Minecraft: Caving tips

MineCraft: Caving

What “going caving” means in Minecraft is exploring a cave to find minerals and resources. If you look at it in the wrong way, it looks like a chore, but if you cave well and ensure that you don’t die, then you can relax and look at it as a relaxing activity that you can do in Minecraft after a long day of real-life work.

First off, let’s ask ourselves a question: do we actually need to go caving?

Do You Need to Go Caving?
Do you need to go caving? Lots of people just don’t go caving often because they think they have enough resources. But you can never have enough resources, and after going caving a few times and successfully obtaining a lot of minerals, you may decide that you really like to cave. Personally, I cave in vanilla Minecraft quite often. It’s always fun to have a large stock of materials, and it’s fun to go mining just to relax. Do you die while caving pretty often? Trust me— after reading this guide, you’ll be a pro at caving.

A technique to gather minerals that people often use instead of caving is branch mining or strip mining. Both of these methods involve making tunnels in the ground; and, while both methods often turn up a lot of ores, they’re fairly boring and safe. Why be boring and safe when you could be dangerous and fun? Go caving! Branch mining involves making tunnels through the earth. Caving lets you run through dark caves, lighting them up and fighting mobs as you go, and navigating around obstacles like lava. Which one sounds more fun to you?

Yeah, I thought so.

Location, Location
Where to go caving? Start around your house, 99% of the time. If you haven’t been caving before, you should light up the caves around your house just because of convenience. Why walk far away from your house to mine for ores if you could find a cave right next to your house? Another advantage to caving near your house is that if you die, it hopefully won’t be very hard to get back into the cave and retrieve your stuff. With caving farther away from your house, dying can be a problem. However, hopefully by the time you have lit up all of the caves around your house and are mining farther away, you’ll have enchanted diamond/iron armor that will keep you safe from every harm that could possibly befall you in a cave.

A good technique when you go caving far away is to bring a bed. Before you enter a cave that’s far away from your home, lay down a bed and bide your time chopping wood or doing some activity until it’s nighttime. Then set your spawn at the bed before you enter your desired cave so that if you die for some reason, you’ll respawn right above the cave and you’ll be able to (hopefully) find your way back to your stuff. But what if you die and can’t find your way back? Well, this is where markers come in.

Markers
Markers are a technique often used by people caving to show where they’ve already been. These take many different forms, but usually they are a certain kind of block (e.g, a piece of sandstone or something) placed at a crossroads in a cave. To some people, these help them find their way back to the surface. However, I will not be going over them very much in this guide, because most people just dig a staircase up to the surface or don’t care about finding their way back. But I’d just like to let you know that this method exists and that it can be helpful to some people while caving.

Staircase to Heaven (well, maybe just to the surface, but whatever)
Once you’re done with caving, don’t you want to leave your cave? Don’t you want to leave it in a safe manner? Digging straight up is what the cool kids do, but honestly that’s just going to lead to an embarrassing death involving gravel falling on your head and suffocating you. Eww. So not cool.

Introducing the all new way to get to the surface: the staircase! Easy, fast, and fun. Just mine a set of stairs up to the surface, staying behind your pick as you go and not mining directly above you to make sure no gravel or any pesky substance falls on your head. Once you get to the surface, you’ll be happy that you made your staircase mine instead of digging straight up or taking forever to find your way using markers back to the beginning of the cave.

Well, now we’ve gone over some simple caving techniques. But let’s get back to the basics, and the real questions people might be asking. First off, what do you even bring to a caving trip?

