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How Settlers plays
The rules that make Settlers III different from vanilla survival, on one page.
If you've played a lot of vanilla survival, most of your instincts still work. These are the things that don't.
| Vanilla habit | On Settlers III | Read more |
|---|---|---|
| Everything is available everywhere | Ores, crops and animals are regional. Your island has some things and not others. | Resources |
| Keep your items when you die | You drop everything where you fall. | Banned |
| /home, /spawn and /tpa | There's no teleporting at all. | Banned |
| Fill your inventory and walk home | Weight slows you down, then stops you sprinting, then stops you jumping. | Weight |
| Swim or row to the next island | The deep ocean kills swimmers and small boats. You need a ship. | Open ocean |
| Build a floating roof on four pillars | Player-placed blocks need support. Overhangs and wide roofs collapse. | Gravity |
| Dig out a big room underground | Wide mine roofs cave in unless you brace them with posts. | Cave-ins |
| Fly with elytra, use the Nether | Elytra won't glide, and the Nether and End are sealed. | Banned |
| Build an ice-boat highway | Ice can't be placed. | Banned |
| Pour water wherever you like | Water and lava can't be placed, even from dispensers. Farm by natural water. | Banned |
| Chop a tree one log at a time | Cut the trunk and the whole tree falls, and it can crush you. | Tree felling |
| Hunger bar is all that matters | Four meters: protein, fruit and veg, grains, and thirst. | Nutrition |
| Emeralds and villagers are money | Gold is money: 81 nuggets to the block. Players run the shops. | Economy |
| Dig sand off the beach | Natural sand drops nothing. Pan for it in streams. | Panning |
| Wheat grows anywhere with water | Potatoes and beetroot grow everywhere. Wheat, carrots, melons and sugar cane are Breadbasket crops, and pumpkins grow only on the Spiderholme Isles. | Farming |
| Weather is occasional | It rains about half the time, usually clearing just before sunset. | Weather |
| Zombies and creepers everywhere | Each region has its own designed wildlife: wolves, bears, deer, crabs, spirits. | Wildlife |
The idea behind it
Slow progress is the point. In most servers the first week is a race to diamond gear, elytra and farms, and then there's nothing to do but wait. Here, distance is real and scarcity is regional, so a settlement's wealth depends on where it is, what it can make, and who it trades with.
That's meant to produce politics on its own. Whoever controls the only good farmland feeds the world. Whoever holds the iron country equips it. The sea lanes between them matter. You don't need to roleplay any of this; it follows from the rules.
What stays vanilla
- Vanilla crafting, with a few adjustments (rails craft 32 at a time, for example).
- Vanilla combat, against a very different set of creatures.