I’ve played 5 years basically only on PvP servers. In the beginning the raids and losing everything was frustrating, but i got over it quickly. The first thing to understand is that every base can be raided, especially these days with the easier bomb placement and whatnot. That’s why i’ve stopped caring about building a heavily fortified base, at the moment i have very visible T1 bases on couple of the servers i play though i’ve been lvl 60 there a good while.

The trick is to have a good chest stash, and i’ve gotten fairly good at hiding my stuff and thralls. Basically the raiders get nothing but the stuff i want to give away, it’s very rare that my stashes are found. If they are, it’s because the attackers have destroyed the whole base completely. So, think of ways to hide materials and gear and just repair and rebuild after a raid. For a minimal amount of repairing needed i just leave the visible chests open with some materials and gear in them so they won’t be bombed and the base destroyed for nothing.

And if you want to level up fast, head to Sepermeru right away and build a base near there. Loot the rooftop chests for a pickaxe and then just chop down wood. I noticed that it’s the fastest and easiest way to gain XP quickly because the pickaxe gathers wood, branches, resin and bark all at once. It’s insane how fast you can level up that way, no need to go north and gather black ice/ice anymore since trees are everywhere. And i’m not even kidding, i never paid attention to it before but on the last server i started i leveled up to 50 in one night just by cutting down trees.