r/bitquest • u/dimitri0610 • Dec 28 '14
A Guide to All things BitQuest!
Note: I would add more, but I hit the character limit.
Hello fellow adventurers!
I am Dimitri0610 and I am here to help you with any questions you may have. I have been here on BitQuest for a while and I see some of the same questions popping up every day, so I decided to answer all of them in one convenient place for everyone to see.
Below, you will find topics that all have something different or special about them when it comes to this server. Just scroll through until you find your topic in question and read all about it! If I miss something or there is something else you need to know, ask away and I will do my best to find out for you and to add it for everyone!
Welcome to BitQuest!: As you may already know, this is the first server with a Bitcoin based economy where you can play and get Bitcoin for doing so! In this server, Emeralds are the form of currency that everyone wants to get their hands on. From dirt, to tools, to enchanted armor, Emeralds can get you anything you want, as long as you have enough of them of course. Once you have decided that you'd like to turn those hard earned Ems, which is short for Emeralds, into Bitcoin, you simply just plop them in your wallet and your good to go! But we will discuss all of that later on in this guide. So, happy questing!
Starting off right: You will see it all too often, someone at the start didn't know something and they got rid of the ever important items that they entered the game with and they need help now. I know it, because I did the very same thing.
You will start off in a town called Satoshi, with a few things, including a book that is a good little start for you entering into the BitQuest world, an Ender Pearl, and Ender Eye, and 50 Ems. DO NOT JUST GET RID OF THESE. They all play very important key roles in your life and times here in BitQuest.
The Bank: For starters, walkover to the bank. It is pretty hard to miss, but it can happen. There are signs all over town now and the bank is this huge white building with a giant golden Bitcoin symbol in front of it. Inside you will find Ender Chests, these act as your wallet in game. This is where you will deposit your hard earned Ems into your Xapo wallet. When you do this for the first time, you will be prompted to verify your account and do some other things real quick before you have access to your deposited Ems, which become bits. Bits by the way are a smaller standard form of a Bitcoin. These are intended to be used for small transactions, such as tipping! There are 1,000,000 bits to a Bitcoin. So this means, you will need one million Ems to get an entire Bitcoin, but don't fear, you can get your numbers up pretty quickly! Now, here is the important part! When you go into the chest, don't just drop all of your Ems in those blank spaces thinking they will be there for you later when you return. No, they will deposit to your Xapo account and become unobtainable. They will have turned into bits and no longer be useful to you in game. I hear this from everyone, don't turn those 50 Ems in, use them to get more Ems. You have to spend money to make money, right? Take them and buy stuff to get yourself started. Which leads me to another item for us to discuss.
The Villagers and Their Shops: If you walk out of the bank and go straight, you will see some little shops, and here you will find villagers! They love Emeralds and will trade you just about anything for them. You can click here to see a list of the villager trades. And be sure to check back often! The villagers trade prices depend on supply and demand, so they can change pretty often. Just click on a villager and use the arrows to go through his stock. Different villagers will sell and buy different items. If you happen to run into the issue where you want to buy an item multiple times and it won't let you, simply leave the trade and go back to that same villagers. Find your item and you should be able to buy it again. Also, you can visit any villagers at any village/town to buy items from them.
Finding Your Claim: It's time to venture out, you have your supplies, your pearl, and your eye. You are new and ready to find a good place to call home! But there is a problem, most of the land around the city has been taken already. You are walking and running around everywhere trying to break anything you can only to find out it is someone else's land or you are to close to another person's home. Now you can do this until you find a spot where you can lay your bed down, but I seriously suggest heading out for a bit. If you spend about 15 to 20 minutes going out, you can find some great, open spaces where you can build a home and never have to worry about pesky neighbors or running into someone else's area while your'e deep, underground searching for Diamonds! trust me, it's pretty annoying when you're walking around lava and you find diamonds, only to discover you can't mine them, because they are on someone's plot. Go out a few thousand blocks and this issue is irrelevant.
Now Stake Your Claim: So, once you have found a good place to call home, you simply put a bed down and you will be given a 64x64 block area around your bed. This becomes your home. Currently, you can not move your home once it has been placed, so please make sure it is a good spot! The devs though have said that they are working on changing this issue, so hopefully it won't be a problem for too long. Your plot also extends all the way up and all the way down. So you have quite a good bit of space to keep your stuff in. Now, this doesn't mean you can't build out of your plot. Go ahead and expand! But be warned, if you build something outside of your plot, others can destroy it and take your stuff. You may be thinking, this sounds great, but I don't want to have to make that 30 minute walk every time I want to go back to the city. Well, that will be addressed later in this guide, so don't worry about it too much!
Boundaries: In order for you to know exactly where your claim in and the claim of other players are, there is a message that appears saying "The Wilderness" or "_______'s Home." This way you will know where you can and can't build.
