Hey guys, Khaladin here.
I’ve decided to create this thread in the hopes that it will reach everyone who plays on Survival. This may contain content that could benefit both new, old, and players returning to Survival after being away.
I noticed day to day, we experience some of the same experiences and conversations as players. Perhaps creating this post will get us the best experience we are all seeking. I will try to keep this as comprehensive as I can.
I’m hoping you read through the important information thread found here.
Especially the rules that can be found here.
New Members
and guides at the very least. Also found, you guessed it. Right here.
Whew now that all that is out of the way. Let’s get started. 
Whenever you first enter into survival. Your first instinct is to find a way off of the spawn platform so you can start getting to that sweet amazing loot! Right?
Maybe even walked off the edge a few times in both directions looking for that sweet spot of water to save your life so you can get to those trees. Don’t do that at all. Whenever you first spawn. Directly under your feet is a teleporter that can lead you right to the surface! You can identify it by the 2 switches on the wall after you drop down from a hole off of each side. You can also use the command /warp surface. Either one of these methods will work great for getting you started with minimal effort.
Part 2. There’s gonna be a time you join the survival server. I’m hoping that time for you is gonna be on each Friday after reset. This is gonna get you your best chance to live. Now why is that Khaladin? Well let me tell you. If you join the server in the middle of the week. Then there’s a very strong chance that you are about to join the survival mode with a brand new character with starter gear and 100 health in hard mode. Most, if not all mobs will be 1 shotting you, or 2 shotting you at worst. This is not optimal if you want to thrive with minimal effort. (Trust me sometimes I do challenge weeks where I don’t join till wednesday, and it hurts every time. So best to just join friday after reset.
Now I know you’re thinking. Khaladin. Why don’t all you guys who have been farming all week just give me super awesome end-game gear, and I’ll jump in and help? Let’s talk about that for a minute. The survival server is limited. Yes limited. Limited space. Just like every Terraria world. It has a begining, and an end. Due to the fact of how many players are on the server. We have limited space. Limited building space, and limited inventory space. That’s why a lot of us build public, unprotected from grief farms for everyone to use. That way we all get to reap the benefits of such places. Even you as a new player can use these spaces.
Now that we’ve talked about inventory, and world limits. Let’s flip the scenario around, and we’ll talk about what happens if we give you that end-game gear you so want us to give. So firstly, if we give that amazing gear. You still have 100 health. It’s rare in any scenario that someone has a full set of armor, a weapon, in the class you want to play, or otherwise, as well as enough life and mana crystals to get you max health and mana. Limited inventory space. Keep what you need.
That’s not the only side of the coin here, and it does happen sometimes. We put an item in storage to keep “just in case” a new player joins, asks for a weapon, some gear. You give it to them. Then someone who has been working just as hard as you all week says. “I needed that. Why did you give it to them?” It happens. It happened to me just the other day on an item I thought nobody would need by that point. So then there’s a new player with 100 health with an awesome weapon to help with dps and dies as soon as the boss looks at them. That’s not fun for you, it’s not fun for anyone.
So a little bit about how survival works. Survival. Is Master Mode Terraria. With varying world seeds that change each week at server reset. So if you have played Terraria Master Mode solo. You’re part of the way of understanding survival right now! Excellent! That’s where the similarities end though, I’m afraid. This is nothing like your solo world. Bosses, health multiplies for each player. Damage is multiplied even more than Master Mode, and it’s not often, but always harder than even the for the worthy seed. If you can make it through a month in survival. You’ll cake walk any solo world you play. It’s that different.
Some of things that make survival different from the standard solo worlds are part of what make it so amazing. Other than the obvious fact of you having people to communicate with, know, work as a team with, and become friends with… The dynamic is completely different. Can you solo beast any boss in master mode? Are you the greatest thing Terraria has ever seen? Well. Let Khaladin welcome you to survival the proper way. You’re going to die. Bosses do not move the same as your single player world, and multiple players give them an element of unpredictabilty. None of your solo boss “Techniques” will work. None of your boss farms will work, and none of your boss cheeses will work. This is not for the feint of heart.
