The 2b2t Blog

This following blog post has been lifted from the depths of the Facepunch forum archives.

It was a post on a thread dated 8th July 2011 by Chezhead that comprehensively described the Facepunch communities travels on the server.
2b2t.org used to be called 2b2t.net and for the sake of preservation, it has been left as it was written.

If you are interested in reading it on the thread, please click here.

Take your mind back to 2011 now as you read Chezhead's account!

In the far reaches of the minecraft community, there is a server called 2b2t.net. It’s open for many forums including Facepunch, 4chan, and Something Awful. I decided to head over to it one day to see what it was all about.

This is the spawn. The entire area around 1000 blocks of the spawn feels like a nuclear apocalypse, with ruined buildings, giant craters, and nothing surviving for more than a few days. It’s pretty much a cesspool of griefing and destruction. That’s what I loved about it, however. There was a raw feel of survival. No rules, no admins, full strategy and PvP action.

I joined this server, and some buddies of mine joined on as well, Mattyyy and Coolity. We took refuge underneath this.

(The linked image was no longer avaliable)

We later met with the creator of this “castle” and learned of its history, but for then, we just hid in the expansive mines underneath it. There were thousands of tunnels under it, and led to many areas around the spawn. It was a true set of catacombs.

After a little bit, a thread of mine about this server gained popularity, and many other facepunchers joined in the fun. We eventually had a bustling area simply built around a single staircase.

(The linked image was no longer avaliable)

Eventually, we moved out to a separate castle due to the lack of space and being too close to the spawn. This castle was an amazing fortress of solitude and happiness. We eventually got a working system of government (for the most part), jobs, and a decent infrastructure of facepunchers. Here’s a picture of a meeting. (I’m the one at the front of the room)

Sadly, all things had to come to an end. Base number two was destroyed by hackers with their hacked in TNT.

We found another base the next day. It was a bustling castle with a wide open courtyard. Some 4channers with hacks shortly destroyed this too. 

Facepunchers are persistent, so we moved onto another area. After a brief struggle with two separate bases, we moved into a cave system, led again by me. We made a nice courtyard, fountain, and other fun things.

This base lasted a while. I moved from it for a bit, and let Icytruth take control of it in place of me. Sadly, it was taken by creepers. Numerous explosions near the entrance flooded it, and creepers were swept in by the water, making it inhabitable. It was lost and forgotten.

Base number 5 was found completely by accident. After the creeper invasion, I moved elsewhere to find a nice area for a sweet underground base. After digging down a bit, I fell into this:

This base was the best of them all. We inhabited it and changed it to our needs. I’m not exactly sure how the base fell, but I think it was a friendly hacker turning evil after someone hurt him. Not too sure, but it was later inhabited again. Not sure if people still live there. The location was later told over chat by KombatDoctor, and the location compromised. It’s likely being griefed and looted right now.

Eventually, we moved and created base number six. I put Startoad in charge of this one, and he ran it pretty well with the exception of a bit of bickering between him and Dachande. It was named Camp General Discussion, and another camp was made into Camp Creationism Corner. This is when I worked on a secret project, “Project Arsenal”, a mob trap hidden in a desert, made to provide military equipment to our military to ward off hackers and other potental threats.

From here on out, the history gets muddled. There’s multiple bases used to house people from different camps. Life is pretty well, except for two mysterious people in diamond armor that scared us near spawn. 

Camp Creationism Corner Flourishes, and mweorz helps us out a bit. He ends up being a great friend and helper. Sadly, this comes to an end like all bases. I logged off for the night, and all or items were gone (Still wondering if that was some FP members, taking it to the new base?), the place trashed, and the place deserted. Bennyhill and rage639 take the base to attempt to look for materials, but obviously fail. I hit them with some lava and a sword, and die valiantly after attempting to run away and logging off.

This is a brief history of the Facepunch campaign in this server. Tell me if you have pictures or more info! When this is all over (server shutdown, ultimate destruction of facepunchers, total conquering of the entire server), I’ll make a thread about it, much like the Wurm Online story that always seems to be around on GD.

2builders2tools, better known as 2b2t, is the paramount anarchy server of Minecraft. It is famous for running vanilla survival gameplay on the same world since 2010, and infamous for its less than politically correct chat (to put it mildly) and complete lack of rules.  

