Playing Minecraft (what should I do?)

Okay, I'm in the game. Now what?

Welcome! It's Minecraft with a lot more going on than the last time you may have played.

Some things you might want to try:

catch some Pokemon
go exploring
do some strip-mining in survival & hang out in a cave
hop on a train and ride it around
pick somewhere on the map to explore (press M to bring up the map, right click for teleport options)
build some things in Creative mode
browse the thousands of blocks we have available to build with
do parkour or grind on some rails

Here's a 'needlessly long list' of ideas from the Minecraft subreddit.

Server Etiquette

Basic expectations: don't be a dick
Don't break any existing structures on purpose, fix things if you break them by accident
Don't build on top of existing structures unless given permission (unless you find something unoccupied and generated by the game)
Don't loot people's chests without permission
No griefing
Try to warn people before teleporting to them (avoid jumpscares lol)
Be as chatty as you want (or not)
Ask for permission before inviting new players

Useful Slash Commands

Some useful slash commands to know. Hit T to bring up the chat window and begin typing. Tab will autocomplete suggested commands. You can read more about them here.

Some commands may require admin to use, we're gonna see what we can do about that.

/gamemode survival	switch to survival mode
/gamemode creative	switch to creative mode
/time set day\|noon\|night\|midnight	set global game time - also accepts numbers like 6 for 6am, 15 for 3pm
/weather clear\|rain\|thunder	set global weather (rain makes snow in cold biomes
/spawnpokemon <pokemon> [attributes]	example - /spawnpokemon shiny abra ability=synchronize
/tp @playername \| /teleport @playername	teleport to named player instantly
/locate structure <structure>	get the coordinates for the nearest instance of a structure
/locate biome <biome>	get the coordinates of the nearest biome within 32x64 blocks (ex: minecraft:plains)
/locate poi <poi>	get the coordinates of the nearest point of interest within 256 blocks

/seed

displays the world seed, useful for webapps that can display MC maps like this one (this is the same one we're playing with)