At minimum beating Terraria in master mode is a great idea. Otherwise you may be daunted by the difficulty and want to quit playing the game. I personally suggest beating Terraria Master Mode 2-3 times and at least 1 time on the For the worthy seed. Survival, is the real worthy test. I often suggest this to players who are obviously new to the game, and not just the server with many agreements from others on the server as well.
Now that we have a bit of a bases to work from, let’s move back to those pesky items we can’t give all the time. (And yes sometimes we do when we have them.) So say we have a set of armor that we are willing to give to a new player joining the server. Say we give that armor. Then 2 more new players logon and ask for more armor. Before you know it, nobody has any extra armor sets, and often newer players use them for a few minutes then logoff to never be heard from again.
This is likely due to them joining mid week in hard mode, the mode is too difficult, or they discover that no matter how good the gear, they still die. It’s how the server is. It’s difficult and we quite like it that way. Don’t want to get stuck in a loop, but you’re getting the idea.
Let’s talk about some restrictions now before moving on. You will notice as time passes in survival that you may not be able to use certain items. Such as, the rod of discord, the hook of dissonance, lava buckets. Yes I said it, lava buckets are banned. No easy lava fishing for you. We’re gonna go over some of these restrictions, and why. and I’ll add something at the end, because it was posed as a question to me, and I’ll add it as a bonus.
Some of the restrictions may be lifted through certain means. If you read the important information, rules, and other posts that I added links to, then you would have some understanding of experience, DP, credits, and other Dark-Gaming currencies. These can be used when you have enough to use features like the rod of discord, the hook, ect.
You will still NOT be able to use a lava bucket, and it’s not because the admins are being mean and want us all to fish in dangerous areas for lava fishing. It’s to help prevent a huge plague. What plague you ask? The plague of grief. Giving someone a lava bucket on a server full of everyone’s hard work doesn’t end well. Especially when you have to tell a new player you can’t give him that awesome Zenith so he can destroy everything he fights. (Or not tell him anything because everyone is fighting a boss so he griefs the public farms and cusses everyone out. Why don’t they instantly respond to my texts? I’m just standing here, isn’t every player on the server? See where we’re headed with this? 
) The admins add some of these features as protection for everyone’s best experience, and some of them rewards. Now you may be saying, “Khal why’s it such a big deal if I can use a rod of discord, or a hook of dissonance?” Well let me tell you. A lot of us on the server are VERY experienced players. And those items are very powerful indeed. Rod of discord for some of us means the difference between doing well through the playthrough of the week, or being borderline goldy and being able to almost solo anything. All things in balance, and all things in moderation. The admins add the permissions as a thank you! That’s right, I said that too. They add it to say “Hey. You know what? You play the server a lot, you enjoy it. We don’t want to add broken things to the server. So enjoy this little bonus on us.” It’s a good thing. It’s cool guys. Especially if you are someone who has beaten Terraria a bunch of times. If I get the rod of discord on any solo game. That’s game over. I’ll kill anything and laugh while watching tv… It’s a nice change of pace to earn things. So as a side note here, let us all thank the admins for having such foresight and being awesome.
To earn things… Let’s hang on that sentence for a second, and talk about it. No I’m not going back to the items things. We’re going down a bit darker of a path for a minute here. Hackers, exploiters. Let me just say on behalf of every player on the server, and every admin (I think on admins, but I can definitely confirm for players.) We hate you. You’re ruining the game, we will find you. We will HUNT YOU DOWN! With no mercy. We will report you, and we will not care about your excuses. There’s no point in playing a game when you give yourself end-game gear. <3 The point of the thing is to collect things and get stronger, if you give yourself everything and can’t get stronger then… (You see where I’m going with that too I bet.)
