by using ender pearls or with a water bucket. It is only possible to farm cobwebs with potions of weaving (which is somewhat difficult), so use them efficiently. One of the most effective ways to use cobwebs is to use them dynamically, by transitioning from defensive to offensive. Say your enemy is chasing you, and you trap them in a cobweb. You can follow up by webbing them more, blocking them in and lighting TNT around them, so your enemy has to deal with a potentially deadly threat while you can heal or prepare to catch them during their escape before they can react. Two other uses of cobweb are the Hit Web and Head Web.
  • A hit web is hitting your opponent (who will have to be close to you for this to work) and immediately placing a cobweb behind them, in the path of their KB. The advantage of this is that they are suspended in the air, making it harder for them to hit you back and giving you an easy setup, despite being mechanically somewhat difficult.
  • A head web is hitting your opponent against a wall and placing a cobweb in their head (third block up). If possible place blocks surrounding the web on all sides but the bottom. Hit their legs/feet. They won't be able to use water to escape, so used correctly this is a good way to quickdrop someone, or at least deal a huge amount of damage before they escape. An often overlooked aspect of the cobweb is their ability to prevent knockback, which can sometimes be a life saver if, say, you're about to get knocked off the map or if you know the enemy would put ender crystals in your face once they deal that knockback. Its even possible to simply place a cobweb under you while you're being comboed to end it then and there, although you'd best have a plan to get out before you are crit out.
  • Draining: Draining is spamming lava or an empty bucket on top of a cobweb that your opponent is in. If they use water to escape, the water will be destroyed and they will be trapped, not only keeping them in the web but stealing their escape method.

• Tipped arrows are one of the most powerful items in the game, and can give you a massive advantage if you bring them in the right situations. They're expensive and tedious to craft, but the payoff in bringing them is invaluable. Some tipped arrows such as the arrow of regeneration are downright useless in PvP scenarios, though, and the only useful ones in PvP combat are Harming II, Weakness, Slowness, Poison and Slow Falling. Slowness or even Turtle Master is great if you are to give chase, since it makes you faster than your opponent and makes them easier to hit, weakness is great for extended trades as they will do less damage to you. Slow falling makes it very difficult and slow for your opponent to crit. They glide through the air after taking knockback, making them easy to combo or crit since they can't control themselves. Hit Webs (detailed later) are far easier against them, as well.

• • Be aware that tipped arrows aren't affected by Infinity and are consumed as if Infinity wasn't enchanted on the bow, so your only choice is to bring a ton of tipped arrows if you want to spam them constantly, and use a stack of regular arrows if you still want to make use of your infinity bow, as that way, you wouldn't run out of arrows to shoot even if you run out of the tipped ones. A high power enchant combined with full charge could also override the harming arrows' effect (instant damage II) with its higher physical damage, which actually causes you to deal less damage with full charge than low charge since the tipped arrow effect ignores armor but the physical damage doesn't. Therefore, it is more advisable to use a crossbow with tipped arrows, as the piercing enchant goes through enemy shields and will apply tipped arrow debuffs, and if your enemy doesn't use a shield, multishot makes you fire a 3 arrow volley which is a lot harder to dodge than a single shot, and harming arrows will work no matter what, since it doesn't do enough physical damage to override its effects.

• Splash potions of Poison can help you in PVP. Poison constantly damages your opponent through their armor and messes up their movement with damage ticks. It can be countered with honey bottles which are stackable to 16 and quick to drink. When you poison someone you want to crit them out and drop them as fast as possible. Knockback hits are less effective as the damage ticks mess up and cancel their knockback. Extended poison messes up their movement for far longer but has none of the deadliness of Poison 2.

• Lava can be used to set your opponent on fire. The best method is to double click with your lava under your opponent so that you pick it back up but still ignite them. The basic goal of using lava is usually to deal a bit of damage and force your opponent to look down and douse themselves, giving you a window to hit them. This is best used after breaking your opponent's shield or another situation where you want to follow up on your opponent.
  • Standoff Breaking: If your opponent is staring at you with their shield held up, you can strafe to the side and use your lava on them, dodging their hit. Since their shield didn't break they can't “autohit” you. They will be forced to drop their shield and douse themselves, giving you an opening and dealing some damage.
  • Fire Pit: Not picking up your lava to instead leave it on your opponent, dealing higher damage and immobilizing your opponent completely until they use water. You can do this to punish an opponent who likes to not water themselves immediately. This is best used if you have lots of lava to spare. It gives you a ton of critical extra time, confusing your opponent and doing a fair amount of damage.
  • Burning: If you are caught on fire, it's possible to not douse yourself and begin to crit your opponent out. They will have difficulty hitting you away because the fire damage will mess up the knockback you take. Even better, place lava on them as well so that you are both on fire. Stand next to them so that if they take time to douse themselves, they accidentally douse you too!
  • Counter Lava: Using lava on your opponent to force them to water themselves, giving you time to do something else in return. Whether you need to escape a cobweb, heal, or reposition, this gives you a short break from their attacks.

• Water has many uses in PVP. It can be used to douse yourself if you are on fire, or placed on top of a cobweb to destroy the cobweb. It can also be placed on your opponent to slow them massively as they wade through the pool it creates. Once they are stuck it's your choice if you want to safely heal or attack them while you have an advantage. If you attack them, use critical hits as they can't escape them but don't take knockback from Knockback hits.

• Sponges can be used to get rid of your opponent's water. An especially effective use of sponges is to place them down after using lava or cobwebs on your opponent to prevent them from using water at all. If your opponent fully runs out of water, try to cobweb them or lava them as they wont have any way to rectify the situation.

• One usage of blocks is to place blocks below you to run above enemies cobwebs or water. Alternatively, destroy their water source blocks to drain them of their waters. Another is to place blocks in your enemies way. Alternatively, place a block in front of your opponent at about 4 blocks away. They will run into it and then not be able to sprint anymore. Not having forward momentum, they lose momentum reach AND can't knockback hit you, giving you a free hit usually.

XP management

In various kits, players are given stacks of bottle o' enchanting to repair their Mending armor. Without proper XP usage, you will waste a significant portion of your XP and your armor will break earlier.

Before repairing, make sure to back off way before your armor breaks (preferably when your helmet/boots dips to below 70 durability). Use XP bottles to heal your armor if it gets low. If your shield has mending, all the XP will go to healing your shield, so take off your shield while doing this (shields don't take enough damage to fully break during a fight, normally.) XP bottles heal all your armor evenly, but your armor has different amounts of durability. Your helmet will break while your chestplate still has 1/3 durability. XP bottles only heal armor pieces that you are wearing, though. Take off everything but your helmet and heal it to 100% durability. Now put on your boots and heal them to 80%. Now take them off and heal your leggings to 75%, and then chestplate to 70% durability. Also, make sure you're not too close to your enemy while repairing, since they can get free hits on you, wasting your bottles.

Playstyles

It's extremely important to know how to play and when. Knowing how to deal more damage than your opponent is necessary, but you have to be able to chain your manuevers and gameplay together to really press your advantages and turn a mess of hitting things into a cohesive playstyle. First we'll examine the two most basic playstyles, playing Defensively or Offensively, and how to counter those playstyles.

Defensive

The most common playstyle in SMPs, a defensive playstyle involves constantly keeping a little between your opponent and playing reactionarily. You will be playing slow and winning by Armor Drain, steadily but surely. This playstyle is very effective against players that seem to have good aim and fast mechanics, but have worse strategy and might be too eager to rush into things. This is how to pull it off using your kit.

• Open trades with KB hits (main the KB1 sword). Back away when they run or jump at you or use Crit Deflections, seeing if you can bait them into missing or getting into a bad position. This also can discourage them from rushing you too hard.
• The main purpose of your shield is to protect you from damage or save you from scary situations.
• Abuse Autohitting and Shield Sacrificing to get in a free KB hit. Back away and trade KB hits. Some players when they break your shield are desperate to follow up, so see if they expose themselves to a bait and punish them for it. Pearling away when your shield is disabled is also a good idea sometimes when playing defensively.
• Try to get the first hit in an exchange. Doing this will make it so you can back out of trades and escape while still up a hit.
• Make sure you heal your armor safely and correctly. This is always very much true, but if you throw your armor durability, this playstyle is useless.

Counters

Defensive players need two things: they need to be able to run away from you, and they need to safely survive to drain your resources.

• First, just play calm against them. Understand that they are going to be constantly trying to bait you, so don't make stupid aggressive moves if they could dodge out of it. Play very aggressively if you have an opportunity to punish them; once you get very close they might crumble.
• Play aggressive on a shield break. Be absolutely sure you use a technique from the Aggressive playstyle to stop them from running or hitting you away, to force them to fight you. Close to you with their shield down is the single worst situation for a defensive player to be in. Pearl after them when their shield breaks if you have to!
• Pearlchase your opponent if they are low. This gives you free hits when the heal and applies lots of pressure, and can give an opportunity to drop your opponent.
• Utilize every tactic you can to drop your opponent.

Aggressive

An aggressive playstyle is constantly pushing your opponent, never allowing more than a short break. It mostly relies on being able to play faster than your opponent, making them panic or forcing them into bad decisions. You are often able to drop your opponent when they can't escape your quick damage. It requires strong mechanical skill and versatility with melee mechanics.