Newcomers arriving at spawn are often hard pressed to survive. Those that do not starve to death are often slaughtered for their possessions, or just for fun. Bases are burned to the ground, looted, and marked with symbols of hate. Factions battle one another while predators purge the weak who stumble naked through the ruins of spawn. Those that escape this area sometimes rise to form alliances and build larger bases or even small cities that they are able to hold and defend for a time, but even those inevitably face their doom, either from determined enemies or random griefers intent on destroying anything they can find. Such is the harsh reality and fun of this server.

Yet far from spawn is an entirely different world, one that does not even begin to emerge until a player has traveled at least a million blocks from their original spawn point. Here, surroundings are largely untouched. Jungle or desert temples still contain their riches. Spawned villages offer welcome shelter and sustenance. One can easily forget that they are on a multiplayer server, quietly building their base alone, deep in the wilderness. But this is an illusion. In reality, many great builds exist throughout the outskirts of 2b2t. The sheer size of the server can sometimes make them difficult to find, especially when they depart from the main axis lines, but they are not at all uncommon.  In some cases, by sheer accident, they can be found only a few thousand blocks apart. These builds are typically different from those found at spawn.  Some have survived untouched or unvisited for years. They more often include intricate redstone machines or great fortresses filled with elaborate décor or unusual mobs. They are amazing to come across, particularly after weeks of painful travel, and they regularly offer a chance to explore, rest, and recover. One such build is Avalon, the City of Peace.

Avalon Castle

Avalon was created in 2013 after I undertook to leave the chaos of spawn and see what else existed on the 2b2t server. Like others before me, I followed nether highways to hidden bases and even the ruins of great cities long since destroyed. I reached 100,000 in the nether (or 800,000 overworld) thinking I had traveled some great distance. Little did I know that this was only the beginning, and that the real work would begin when the nether highways ended and the long walk began. Ultimately I settled in the middle of a distant ocean, an unlikely spot with no immediate access to any resources.

I started building, importing everything I needed from distant shores where I created temporary mini-bases to gather supplies. Construction was painfully slow. As faction wars ended at spawn, I built ocean roads in all directions from my small base. As the Valkyrians took part in their spawn incursions far away, I built underwater passageways leading to massive tunnel systems, critical for material and to provide access to various biomes. As Asgard 1 was abandoned and Fenrir and other great cities were founded, I began construction on a great castle, with four floors above ground and roots travelling deep below the ocean. Then came the farms and houses, ranches and marinas. The great city of Avalon had emerged.

Guardian and Child

Named after the island where Excalibur was forged and where King Arthur traveled to recover from his wounds, Avalon remains a castle city - an island refuge for the weary traveler seeking to heal, rest, and fill their stomachs. All are welcome, so long as swords are left in their sheaths, and grievances and hate are left at the city gates. Storage rooms are available with virtually any type of item a player might need. A general store run by a zombie pigman is available for trade. Food is plenty ranging from steaks and cooked salmon, to cake and entire chests of mooshroom stew. Fields of wheat, potatoes, carrots, melons, pumpkins, cocoa, cactus, and sugar cane are also available.

There is an abundance for everyone.

Mushroom Island and Villager Condos

Over time Avalon has expanded from its central castle, father and farther into the ocean. Villager condos were built to the north after captured zombie villagers were cured. As the population grew allowing for a full range of trade, so did the number of iron golems looking after them. Residential properties were built to the south. Birch homes were erected with sunroofs, porches, and multicolored sheep as household pets. Other builds included nether brick homes with fireplaces and pools, and prismarine brick homes filled with pigman families and sponge beds.  To the west, manmade mushroom islands were created complete with mooshrooms and mycelium imported from far away. To the south, a second courtyard and ranch was constructed with grass, birch, oak, acacia, jungle and dark oak trees, a central fountain, and every possible variety of horse and armor. Gardens were later added to the castle, offering a more colorful oasis within the castle walls.  

Castle Ranch

Around the central core of the city floating forests were constructed, including giant spruce to the south and giant jungle trees to the north. Ocean roads became lined with oak and other floating trees as well, as was the case with the recently renovated south marina ready to meet those travelling north.