I think since we’re on a dark path we’ll keep it here for just a minute before going back to happy thoughts. Griefers! Yes you, you know who you are. So do our admins! Even if we don’t know exactly what you did, they do. Even if you’re so “sneaky” nobody saw you. Everything is logged, and the logs saw you. The admins see the logs, hence admins know what you did. On a side note. The admins are quite amazing, and they do believe in second chances. That being said, the players… Not so much. I will be the first to tell you, if you grief someone, and they know about it. Everyone will know about it, and even if the admins are forgiving. You will be lucky if anyone helps. If someone does help you, it’s gonna upset the person who they griefed. I know it’s the elephant in the room, but we need to talk about this. I personally put 251 hours into Terraria the last 2 weeks. (Calm down Khaladin.) There’s a reason I say this. Think about someone coming in, breaking all the stuff you worked hard to create, not just for yourself, but everyone. We all work together. Then, someone you work with as team mate gives this person items. It makes it hard not to be mad at your friend too at that point yes? Think about if it was this that happened to you. I’m not saying that I’m gonna hate on you if you get another chance, or that anyone is in particular. It’s just how we work as humans, you know it, I know it. If you buy a new car and someone steals it and your best friend gives them $1,000 cash for gas. You’re not gonna be none too pleased with that.
Now let’s move off of that dark stuff.
So we have some things established. “But Khal what do I do now? You told me how to get to the ground… Gee thanks…” Well let me tell you some of your options, even if you are experienced. There may be some good information contatined in the proceeds here.
Firstly, let’s cover a couple things on the website. You’ve made it to the forums! Congratulations! That means the hard part is over! Make sure you have used the command /register to register your character and used the /rename command if you’re having issues getting that name to work, or getting an error that you have an existing account. This is likely due to you actually using an existing player name, which happens to be your account name. Which is why it isn’t working. Once you’ve registered, you’ll wait 3 days as a grace period. Again, this is for protections of users on the server. “Awe man, why do I have to wait 3 days Khal? That’s not far.” Well let me tell you. It’s to prevent people logging on and just griefing all your hard work and spamming you to death till you cry my friend. I’m going to go ahead and answer your next question as well. Yes. The answer is yes. We ALL waited the 3 day grace period. During this time you are free to explore, test and play other game modes outside of survival, and oh boy. Some of them are quite fun!
Now that we have that portion out of the way, let’s talk about some voting reward! Yes! No not voting for a new president. We’re voting for the server! Every day! That’s right. Every day. Why? Well most importantly to show how much we love the server and get more players to join our awesome army, but it comes with rewards. Rewards!!! Amazing! Yes. If you vote each day, you’ll get a special loot box that can contain special titles, tags, colors, and other various rewards that you can use in game. Not getting the title you want? Does it not exist? Awesome. There happens to be a suggest section to have them add in that special title just for you. Does that mean you’ll get it? Better keep voting, my friend.
You can start voting by going here: https://t.dark-gaming.com
You will then login using your username (Character name) and password that you setup using that /register command we talked about earlier.
From there you’ll see a link at the top of the page that says, [Vote for DG and get a Loot Box and 1,250XP] click the link provided, and you will be taken away to the vote page. You must type in your character name to receive loot. This is an optional step, but if you don’t take it. You’re just voting and they don’t know who to distribute the loot to. Hence, no loot if no name.
==Disclaimner== I personally have never received the 1,250 experience stated above. I am not sure if it’s part of a change that was made previously. (There’s threads on it as well, best to reference an admin for these types of questions. This is a player to player FAQ after all.)
Now once you’ve accumulated enough experience. You’ll end up gaining levels. With those levels, more things are unlocked. Like the trading shop. Oh what’s the trading shop? Exactly like it sounds. You trade in-game currencies and other things in exchange for awesome things. We’ll keep it simple for now.
==Disclaimer== Due to the nature of my playstyle, I don’t often play other game modes. I am a fan of survival and I prefer summoner class. So I don’t like to pvp often. (We’ll get into that later.) the shop can be located if you can’t find it here:
https://t.dark-gaming.com/#upgrades
According to this site, it will tell you that you have to be level 5 to unlock the shop.
I know players in game that claim to have the class at a mere level 2. So I can neither confirm, nor deny this information. (Why not Khal now I’m curious.) It’s because. I like summoners. Which leaves a lot of game modes out for me. You can gain resources by killing bosses in the PVE game mode, zombies, pvp , and other modes. But I prefer only survival.
