Getting Started
MCLabs is the longest-running Minecraft farming server. The server was formerly known as MCLabs, but went through a required transition from the drugs theme to the chems theme. The entire server economy is based on selling chems. Chems can be acquired by either growing them (most Minecraft plants and crops that can be grown can be sold as chems), or by becoming a police officer and selling confiscated chems. This article will aim to give a quick overview of the main features of the server, and provide enough information to help you get started.
Reading this entire article isn't necessary to get started - you can start playing, and refer back here when needed. If you don't want to read the entire thing before playing, here's the basics:
- Grow Minecraft crops, or "chems", and sell them to make money. Farming tips and tricks here.
- You can sell chems by going to /spawn and following the redstone trail.
- Watch out for police in blue leather armour, who can confiscate your chems if they catch you.
- Once your reach the Intern rank, you can sell chems for others with /runner. More info here.
- Craft chem compounds, which sell for more than base chems. Check your crafting book or /recipes for compound recipes, and see /chems for prices.
- Spend your money to rank-up and earn rewards with /rankup.
- Once you reach the Trainee rank, you can become a police officer and catch players selling chems with /police enroll.
- Chems grow faster in the Farm worlds, which you can get to with either /farma or /farmm. To see where each chem grows fastest, use /chemnames.
- A good way to start is by making a farm in the Farm-M world (/farmm).
- Raiding is allowed. It's recommended you keep your base deep underground and unclaimed to avoid other players finding it.
- Use the Wild world (/wild) for Factions bases and vaults.
- Travel to different worlds with the /nav command.
- Along with selling chems, you can make money by voting (/vote), jobs (/jobs), fishing, parkour (/parkour), and more.
- Create a Faction to protect your land in the Wild and Farm-A worlds with /f. Earn faction power by ranking up.
- Buy items from other players at /warp shops, or from anywhere with /shop.
- Get free access to the Communal Farm for 48 hours to farm sugarcane at /warp cfarm.
- Read the Tips and Tricks article for more useful information.
Make sure to be familiar with the server rules!
MCLabs Basics
Essential Commands
Commands are chat messages that have an effect other than sending a message. To run a command, write the command in your in-game chat. Commands will always begin with a slash (/). MCLabs has a lot of commands. We don't expect you to learn them all right now, but there are a few that you need to know:
- /sethome <name> saves your current location as a home with the given name, allowing you to teleport back.
- /delhome <name> deletes your home with the given name.
- /home <name> to teleport back to your saved home with the given name.
Tip: Don't forget to set a home at your first farm! If you go back to Spawn, you'll need to have a home set to get back to it!
- /tpa <player> to request to teleport to another player.
Tip: Don't trust teleport requests from players you don't know - you don't have to accept a teleport request.
- /spawn to return to the Spawn world.
- /wild, /farma, /farmm to navigate to specific worlds.
- Access the Nether and End with /warp nether and /warp end.
Chems
Growing Chems
"Chems" are just regular Minecraft crops that you can grow and harvest just like in vanilla Minecraft. This includes wheat, carrots, pumpkins, mushrooms, chorus fruit, etc.
To start producing chems, just farm and harvest crops. You can get a set of the seeds for each chem with /kit seeds.
Where you build your farm matters, as crop growth speeds are different in each world, with the Farm worlds (/farm and /farma) providing increased growing speeds. See /chemnames for info on which chem is boosted in each farm world.
Tip: We recommend you start off in the manual farm world (/farm) growing either wheat, carrots, potatoes, or beetroot, as these sell for a good price and don't require an expensive auto-farm setup.
Selling Chems
Selling chems is the main method of making money on MCLabs. To sell chems, go to /spawn and follow the redstone trail to the chem dealer building. Inside, there is an NPC that you can right-click to open the chem selling menu.
But watch out - police patrol spawn and will try to frisk you and take your chems. Police wear distinctive dark blue armour, and you should avoid them if you have chems in your inventory. If a cop right-clicks you and you have more than 15 chems in your inventory, all of your chems will be taken and you will go to jail for up to a few minutes.
Tip: As a new player, you have two hours of protection from police. Use this time to scout selling routes before you start selling lots of chems!
Running
If you don't have any chems to sell, but still want to make some money by selling chems, you can run chems for other players. Once your reach the Intern rank, you can go on Runner Duty with /runner duty, and take jobs for a cut of the total sell price. You should be familiar with the selling routes before running, since you have a runner reputation, and failing jobs (getting arrested or losing the chems) will lower your reputation.
See running for more detail on running.