South Marina

The expanding size of Avalon necessitated a powered rail system that now circles the central part of the city, with similar systems expanding onto ocean roads. But these still pale in comparison to undersea roads which reach everywhere from taiga and jungle bases, to ocean monuments. The city of course is connected to the nether as well, where other sub-bases exist with pathways linked to two nether fortresses.  

Nether Entrance to Castle

Avalon continues to grow beyond the confines of the city core. Like a web of cobble and stone, its new roads and structures weave across a deep blue sea filled with squid and packs of angry guardians stripped of their ocean monuments. An industrial section is currently under development with a focus on automated farms and grinders necessary to meet the city’s growing needs. A museum is also in the works, with a focus on the history of this great server and the groups that have contributed to it over the years.  

Aerial View of City Core (from nearby Tower)

Avalon remains a Geneva of sorts, a safe neutral ground waiting for those that can find it. It does however have defenses against those who might do it harm, as well as its secrets to reveal. But what lies within its castle walls or in its deepest dungeons is a discussion for another day, for Avalon does not sleep, nor do some of its permanent residents.

Enderman Prisoner

To be continued ….

Welcome to 2b2t's third official Spawn Incursion!
This post will be updated multiple times a week - Last update 15 May 2015
You can comment to this post to add any information providing it is factual.

What is an Incursion?

The Incursion is essentially an 'attack' on spawn by older players and new alike.

The aim is not simply to just kill anything moving or living in spawn though. Part of the focus is on building a base so grand that spawn has not seen since the last incursion.

Anyone is free to join 'volunteerbase' and help make it grow and assert dominance over other current bases.
Wrath Outpost will be a more grand base made almost entirely of Obsidian.

Volunteerbase and Wrath Outpost will be protected by all their members. Should an attacker appear - from the outside or within - they will be 'removed'.

KOS - Kill On Sight

This area lists players that are KOS - untrustworthy, enemies of Incursion members, Wrath Outpost or volunteerbase.

Updates

28 April 2015

Sato86 declares the beginning of the Third Spawn Incursion accross all media 2b2t is involved in - server chat, facepunch, skype, 8chan. Interestingly this event falls on the same date that Valkyria was founded in 2013. This may be relevant considering most if not all of Sato's current basemates are taking part or heading up this years incursion.

The volunteer base is formed around an impressive stonebrick and water build by bammerbeast. An old duplication glitch is exploited to produce endless ore blocks such as Emerald. False rumours begin to circulate that the base has been griefed.

29 April 2015

Building continues at volunteerbase, more beacons and castles are built. Other players gather their items and begin heading to spawn.

6 - 8 May 2015

More blocks are duplicated, melon blocks, golden carrots, obsidian included.

Work continues on Wrath Outpost and many, many more players are either killed or die from falls around the area. The iconic Spawn Beacon is made once more.

The wave of attackers grows even stronger, with many deaths occuring.
The Melon castle fort is constructed by Kaorukun.

Prepare.

Facepunch Decay Era: With the faction war losing force and spotlight, Facepunchers started to form their own groups or just going solo. 4channers had nothing more to destroy or stalk, seeing themselves to be forced to follow the same path of their enemies. 2b2t base numbers grew at the same pace that the griefings decreased. The player number also started to decrease due the fact that many players gave up after the extremely violent period. 1mil group or at least what was left from it was isolated in the millions. 

A very long Era of decay began. It started with a new facepunch thread that was made about 2b2t - during February 2012 - announcing that there was no republic and that there had never been one. In fact, the amounts of bases that were made claiming to be facepunch republics would be so great that even dirt huts would make this claim as a obvious joke of the whole situation. During June 2012, 2k2k became the only official facepunch base to be discussed on the forums. Phagocyitc was the person in the charge of the base. The fact that the place was considered a spawn base and griefed before would discourage 4channers to do anything. They would just repair it again and again. Both sides were exhausted from the months of fighting.

2b2t griefings became more and more rare. The lag started to strike and many players left the server. The last attempt by Facepunchers to make a base was lead by Coldwave and his group. However they were smart enough to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors. The group had a locked list of invited members. No one on the forum would join, no matter how much they asked. They would use facepunch to update their base progress and communicate. They greatest base was known as Hitlerwood

Shortly after, 3 players grouped together past 100k. They were all fairly new on the server and with no goals in mind. Sato86 invited Pyrobyte and Drewbookman to his base called Anatolia, where they would form the Anatolia triumvirate. Anatolia and Hitlerwood would later join forces thanks to a convenient temporary test map. Under the leadershio of Sato86, Coldwave and hinderjd, a new major group of players formed. This group put an end to the long decay Era that 2b2t had suffered, making the server active thanks to a base called Valkyria.