• You rarely want to knock your opponent very far, or take KB much yourself. The No-KB sword will see a lot of use. Use No-KB crits, Pcrits, shielding, and jump resetting as much as possible so stay on them and allowing yourself to crit them constantly, dealing damage as fast as possible.
• Your shield is primarily for preventing knockback. If you are able to stay close to your opponent without being deflected or comboed, your crits will do all the rest. Blocking their much lower damage output isn't as important as continuing to crit them out.
• Make sure to follow up on shield breaks as much as possible with crit chains. Use No-KB stuns (a No-KB crit with an axe to disable their shield) and Single Click Disables (only click their shield once to not deal extra knockback) so that you are close to them once their shield is down.
• Keep a health advantage at all times so that you can afford to rush the other player at any moment and not worry about healing yourself. A lot of value will come by pushing your opponent when they need to heal; getting very close to them and spamming your shield so that they don't have an effective way to escape to heal.

Counters

Aggressive players want to disable your shield and catch you in a bad situation to crit you out. You're gonna need to react to all they're doing and avoid getting dropped at all costs.

• Adopting a very defensive playstyle is the most simple counter. Just bait them and punish them for their most aggressive moves to take the edge off of it. However, use your shield sparingly and cautiously unless you have a plan for if it gets disabled.
• Disabling their shield is a very important part of countering this playstyle, as otherwise all your attempts to hit them away can be blocked. Without a shield they are easy to crit deflect and combo.
• Instead of pearling out when low, pearl out when you won't be punished for it. If you get some distance from them, that's a safe time to heal you should capitalize on.
• You can use backstabs or sidesweeps occasionally. This relies on the fact that they constantly push into you as hard as they can to stop you from running, so switching playstyles and running into them will surprise them and they won't be in a good situation to counter it.

General

• When playing against an extremely defensive player, its possible to run into them and let them hit you first, and then counter their attack depending on what it is. Preferably you have an health advantage when doing this, but waiting for their hit will give you an opportunity to get a successful attack on them.

• When you and your opponent get very low, a good option is to offhand totem and rush your opponent in hopes of dropping them immediately. This strategy is slightly less effective in evaluation matches because you have only 1 totem, but in a real SMP, you can bring lots of them.

• Most skilled players have great reactions, but it takes more experience to change their playstyle on the go. If you begin playing very defensive, using crit deflections, combos, and backing out, they will most likely try to counter with something like a No-KB crit. This is easy to predict, and so you can counter by suddenly becoming very aggressive, double-critting, backstabbing, and pushing hard into them. Changing your playstyle is a good idea if your opponent seems to be predicting and outplaying you in exchanges.

• It is possible to neglect fire resistance potions. One player, Marlowww, became the best player in the world until she retired by using this strategy, but almost no other high level players have been able to use this strategy since. The concept is that by constantly taking fire ticks of damage, your opponent won't be able to correctly knock you back. If you want to try this playstyle, notice that your combos will be very hard to break, and crit deflecting you won't work quite right. You need to play fast, close, and aggressive.

Ping influence

Minecraft ping is coded differently from other games. The two differences are that you can hit a player when you can hit them on your computer, even if your opponent and the server agree you can't yet, and your knockback is delayed by your ping. If you have 100 ping, you only start taking knockback after the 1/10 a second has passed for your computer to find out you got hit. Fighting Ping: Any opponent that has ping has slower reactions. Strategies like No-KB crits that require immediate counters work very well. Their shield disabling will also be very delayed: you can get away with much more aggressive shield usage. Don't try to combo against ping as much because their knockback is delayed, giving them a window to hit you. If you do, use Silly Circle Hitting or side strafes to make them miss, since laggy players often have more trouble hitting you. Low ping players should play more defensively since they can react very quickly. Using Ping: You are far harder to combo on high ping, since your knockback is literally delayed, giving you an extra window to hit your opponents. Its better to be using an aggressive playstyle. Use the Spacing Techniques detailed earlier in the guide to get in constant extra hits and pcrits before knockback takes place. It's also more difficult for you to be KB hit away, so a crit spammy playstyle is very effective (and annoying) here.

PvP misconceptions

The world of PVP is vast as it takes place in a sandbox game, giving players many options, and not all of them are good, despite how tempting they may seem. A great way to learn your mistakes is to watch better players play and simply try to notice what's different. Why might they be playing that way or using that item?

Items

• Tridents

When the trident was released, players jumped to use the new PVP item, a versatile weapon for ranged and melee. However, sadly, when min-maxing in PVP, the trident falls short of an axe in melee and can't rival the bows damage in range. Tridents should therefore not be used as a weapon unless no other ranged option exists.

• Healing potions

Healing potions are sometimes considered popular, but this is largely due to faction servers such as Loka or older servers where better options were not available. Healing potions take up huge amounts of inventory and hotbar space and are outpaced by the stackable Golden Apple, which should be your go-to healing item.

• Harming potions

Harming Potions are able to bypass armor but cannot bypass the Protection enchant. They do not drain your opponent's durability either, giving you meager returns for so many inventory slots filled.

• Crossbows with firework rockets

Firework rockets are often said to do much more damage than they actually can in PVP. They can still be an effective way to drain your opponents armor durability and as a huge plus fill their screen with colors and effects. However, they are not the superweapon they can be made out to be.

• Sword without Knockback I in netherite PvP

Many players automatically bring a no-Knockback sword to PvP with netherite armor. While this can be a playstyle preference, netherite armor often makes combo hits completely ineffective when using a sword that does not have Knockback I. Knockback I levels the playing field again, making knockback similar to a no-Knockback sword versus diamond armor and letting you use your full range of tactics on them.

Strategies

• Overemphasis on ranged weapons

Despite the intuitiveness of ranged weapons, most ranged weapons deal lackluster damage against a geared opponent if compared to sword crits while shields offer a near impenetrable defense. Usage of ender pearls to rush archers is also a problem for bow-reliant players, where they can get many crits off while taking little damage in return for each engagement. Bows are a good tool for utility and chipping at your opponent, but not a primary weapon.

• Offhand totem

The totem of undying is a popular offhand choice, but there is one simple problem: It does not do anything. It should be used when you are very low health to prevent death, but when you aren't at risk of dying, a shield or other utility item will help you far more than the golden statue.

• Overreliance on an axe as the damage-dealer

A netherite axe with sharpness 5 and strength II will deal 19 damage, only 11% more damage than a sword would deal, despite the attack speed of under 2/3 the sword attack speed. Using the axe just for the extra damage is usually not a good tactic as you just don't get enough value from it. It's true value comes from its shield disabling ability. It should almost only be used either be used spam clicking to disable shields, or using a fully charged axe attack when you have the time to prevent your opponent from blocking it.

• Escaping cobwebs

Many players use water to escape cobwebs, as this is the most intuitive way. Indeed this is a solid option, but if ender pearls are available, always use them. Ender pearls are instant and can get you out much more smoothly, leaving no reason to let yourself get hit as you wash away the cobweb.

• Using milk

Milk is a common way to escape negative status effects. However, milk also removes your positive status effects, rendering it very niche. Strength, Speed and Fire Resistance are all crucial to have active. Honey is the superior alternative for clearing Poison specifically, as it can be stacked and does not clear positive status effects.

PvP kit tips

Sword

Basic tips:

• Learn to sprint-reset and S tap effectively.
• A lower DPI and a lower sensitivity is important to keep your crosshair steady on your opponent.
• Diamond sword isn't simply about getting your enemies in combos. You need to learn how to crit and jump-reset.
• As mentioned before, jump-resetting is incredibly useful in negating knockback.
• Most importantly, spacing and timing is important. Aim and strafing is useless without the aforementioned two.

Advanced tips:

• Sometimes you would meet people who have higher ping than others, making it challenging to defeat them as combos won't work. Try critting them out instead as combos are almost useless against them.
• Switch playstyles depending on the situation. Although it's important to have a main style, having backup styles won't be as bad, and if your opponent can decode your style, you can have plan B to defeat them.
• If on a p-crit trade, you can be unpredictable by immediately W-tapping them, which can mess up their aim. You can also do this when your opponent is trying to crit you out and you critted them once. This latter tip is called "Sprint Hit Deflection".

Axe

Axe is a very strategic gamemode. Autohitting and backstabbing are of great importance. It's very common to let the opponent disable your shield, autohit them, shoot them with a crossbow to push them away, and run until their shield is back. You need a good understanding of what each player has available to them, and therefore what move they want to make. Baiting your opponent into jumping could get you a free crit, turning the tide of the round. Bowing them near the end of the round when they have no shield might finish them off. At any moment you might only have one opportunity or play to make, and your job is to find it and execute it properly.

SMP (netherite)

Now each SMP might have a set of standard rules when it comes to fighting, such as netherite or certain potions being illegal. Even though this is the case, the tips here can still be used on SMPs regardless of their rules. For this kit, we're going to assume that the kit contains fully enchanted netherite armor, 2 netherite swords (one is fully enchanted with Knockback I, while the other doesn't have Knockback), a fully enchanted netherite axe, 2 stacks of gapples, one totem, around 4 stacks of pearls, a fully enchanted shield, 2 stacks of XP bottles and finally copious amounts of Strength II, Speed II and some Fire Resistance (8 minutes) potions.

Basic tips:

• Master the shield techniques, as well as sword techniques. These will be your biggest tools.
• Shield would be one of your biggest roadblocks in SMP fighting. Try to learn when your opponent is going to shield and disable it with an axe, giving you a huge opening.
• Pearl away at around 4 hearts, also you shouldn't pearl too close for your enemy to chase you, but also not too far that it would take some time to actually teleport you to the pearl.
• Deception: You can try to fake that you're low, eat 1 or 2 gapples to fill your saturation and play aggressively. Your opponent may naturally forget to heal since they thought you're on low HP, pushing you and accidentally dropping.
• Drain: Take as little hits as possible. Always heal away from your opponent so that they don't hurt your armor durability while you are healing.
• Knockback I sword can be a gamechanger. You can use techniques such as crit deflects and combos that are usually ineffective against netherite armor.