Raw Chems
"Raw chems" are any regular crop in vanilla minecraft that can be sold as a chem. This includes items like wheat, sugar, netherwart, etc. Selling these items is a good way to get your chem empire started.
Tip: Chem compounds are made with base chems, so even if you have no chems to craft yet, it can be beneficial to look at the combinations (/recipes) and make your first farm based on which combination(s) you plan to craft!
Each base chem has a chem name. For example, wheat is "Wheatium", pumpkins are "Pumpkonium". It's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the chem names. You can easily view all of the chem names at any time in-game with /chemnames.
Tip: Farms can take a while to set up, so it's best to start a farm for something that grows quick like sugarcane or netherwarts while you set up other farms.
Chem Compounds
Selling raw chems will only get you so far. For an even greater profit, you'll have to start selling chem compounds. These are combinations of raw chems, and sometimes other ingredients, which will always sell faster and for more than the sum of their components.
Chem compounds are can be crafted in your crafting grid or a crafting table. Check your recipe book for the recipes, or use /recipes. Compounds can also be crafted quicker in the /chemlab menu once you reach Bioengineer rank.
Chemlab
The Chemlab is unlocked at Bioengineer rank. Here, you can instant-craft chem compounds by simply clicking on the compound in the Chemlab while you have the ingredients in your inventory.
In order to craft a compound in Chemlab, you must unlock the Chemlab formula for that compound. You will start earning Chemlab formula unlocks at Bioengineer rank, and occassionally earn more as you rank up. These unlocks can be used in /fshop to unlock formulas.
Police
Police are a core mechanic of MCLabs. They roam the spawn world, searching for players who have chems. They can frisk players, which checks the player for chems. If they have chems, the police officer gets the chems and the player goes to jail. You can Identify police by their dark blue armor. The lighter an officer's hat, the higher their rank. They may also be in SWAT mode, which has them wearing a black leather hat and their armor being enchanted for PVP. Any player is able to enroll into the police force once they reach the Dealer rank with /police enroll.
See Police for more info.
Ranking-Up
The main purpose of money on MCLabs is to rank-up. You start off as a Junky, and can work your way up to the RASTA rank. Once you have enough money, you can rank-up with the /rankup command.
Each rank has rewards, and ranking-up gets you closer to Chem Lord status.
Once you complete all of the ranks, you can prestige, which will set you back to Junky of the next prestige, and earn you a Prestige Key and Museum Bust, among other rewards.
To see the costs of each rank-up, use /ranks. View Ranks for all perks and advantages to each rank.
Differences from Vanilla Minecraft
Some mechanics and features of vanilla Minecraft are disabled or altered on MCLabs:
- Pistons and hoppers are not craftable. They must be purchased from /shop or from other players.
- Shulker boxes are completely disabled.
- Bonemeal cannot be used in dispensers.
- Villagers cannot be spawned or cured.
- Illager raids are disabled.
- Nether portals are disabled (access the Nether with /warp nether)
- Withers cannot be spawned (Exchange 3 wither skulls for a nether star with /convert)
- Wet sponges can be used to soak up lava, turning them into dry sponges.
Worlds
The main gameplay of MCLabs has four main worlds: Spawn, Wild, Farm-A, and Farm-M. Each world has unique features and advantages, and you should familiarize yourself with them before building your first farm.
You can easily travel between worlds by opening the world navigation menu with the /nav command.
There are a few more worlds, see worlds for information about them.
Spawn
The main functions of Spawn are selling chems and using player shops. This is where you start, and it's a safe place to be, as you're invincible while here (besides in prison, see below!).It's also a fun place to explore, as there's tons of hidden areas and details.
Use the dynamic Spawn world map to learn where everything is. There are also warps to many areas around spawn, see the available warps with /warps.
You can get back to the Spawn world at any time with /spawn.
Wild
Wild is intended to be used for Factions bases and vaults. As you'll see shortly, the limitations of the Farm worlds make Wild the natural choice for this purpose. It's not recommended to make farms in Wild, as chems grow slower here.
The Nether and End are part of the Wild world. You can access them with /warp nether and /warp end
You can get to the Wild world at any time with /wild.
Farm-A
Farm-A is the automatic farm world, and is intended for automatic farms that can be harvested automatically. Like Wild, this world also has Factions, but the TNT resistance of obsidian is lower here.
Valuable items cannot be stored in chests and containers here.
To incentivize automatic farms, the following chems will grow faster in Farm-A:
- Canium (Sugarcane)
- Cactium (Cactus)
- Melonium (Melons)
- Pumpkonium (Pumpkins)
- Shroomium (Mushrooms)
You can get to the Farm-A world at any time with /farma.