This is a great time to bring up another point. I have been around the server for a long time, though not on forums long (Insert laughter here guys.) I can tell you, you can absolutely enjoy this server without doing all the extras. But are you missing out on some big stuff? Yes, you are. So am I. I will come around eventually. Haha.
Let’s move forward a bit. “What if I registered, but I don’t want to play other game modes while I wait 3 days?” Well there’s still a TON of options here for you. You can simply return to your single player world to brush up on your skills before dropping in with a lot of other players, you can visit the items section and get any item you wish to test, or take to your single player world to play around with. You can take it to the PVE game mode and test on any boss, or mob in the game. (I think all the mobs are there? maybe someone can confirm for us in the thread.) While we’re here we can touch base on a couple of these modes, or “areas” if you prefer after seeing the server hub. Let’s talk about items first. Guys, have a look around. Don’t just ask “Where’s this random item?” There’s a ton of items in the game, hardly enough for someone to memorize what’s in every chest for you when you can just look around for a minute. Especially when everyone is working on something. You’re the one in items chilling out not doing anything after all. Not being mean just using insight. That being said, I want to talk about another thing here. Items. Isn’t it cool that we have access to every item in the game? Except hearts. Don’t ask where they are. There are no heart crystals. Use the /sethealth command.
Also potions. That’s right. Not a potion in sight, but you can get as many ingredients to make them up yourself as you want out of items. One more thing about items before we move up. I do not use items. “Why you telling me that Khal?” because (insert your name here.) You keep asking me where items are in a room that I never go in. There’s a lot of us that play that never use that room. Yes! You are right. There are people that do, but people that don’t as well. It may be that one day that everyone playing doesn’t use it, or it may be the day they all do and know where it all is. Best to just have that look around we talked about don’t you think? After all we’re playing that mode harder than master mode, or worse pvp which against actual people.
Speaking of pvp let’s talk about that. The pvp section is quite amazing and it does feature it’s own lobby. I would like to take a moment here to thank, and shoutout my friend “Beetle” if you ever pvp. You’ll know who he is quite quickly. He’s widely recognized as a great pvper on the server. (Perhaps the best? insert controversy here.) In the pvp lobby you can recognize players by color. Blue to red. More blue is lower tier, more red, means RUN! Unless you think you have the mettle. End pvp tutorial. Just kidding, just kidding. There’s a couple more things you should know! Firstly, over the years our amazing admins listen to us. So they took the time to rebalance, and remove items while you’re in the pvp phase. This makes many armors, weapons, and other items viable instead of everyone trying to Zenith each other to death. Again. Applause for the admins for bringing depth. That concludes the pvp tutorial. There are threads you can reference on balances, changes, and combinations. I say this, because I would be linking all day if I referenced every thread I’ve ever read on the server. I read more than I talk, and after reading all this, that should scare you.
So now you’re registered, you voted, you learned about pvp, items, you learned about pve. Now it’s time to talk about zombies. Nuff said right? No… No my friend. Zombies is an incredible mode to play. It’s what you think. It’s a terraria version of the old black ops zombies. Featuring custom classes, kits, loadouts, and gear. As you kill zombies, you get that cheese so you can purchase your upgrades as the battlefield evolves. Certain zombie maps will also net you things like experience towards leveling up, and DP the in-game currency. (Dp could previously be purchased, so to speak through donation? I belive? Someone cite and correct me if I’m wrong?) Donations have been frozen, and titles and tags remain forever until further notice. So ignore those pesky timers making you feel like they’re gonna disappear for now.
So we’ve gone over some of the cool things the server has to offer, and some of the other modes you can look at, but let’s look at something else too. Do you own Terraria? Would you like even more cool features? Of course you would! Don’t we all. I’m gonna tell you how we get to that. You’ll want to reference this thread:
for the best results. If you have issues getting crew, there’s threads on that. You may also contact an admin as a last resort once you have exhausted other options with no success.
Once you become crew, you gain access to many things, including more commands. Like the /tp command. What does that do? Oh not much, it only allows you to teleport to any player that allows it on the server at will. Using command /tp (name) And a host of other things you can find threads for right on this forum!