Valkyrian Era: Hinderjd himself declared while at Valkyria that 2b2t was now at an Era of Peace. He couldn't be more right. This peace would only be interrupted by the Incursions that spawn suffered. However, despite the amount of killings made there, the griefing reduced to such a point that it was common to go for a whole week without hearing about one. The patching of nether roof access also helped to decrease the already decreasing rates of destruction.

Valkyria would mainly become the servers most noted settlement during this period. Actually, more than half of the online players on 2b2t at the time were at the base. Suddenly the base grew to double the amount of members of hitlerwood and Anatolia combined. A “friend of a friend”. People started to ask for their base-mates to be invited, forming a chain of trust that connected all the players inside. This chain worked pretty well. A giant base was born. And with it, the powerful rule it started to exercise on 2b2t. The embodiment of this rule was them proved on both Spawn Incursions. The first incursion was the shortest one, but the second lasted 3 months. Spawn was absolutely dominated by this newly formed army with players armed to the teeth with duped god equipment, revitalising the “oldfags” that were already there, pushing them out of spawn to a point that only Valkyria remained. They also protected NFE at a request of xcc2. The Reddit and IGN invasions were driven back by the Second Spawn Incursion. The number of kills of the combined members of the occupation most likely passed 1000. And two giant obsidian eagles were made on each axis of spawn, remaining there for many months.

2b2t's last Facepunch base was also made by Knightvista. Fort Avril, that was later griefed.

The Valkyrian Era would end with the interruption (Caused by popbob) of the Asgard base project. . A carefully planned and widely expected project that would come with the biome update.

Post-Valkyria Era: The broken eagle is a good symbol to represent this Era. Without leadership and exhausted and frustrated by Asgard failure, the majority of players from Valkyria left the server and the rest went into solo goals or joined minor groups and initiatives, such as Gape 1, Gape 2 and Judge's Oldcity project. A new generation of 2b2t players started to arrive and to mix with the Valkyrians or maybe the opposite. The Legion of Shenandoah became stronger in numbers and more known at this period as well, even though they first appeared at the end of the previous Era. 2k2k, one of the oldest bases of 2b2t was then destroyed following the destruction of NFE months before. Spawn lost the 2 most known spawn bases of its history during the transition of the two periods.

First Days: This is the beginning of 2b2t. The truth is that there is little saved information about this first period. Only Hausemaster (now HOUSE_MASTER) would be able to go into fine details. Nevertheless, it is likely that the server started to get popular for its promise of true anarchy. ‘4channers’ who wished to play on an online server couldn’t identify with the existing anarchy servers and also their admins. So 2b2t was - especially for /v/ and /b/ people - the place they wanted to play Minecraft online. The server started to be advertised on 4chan almost daily. People started to get online more and more. Spawn probably received the first wave of destruction at this point. The game was still on beta or alpha at the time.


Facepunch Era: This is where everything changed. This period made 2b2t widely popular among Minecraft players. It all started when a Facepuncher called Chezhead rallied other Minecraft players from the same forum to join him on the server to make a ‘Facepunch Republic’. The short-term goal was just to have a base for the Facepunch community to play on. However, the 4channers took notice of this. Days later, Camp Facepunch, their first base, was destroyed.

Apparently everything was fine, but it was really ironic that the fall of Valk came from a person that I wouldn't imagine… after months of watching over anything and anyone.

It started when Kinorana, a new member arrived at Valk. He was quite strange and I even began to think that it was mistake to invite him. He even fooled us into thinking he had griefed Valkyria. He downloaded the chunks and griefed it on single player, took the screenshots and showed them to us. I wasn't at the base when he did that so I couldn't confirm. He apologized to me and so I let that pass. 

Then in just one week, Kinorana brought to us the new dupe. He didn't just share with us everything he was duping, but also taught us how to do it. It was a great advance not just for us, but also for the base. We could have more building blocks and more resources. But then started the problem with Drew and Kino. It all began because an armor set disappeared from one of the chests. The people blamed drew for it. And since Kino was always trying to hurt Drew and to keep him away, Drew isolated himself from me and Pyro. And the more friendly we became with Kino, the more unfriendly and distant Drew was becoming. 

