What type of server should be my first?

[SGFTI]

• Official PvP
• Private Unmodded
• Private With Mods
• Other

[MyNameJeff]

The game generally is broken so I wouldn’t recommend going PVP Official as a lot of older players probably have a lot of better gear and could destroy you easily while if you were to match their gear it could take you months of farming since XP has been nerfed a lot and crafting items has been made harder due to recipe changes.

I recommend Single Player if you just want to enjoy it by yourself, otherwise go PVE so you can meet people online.

[SpiralValve]

What do you want from the game. I personally love PVP but I am the type that doesn’t mind having everything destroyed and rebuild and continue on. Official servers are the wildwest, assume no rules are there. I only play vanilla cuz I am a console player but if you want to play modified then that would be a risk every time there is updates etc that you will need to wait for a mod change possibly.
Private servers will have some admin for the servers but from what I have seen there is some admin that want to play god and it could drive you nuts.

[SGFTI]

I don’t mind playing against the odds. I understand I’m not walking into a fresh on the market game, I expect heavy resistance starting out. I’m an overcome the odds kind of person.

Fall seven times, stand up eight.

[SpiralValve]

With that attitude I think you will like PVP server. The only choice after that is if you want moderators or server admin involved in game. Official there is no support , often private have server admins but that has its own risk as well.

[Leeux]

I’d say start either in an official PvE-conflict server, or a private modded one. I wouldn’t recommend to start on a full PvP server for your first playthrough, though.

EDIT: And I said private modded instead of unmodded because IMHO the only reasons to play on a private servers is, either 1. you know the people playing there, 2. you wan’t to role-play and it’s a role-playing server, 3. you want to use mods and you can’t on officials.

Playing on a private unmodded is like playing on an official one IMO, except you maybe trade more server performance for less “stability” (if you don’t do your research well enough, I mean.)

[Aknunsus]

Highly subjective question, which depends on your play style and what you want to get out of the game. IMO, regardless of whether you prefer PvE or PvP you should go with a private server.

[mulzi]

It is not an easy answer. Private servers come with huge risks as well. On all servers, you can be raided, killed, etc countless times, but pick the wrong private server and you can add frequent wipes, admin abuse, etc to the list.

Just to add to this: when you join a server, don’t rely too much on building at first. Discover points, level your character and get a feel of the community. Once you get a handle of the server politics/community you can decide to lay down roots and play or move on to greener pastures. Saves alot of aggravation.

[Enyo]

@SpiralValve brings up a good point with the unmodded private servers, in that they don’t have to wait for mods to get updated, or update frequently because of mod changes. Private servers generally have less griefing going around and it’s easier to set up consensual pvp ‘Duels’ whenever the mood strikes. However, if the admins are not active, the server may not get reset or updated as often as it needs to. These also run the risk of being shut down or wiped with little to no notice.

Enter the PVE-C, A great starting place for someone who isn’t completely knowledgeable with the mechanics or doesn’t want to be raided, but may want some occasional pvp. The biggest problem with official servers is that it IS the wild west and there is absolutely no admin moderation. People can build ugly boxes all over the landscape, roads to nowhere and spam foundations/columns to prevent others from building.

It’s a give and take with whichever mode you choose. No one type of server works for everyone.

[Leeux]

Yeah, agreed on all points!

I’m biased towards mods myself, that’s all

[Taemien]

Stay far far away from official. Those servers are the only ones that allow racial slurs, bigotry, hacking, and exploits. So the people kicked off private for it dwell there instead.

Private servers can suffer from admins that don’t follow their own standards, but you can easily tell which ones do not by their populations. Higher stable pops mean less chance. Also private servers are the only ones who can sustain a stable server at higher player counts.

Official starts degrading fast around 25 players. Some private servers can maintain 70 with only a slightly noticeable impact. IMO the map is too large to sustain a smaller population.

[SGFTI]

I ended up starting with an official. Then after it crashed, killing me and wiping my body and all the loot on it in the process (which was all my best stuff), I decided before I get too invested to jump ship and go to a high pop private server.

It is an RP server and I have no interest in RPing, but I’ll tolerate it for stability.