Crystal PVP

Crystal PVP is using end crystals and respawn anchors to defeat your opponent. End crystals and respawn anchors are capable of one-shotting players in full Protection IV netherite armor, and so it is generally regarded as the most powerful form of PvP. Many survival servers ban or disable these items, and even on those that do, getting large quantities of crystals and anchors can be time consuming and expensive.

• • Gearing Up
    • At least a stack of obsidian, end crystals, respawn anchors, and glowstone blocks as your main weapons.
    • Bring as many totems of undying as you can since they will be your main method of staying alive.
    • A piercing or multishot crossbow with arrows tipped with slow falling to make it harder for your opponent to seek the low ground. Weakness arrows may also be used to prevent the opponent from detonating crystals with their fist, as long as they do not have Strength II active.
    • Instead of Protection IV on your leggings, Blast Protection IV is preferred in crystal PvP. You can always have a Protection IV leggings in your inventory or ender chest as a back-up in case you find yourself in a sword fight situation.
  • Items and Mechanics
    • End crystal: End crystals can be placed on top of obsidian or bedrock blocks by right clicking obsidian with the end crystal. Any damage will explode an end crystal, causing it to deal damage that can be blocked by a shield. End Crystal damage is vastly higher if your legs are on the same or higher Y level than the end crystal. It's also not possible to place an end crystal if its hitbox would conflict with another entity hitbox such as another player or dropped item.
    • Respawn anchor: Respawn anchors can be placed in the Overworld or end and then charged with 1-4 glowstone blocks (charge has no impact on damage). Once charged they can be set off by right clicking them, dealing damage in the same fashion as an end crystal and creating a large, fiery crater.
  • Strategy: Crystal PvP is all about being lower than your opponent and setting off your explosives so that they damage them far more than they damage you.
    • Ledge crystal: Running off of a ledge that you and your opponent were both on, putting down an obsidian and spamming crystals into the obsidian.
    • Hit crystal: Hitting your opponent, then placing an obsidian and spamming crystals into the obsidian while they are in the air. It's best to use a sword enchanted with Knockback 1 to hit your opponent.
    • Safe anchor: Placing a respawn anchor in front of you and any block in between you and the anchor. That will shield your legs from the damage of the explosion, but still harm your opponent.
    • Blocking off: If there is a block of obsidian under or around you where you might get crystalled, it's a good idea to quickly cover it up with other blocks so that end crystals can't be placed on the obsidian.
    • Double tap: Hit your opponent with a sword then immediately place an obsidian and blow up a crystal. Then, right when your opponent stops flashing red, blow up a second crystal to double-pop your opponent. This instantly kills any player holding only 1 totem. However, this requires strategic timing as the second crystal cannot be too late or too early.
    • Double handing: Essentially, this means holding 2 totems to avoid dying to a double-pop. You can have a slot in your hotbar for a totem and bind a hotkey to that slot. Right when you feel like you are going to get popped, switch your main hand to that hotbar totem by pressing the hotkey.
    • Pearl flash/abuse: After you pearl, you will have a damage tick, during which your opponents cannot deal knockback to you. By exploiting this, you can avoid getting hit by your opponent. This can be used both as a defensive mechanism, or you can use it to instantly perform a hit crystal on your opponent. If your opponent face-places, remember to pearl directly at your feet to not get caught in the crystal.
    • Face Placing: Place an obsidian right in front of you and spam crystals. This is to counter pearl flashing as crystals can catch your opponent's incoming pearl, which usually throws them off (sometimes it can straight up pop them).
    • Retoteming and inventory management: When you get popped, you will need to restock the popped totem either in your hotbar or offhand. This requires you to go into your inventory and quickly hover your mouse over a totem, then immediately press the offhand key or hotbar totem key to put the totem in the corresponding slot. (For example, if your switch to offhand is binded to "F", hover over a totem and press F; if your hotbar slot for the hotbar totem is binded to "V", hover over a totem and press V). To make this process as fast and accurate as possible, you should put all your totems around the center of your inventory, which requires good inventory management. When you are having difficulty retoteming due to them being to far from the center, you can disengage from the fight temporarily to fix your inventory.
    • Hit crystal (Advanced): As previously mentioned, you can combine pearl flashing and hit crystal to instantly perform an attack on your opponent. To achieve this, first step is to aim your pearl at your opponent's feet then throw it. Then, immediately start spam clicking while your crosshair is facing the general direction of your opponent. This allows you to instantly hit your opponent up in the air right when your pearl lands next to them and perform a hit crystal/double tap instantly.

Pot PvP (diamond)

Basic tips:

• Although the standard sword kit provides the foundation of how to fight, your aim would drastically be changed due to the Speed II effect present in the kit. Therefore it's advisable for players to play at Speed kit (sometimes labelled as ninja) to get the hang of the new speed effect.
• Healing and refill speed plays a big role, as well as hotkeying. Modify your keybinds to what suit you the best. Although scrollwheeling may be great for starters, it would be very annoying in the long run and a player who relies on hotkeys rather than the scrollwheel will most of the time heal faster than a scrollwheel player. For refills (putting pots in your hotbar), practice butterfly clicking, shift and accurately pinpointing the pots you want.
• Try to play close to your opponent with crits and jump resets if they are low, so that you can hit them and steal the potion effects when they turn to heal.

Pot PvP (netherite)

Basic tips:

• Your main fighting style in this kit is p-critting with occasional knockback hits to keep some distance and get extra hits on your opponent.
• Golden apples should be on your offhand, don't put a totem unless you're going to do Deivi popping (explained later) since with a totem on your offhand, you'd have to hotkey to your golden apples, unlike when your gapples are on your offhand, you can just hold right click to eat. This makes it so you don't have to reset your attack timer after eating.
• You can combo opponents but don't make this your main style, as netherite armor has a passive knockback resistance that cancels out knockback, as well as jump resetting. Hit-selecting also doesn't work so don't mainly rely on your sword skills to win in nethpot fights, as critting and timing are much more important.
• Never use a scrollwheel, force yourself to use your keybinds to pot fast.
• Deception: Try to run away for a moment and at the least expected moment, W-tap them afront and combo them. You can also crit them out instead of W-tapping depending on your preference.

Advanced tips:

• Mirroring: When your opponent gaps, you gap right after them. This results in you having more healing than your opponent.
• Strafing: When in a p-crit trade, press S then W-tap to combo an opponent.
• Deivi Popping: A technique created by Deivi_17. When low on effects, offhand a totem, make sure you have at least 2 healing pots, a strength and a swiftness pot. Then do a suicidal move, after your totem pops, immediately splash all your pots to win in an engagement. Not recommended when your opponent has a way higher HP than you (like more than 6 hearts) and when they gap as well.

UHC PvP

UHC is unique for a reason, that is because of a game mechanic being absent, the ability to heal naturally. This meant that you can't heal on food alone, and you'd need the regen and absorption from golden apples to heal. Aside from that, UHC has a diverse inventory of melee, ranged weapons and utilities that players can use to their advantage.

Players must be fast at hotkeying, and scrollwheels won't simply cut it, since hotkeys are more accurate and faster. Second, players must know how to use each utility to their advantage, and must know when to fight defensively to drain or offensively to drop your opponent. Blocks for example, can be used not only to build/bridge up but also to put out a lava or a water source block when placed down. Its an interesting mix of the melee combat similar to SMP kit and intense mastery of usage of utility items.

PvP building

Structures

Standard base

• A base made of cobblestone with several chests and beds for allies.

Heavy base

• A base made of 3 layers of cobblestone and about 50 beds and over 100-150 chests. Recommended to have a tree farm.

Hidden base

• Very small, but easily camouflageable. Do not make this base more than 15 blocks wide, or it will lose its ability to hide. Cave or jungle biomes are your best bet for making this base. To hide its identity more, add leaves and other natural resources around it. You could even add portal entrances to the base, so baddies cannot infiltrate inside the base from outside.

Factory

• Not really a base, but produces resources and holds some player. Has about 50 beds and tons of chests. As the name suggests, this is where you get most supplies, but make sure your other bases have mini factories too. Have tree farms, ranches, mob grinders, experience farms, crops, cobblestone generators, and stockpiles. Have people who run it, and people who defend it. Make sure to add minecart rails and tunnels to transport supplies and people from the factory to the bases. A self destruct machine is helpful to avoid it falling into enemy hands. Make sure it has farms to produce food, potions/nether wart, iron and other minerals, and wood and stone!

Destroyer

• A huge sky base with beds and chests with people monitoring the outside with dispenser turrets and other advanced weaponry. The only way for it to be destroyed fast would be lots of TNT. If you wish to mass-produce these, you really should build a cobblestone generator.

Battlecruiser

• A medium-sized sky base with enough space for 100 troops and lots of storage and requires lots of cobblestone.

Turret

• A redstone turret with a redstone clock and a rapid fire redstone gun that shoots about 3 arrows per second. Recommended for the guns to be high and blocked off.

Cobble farm

• Recommended to mass-produce everything above. Creates cobblestone with lava and water.

Brewery

• Made of about 3 layers of cobble, with creeper and witch farms (or just a lot of chests with these materials in them) and dispenser guns. Make sure to have about 10 brewing stands and people operating them, with about 20-30 beds and chests. Put splash potions of harming, poison, and weakness in the guns, hook up a redstone clock and watch the fireworks.

