SC3 is a minecraft server built around computercraft. Apart from CC:Tweaked, Plethora, and a few homebrewed mods, there is not much else in the modpack. This gives the game a very vanilla+ feel which manages to have a rather extended endgame due to progression not being the main focus. You probably joined for the computercraft mod, and this tutorial will get to it eventually, but first let me introduce you to all (most) of the new items from all of the mods:
- Computers
- Computers: Blocks that execute arbitrary Lua code. Apart from running code they can output redstone signals, transport items instantaneously, and control any connected peripherals like speakers, printers, etc. (More on them shortly) An advanced computer is only different from a regular computer in that it has a color display and mouse support.
- Turtles: Computers on wheels! Can do anything a computer can do and on top of that interact with the world by moving, placing and breaking blocks, attacking mobs, etc.
- Pocket computers: A computer in your pocket; An item you can right click to use instead of a block to place. Rarely used because it can generally do less than a regular computer, but it's still sometimes useful.
- Neural interface: A computer on your face! It's like a pocket computer but way more useful in that it has more slots for modules and can also act upon the player wearing it. Very useful for automating player tasks that cannot be done by turtles.
- Peripherals
- Monitor: Can show visuals on a screen visible without right clicking on the computer. An advanced monitor also allows for right clicking on buttons.
- Speaker: Can play arbitrary audio. There's a cc-friendly audio format to store such audio in (DFPWM1a) and an online converter. Apart from playing music it can also easily play in-game sounds and music disks
- Printer: Can write text onto a sheet of paper with a bit of dye. Can also be used to print entire books
- Poster printer: It still prints thing onto paper, but instead of being limited to text it can print an arbitrary image. There is again a cc-friendly file format for that (2DJ) and an online converter.
- 3D printer: Makes custom blocks! Kind of hard to use since you need 3D modeling skills to make anything non-trivial.
- Wireless modems: Allows direct data transmission between computers.
- Wired modems: Also allows direct data transmission between computers, but requires a cable to run between the two computers. Additionally, it allows a computer to connect to peripherals and chests.
- Floppy drive: Can store files onto inserted floppies.
- Manipulator: Can host Plethora modules inside it, essentially turning said modules into peripherals
- Modules (either for use in a manipulator, a turtle, or neural interface):
- Frickin' laser beam: Shoots laser beams! The beams break blocks and damage mobs and players that aren't resistant to fire.
- Kinetic augment: Can be used to launch yourself into the air. Turtles can also use it to work with a wider range of tools (but simultaneously consuming the durability of said tool)
- Introspection module: Allows access to a player's inventory as if it's a chest. (Has to be bound to that player for that to work)
- Overlay glasses: For displaying holograms through your neural interface (both 2D HUDs and 3D holograms)
- Block scanner: Gives you information about all of the blocks in a radius around it. When handheld it acts as a convenient xray gadget
- Entity scanner: Same thing but for entities instead of blocks. Has a larger range
- Keyboard: Right click on a computer to type on it without having to open it. Mildly useful when paired with a monitor. Also useful for getting keystrokes in a neural interface
- Miscelaneous
- Ender storage chests: Has 3 colors on the top, any two chests with the same sequence of colors act as if they're the same chest and share their items across all of spacetime. Extremely handy for item transportation. Additionally put a diamond on the latch to make it a personal chest to prevent other players from accessing the contents of it.
- Item magnet: Attracts items towards you.
- Hover boots: Makes you jump 4 blocks high instead of 1 and automatically step up a 1 block high ledge.
- Dragon scale: Dropped by killing the ender dragon. When crafted with an existing elytra, it creates a new elytra while keeping the existing elytra intact. It's a way to craft elytras, essentially.
- Iron/Golden/Diamond Chests/Barrels/Shulker boxes: Upgraded storages, have the capacity of 2/3/4 regular chests, respectively.
- Ancient tomes: Hard to find enchanting books that let you enchant something 1 level above what would be possible in vanilla minecraft. Obtainable only as chest loot
- Popcorn: Unobtainable.
- Sakura/Maple/Peppy saplings and grass: Funny colored foliage, can be found in villages and grown indefinitely.
- Ink cartridge and Chamelium: Used to fuel poster printers and 3D printers.
- Glass item frames: Identical to regular item frames but when there's an item in them the item frame itself becomes invisible.
That's a lot of stuff!!! And some of it is mighty expensive to craft, where does one even start?