Look at you now, you’re a pro right? Nah, that’s just the basics for breakfast. Wait till we get to lunch. So you’ve registered, you’ve become crew, you waited your 3 days. You’re ready to hop in and start playing! Let’s get to it. We spoke a little bit earlier about the ways you can get out of the spawn area, but let’s rewind a tad bit.
Once you enter the survival section through the hub, or use the /survival command. you will be transported to the survival game mode. If you use the /survival command and you find yourself a stone statue, one of two things has happened. Either you have encountered a rare glitch, and relog to resolve it and reenter survival. Or… You used with /survival command without being registered, or inside your grace period you silly. Don’t do that, it doesn’t work.
Before you even leave the platform. As soon as you enter survival you will find yourself atop a platform on what could be a space ship. You will see yourself surrounded by signs. Read the signs, they are helpful. Do not ignore them. To your left and to your right, you will find many amenities. This will include… More signs. And every workshop you need to play through the game, including a device called an extractinator. It also has many optional workstations, (Not including things like bewitching table ect.) To the far left you will see a sign on the bottom right. I suggest you read it every single day when you logon to see if it changes. To the right, I believe you’ll find a sign with a very helpful youtube link. I suggest you watch it. And now you’re ready to begin your journey!
So now that you’re feeling super awesome!
I would like to talk about warping here. When you join the server, you can warp around to certain locations using commands. They look just like that /warp surface command we talked about earlier. You can find many commands at your disposal at any point simply by typing the command, /help
Through the help command, you’ll be able to access various commands, and various pages of the help menu.
Some of these commands include, but are not limited to: /warp surface /warp jungle/ warp hell/ warp dungeon /house there are also various threads you can locate throughout the forum to assist with these commands.
Use these commands to your advantage!!! !!! !!! I can’t express enough how helpful commands can be. You can go directly to where you need to go. Think about your class, and what you need to get first to be successful early. This server can be rough if you’re not as efficient as you could be. Trust me on this. Don’t know what class is? Again, I suggest beating the game several times before trying survival.
So you’re here, you want to build! Excellent. We talked about some farms earlier, public farms. (But Khal can I have a private farm?) Absolutely! You can have private farms all you want. Just remember, limited space. If you have been successful in gaining your “crew” status. You’ll be able to use the /house command to create an area to build yourself a Home. Once this home is created, it’s all yours. Nobody can touch it. Amazing right? Grief protection. Nobody can break it but you. If you are unsuccessful in becoming crew, it can prove more difficult as you cannot protect any of your buildings. Crew can be obtained as long as you have steam and own your copy of Terraria. Mobile users will have to vote 40 times. (In a row? All together? Someone cite me here? Lol.)
Let’s hop back to crew. Now that you’re crew, you want to build your house. You can’t just build it anywhere, there has to be room for the world to regenerate throughout the week. The world regenrates on 12 hour cycles in real life. Every 12 hours, the world will “restore” itself and items so to speak. (That’s why we have the cool space ship. So it’s undisturbed.) Your building canvas. Is above the spaceship and platforms. You will know where it ends. So now we know about the spaceship. Once you see the size. You will know that almost all, if not all crew members build above this line. Hence the real limited space we spoke of earlier. When the world regenrates. It also destroys. (Oh my GOSH Khal what if it deletes my builds below?) It will… Yeah. It definitely will. So I Suggest getting crew if possible. Your house permissions include a ton of really cool features. You can lock doors and switches so that nobody can use them but you. Your chests will be protected from prying eyes, and theives with zero effort for crew members. (But Khal, what if I have friends?) Well I’m glad you asked hypothetical stranger! You simply use the /house add command. This allows you and your other crewmates to share homes, and resources. (Making a lot more sense why it’s hard to give items to random people now isn’t it?) So every week. WE meaning us, meaning you coming to join us. Work together through the hardest, and worst things that the game can throw at us, under the hardest of conditions, and we LOVE every second of it. That’s what makes the whole thing is the community. Not a single person on the server can make it through alone. It takes teamwork, dedication, coodination, trading of items. But every week before Friday. We go in, and stomp (Spoiler alert stop reading if you haven’t beaten the game.) ML into dust bits, and we go full endgame amazingness and usually take a full day to just kill him repeatedly like poor old “Gollum” the golem. We kill “Waffles” the wall of flesh. We kill them all. (Except Empress is on a WHOLE new level in daytime, and doesn’t happen often. It’s mass murder usually. Lol.) I very much encourage all of you to come and do at least one full playthrough with us. Start to finish.