Item stash

• An items stash is a small (no more than 4×4×2), completely camouflaged room with a few double chests loaded with equipment. Because they rely on not being detected, their locations should be only known to trusted members. The ideal location to build one is underground but in a location where no-body would dig. For example, near but not in a surface cave since the player trying to mine would just go down the cave.

Redstone base

• This house is the trap of them all! Make the house look inviting, iron blocks behind the glass, chests everywhere, and maybe a sign that was "supposed" to be to a friend for a secret entrance. They walk in the door, see the chests, and open them, only the chests are trapped chests! When they are activated, you can have them shoot arrows, lava, or even TNT! Make sure to add a piston that blocks the door when the chest is opened too!

Troops

Standard

• The stock iron. The most basic troop is equipped with full iron armor, an iron sword or axe, a shield, a bow and stack of arrows (or Infinity Bow and an Arrow) and a cheap source of healing such as steaks. These are fairly cheap but are able to deal and withstand moderate amounts of damage.

Officers and commanders

• Higher-ranked players or commanders or those of exceptional PvP skill are those who benefit most from superior equipment. They should be armed with enchanted iron or diamond armor, enchanted iron or diamond weapons, Unbreaking shield, enchanted bow possibly with tipped arrows as well as a few higher-quality sources of healing such as potions or golden apples as well as lesser sources of healing such as steaks. Given this level of equipment is usually given to more skilled players, they should be able to deal and survive significant amounts of damage.

Gunners and other ranged specialists

• Owing to preferring ranged combat over melee combat, these units can afford to be less equipped defensively. Chain armor is acceptable, though shields should still be kept as they are nonetheless useful for protection from enemy ranged attacks. Beyond that, arm them with their preferred ranged weapon (bows, potions or redstone materials etc.) and place them away from melee combat. If armor is to be enchanted, consider Projectile Protection, as ranged units shouldn't ever be engaging enemies in melee range. Generally dishes out and survives high damage at range, unable to survive much damage at melee.

Monitors and other defensive units

• The key difference between a Monitor and a Stock Iron is the former is defending a fortification with numerous advantages for the defender. Can be a Stock Iron put in charge of defense, can be someone better equipped. Regardless, they should be trained in operating any defensive redstone as well be capable of ranged attacks (and armed with extra ranged weapons if able) as to attack the enemy before they breach the defenses. Superior damage and survivability compared to enemy units due to advantageous terrain.

Pilot

• Equiped with elytra, firework rockets for boosting oneself in midair, and a fully enchanted bow and crossbow for dealing damage from above. Try equipping potions if aim is good. A Knockback II sword is also good if your enemy has the same ideas. Pack a lot of steak and arrows (or Infinity). Favor hit-and-run tactics, lack of a chestplate and use of Projectile Protection results in poor melee durability.

Juggernaut

• Frequently overlaps with Officers and Commanders, a Juggernaut is an experienced PvP’er of noteworthy skill equipped with enchanted diamond or netherite gear. Aside from higher grades of armor and weapons, they should also be equipped with ample healing including potions and golden apples to ensure they survive. These are the strongest units and the difference of power level can allow one of these to fight several Stock Irons at once and win.

Factions

This can be done with a Factions plugin or through other means. This is when a group attempts to irreparably exterminate members on another group and later destroy or loot all property of the said group. These can range from a surprise attack to a formal challenge of two armies, and can have up to hundreds of warriors on either side (though this is extremely rare and may cause lag). In some servers, you may be asked to pick a team without knowing who is on it.

Sabotage

If you can't hurt them from the outside, hurt them from the inside! If possible, join your enemy faction while you are still able to. If you get into their base as a faction member, wait until the faction moderators are all offline. This is the best time to strike. Take their best valuables, then break the furnaces, chests, and burn the items with a flint & steel. If they have a water mine, block the water. If they have a staircase mine, put a lava or two at the top. Go to the "/f home" and dig a hole. Put lava in it, from the ceiling and make a wall so as soon as they "/f home" they will constantly respawn in lava. If you have spare lava, fill the place with it! Make sure that there aren't any hidden chests, and destroy the farms if no one in the faction catches on. If possible, if they don't know you griefed/raided them, wait until they repair their bases with more food/loot and restart the process! Remember to give loot to your actual team after each raid.

Infiltration

In most, if not all faction servers, there is a plugin that allows factions to claim chunks of land. If you are raiding a base, there is a 99% chance that they have claimed their base. So how do you get in? Here's how.

Scouting out weaknesses

• Occasionally, your enemy may have carelessly built part of their wall in unclaimed territory, allowing you to simply mine away the wall. They could have also left a hole or entrance connection their base to the outside, negating the need for you to make your own entrances. Finally, a wooden base is incredibly flammable and there is a flint and steel you can craft...

Using a TNT cannon

• Any block except obsidian or bedrock will break down with a couple of well-aimed TNT blasts. Set up your cannon and fire away until the walls comes tumbling down. Do note that certain servers have plugins that enable obsidian to be destroyed by a sufficient amount of TNT. If that's the case, then set up your TNT cannon and blow up a hole in it. There are bases that have obsidian covered in water, you CAN TNT-cannon in, but before that, either you have to turn that water to cobblestone or you have to fire sand in using the TNT cannon. Then after you've covered the water, fire your TNT in, now you have a hole to enter their base. If these servers do not have these modifications, on servers with the essentials plugin (Basically every factions server), if you sethome in a "dangerous" thing, such as lava and water, it will teleport you to the safest place. Abusing this glitch to get into bases where they have water underneath them or on top of them to prevent from being exploded, you can sethome at the side of the base in the water, walk away and use your command to go to that home, usually, you will be teleported inside of the base, but a way to counter this is to layer your base twice, what this means is you put a second layer around your base that can fit a player on all sides, then create a box inside of there, then even if someone glitches in, they are stuck in the outside layer and cannot get to your chests. You can also build hidden cannons for a surprise raid. TNT cannons can combine with bombing flying machines and elytra pilots perfectly.

Ender pearling:

• If you throw an ender pearl up at a roof, your head will get stuck in it, and if you throw another ender pearl up while in that state, the ender pearl will go through the roof. A way to combat this is to make your ordinary floor, dig 1 block below each block of your floor, and fill it with lava. Note that some servers prevent ender pearling right next to a block.

Raiding

If you intend to explore the full tactical armory of PvP, then a helpful one and likely the first is the raid. Simply put, a raid is the theft of materials from the property of another player and killing enemy team members. Raids can have pros, such as drain the opponent's resources that could later have been used against you, and increasing your own resources. However they can also have cons, such as increasing the likelyhood of you being made a target by others. Generally, raids are worth the risk.

There are three different types of faction raids: TNT raid

• Most of the time, nobody in a faction is online. In this case, simply bash the walls with TNT and then steal everything from the chests. This is difficult on underground and obsidian bases though, which is why usually you will do a…

Claim raid

• This means that you will simply kill players in the opposing faction when they are online and claim their land. This is the only way to raid factions with huge obsidian walls.

Stealth raid

• Though it is possible, but really hard, your faction can send a few of your faction members to attempt to raid the base without being seen. This is especially useful, if the enemy's base isn't tightly secured, but stealth is most likely playing Russian roulette.

There are two objects that are absolutely necessary if you want the raid to be effective and efficient:

• Lots of food (such as steak, porkchops, golden carrots, and golden apples).
• An Efficiency V diamond/netherite pickaxe (you can combine two Efficiency IV enchanted books in an anvil or put one of the Efficiency IV enchanted books on the Efficiency IV pickaxe to get an Efficiency V pickaxe).

The first is always needed since this may take some time. However, you may wonder why the list contains an enchanted diamond pick. It's because you can break almost anything fast. Without a powerful pick like this, the odds are that the owner will have mowed you down before you could even get inside their base! Therefore, you must be fast.

Choosing a base is easy, and really, an unmanned base is a dead base. When a minimal amount of people are manning the base, then you can strike. Steal all goods. Remember that your point is sabotage, and so you should dispose of all you didn't steal. If you really want to damage them, clog all entry points. Don't stay around too long, though. Take a minute longer and they might be online and hunting you down, in the end you're just wasting your time.

Tips

• If a faction is reinforced with obsidian, it's likely they'd leave a door or something for ease of access. Enter there if necessary.
• If you just want the enemy's equipment, then do it when nobody's around the base.
• Creepers will be easier to control than TNT since you can lure them to the enemy's walls. Just be sure to wear some armor.
• To find some bases, you can just randomly teleport to some people in the server, if there is a teleport trap where you cannot get out, usually you can sethome in that place as you are dying, come back with new gear and go try to kill them as they open it up to get the items, if it is a hole trap where they just hit you try to ender pearls out, people mostly idiotically make these smack dab in their base, so now you can get all of their items, setting home in a base is a effective way to raid, as you can raid while they are offline, if it is an enemy's territory, it is not known commonly that you can do /esethome and you can sethome in an enemy base.
• If you know the base coordinates, go into the Nether. Walk/teleport to your enemy's coordinates divided by eight. Build a portal, and when you go back to the Overworld, you will be in the enemy's base.

Planning

Keep in mind that faction wars are not always about combat. It's about preparations and knowledge in order to turn the tide exponentially in your favor, such as how you can slay a player in diamond armor with only iron armor and win a battle before going out to war. You can't rush into an attack, you need to plan it. There's lots of ways to get a kill without having to fairly "fight" your opponent.