Download the .zip file from https://sc3.io/ and then import it into Prism launcher (or anything else that supports the MultiMC format). Assuming you have just installed Prism here's how to set it up:
- Open Prism
- Add your microsoft account by click on the top right and following the steps
- On the top left, click "Add Instance"
- From the list on the left, "Import", then select the .zip file you downloaded
- Click Ok to add the instance
- Double click on the newly added SwitchCraft instance to launch the game. It'll automatically download minecraft and all the necessary mods.
This section will lay out a hypothetical route from spawning to beating the game while relying as little as possible on the existence of other players. This is not the only way to play the game, and on the other extreme of the spectrum you can simply buy all of the top tier gear using your starting balance to skip straight to the endgame.
Note that there is little to no risk of ever losing your progress, as you get to keep your inventory when you die and can type /back to go back to the place you died.
First, get away from spawn with /rtp so you have somewhere you can mine and build. (Alternatively use the dynmap to find an unclaimed spot closer to spawn, more on that later). Then set home there with /home set so you can always come back with a simple /home no matter where you are.
After that, play minecraft as you normally would. Secure a food source, obtain iron and diamonds, and build a small base of operations.
The nether is unchanged, but along with hunting for blazes you'll also be hunting for ghasts.
That's because to defeat the ender dragon you first need to summon it with 4 end crystals.
You will need 4 ghast tears and 4 eyes of ender in total for the 4 crystals.
Both of these fetch quests will be rather difficult, as a lot of the blaze spawners near the nether's center have been claimed (more on claims later) so you'll have to go rather far out to find one you can use.
Set /homes often, as you cannot do /back if you fall into a lava lake
No need to find a stronghold, just do /warp end. Summon the dragon with the end crystals and then fight it.
Ideally do this without alerting other players that you're fighting the ender dragon so that they do not come to interfere.
That includes not dying to the ender dragon, as the death message will be visible in chat. After you kill the dragon, it'll drop a dragon scale from the sky where it died.
Sadly turning the scale into an elytra involves already having an elytra, and to my knowledge every single end city has been raided already, so this is the one and only step involving another player: Kindly ask someone with an elytra to convert your scale to an elytra. After that, voila! Elytra. Except it also needs propulsion. You could go the vanilla route of firework rockets by making a gunpowder farm and a paper farm, but the gunpowder farm would likely involve afking to work. A more permanent solution would be to propel yourself using a kinetic module, as it does not require any fuel to propel you. The main ingredient for it is a potion of leaping, which you will need more blaze rods for (for the blaze powder to fuel the brewing stand) and a rabbit's foot.
Defeat the wither, several withers, in order to craft a beacon, a magnet, and a printer. Automate everything with farms. Expand your base, make it big and pretty. Or just do anything else you fancy. Welcome to the endgame. In general the three things to do at this point boil down to programming things, building cool stuff, and making big piles of money (or doing all three things at once).
All players can mark out chunks of land and make it such that only they can build there. These chunks are called claims. Apart from the 200x200 or so area at the center of spawn ("the Immediate Spawn Area"), everything at spawn is built and claimed by players. For a birds-eye view of that entire mess you can go to https://dynmap.sc3.io/ where every colored rectangle is its own claim.
To claim some unclaimed land, first type /kit ck to get a golden shovel. Then right click on the first corner of your land and then right click on the opposite corner of your land. And that's about it. You can view information about the claim with /claiminfo or get rid of the claim with /abandon.
In the previous section I mentioned /rtp which puts you well outside of spawn, but if you want you can instead build a base at spawn by finding an unclaimed spot near the edge of spawn, claiming it and building there. You do not need to shove all of your farms here, you can have a second remote location where you keep your ugly stuff and only have your house near spawn.
You may have also noticed from dynmap that the world is rather small. That is intentional in order to limit the file size, but does mean you're limited in your explorations, and that structures such as mansions have probably all been claimed already.
Hold tab. On the top left of your screen is your account balance of "krist", the server's in-game currency. Don't worry, it's not tied to real world money in any way. You start out with 200 krist when you join, and get more free money every day according to how much you play (up to 40 krist for 14 hours of playtime in the last 7 days). You can send anyone krist with /pay {player name} {amount} in exchange for goods and services.
Shops are an automated way to dispense items out to players in exchange for krist. A shop will display an address to pay to with /pay and when money is sent it'll spit items out. Almost every in-game shop is created by a player, and you can make one, too!
A lot of the items you normally have to grind for are probably already for sale at some shop, so if you do not feel like grinding for an elytra or a kinetic augment or for netherite armor, you can just buy some. To find a shop selling a particular item you can use the online catalogue or use the \fs command in-game.