Farm-M
Farm-M is the manual farm world, and is intended for manual farms that must be harvested by hand. This world does not have Factions, so be sure make a well-hidden farm underground!
Valuable items cannot be stored in chests and containers here.
To incentivize manual farms, the following chems grow faster in Farm-M:
- Wheatium (Wheat)
- Nethwartium (Nether Warts)
- Potatium (Potatoes)
- Carrotenimu (Carrots)
- Betronium (Cocoa Beans)
You can get to the Farm-M world at any time with /farmm.
Making Money
Selling chems is the quickest way to make money on MCLabs, but there's many more ways. A few are outlined below, but you can find much more detail on the Economy Page
Voting
Voting is the easiest way to make money on MCLabs. You can vote for the server every day by doing /vote, or by going directly to the voting page, and voting on each link.
Voting doesn't only earn you money, but also Vote Tokens, Voter Crate Keys, Creeper Eggs, and more! Vote Tokens are a form of currency that can be used in /vshop.
Along with the rewards for each vote, the top five voters each week and each month earn huge cash rewards. Be sure to vote every day to become a top voter. There's also rewards for hitting voting milestones, which grant even more money, and some cosmetic chat tags. You can view all the rewards from voting with /vrewards.
Jobs
Jobs are a great way to earn passive income. You can make money while mining, exploring, woodcutting, fishing, etc.
Tip: It's always a good idea to be in a job while doing other activities. For example, if you're mining out a farm, join the Quarrier job (/jobs join quarrier).
View the available jobs with /jobs browse, and join a job with /jobs join <job name>.
Fishing
Fishing is a calm, relaxing break from the world of chems, and can be quite profitable. Fish can be sold to Chuck in the Fisher's Cove (/warp cove). You can also craft fish into sushi, which can be sold at /warp sushi for even more.
You can also earn rewards for fishing, including random enchanted items and fishing crates.
For more, see Fishing and Sushi.
Parkour
Earn money for completing parkour courses in the Parkour world. Get there with /parkour. The rewards refresh every day, so you can keep completing courses for money.
Factions
The Factions plugin allows you to create your own group of up to 30 players, and claim your land to protect it. Factions are only available in the Wild and Farm-A worlds, and each of these two worlds have their own separate factions data, so factions from Wild to not carry over to Farm-A, and vice versa. Faction claims are great way to protect your land, just because you have a claim doesn't mean you are totally safe, players can use Creeper Eggs and TNT cannons to destroy your walls, or overclaim your land if you have more land than power.
Factions Commands
Here are the basic factions commands you need to know to get started:
- Create a faction: /f create <faction name>.
- Invite someone to your faction: /f invite <player>
- Join a faction: /f join <faction name>
- Claim land (by the chunk): /f claim <radius>
- Set your faction home: /f sethome
- Teleport to your faction home: /f home
- Check Total faction power /f who <faction name>
- Check personal power /f power
There's many more factions commands, too many to list here. To learn about them, you can read the official documentation.
For more information on Factions, view Factions.
Factions Power
The amount of land your faction can claim is limited by the power of your faction. Each player has their own amount of power, and the faction's power is the total power of every player in the faction. The number of chunks you can claim is limited by your faction's power.
Dying will lower your power, and you will have to wait for it to regenerate. This will lower your faction's current power. If your faction's power is lower than the number of chunks your faction has claimed, other factions will be able to steal your land.
Tip: Always keep your number of chunk claims lower than your total faction power, so that you can afford a few deaths without losing your land.
You can gain more personal factions power by ranking up.
Other Features
mcMMO
mcMMO adds skills and abilities that enchance vanilla Minecraft mechanics. Each skill has a level that you can increase by doing the corresponding activity. These activities include mining, excavation, swords, etc.
Your mcMMO levels will increase as you play - there's no need to use any commands.
If you want to learn more about mcMMO and your skill levels, use /mcmmo.
Click here to view the official mcMMO wiki for more information.
Shops
Player Shops
You can buy from and sell items to other players at the Player Shops in Spawn. You can get here with /shops. Player shops are stocked and maintained by the players, so the items available and their stock is not always consistent.
If there is a shop available, you can rent it for $5000 per day, and create shops to sell and buy items.
When using a player's shop in the player shops, right-click the sign to buy the item, and left-click to sell, if available.
Server Shop
The server shop menu can be accessed anywhere with /shop. This shop has infinite stock, and you can only buy items.
Drink Brewing
Special drinks with unique effects can be brewed by police in buildings rented at Spawn. It can be bought and sold at the drink store in Spawn.
See Alcohol for more info.