Now say a new enemy has come and they have Protection IV armor, with a Sharpness V sword, and an obsidian base. Attacking them would be suicidal in a fair fight (unless you have better equipment). First, send someone to scout their base while you prepare a full assault. TNT their base and ruin the defenses. This allows you to eliminate their source of power. Then, send someone to cause a diversion to distract them. They'll be chased all the way until they come back and finds the smoldering ruin that was their home. Lead them to a premade trap such as a TNT minecart bomb and detonate it as they chase you over it. No matter how geared they are, they will be killed and their base will be undefended.

Always make sure every fight is strongly in your favor. Go to reasonable lengths to ensure you can attack, but they cannot retaliate, or sacrifice to gain power, such as you losing 10HP through snowballing them, but in the process breaking their diamond armor.

Faction wars are not always about fighting. Although the point of a Faction War is to demolish, a clear assessment about the other side is helpful in doing so. Let's go into another scenario. Another faction is the strongest faction but is secretive, stealthy, mean, and rich. Your faction has never liked them, and in fact, hated them. But in terms of pure force, your faction is outclassed. They need you. Now, they equip you with invisibility potions, a diamond sword, a bucket of milk, a splash potion of poison and 3 of Harming, a bow with 128 arrows, and 32 pieces of pork. Throw in some Fireworks for distractions, and you're ready to go. The whole faction depends on you!

Now, as a spy, don't ever alert them to your position, because even if they don't know who you are, you are someone sneaking around their base, and they will pursue. To do that, you must follow some steps.

• Leave an object to hold Shift to sneak and make it so that nobody sees your nametag. You don't have to sneak if you are invisible, but you will leave particles if you run. Don't run ever.
• Make no noise, under any circumstances. To recap: no noise ever!
• If they catch you, they will certainly declare war. Kill yourself with permission from the faction leaders unless in hardcore to escape discovery if they are closing in. Be warned that you must use fire or risk your item drops being seen. Alternatively, if the server allows it, teleport out using /tp <player>. You may also use the command /respawn if you are in enemy territory.
• Even if you know you aren't in reach of one, setting off a trap gives you away! Even if you are safe from it, setting it off may also alert whoever is in the control room. Take alternate routes. The only reason to try to defuse a trap is if there is no other way. Or if there is no other way because of people blocking you, you can set off the trap on purpose to direct attention to hide and kill anyone who comes to check the trap out.
• Always have an escape route. (ex. Ender Pearls, /spawn or /tp, etc.…) If enemies have set their particles to "all" in the options, they CAN see potion particles emanating from your invisible character and you need a way to avoid being discovered.
• Distraction can help (Fireworks, Snowballs, and Eggs) but this can backfire, as most of the time a base will go on high alert if guards keep finding baby chickens in the corridors.

Make note of details, as intelligence is most important as it can get you get one step closer to victory. Do not forget that secrecy is required. Report back to your base once you think you have more than enough information on the enemy and that is when you can declare war. Another trick is to (if in a faction server) station your teammates nearby. (Say, a mountain bunker in the distance) That way, if you are caught and running for your life, you can send a distress signal or flares (The most obvious thing would be fireworks). One other trick is to pay attention to what you hear. Say you are in the base, and you hear someone munching on food. Avoid them as quickly as you can. If you hear a nether portal, then your team may be able to build a corresponding portal in the Nether and invade through the enemy's portal.

Base building

Building a base to protect yourself from the diamond swords and the arrows? Good work! Here are some tips to help you make your base even more efficient:

Size

• Bigger may not be better, as a visible structure gains visibility the larger it is, and leaves more space unguarded. On the flip side, big bases are good for large amounts of people that are working on something together, and can hold more munitions. A small base is also dangerous, because it will be easily demolished.

Type

• One effective type of base is a base that is deep underground. Here enemies will take days to hunt you down, while you survive on a farm and branch mine for diamonds. Another base, meant for continuous habitation, is far above the world. Therefore enemies will be required to build up to it. Unless a prohibitively expensive defensive structure is used to get up, they can be easily pummeled with arrows, a single one of which could send them falling to their death or at least making them restart. For sky fortress builders, the most important rule is to not have any spots that are out of the fortresses' archers' line-of-sight. Try building the bottom floor in a "multiple ring" shape to do this. Also, make a disabled nether portal that will upon activation become an escape (disable it to ensure that it cannot accidentally link up to another portal). Bases in mid-air are effective during a raid, when manned, as entry is all but impossible. Again, this base type is best for continuous habitation, but it is only slightly more protected than a house on the ground if nobody is manning it. Also make sure to put cobwebs all over the bottom to stop ender pearl glitching.

Defenses

• Every good base needs traps and defenses! First of all, we have the wall. A good wall should contain at least one obsidian or water layer to shield explosive force, and require at least one minute to mine through with an unenchanted diamond pickaxe. To further prolong base penetration, chessboard wood and cobble to force players to slowly break wood or switch from axe to pick. Traps are great defenses to surprise enemies that make it through the wall, but are generally not infallible. Note that self building walls can be useful during an attack to repair severe damage (aka the TNT equivalent of a bunker missile). However, remember that a trespasser will not simply pound at the wall forever (unless they are monotonously dedicated to it). Eventually, they will most likely climb it with blocks, or disable it by destroying the mechanism.

Allies

• This is one of the great secrets to PvP mastery! Trustworthy allies can be useful in many tasks, from grunt work to being the safe keeper of your gold. Be careful whom you choose for an ally, as treachery or lack of skill can easily hamper or destroy your attempts to thrive in PvP. Haste in that aspect is generally a waste.

Factions plugin-specific

• If the server you're playing on has the Factions plugin, you can create an impenetrable base with water and cheap walls. To do this, dig a hole along the border of claimed land (INSIDE your faction land, otherwise it can be blocked up or destroyed) all the way to bedrock. Next, cover your base with water, including the sides and roof, and let it flow down to bedrock. Make sure TNT cannot land anywhere in the base. There should be no blocks connecting your base to the wilderness. The water acts as a shield, making your base invulnerable to TNT, and impassable by enemies. The only way to counter this is make a sand/gravel cannon (a TNT cannon that shoots the falling gravel/sand instead). This can also be countered by a team of people using Wither. You can also bring elder guardians (if possible on the server) and bury them near the outside walls in obsidian, then build a wall of waterlogged stairs around the base. You can then cover that in another layer of water, forcing the enemy to use a Wither. You can use this to your advantage and get your whole team a smite V sword to shred the Wither(s) along with sharpness V to deal with the players after the Wither dies.

Skybase

• Gather enough dirt to build to the build limit (about 3 stacks). Then pillar jump with all of it, or until you reach the build limit. Then dig 17 blocks down. Place 1 obsidian by pillar jumping with it, mark that corner, then build a 12×12 obsidian platform. (Set home to platform if /home is enabled!) Then find the corner you marked, dig down, (you should see dirt, and not fall), dig 2 more dirt down, replace the obsidian, and coat the bottom with lava. (Fire Resistance is highly recommended) Ender pearl down, dig the bottom block of dirt, and dig a 12×12×2 trench where the lava lands. Then teleport up, either with an ender pearl (may take multiple tries) or /home. You can now add the necessary items to your new base as needed. And finally, add redstone blocks around the edge, and build rings around the platform at a lower level for archers and potion lobbers to walk on.

Security

• If enemies can easily blow up walls and tunnel through them, reinforce the walls with rings of obsidian embedded in it to break TNT impact and deter speedy tunneling, and coat with water. To prevent glitching in, create two layers, the first layer is one that someone can teleport into with the teleport glitch (explained earlier) with a place on every side that a player can get into, then create a box in the middle, the second layer so that the person who glitched in cannot get to your chests, put two coats of obsidian on this layer so that the person cannot block glitch into your chests.
• If an elytra attack gets you quite often, build tall ladder shafts around the perimeter so that you can climb them and shoot off the enemy.
• If enemies eventually get through your walls, put lava falls to help deter them and have archers constantly patrolling the walls. The Nether is a great source for obtaining mass quantities of lava.
• If enemies tunnel under your base, dig a long 1 block wide trench all around your base beyond the walls all the way to bedrock. Occasionally look down it, and if you spot any gaps in the "canyon" in the form of tunnels, ladder down and attack.
• If enemies have gotten in and you are hiding inside blocks, use an inactive nether portal within your base so you can portal away, build your base around an end portal, and/or build tunnels.

Self-destruct and escape

• If the base is being raided, and your hand is forced, activate the self-destruct on your base. It is important to keep one on hand at all times and also have an escape. The self-destruct must be designed to overwhelmingly destroy all life and loot inside the base and the base itself but also be well-hidden. This is hard and so you should experiment. In times of need, start the lethal countdown and escape. Ender chests are good for these kinds of bases, as they don't drop their content and it can be accessed anywhere as long as you have another one. Escape pods are essential for above-ground bases as they can drop you deep underground into a water spot, where you can dig (possibly minecart) yourself up to the ground and escape with your friends (if you have more than just one pod) to far away from the base. You can lock the escape pods with pistons to prevent enemies follow you when attempting to escape.

Keep in touch

• Not all of your faction skirmishes in the PvP world will be set up beforehand. Organize raids with your faction. Find some server to host a voice chat box with your teammates. This will allow you to coordinate your attacks on hostile bases and their creations. The more connected you are with your fellow faction members, the more likely you are to emerge victorious. Keep in touch with them and increase your odds of success.

Keep your own bases

• Let's say that you have just moved in with your awesome new faction. They have diamonds, dozens of anvils, and general awesomeness. Now, a faction war has started, and you have no base, no food, nothing except what the faction gave you. This is dangerous. In the event the faction fails, you are defenseless. Trust nobody and keep a secret base all to yourself. Put a home there and be safe from pursuers and spawn campers. Be ready! If you need to and fear that the faction is about to fall, steal some items and leave the faction when necessary.