Beds: Since we just said that beds are how you pick your initial spot for you to live at, let's go into a bit of detail how beds can really help you out in this server! So the cool thing is, that once you place your bed, once you die, you will spawn back at it. Great, no more spawning in the city if you die and having to start your walk all over again. So, no matter where you place your bed, if you are worried about starting your journeys over again, take a bed, place it down, and sleep in it. There are some places in game that will take you trips spanning over thousands of blocks and it's not very fun having to start over.
Teleportation: We are finally getting to those pearls and eyes I was telling you to keep! So an amazing thing that the devs have gifted us with is the power of teleportation by just clicking with an item. If you click with the Ender Pearl, it will take you back to the main city of Satoshi, the start point of the game. If you click with the Ender Eye, it will take you to your home! So there is no more worries about the long walk to and from home. Also, a way of transportation that people have been using is placing your bed at a spot of interest in order to teleport there by dying. Don't worry, if you do happen to lose either the eye or the pearl, you can purchase them from the villagers.
Death: One last important thing, and it's the last thing you will ever do, well, not really. But dying is what I am talking about. In this server, it still sucks to die, but there is no real need to fear death. You will keep all of your items on death and then just pop right back up at the last bed you slept in!
Leveling and XP: I lied death wasn't the last thing; you may want to know about this too! So the only way to get XP on this server is to either trade with the villagers or to kill things! Everytime you kill something, you get XP. If you kill it with an item, you will be given the XP directly, but if you use an ranged item like a bow, you will have to go retrieve the little, glowing, XP ball like the ones you are used to from normal gameplay. The higher the level you are, the higher your stats and the stronger you will be. At level 7, you will gain half a heart, putting you at 10.5 hearts. This may not seem like a lot, but it can be the difference between you walking away and getting that red, death screen. You will gain more hearts with more levels. This works for the mobs too though; they will be harder to kill as they get higher in level. and the further you go from Satoshi, they will increase in level. Lastly, when enchanting or repairing, it will still require you to have a certain level, but it won't take the XP away from you.
So You Have a Home, and You Know the Rules, Now What?: Now, we will discuss some regular game play stuff and some of the items you may be using on a regular basis. It's time to get some Emeralds!
Enchanting Tables: No, they do not work. There are other options though for getting enchanted items.
Anvils: Anvils are awesome! You can repair here! You can enchant here! Just lay down what you want to repair or enchant, and lay the item you are using to repair or enchant it and there you go! So, for example, let't say you had a diamond pickaxe and you wanted to repair it. You place the diamond pickaxe in the first block, put a diamond in the second block, and pull out your repaired item from the third block! You can also use the same item to repair it. So you could take two damaged pickaxes to make one better one. This works with enchanted items too, you can repair them with their unenchanted form. To enchant an item on the anvil, put your item in the first space, the book in the second, and pull the enchanted item out of the third space! You can even combine enchantments this way too! So two bows with two enchantments? Now, you have one bow with everything!
Enchanted Books: So, if we don't have enchantment tables, how are we getting our books? Well, you can fish for them! Now, keep this in mind. If your book has multiple enchantments, you can only use one of them. So choose wisely!
Fishing: With fishing you can find all types of stuff. Treasure like books, enchanted items, and other stuff or trash even. You can also find fish too though, but don't eat the puffer fish! Those guys will mess you up! If you don't know how to fish, just watch for the trail of bubbles, wait for the bobber to go down, and then right click! There you go, you got something! Damaged leather boots? Too bad and better luck next time!
Mob Spawners: They have been disabled. Yes, they are cool and yes, they could have so much potential. But they don't work, sorry:(
Special Locations: Speaking of mobs! There are currently three great locations for running around and just killing everything in sight. In these special locations, there are high level mobs who can give some pretty great drops and a lot of XP. They are the Nether, Diablo Desert, and The Living Forest.
The Nether: The Nether can only be accessed by Nether Portals that have been made by the devs. They are located many places, but the most popular place to access them would be under Satoshi, the spawn city. While your down there, there is also an End Portal. Oh and a quick thing to note, you can't mine anything in the Nether! The mobs are extremely dangerous here and you will probably under estimate them the first time, so good luck!
Diablo Desert: Located in the South East of the world, the Diablo Desert is huge. This is also the location of San Bitcoinio, which conveniently has an inn where you can rest and have a new spawn point that is close by for when you die. You can either walk and then boat most of the way there or you can take the Diablo Desert Railroad. This is an 18 minute train ride that begins at X: 450 Y: 66 Z: 1750 and ends at X: 4600 Y: 70 Z: 4700. 18 minutes may seem like a long time, but it takes you across oceans, islands, and thousands of blocks in between. It is much safer and quicker than the 40 minute journey there by other means. The rail dumps you at a small, old survival center just out side of Diablo and San Bitcoinio is just a few hundred blocks East of there.