What To Bring
Everyone has a different set of tools and materials that they like to use while caving. However, bringing some things are more effective than bringing other things. For a standard caving trip (this applies to all versions of Minecraft 1.4 or before that, generally) here’s what you should bring:

-1 diamond sword. If you have no diamonds, the equivalent would be 3 iron swords, 5 stone swords, and for wood swords… honestly, who uses wood swords?
-1 or 2 diamond picks. If you have no diamonds, bring 5 iron ones or a whole dang lotta stone ones. Remember though, you can craft more swords or picks while you’re caving if you need to.
-A bow, enchanted if you have one. A bow is invaluable for sniping far-off skeletons that are going to become a pain once you get into their shooting range, or that pesky creeper. If you have a bow enchanted with Infinity, you only need 1 arrow, of course. I’d recommend bringing about 2 stacks of arrows if you have a bow without Infinity.
-Blocks! Bring about half a stack of cobblestone, in general. Remember though, you’ll probably end up getting plenty more cobble on your caving trip, and as it’s not hard to mine any, don’t worry about bringing too many blocks.
-Wood. This is the single most important thing to remember to bring on your caving trip. If you forget this, you might as well die in your cave because of the face-palmy-ness that ensues if you realize you don’t bring this. In a cave, wood is life. If you run out of torches, or picks, or swords, or whatever, you can always find the materials in a cave for more— except wood. Yeah, you can find wooden planks in abandoned mineshafts, but that’s gonna take a long time to find and it’ll be annoying to mine. Bring a stack of wood logs, not planks, in general while caving. Remember, it’s better to bring too many of them than too little.
-Food. If you bring a kind of food that fills up a lot of hunger bars, like steak, porkchops, bread, baked potatoes, or other high-saturation food, you probably just need a stack of food. If you bring a food like melons or carrots, you’ll probably need 3 or 4 stacks. Always bring more food than you think you need. It sucks to have to stop a caving expedition short because you just don’t have enough food.
-Water bucket. This is invaluable for turning lava into obsidian so you can walk over it, especially when you have a large pool of lava.
-Flint and steel. Read on to find out why you need this.
-Torches. Bring 2 stacks or so to start. As you mine coal in the cave you explore, you can always craft more torches, but bring some torches just to start you off.
-Potions, if you have them. If you’ve gone to the nether and found blaze rods and netherwart to make potions, you should certainly utilize these potions to their full extent. Bring them on your caving trips! In general, bring 2 fire resistance potions, each one extended to 8 minutes long, and bring about 2 instant splash health potions. Use the fire resist if you fall into lava and are going to die, and use the splash health if mobs are cornering you and your health is low. Each one of these potions will probably save you at some point or other while caving, even if you’re a Minecraft pro.
-Armor. Everyone likes to bring a different kind of armor caving, but which one should you choose? Assuming you have access to an experience farm, always enchant your armor with level 30 enchants. If you have a way to get level 30, use it on your armor! Even if you have just iron armor that will run out fairly quickly, take the time to enchant it with good enchants. It could save your life. In general, I’m not going to tell you what kind of armor to bring. It differs for everybody. But vanilla Minecraft is not that hard, and as long as you have your 2 splash health potions equipped and your fire resistance potions equipped, you should be fine no matter what kind of situation you’re in.

Silk Touch vs. Fortune
Have a Silk Touch pick in your Minecraft world, or on your Minecraft server? Have a Fortune pick too? You’re well off! But which one should you bring mining?

In general, it’s always better to bring your Silk Touch pick to go mining. A Fortune pick multiplies the drops that most ores give, so these ores will take up more space in your inventory. And while you can craft some ores into ore blocks (like diamond blocks, iron blocks, or gold blocks) it’s just so much easier to Silk Touch the ores. Instead of having a million coal in your inventory, you can have just a couple coal ore that you can Fortune once you get home!

Torch Placement
Honestly, this is not going to be a big deal for most people. But when I see Let’s Players on YouTube going caving, and they place their torches on the walls of caves instead of on the floor… I just hit the roof.