Escape

• If your group's/faction's leader has been killed, or you just feel like it, don't be afraid to go rogue. In order to do so successfully, you need to follow certain rules. First, you need to either decide whether you want to be a wandering rogue, or a bandit-style rogue. Wandering rogue life is relatively simple. You wander around, and occasionally raid abandoned or unguarded bases, and avoiding other players at all costs. If you decide on this, you can refer to the nomadic experience tutorial to help you get started. If you want to be a bandit-style rogue, however, then you need a top secret base of operations, and lots of equipment. Only engage people if you are 100% sure you can win, and escape as quickly as possible. Trust no one, let no one see you. Although the life of a rogue may not be as action-packed as being in a faction, it is certainly profitable, and once you have enough stuff, you might be able to join a new faction, either to settle down or backstab them, get their stuff, and move on to the next gullible faction.

Mass battle

PvP in large factions can include multiple scenarios, from individual murders or attempts to murder, to entire factions battling it out with lines of defense, barricades, and tunnels.

Open-field battle

• An open field battle is the combat of multiple factions in an open area. This can cause chaos and may lead to a slaughter in the right conditions. Be sure to be well-stocked for this. The open field battle playstyle is to have minimal life lost on your side no matter what, even above the victory itself. With lots of people on one side, as well as regeneration from a full hunger bar slowly healing each player (and health potions), the whole army in general is almost continuously regaining health. (If your army's hunger bar isn't full, you shouldn't be in a battle!) Since all the opponent's damage is not placed in a concentrated area, every person alive is in a sense helping heal others. When someone dies, their regeneration and health is lost. So is their ability to fight, and the formation they were in is weakened, so momentum in terms of a steady advance is lost. Therefore, minimal life loss is the goal throughout the battle.

There are three major melee builds, which will be discussed more in depth later. They are:

• Juggernaut
  • These are heavily enchanted soldiers. Highly costly to make!
• Infantry
  • These are normally armored soldiers without enchantments. They are cheap on everything but Iron.
• Exotic
  • These are users of exotic weapons (such as many potions, TNT, or professional archers) with varying armor levels. They are not difficult but suicidal hard in certain cases. Not costly, but it takes time to make. Their purpose is to deploy an unusual weapon such as debuffs or explosions on their opponents.

Mass battle mistakes

• Charging the enemy.
  • Charging the enemy is a waste of time and durability due to damage distribution. It is also near-suicidal due to the large number of weapons present.
• Running from the main areas of combat to camp the areas nobody goes to.
  • Running wastes time as well and is both cowardly and counterproductive, as then damage distribution will be far less useful.

Instead, have all your soldiers in a group and have a continuously switching front line.

• The first situation is if the enemy has large numbers of archers. Send a wave of soldiers charging in, with moderate armor, and some skill, as well as some Special units to cause some starting chaos in their lines. Even better, get some ender pearls and rush in to engage the archers, who will often be weaker in melee combat. If they don't have archers, they will run or charge. If they run, have archers retreat to the back lines and then have the whole army sprint, bunching Juggernauts close to the front line while staying together, for maximum impact. If they charge, stop their forward momentum with arrows, shooting when they are 10–15 meters away. Then the infantry should then fight for a bit, while juggernauts and potion lobbers move in at sprinting speed to surge into enemy lines and later replace the infantry and slaughter anyone that was engaging the infantry. Make sure that the juggernauts and potion lobbers do this carefully, as the enemy infantry may have lethal potions. However, in general, the enemy can do little versus Juggernauts and potion lobbers coming in from a flank as well as a defensive row of Exotics to stop enemy Juggernauts from advancing effectively.

However, if you are on the attack, there are some threats to your advance you must take into account.

• A massed force of archers or snipers (these can really break a big section of the front line off. Terminate them as soon as possible.)
• A hardened, continually blocking front line (these are really hard to fight by, but you can bait them just by having a player sprint near them and run away.)

Then charge with infantry, followed immediately by exotics. The juggernauts among you should flank around and smash the enemy infantry after a few seconds of fighting. The Exotics should only engage juggernauts in combat, and only with superior numbers. In this situation, have archers aim for infantry advancing toward the fight, NOT the enemy front line, where you could shoot one of your own men. One can make some professional charging units with horses. Never have everyone charge at once. They will lose momentum and a solid position, while also becoming less cohesive which causes less damage distribution. Retreat, while also dangerous, is far safer.

Server war

A server wars is a mass battle with a large quantity of the server's playerbase participating. The attacking parties are typically organized and well armed. They launch an attack big enough to cause a disturbance on the server. Another party, typically admins, retaliates against this attack. If the retaliating party is composed of admins, it will typically resort to Intel and the power to ban players. However, admins will counterattack with weapons in the process of banning the attacking players. Unless they allow griefing of course.

In an all out server war, you have two choices: you can either fight for one of the two parties, or you can flee to safety and let the admins sort it out.

• Most players decide to fight for their server, however, players who have a lot of resources like diamond might feel the need to protect their precious resources and flee to safety. If you decide to join the party that is defending the server, you don't really need to worry about firepower since you will probably be armed by fellow soldiers. If you join the attacking party, you should equip enchanted weapons with high damage. It is also good to equip weapons of mass destruction such as TNT, end crystals, lava buckets, etc. You should do everything in your power to keep your nametag hidden if you don't want to be banned. Being banned means you are out of the server, and out of the war. You can no longer fight alongside your comrades. When you are fighting with the attacking party, you typically want to destroy as much as possible and invade as much of the server as you can. A good tip? Drink an invisibility potion, arm yourself with end crystals and blast protection armor, and let the terrorist bombings commence on anyone you see, especially the ones that are insecure.

Remember, the retaliating party doesn't always win even though they seem like the "underdogs". Server wars are won with great soldiers, and most importantly, great leaders. You don't have to be a "grizzled" war veteran to be a great general, a great general is someone who is smart and fights alongside their soldiers. Remember, great generals take point, they don't watch from a safe distance and bark orders while watching their fellow players get slaughtered. Also, if the server has mods equipped, especially mods like "flans mod", "flintlock weapons mod", or "Mo' explosives mod", use that to your advantage! Because of the nature and the danger of these wars, the mechanics of these "groups" of people that are attempting to overthrow the server will be explained.

Generally, the group may know each-other personally. If three friends chose to do this, and each friend tells two of their friends, then we already have nine people ready to attack. Doing this makes it easier to create order and hierarchy. This is also done to deter any traitors or turncoats in the group. Some of these groups go into faction servers, claim land, and make a legitimate faction. They will probably use the faction as a temporary "bank" for what they steal and make. They will build a secondary base, and will use this when they attack. They are highly armed, and are equipped with heavy enchants, potions, lava buckets, redstone, TNT, and whatever the Modifications on the server make available. They disband the faction, and move to the other base and create a new faction, (if they make one at all) and begin their attack, or they may each stay factionless (to avoid detection) and cause great destruction to large bases using the exploits above, communicating attacks via a third-party social platform.

There is a hierarchy involving the status and rank of the players usually, there are generals of the troops that go to battle. They are on the battlefield. And they command the players to attack. But these generals get their orders from one player. This player is the equivalent to the "god father". They are never seen, although sometimes in the game anonymously. Several of these groups have primarily PvP champs, but most of them have hackers, x-rayers, cheat mods, and whatever they chose. Most times the hacker is the godfather or at least close to the top. They also have spies and intel groups. This is not the most usual case, but there are exceptions. Some of them have strategies that they commonly use. Some are griefing, personal raids, and singling out a player. For example, if they know that a player has valuables (diamonds, enchanted books, etc.) and they don't know where it is hidden, they may grief and threaten the player.

PvP behind the scenes

Your presence on a server is important for gaining allies or a following.

Be popular and revered

• If you want griefers or spawn killers on your side, be really nice to them. Most of them are notoriously good at PvP from practice, and giving them a reason to be on your side through making sure they never have to worry about starving or being hunted by others is a good way to avoid alienating them. Ironically, this may be the most effective way to make allies with random people, giving them full access to all of your resources and your considerable efforts to be hospitable will generally remove any want to take your items. (As always, this may backfire).

Know the surroundings

• If a server has an online dynamic map or if the Rei's Minimap mod is allowed (most likely), USE THEM. Rei's Minimap helps you understand what structures are ahead of you, and Online maps show everything and also show locations of players. Forgo any advantage you can get your hands on.

Participate in server events

• Whether it'd be a Drop Party or an organized PvP match, participate in server events and you'll be known by most members in the server. This means people will have second thoughts of attempting to kill you.

Respect allies

• This one is obvious. Make sure to be friendly and caring with your members. Give items randomly to the squadron. Make an Army, Navy, and Air Force if you must, but let them mingle. Give crate keys to your teammates if the server has a crate system. And make sure to not act stuck up. Listen to their opinions. If you want a Mega-Uber Skull Laser Chainsaw Castle of Death™, and your friend wants a smaller base, compromise.

Defending your base

• Let's say you're on a faction server and you have many enemies. Your base has not been found until now. Two players each holding a Sharpness V, Fire Aspect II, Knockback II sword and wearing Protection IV armor are directly outside your base setting up a TNT cannon. You should always have defenses that are innately active, such as obsidian and water to negate explosions and if available, a spawner that can funnel out mobs on command (go exploring for spawners) to distract and dangerously deter, or snow golems to break armor. If you have these, don't jump down and PvP. Wait for the spawning mobs to break their armor, or call for your faction members and allies to assist in defeating the enemy. In these cases, booby traps are good, so set up booby traps everywhere where the enemy can't find them. In fact, make some that are meant to make the enemy know about the traps but it itself is a trap. These work as warnings and signals. Use tripwires and wool under them to use as signals for example.