The liquidity pool (LP for short) is currently the only in-game shop that allows people to not only buy but also sell items. But watch out - the price rises as you buy and falls as you sell. (You can visit the LP with /warp lp)
Additionally there's a bunch of free items at /warp enderstorage for anyone to grab as much as they need. (Please don't be too greedy, though)
Apart from your in-game wallet you can make additional independent wallets at https://krist.club/. All wallets have an address which is just a random sequence of letters beginning with a k that identifies the wallet, and can be entered as a recipient in the /pay command to send money to that wallet. Additionally, you can also purchase a name (basically an alias) for the wallet that can be anything you want and ends in .kst. Sending money to a wallet name is going to direct that money to the wallet that owns the name. If a wallet has a name you can also include a subname to pay to. These preceed the name and are separated from it with a @. They do not affect where the money goes to (it still just goes to the wallet owning the name) but can be used by the recipient to indicate exactly what you're paying for. For example, if you send money to dirt@verycoolshop.kst your money will go to verycoolshop.kst and the shop will know that what you wanted to buy was dirt.
You will need:
- A place for your shop (either your own claim or a spot in one of the malls)
- A turtle, advanced monitors, wired modems, and some chests
- A wallet (created on https://krist.club/)
- Optionally a krist name (bought from https://krist.club/)
- Shop software. The most popular options are Radon and Kristify. (Kristify requires a krist name, so if you don't have one you probably want to use Radon). If you feel ambitious you can also write your own.
After you select your shop software, follow the respective setup guide for further instructions on how to construct a working shop.
Additionally if you're making those vending machine shops with a single 1x1 monitor you will probably need Radon and the MicroLayout for Radon
More detailed info here, but in short, you can buy chunkloaders with krist that keep a chunk constantly loaded either while you're online or even when you're offline. An offline chunkloader is a game changer for farms as you can have them run 24/7 without the need to afk there. Most players buy an offline chunkloader, load some random chunk away from spawn and then shove all of their farms in that one chunk. Just keep in mind chunkloaders are rather expensive, so you'll need to save up some krist.
In short, /commands are commands made by admins, and \commands are commands made by players. \commands are essentially just computers listening for instructions on what to do, and thus aren't capable of magic.
If you're new to computercraft and/or programming I would recommend starting by playing around with turtles. Relevant resources include:
- Sethbling's turtle programming tutorial - it may be 10 years old at this point but it's still relevant. If it doesn't catch your fancy there's other similar tutorials on the web
- A reference page of all turtle-specific functions you can call - move, place, dig, place, craft, etc. Useful as a reference. (This is called "documentation" in the programming world)
- The official tutorial for lua, the programming language - if-else statements, loops, functions, variables, tables, numbers, etc. Essentially everything that isn't specific to turtles or minecraft.
Progressing past turtles, you'll probably also need the plethora documentation for the various modules (very outdated at this point, it's almost useless but there's nothing else) and the sc-peripherals documentation for the poster printer and 3d printer, as well as the chatbox api if you want to make your own \commands
A set of useful libraries, tools, and programs can be found at https://github.com/aspen-reeves/awesome-switchcraft. The most noteworthy of these when it comes to programming is cloud catcher since it eases writing programs significantly.
You can add additional client-side mods to your instance if you wish to, but not every mod is allowed. Admins approve/ban mods when someone first joins with a new one and add it to a database. Here is a list of some approved and banned mods, but it is by no means exhaustive. If you are wondering whether a mod not listed here is allowed, simply ask a member of staff and they will give you a yes/no answer.
- Shaders
- Iris
- Performance optimizations
- Sodium
- Indium
- Lithium
- ImmediatelyFast
- Fastload
- Enhanced Block Entities
- Minimap mods
- JourneyMap
- Xaero's Minimap
- Xaero's World Map
- Distant Horizons
- Bobby
- AppleSkin
- Litematica
- Litematica Printer
- Inventory management mods
- Mouse tweaks
- Mouse wheelie
- Inventory essentials
- Inventory Profiles Next
- inventory-tabs
- itemswapper
- Spyglass Astronomy
- TimeOut Out
- 3dskinlayers
- do-a-barrel-roll
- TouhouXpOrbs
- Legendary Tooltips
- LambDynamicLights
- Dynamic Music
- Ambient Sounds
- Sound Physics Remastered
- Accurate Block Placement
- Better Log4j Config
- Zoom mods
- Zoomify
- Zume
- Figura
- Xray and other hacks
- Fullbright mods (use night vision instead)
- ReplayMod