Just don’t place your torches on the walls of the cave. Place them on the floor. First off, a good reason for doing this is block lighting. If you place a torch on a wall of a cave, it’s not going to project much light to the floor. It’s going to light up the wall, but who cares? Mobs can’t spawn on a wall anyway! The part of a cave you want to light up is the floor, so that the mobs can’t spawn. Secondly, placing torches on the walls of caves takes a lot more time on placing them on the floor! This time is precious time that you could spend obtaining ores and having fun. When you place a torch on a cave wall, you have to stop and place it. But if you place a torch on the floor, you can just look down and place it while still sprinting along. It doesn’t stop your momentum, and it’s so easy that you don’t even have to think about it!

Lava
So you’ve been placing torches the correct way and mining all the ores with your shiny Silk Touch pick. Suddenly, you come to a huge pool of lava! You can see that your cave continues on the other side of the lava lake, but how to get across? Well, it’s easy! Just use your water bucket. Now there’s plentiful obsidian for you to mine also! Yay obsidian. Woot. Yay.

Disaster (aka The Pause Screen)
Oh look, lava lake. La-la-la, la-la. Place water bucket. Walk across. Suddenly, your game lags and the water reverts back to nothing, like you didn’t place it, and you fall into the lava! You start to take damage and you can’t get out of the lava. To make it worse, a skeleton suddenly comes out of the darkness and shoots you closer to the middle of the lava lake. What do you do?

Press the Escape button! (Or whatever button you have mapped to pause the game). Honestly, if you’re in a disaster situation, pressing the Pause button is the best thing you can possibly do. It stops the game to let you think about the situation, you can see the game behind the pause screen, so you can map out what you want to do when you unpause, and there’s no downside to it. When you pause, think about the situation and the best way you can get out of it. Do I have a fire resistance potion on me? Is it in my hotbar? If not, where is it in my inventory? Map out what you want to do when you unpause. Think of yourself getting the fire resistance potion out of your inventory, drinking it, and then sinking under the lava to avoid the shooting of the skeleton. Regain some health under the lava and then come up and kill the skeleton with your bow, or with your sword if it’s now at shorter range.

If you’re on a server where you can’t pause it…yeah, you’re screwed. Have fun dying in lava.

Dungeon
If you’re at all decent at Minecraft, dungeons won’t be a problem for you. But if you’ve been hanging out in the area for a while and the spawner in the center of the dungeon has been spawning mobs, you can have real trouble if you come into a dungeon and a bunch of mobs quickly swarm you into a corner. Either pause the game and think about the best way to kill them or kill them all with your sword, disregarding the damage you’re taking. If your health gets too low, pop one of your instant health potions.

Abandoned Mineshaft
Especially for players with unenchanted armor, mineshafts can be a nightmare. The main mobs in these places are Cave Spiders, which are mobs that can fit through a 1x1 space, climb walls, and poison you. Yeah, you should be scared. The worst part is that abandoned mineshafts are fairly cramped, so if you’re walking around in a small area, these spiders will have plenty of space to spawn. Even worse, their spawners have spiderwebs around it, making it hard to hack through the webs to get to the spawners. Even worse than that, you can get caught in the webs and not be able to hit the spiders as they slowly kill you!

There’s no one real way to conquer a cave spider spawner except that you should break it as soon as possible if you don’t intend to keep it for a mob trap. If you want to keep it for a mob trap, make sure you put torches all around the area, and keep in mind that mobs can spawn even behind walls and in dark areas, as long as those dark areas are close enough to the mob spawner.

The nice part of abandoned mineshafts, though, are the chests. The only really good thing that can be found in these chests are diamonds, and there aren’t that many of them. Still, finding Mineshaft chests are an easy way to get diamonds. Sometimes there’s bread in these chests too, and if you’re running low on food during your caving trip, this bread can sustain you until you get out of the cave.

Ravines
Ahhh, ravines. These structures under the ground can be extremely good for you if they are very low underground. If you’re about midway between the surface and bedrock and you come into a ravine, there’s a good chance that it could go down to the level where lava is, which is also the level that you can find lots of diamonds at. So it’s an easy ticket down to diamond-finding level. But usually, when there’s a low ravine like this, there’s lava at the bottom. So, how to traverse the ravine without dying?