Hate the spawn

• If you're building a massive fortress near the spawn, a griefer or simply a plain idiot might run behind you and kill you, disassemble your fortress and run off with your materials. Well, the easiest method to prevent this is to build your house away from spawn and try to survive a good distance away from spawn. It is usually a good idea to use a home-setting command around this area where you wish to live, as if it is a long way away from spawn and you die, it's a long walk, or mad chase if there are spawnkillers with diamond armor and enchanted diamond swords. Using the /home command if you used /sethome cuts the time getting to your safe zone drastically, usually having the spawnkillers and griefers be dazzled in confusion.

What about my valuables?

• The best way to keep your most precious valuables is to put them in an ender chest. Then put a chest in your house with basic invaluable items in it (with a few valuables mixed in to help fool them), and bury a chest with 8 obsidian, an eye of ender, a crafting table, and other less semi-valued objects in it a short way away from your house. Even if your entire house is a crater and the ender chest you placed is destroyed, the chest you buried will still be safe, and you can craft an Ender chest with what is in it to access all your valuable items and loot in there, as well as the loot in your actual chest.

Getting started on a server

The following is a step-by-step tutorial on how to survive while being new to a PvP server. Follow in this order:

• Go solo for now. If the server you play on has Factions, make one to protect your stuff. Be sure to walk at least 5500 blocks. Using a boat is a good idea as you do not need food and can travel at night.
• Go in the opposite direction people are moving toward. This prevents you from being noticed.
• Make sure it is far away from anything. There's nothing more horrifying than your mortal enemies being your next-door neighbors.
• Make a small, undetectable base. Underground is the least noticeable around layer 10 is ideal, putting you near good materials and hiding your nameplate on the surface.
• Cheating is something that undermines every setup. Step carefully!
• Start gathering immediately. Do them in this order;
• Find a village to set up your base. Move all the villagers deep underground so that other players cannot find your base.
• Make a farmer villager to sell bread and buy pumpkins.
• Set up a pumpkin farm or a melon farm. This will supply you with emeralds to buy items from the villagers.
• Make an Armorer, Weaponsmith, and Cleric to buy armor, weapons, ender pearls, and XP bottles.
• Make Librarians to sell you Protection, Mending, Unbreaking, and Sharpness books. These are the minimum enchantments you will need.
• Make a portal to the Nether in order to find blazes and nether wart.
• Once you have a blaze rod or two, start hunting for endermen, which are common in Warped Forest biomes.
• Make an ender chest.
• Start brewing potions. Focus on Strength II, Swiftness II and Fire Resistance for now.
• To make raids against you rare, it is recommended to live in the Nether (but not the End since it's highly coveted) where people normally don't go. It's dangerous, but not as dangerous as living in the overworld. Keep in mind, if you have a mining base, that too must be defended since raiders can get there via the portal.

Tip: You must have a fallback in your base in the case of hard times. This means:

• A renewable source of food,
• A renewable source of wood, and
• A set of stone tools to restart the gathering of supplies.
• Hopefully a good pickaxe to mine resources.
• Backup emeralds to buy new gear.

Getting loot quickly

A lot of times in single player survival Minecraft, you are going to need something. In factions, you are going to need it a lot more because you are competing with other people for it. Some ways to get it faster:

• Selling
• In many faction servers you can sell, auction, and buy stuff. Check and see what you can sell. Most Faction servers allow you to sell cobblestone and dirt, quick ways of getting money.

• Teleport killing
  • In the chat bar you see a new player and you want to take their stuff. They don't have any faction, so you tell them "Teleport to me and you can join my faction" as soon as they arrive mercilessly slaughter them. (Note that this can create a bad image for you on the server and could potentially get you banned, so only do this on servers that this is allowed or you don't value).

• Glitching
  • Use certain glitches to your advantage such as item duplication, unless a server explicitly prohibits their use.

Miscellaneous server tips

Lag creates opportunities

• Despite lag making people randomly visually act, cause injury because of damage just showing up, and crash the server, it may still be useful instead of a nuisance if you know how to control it to your advantage. Whenever you hit someone under the effects of a lag spike, there is a chance that they won't be hurt and can escape. You can use this time to run when a lag spike comes, therefore you may escape if necessary. Keep in mind, lag also delays redstone machinery, meaning if there's a staircase that only activates when you're on a pressure plate, you can get up easier.

General philosophy for fights

• There is that one case of being left for green. This means that your squad disbanded, you are out, all alone with maybe a few enemies a kilometer or two behind you looking for you, and you're starving. Be independent. What if nobody is there stupid to help you? What if your leader takes all the valuables and leaves their troops out to die? You must gather resources, get help of any kind, whether it be a lone man just with a stone toolkit or a juggernaut in Protection IV armor, and you must be careful and start your own faction. Tip: Since anyone can be bought…eventually, keep your own secret, hidden, well guarded bases. Never tell anyone about it. It is for you and only you.

Watch videos and tutorials on how to build traps

• Be smart with what you learned. Many people know how to make traps. That is good on one hand, but on another, they might not know how to use their knowledge to their advantage. Combine traps and improvise offline.

Don't overkill yourself

• Think first before charging ahead to do something. Think first of the necessities, which are supplies, and deal with the secondary needs after.

Don't be afraid to retreat

• If you stand no chance, save what you can save and run. If you're nearly killed, and have no hope of victory, run. And don't let yourself be lured into 1-on-1 PvP unless you can win. Use your mind over your in-game muscles. Most important is to use your environment wisely. For example: if you're in a jungle biome, run into the trees and attack your enemies! If you're in a big NPC-village with iron golems: make your foe hit the Iron Golem, then run off and snipe the foe! If you're on a small island in an ocean biome: get a boat, sail a little away, and use your bow to take down that diamond-armor juggernaut! While in the Nether, surprise the enemy with a bed and kill them with the explosion! While in The End, spleef your enemy into the void for a sure victory! It will all be yours if you succeed! Your sword might be a strong weapon, but your bow is even stronger if you use your mind. Also, don't be scared to use potions: they can give you a great advantage over your non-potion using enemies.

Evaluate your position In other words, take into account all your advantages, all their advantages, and weigh the options. Sometimes, you need to guess and check. The most important ones are your advantages or disadvantages in:

• Armor and armor enchants
• Sword, axes, maces, and their enchants
• Bows, crossbows, and their enchants
• Ender pearl or portal availability
• Potions, skill, and hunger

Be aware of your surroundings, even when playing casually, to avoid being ambushed. Let's say that your base is in the sky with a public chest containing some equipment. Then, all of a sudden, you come down with one teammate and realize that the base is being raided! In the chest, you find some string and cobblestone. The enemies are in iron armor. Now, if the raider's armor was not enchanted, then you're in luck. A stone sword against iron armor with no buffs deals a full heart of damage. A fully charged bow does about as much damage as a diamond sword. Even if you have no armor, you still somewhat stand a chance against those two since it's you and your teammate fighting them. You do not need to be the same size as long as you can beat them. If you and your teammate are strategic, let's say they stick together, and your enemy doesn't, then you are almost guaranteed to kill them, that is if both of you have at least stone swords and they are alone with an iron sword and full iron armor. If you got lucky enough to mine a diamond sword, bring that out too: if you can, enchant with even just Sharpness I, which will do about 5HP hearts every hit. If you somehow have gotten a Strength II potion, maybe by buying it on a server, then DRINK IT! It will multiply your damage by 3.6, so that 5HP, if you make that a critical hit (by falling when attacking) (will do 7HP hearts) WITH Strength II, then you just might have killed your opponent in one or two hits.

Get to your senses

• You may be thinking that people who have lost so much that their anger is uncontrollable are going to go psycho to win and when people come with supreme equipment you should be scared out of your wits, since that "causes" adrenaline. No! Anger and fear are both factors to defeat. When either happens, whether it be an attempt to kill a player who has diamond armor with your fists or combat logging just because you are so scared that you have to go to the bathroom of fear of peeing in your pants, you will most likely forget all the tips you have learned until you get back to your senses. Avoid that. Now, you must stay calm. Run for cover, and don't stop to watch the deaths of your teammates. If you have one, drink a Potion of Swiftness (the second tier is highly recommended), and keep running. Do not turn back, do not look back, do think of what's back there, and do not stop. Just keep running until you reach safety, whether it be allied or peaceful territory, or a secret place. Don't stop. Stay sharp.

Peace

• Remember what's been said about not trusting anyone? Your turn to chip in to take a stab at backstabbing. Create peaceful factions for your team. Their only purpose is to earn supplies while being impossible to touch.

Diamonds aren't the key to victory.

• If two players in diamond with enchantments come and raid your base, and you're 4 people in iron, and only you have a full set of diamond equipment, do not bring it out! It is obvious you don't stand much chance as you are overpowered. You do, however, need to keep potions of Strength and Speed at a minimum. Also, keep flint and steel, along with fire aspect swords and bows, along with you. And if you find generation errors that create gateways to the Void, use them. Don't forget to keep your dispensers loaded and ready to fire with arrows, damage splash potions, and fire charges. The reason why this equipment and these traps can beat people in diamond is because they go right through their armor. Nothing, not even diamond armor, can resist their effects (except for arrows. Fire, potion effects and Void damage are the only lethal things unaffected no matter what kind of armor.). Also, a potion of invisibility will mean no one will know where you are attacking from! Remember the gift of decoys. Say you have nothing at all and you were just a player that started in a faction war faction. Use your expendable condition. Say there is a hall of traps designed by a redstone scientist. Throw yourself at the traps, run like a madman, break those hidden redstone clocks, and just kill your player on those lethal traps so your faction can zip in and break a hole in their obsidian shield. To victory!