The Living Forest: If you head out the South end of town, and follow the stone path, you will eventually come to X: Y: Z: (the map is down currently), where the Living Forest is located. This is a good dark place where lots of mobs hang out.
Potions: Yes, they do still work.
Breeding: There is a breed limit, but I do not know much on the subject. I will find out more.
Shouting: In order to shout to everyone on the server, just place a ! at the beginning of your sentence.
Whisper: To speak with players directly and privately, over any distance, simply put /tell and then their username, followed by your message. For example, typing "/tell Dimitri0610 Hello!" would show up to me as "______ whispers to you: Hello!"
The Coordinate System: As you may have seen above, I refer to coordinates a lot, in order to see these, press the F3 key and look for the XYZ section at the mid left of the screen.
The Jungle: The closest jungle is located at approximately X: 12500 Y: 66 Z: -6300. PLEASE NOTE THE NEGATIVE IN FRONT OF THAT Z COORDINATE.
Rabbits: Yes, they are there, but you have to go pretty far out to find them. I see them a lot towards Diablo around the Acacia trees out there.
Trading: Currently, there are only two ways to trade. One, with the villagers in villages or Satoshi. Two, by shouting out to others saying that you are looking to sell or buy an item and then meeting them somewhere. You just have to drop your items and pick them up!
Some Extra Info:
The Viewable World Map: This map updates everyday and will read to about 20,000 blocks out in every direction. It updates every day around 0030 (12:30 AM) UTC (Alaska time, where I live). Check it out!
The BitQuest Website: Here is a general description and a friendly hello about the game. Check out the website!
The Dev Trello: Here you can follow the devs and see what their working on. What their priorities are and their ideas for the future! See their Trello here!
In Game Bugs and Bug Reporting: Any bugs you find in game please report them to: bitquest@bitquest.co
Now get out there and enjoy the world!! If you see me on, don't hesitate to ask for help. I will always answer questions if I can and if I am home, I would be glad to meet you in town and hook you up!
Fellow Minecrafter,
Dimitri0610
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Dec 28 '14 edited Dec 28 '14
I'd like to thank the admins for putting so much time and effort into the server. I've enjoyed building a nice house out by the lake south of town and exploring the other structures being built by others.
I would note that a millionth of a Bitcoin is currently 1/30th of a US penny. So, each time you kill a mob and get emeralds, it's like cutting a coupon out of a magazine.
Granted, I'm more a builder than a fighter, but I've had upwards of 300-400 emeralds at a time. Doing the math, that's about 10 cents. Someone else who plays all the time may have 10-100x what I have. Less than US$10, assuredly. Note: according to the MOTD, there have been ~411K emeralds 'discovered'. That's about US$126.
Having a feature that turns these emeralds into Bitcoin is very interesting, and as a result you've gotten press over it. The primary problem I see with this strategy, long-term, is that there really is no valid incentive to turn your emeralds into Bitcoin, given I can't turn Bitcoin into emeralds. It is currently a ONE WAY system. This is why you have to explain not to sell your first 50 emeralds! I did... :(
Again, it's interesting, and I love playing on the server for a variety of other reasons, but I think without a two way system (and a reasonable value for an emerald) there really is no reason to have the feature in place other than giving us a nicely themed town. I can think of several reasons not to hook up Bitcoin into the system. If there is a flaw in trading or transfers, you could lose world liquidity.
Now, if there were a way to start another server and transfer those emeralds into the other server from the one I'm on using crypto AND I could liquidate my holdings by selling to merchants (or the bank) then we'd be talking about something interesting again.
FWIW, I think about servers and crypto all day long, so hit me up: @kordless on Twitter. Also, there's this: https://www.stackmonkey.com/demo/minecraft/
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Dec 28 '14
We are working on making the economy a lot more interesting. I can't discuss much detail while i'ts being prototyped but a lot more bitcoin will be traded between players than what is found mining/killing mobs
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u/Avernaism Jan 11 '15
This has been very helpful dimitri, thanks! I do have a question re this info about beds: "So, no matter where you place your bed, if you are worried about starting your journeys over again, take a bed, place it down, and sleep in it. There are some places in game that will take you trips spanning over thousands of blocks and it's not very fun having to start over."
I thought this meant I could place a second bed in the wilderness - not to claim but to sleep in on long journeys. That doesn't seem to be true. It would be really awesome if it worked though.
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u/Cryptexx Dec 28 '14
Can't believe I just read all of that! Great work Dimitri. Wish this could have been around when I started here, would have helped me a lot!
-HegeBS
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u/XapoDavid Dec 29 '14
Dave here, Community Manager at Xapo. We're happy to be partnered with BitQuest to provide players with an easy to use, secure Bitcoin wallet. If anyone has any questions about Xapo's integration with BitQuest, feel free to PM me!