Getting started

Joining

Settlers III runs on Minecraft Java Edition. The server supports recent client versions, but for the best experience use the current release. While the server is in testing, the address is shared directly with players. Ask an admin for it.

When you join, the server offers you a resource pack. Accept it. It supplies the region's plants, animals and textures: bluebells, foxgloves and wild orchids, red deer, grouse, mosquitoes and whales. Without it, a lot of creatures will look like the vanilla animal they're built on (a red deer will look like a camel).

Where you arrive

New settlers arrive on a long sand beach on the island of Tirwenn in the Breadbasket, facing south over the bay. Tirwenn is the gentlest place in the world: warm, flat, fertile, and free of wolves, bears and hostile humanoids. It's the place to find your feet before you head out.

It's morning when you first arrive, so you have a full day ahead of you.

What you carry

Every new player gets a one-time starter kit:

That food is a balanced diet on purpose: grains, fruit and protein. See Nutrition for why that matters.

Your rank

Everyone starts as an Apprentice, shown as [Apprentice] before your name in chat.

Useful basics

• You drop everything when you die. Your items stay where you fell, and you'll have to walk back for them. Dying also costs some nutrition.
• There's no teleporting. No /home, /spawn or /tpa. Wherever you go, you have to get back the slow way.
• Sleep in a bed to set where you respawn. Otherwise you'll wake up back on Tirwenn's beach.

The full list is on the Commands page.

Your first days

1. Look at what's around you. Every region has its own ores, crops and animals. Read Lands & regions to see what your region has and what it lacks.
2. Get food going. Tirwenn grows almost every crop: wheat, carrots, melons and sugar cane as well as potatoes and beetroot. Most of the world grows only the last two, so farmers here have something to sell. See Farming.
3. Find water to drink. Thirst falls much faster than hunger. Carry water bottles.
4. Pan for gold. A bowl in a shallow gravel stream can turn up gold nuggets, and gold is money. See Panning.
5. Build with gravity in mind. Your first house needs to hold itself up. See Gravity & building.
6. Plan your first voyage. Sooner or later you'll need something from another island, and you can't swim there. See Ships.