In and out

• On some servers, the PvP can take place in real life, as well. If you have many friends who play Minecraft, you can call them to join your (allied) faction, which will make strength in numbers. If one of your friends is good at persuading or knows a lot about strategy, that's even better! Also, if you know your in-game enemy well in real life, you can somehow reduce the time they can play or have a talk with them, so they may have a change of heart.

Attack their weak point

• No matter how your opponent fights, they are bound to have some kind of weakness. Wastefully attacking where they are well defended won't work, and you will usually have to change your plan accordingly. Is he not using a shield? Abuse yours extra hard by blocking all their hits. Debuffing you with splash potions? Chug some milk. Shielding your arrows and tridents? Whip out the Piercing enchantment. Not even the heavily-geared Netherite player is invincible: you can bypass their armor with splash potions and tipped arrows. This also brings to the next point:

Be one step ahead of your foe

• Just as you adapt to your opponent's tactics, your opponent will adapt to your tactics. If you see your opponent change their actions, think about why he is doing that. Don't rashly play into their hands. If your opponent just placed blocks to stop you from shooting them, stop shooting them and attack up close. Just as your opponent counters your actions, you need to counter their actions. Your plan of bypassing their Protection IV Netherite Armor with tipped arrows may be a sound plan, but if he starts holding down their shield, you'll have to change. If you, say, start shooting with your Piercing Crossbow then you're golden. As long as you are devising and implementing counters to your opponent's counterplay, then until your opponent figures out what to do in response, you have the advantage and you should press it. The longer one plays reactively rather than proactively, the more of a disadvantage they are at.

Trick the enemy

• It is said above regarding running in traps (refer to "Diamonds aren't the key to victory") being a tactic that will fool the enemy, this makes it a rather effective attack. Always use psychology as a weapon! When running into a row of tripwires, the enemy might find it as a suicide attempt and not as a double trap, although not likely since most people will tend to just chase you. However, if you have a circuit that makes it so that the first time somebody runs through it, there is a chance your enemy may think that it's a dud or just a scare for the raiders. Once they step over it, though, the trap activates. This makes it useful since it can make the enemy think you are intending to run away when you're instead luring them into a death trap. If you have any type of invisibility potion or maybe you are just good at not being noticed, you can easily lure the enemy away from your actual position, then jump-attack them when they are least expecting it. This can be the key to a neck-and-neck battle, where your enemy's equipment is as good as yours.

Video

See also

• Tutorial:Traps

Notes

Navigation

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Introductory Basics Menu screen Java Edition Bedrock Edition Game terms Playing with a controller Newcomer survival Beginner's guide First ten minutes Second day Third day Best biomes to use Hunger management Things to do Things not to do Simple tips and tricks Survival mode progression Shelters Best biomes for homes Best building materials Building and construction Navigation Shelters Types
General General Achievement guide Advancement guide Minecraft Nether The End Adventure Husbandry Adventuring Best enchantments guide Breaking a fall Breaking bedrock Chunk loader Combat Complete main adventure Creating a village Dual wielding Desert survival End survival Exploring caverns Gathering resources on peaceful difficulty Getting food quickly Getting max gear Headless pistons Hitboxes Horses Indestructible end crystals Managing slimes in superflat mode Mapping Measuring distance Minecraft in education Mining Ancient Debris Diamonds Fossils Nether hub Nether portals Nether survival Organization Pillar jumping Phantom-proofing Spawn-proofing Summoning jockeys Things to do when bored The Void Thunderstorm survival Time-saving tips Transportation methods Units of measure Village mechanics Trading X-ray glitches Zombie siege defense Enchanting and smelting Enchanting mechanics Anvil mechanics Automatic smelting Manual smelting
Challenges General Acquiring a conduit Archaeology Curing a zombie villager Conquering a mountain Defeating a bastion remnant Defeating an End city Defeating a monster room Defeating an ocean monument Defeating a Nether fortress Defeating a pillager outpost Defeating a stronghold Defeating temples Defeating trial chambers Defeating a woodland mansion Defeating a village raid Defeating the Ender dragon Defeating the Wither If it escapes Exploring an ancient city Locating a stronghold Obtaining every music disc Obtaining every block Non-standard survival Adventure mode survival Custom maps Half hearted hardcore Hardcore mode Surviving in a single area indefinitely Infinite desert survival Island survival Manhunt Mob switch Nomadic experience Trapping every mob Skyblock survival Skywars survival Speedrunning Starting in the Nether Starting in the End Superflat survival Java Edition Bedrock Edition Ultra hardcore survival The World Starts With One Getting to the world border Village only survival Challenge maps Beating a challenge map Creating a challenge map
Constructions Constructions Adding beauty to constructions Airlock Architectural terms Building a cruise ship Building a metropolis Building a rollercoaster Building micro shelters Building safe homes Building water features Chunk ban Color palette Creating shapes Defense Elevators Endless circling pool Furniture Glazed terracotta patterns Hiking trail Making nice floors Pixel art Ranches Roof types Curved roofs Roof construction guidelines Roof decorations Secret door Settlement guide Underwater home Walls and buttresses Water gate Water-powered boat transportation Block breaking Blast chamber Igniting TNT underwater Wither cage
Farming Blocks and items Amethyst Armor Azalea Bamboo Basalt Bedrock Blaze Rod Bone Meal Cactus Cat gift Chorus Fruit Clay & Mud Cobblestone Cocoa Beans Copper, Nautilus Shell & Trident Crops (Beetroot, Carrot, Potato, Wheat) Dirt Dragon's breath Dripstone Egg Enchanted Golden Apple Experience Fern Fish Flower Froglight Ghast Tear Glow Berries Glow Ink Sac Glow Lichen Goat Horn Gold Hanging Roots Honey Ice Iron Kelp Lava Meat Moss Mushroom Music Disc Nether growth Nether vine Nether Wart Obsidian Ominous Bottle Powder Snow Pumpkin, Melon Rooted Dirt Sculk Turtle Scute Seagrass Sea Pickle Snow Soul Soil Sugar Cane Sweet Berries Tree Vine Villager trading hall Wither Rose Wool Duplication Mobs Mob farming Mob grinding Monster spawner traps Allay Animals Axolotl Bee Blaze Breeze Cat Cave Spider Chicken Creeper Drowned Ender Dragon Enderman Fox Frog Ghast Glow squid Goat Guardian Hoglin Iron golem Magma cube Phantom Piglin bartering Pillager Raid Shulker Skeleton horse Slime Squid Turtle Villager Wandering trader Warden Witch Wither Wither Skeleton Wolf Zombie Zombie villager Zombified piglin
Mechanisms Various devices Redstone Circuits Components Dust Mechanics Tips Automatic respawn anchor recharger Combination locks Command block Crafter Flying machines Hopper TNT Item sorting Item transportation Mechanisms Observer stabilizer Randomizers Redstone music Doorbell Rube Goldberg machine Shulker box storage Detectors Block update detector Comparator update detector Daylight detector Minecarts Train station Minecarts Storage Storage system Traps Snow golems TNT cannons Trapdoor uses Trap design Traps Pistons Piston uses Piston circuits Quasi-Connectivity Zero-ticking Instant repeaters Tripwire Tripwire techniques Advanced redstone Advanced redstone circuits Arithmetic logic Calculator Command stats Hourly clock Morse code Printer Redstone computers Redstone telegraph
Multiplayer General Griefing prevention Hiding chests Multiplayer Survival Spawn jail Playing on servers PvP Bases Joining a LAN world with alternate accounts Server setup Setting up a Java Edition server Forge server Hamachi server Setting up a Bedrock Edition server Server maintenance Setting up a LAN world Server startup script FreeBSD OpenBSD Ubuntu Ramdisk enabled server
Technical General Creating Forge mods Moving structures using structure blocks from world to world Improving frame rate Minecraft help FAQ Note Block Studio Programs and editors Running the data generator Update Java See Minecraft's code Downgrading Restoring a hardcore world Maps Custom maps Map downloads Command NBT tags Falling blocks Updating old terrain using MCEdit Resource packs Creating a resource pack Loading a resource pack Models Sound directory Data packs Adding a new dimension Adding custom enchantments Adding custom paintings Adding custom trims Creating a data pack Custom structures Installing a data pack Repairing a world corrupted by a data pack Creating Minecraft media Creating videos Livestreaming Hide Server IP Game installation Installing snapshots Installing Minecraft Preview and beta versions How to get a crash report Installing Forge mods Custom Minecraft directory Playing and saving Minecraft on a thumb drive Playing and saving Minecraft on a thumb drive with the old launcher Recover corrupted saved world data Run Minecraft through Google Drive Save game data to Dropbox (world data only) Saved data Dropbox guide Create a Mac OS X startup daemon Playing Java Edition on ChromeOS
Outdated Farming Potion farming End of light mob farms Door-based iron golem farming Villages Legacy Console village mechanics Pre-1.14 village mechanics Village chaining Glitches Duplication Far Lands Contraptions Minecart booster Repeater reboot system Instant wire Water ladder Water tram Challenges Survival with no enabled data packs Construction Man-made lake Other Custom texture packs How to get a crash report (old) Installing mods Setting up a Spigot server Update LWJGL Update Minecraft Custom world generation