How I'd Play It If I Were You

Plugins, Mods and Usage Manuals

If you're like me, sometimes you just want to follow some directions and get something done. So here's a step-by-step guide.

1. Join my humble server ape42.hopto.org, listed under multiplayer. It runs on a recent stable build of sponge.
2. Glance around real quick; there might be some signs, but they wouldn't say much more than what I'm going to describe to you here.
3. Move over to the entrance to my Abandoned Wastewater Treatment Facility and climb up the ladder. Sorry about the smell, but there you should be reasonably well protected from any lightning and hostile mobs. You can /afk (Away From Keyboard) as you skim through the rest of this document if you like. That command and other core commands are provided by the Nucleus plugin.
4. Climb on down the hole to the Kit Shop and use the bed if its dark out. This should work even if not all the other players are using their bed because I'm using SleepVote.
5. Type /balance or /bal which is a command provided by EconomyLite. You should have 50 coins already, and you'll be granted that for each hour of play due to the way I've installed and configured the PayDay plugin. Any activity earns you money, everything except being AFK of course. Note, I tried out a couple of jobs plugins but didn't like them; setup was painful and they were too restrictive. I just want people to have money for doing pretty much anything at all so they can produce value naturally, measure the value somehow, and have a means of exchange.
6. The item frames are just for display; use /shop browse and pick out whatever you want/ can afford. This is from the PlayerShopsRPG plugin, which I'm beginning to like even better than chest shops. I'm using the somewhat-inconvenient-but-otherwise-fantastic Minecraft Economy Manager spreadsheet, the "proposition" tab, as my price guide.
7. Note that one of the items is a Golden Shovel, which as you can see is just slightly out-of-reach, price-wise, for a player who just joined. But I would strongly advise that you buy it when you can or craft your own. You might know this already already but the Golden Shovel the primary tool for protecting your stuff against other players who might not always have your best interests at heart. See the claims management manuals for GriefProtection, and if you like videos, I guess I can recommend this introductory youtube. I personally find it to be a little bit too long and too much like an advertisement, but it is informative.
8. Explore the cave (or "sewer") if you like; there might or might not be anything more of interest to you down there. I wouldn't count on stumbling on some kind of super-discount Elytra shop, but I suppose it's possible.
9. To start really playing, to break and place things for example, you'll need to move beyond the spawn region, about 200 blocks in any direction.
10. If your direction happens to be North, you'll find the server's first established player shop, "Zigmundle's", but be warned, maybe it goes without saying, that the cake is somewhat less than truthful.
11. I would use ComputerCraft to accomplish larger-scale goodness. For example you can program turtles to mine vast quantities of things people might like to buy in your shop. That's what I plan to do.
12. I also provide OpenComputers (curse page) and here's the project page. there's a book about it in your inventory but to be frank I haven't used it much myself, just enough to know that's it's rather big and complicated... so if you're interested in it, you likely already know more about it than I do.
13. Here's a link for Just Enough Items. Maybe that's more-than-enough said.