But that was a reason why people blamed drew for it. There were 3 fire accidents on the base. 1 on some wool decorating a wall and 2 burnt houses - Angry_baby's house and KnightVista's storage. In all those 3 cases, the only witness of what happened was Drew. And regarding the cause, he always answered that it was the “Lightning”. But there is a problem with the lightning fire and its that the rain always put it out before having chance to start a big fire. If it wasn't for that, jungles biomes would suffer constantly from raging fire.

“I am going to keep pretending that I am blind and you're gonna keep pretending that you are a good boy” I remember saying after the third accident.

Drew was the first base mate I had. He was the first person I met on 2b2t, and so even after all this I still continued to defend him and his innocence. 

The 3 places that got hit by fire. Not in the same day and not at the same time.

After this, we decided to make the First Spawn Incursion. Most of the members of Valk - now with God equipment - would travel to spawn and take over it just for some days, killing people and exploring its glory. We actually killed a few withers that were spawned there.

Screenshot by _Aaron_        Location: Spawn

We decided then that the best place to group would be at 2k2k. An old Facepunch base that was griefed several times. There Drew committed a new stupid act, by killing Trodam, a person we met there, that we didn't consider as a threat to us. Yet Drew, ruthless, slayed him and burnt his stuff in front of all of us. At this point, I couldn't defend Drew any more. He just walked away from 2k2k after.

Trodam returned and we tried the best we could to help him. We also put a beacon at 2k2k and built a nice small farm. Everything was going okay. But then at night, when most of the crew had left 2k2k or had logged off, a person came and killed Trodam and stole our beacon. That was BAHSAHKAH (Jacktherippa alt). I only had time to log on to see him running away. Me and Pyro tried to follow him in the nether, but he escaped. 

And when even Pyro wasn’t online anymore, he returned to 2k2k. I saw him with my radar. He was underground, probably coming to see if he could steal some more or maybe he was expecting to find me there and to have a fight. It was what happened. I ran at the underground with my Glaurung to slaughter. And he waited for me, holding his Arondight. Between those pillars we exchanged hits and cuts. Both with the possession of golden apples. Yet I couldn't win. A fair and enjoyable fight that actually made us to become friends months later.

Of course, I re-spawned close to Valkyria. At a secret place. A few days later… It happened. 

Several buildings in Valkyria were damaged by TNT and fire (including the walls) and 5 withers were spawned during the night. I was at Anatolia when it happened finishing the tower project I had started but hinder and Coldwave were at Valk. They killed 4 of the 5 withers and tried to find out who did it. 

I, suspecting Drew, started to talk with him in chat. He said he wanted to make a new base and that he also had the perfect coords. But I ended up getting more from him. This griefing purpose was to spread paranoia to everyone. He confessed to me. He said he wanted to break the group apart. Shatter the crew and return the way it was before. I got a mixture of rage and sadness. I felt anger and pity for him. He then apologized for having disappointed me. I accepted his apologies and forgave him. But I was only speaking for myself. Not for the others. 

He actually was stupid enough to share his coords with hinder…before confessing. Hinder went there with Coldwave and Zach. Drew tried to run away but they ended up getting him. He tried to fight, but Drew was overwhelmed. He was killed and his duped stash was burned down together with his secret house. 

When I then had the opportunity to return to Valkyria, I found a lifeless place. All the buildings had received damage. The torches that once lit up the place were taken. Darkness and mobs were under control of most of our beloved houses. 

I then ran to the plains I was preparing for the base expansion and found one last wither, resting in a deep hole in the underground. In a moment of anger I went down the hole, shooting arrows until the evil creature went to ground, to finally finish it with the sword. And then there was silence. That awkward silence after a battle ends. I got the nether star and started to go up again. And since all the beacons of the Valkyria were stolen, I decided to use that nether star to make the last beacon. I don’t know why I did that. I guess I just wanted to leave something behind

I left the base shortly after to never return. Got everything it could be useful and went to the portal.                                

Valkyria I member board (before it ended):

Valkyria was gone.   

Or at least that’s what I thought…

I would like to extend a big thank-you to Sato86 and all the guest posters for their fantastic stories and contributions!