Let’s talk about being in the survival. The life of survival. It’s death. Lots of death. You will die many times. If you can solo through Master Mode on a hardcore character. My friend, good job. You’re still gonna die! (Why am I gonna die still Khaladin?) It’s because, a number of factors. There’s more than just you. Mobs aren’t just focused on you, so you will NOT be used to the way they move. Sometimes the simplest of bosses will wipe everyone out, it could be someone pulling back to let the tank get aggro and something goes wrong. Technology isn’t flawless and we all have ping times. Sometimes you lag, sometimes one of the biggest servers in Terraria lags. Things happen when this happens. Mobs and bosses clip through walls, rubber band effect. If you have ever played an online game in your life, you know what I mean. But it’s the most fun sometimes when that happens, because you adapt and learn, and it’s different.
Let’s dive back into the boss cheese not working. I will use an actual example of an in-game conversation. (Paraphrased of course.) So a newer player wanted us to kill the cultist. An attempt we failed at the time. The reason was a mechanical error on the players fault. Not the new player specifically, no I’m not picking on him. It’s what he said following that made me think a lot. He said, why don’t we just use lava and burn the Cultist? This is where our single player cheeses we were talking about not working comes into play. You can’t bring lava to the surface, when you can’t use lava buckets… How many of you just lost 3/4 of your farms? Yeah, it’s like that. So here I would like to make another suggestion player to player… Whenever players on the server unanimously tell you that something needs to be done a certain way. Trust us… Really. We have done this with this many people every week. Quite successfully I might add. Between all however many insane amounts of us play this, we have tried every trick you know and more. Because 60 minds are better than 1 or even 2. You will also notice that when we build arenas, they don’t always look like your arenas. This is to compensate for everyone playing. Everyone has a job in the fight, and it goes a lot smoother when everyone works together.
Let’s get going back to more fun stuff again now. Player trading. Yes! I know I keep talking about people wanting items, and people getting items from each other like we’re all passing Zenith’s around like their candy. This is not the case. Since we have master mode, we all get loot bags. Amazing, but still like single player. You don’t always get what you want from the loot bag, and you definitely don’t always get what you need. (Not like that one song at all.) Events. You love farming the xeno popper on your solo world, maybe the xeno staff for summoners? (Shoutout summoner gang.) Here’s where things get interesting. They still only drop one. That’s right. If everyone is on and all 60 people are killing that saucer that keesp multiplying his heatlh and damage because of the number of people on. When he dies. He drops 1 item. Not a special loot bag the admins added. It’s the same as your normal game. So if everyone wants one… We would be farming every event needed to craft the Zenith say, 60 times. Farming for enchanted swords, and all that 60 times… So the way we do it is trade. Either we trade each other what’s needed. Or we give it away. (Some people sell things, I rarely see this on the server. It’s almost always a trade, or just give. It’s part of the teamwork we all learn to love when we come to play.)
There’s a lot of stuff going on. Accidents happen. If you break something you didn’t mean. try to fix it or tell everyone so someone can. That’s really the main thing about it. It takes everyone working togther. Welcome to the server! Welcome back! I am Khaladin! I look forward to seeing you in game, and crying along side you as we lose, laughing when it’s funny, and enjoying the sweet sense of victory when we know that we fought together, fought together and won!
I hope this thread continues to grow, and we all can learn and grow from it. Improving. After all, improving is what we do as humanity, communication, and community. Have a great day!
==Last Disclaimer==
You are reading this message.
(Sorry, bad Khal. No troll.)