Usually, if you’re in a narrow ravine and you see some skeletons around, drink your fire resistance potion before you explore the ravine. If you fall into lava from high up in the ravine because of a skeleton arrow, you could fall into one-block-thick lava. If you fall into one-block-thick lava or water, at least in some Minecraft versions, you take fall damage, and if you don’t have the Feather Falling enchantment on your armor, you could die of the fall damage and your items could fall into lava. If you don’t die of the fall damage, the little lava damage that ensues before you manage to drink your potion could kill you. So don’t take that risk! Just pop your fire resist before you fall into lava.

Another great kind of ravine are above-ground ravines. While you're exploring your Minecraft world above-ground, you'll find some of these giant holes in the ground. While most of these don't go down to lava level, they give you a ton of iron ore! And they're perfect for building scenic bridges over, too!

Stronghold
If you find a stronghold in Minecraft without using Ender Eyes and while just mining, pause your game, yell “Skjdoiwjlkskfjlkhg!” in real life, and then run around your house screaming. Not even kidding.

Silverfish
Now, if you remember from the earlier part of this post where I told you what to bring while caving, you might recall that I told you to bring a flint and steel. No, this is not to light an imaginary Nether portal while you’re in a cave. Neither is it to light yourself on fire. This is for silverfish.

In Minecraft 1.4 and up, silverfish blocks spawn in caves. These are blocks that look exactly like stone, but when mined, produce an annoying mob called a silverfish. You can break these silverfish blocks quickly with your hands, but if you have a pick that is enchanted with Efficiency, you won’t know which blocks are really stone and which ones are silverfish. So, if a silverfish pops out of the block you mine, set the ground where it’s walking on fire. If you directly attack the silverfish, it will call on its brethren, and a veritable army of silverfish will pop out of the ground and attack you. But by setting it on fire, it doesn’t register that you’ve attacked it, and instead will just die in a fire! Yay for violence, kids!

What to do with my resources?
You’re really asking this question? You just went caving, got a lot of diamonds, and you now don’t know what to use them for?

Well, it sounds corny, but honestly, if you had fun while caving, it won’t matter that you didn’t actually need those minerals! And you can never have too many ores. Trust me, you’ll use them sometime on some project in your Minecraft world.

Hey, thanks for reading this! Hopefully you all are caving pros. I haven’t gone over everything in this guide, but this just explains the basics of caving. Hopefully even Minecraft pros got a couple things out of this guide. Congratulations, you’re better at caving now!

Optifine Settings

Default Options:

• Graphics - Fast
• Render Distance - Tiny to Small
• Smooth Lighting - Off
• Performance - Max FPS
• 3D Anaglyph - Off
• View Bobbing - Off
• GUI Scale - Normal

OptiFine Settings:

Default Menu:

• Advanced OpenGL - Fast (without OptiFine, you would only be able to set this to 'On' or 'Off')
• Chunk Loading - Smooth
• Fog - Fast
• Fog Start - 0.8

Details Menu:

• Clouds, Trees, Water, Grass, Rain and Snow options - All set to 'Fast'
• Sky, Sun and Moon, Depth Fog options - All set to 'On'
• Cloud Height - 100%
• Stars, Show Capes options - Both set to 'Off'

Quality Menu:

• Mipmap Level - Max
• Mipmap Type - Linear
• Anisotropic Filtering - Off
• Antialiasing - 2
• Clear Water, Random Mobs, Better Snow, Custom Fonts, Custom Colors, Swamp Colors, Smooth Biomes, Natural Textures options - All set to 'On'
• Better Grass, Connected Textures - Both set to 'Fast'

Animations Menu:

• IF USING A TEXTURE PACK - Click 'All On' button at lower left-hand corner 
• IF USING DEFAULT TEXTURE PACK - Click 'All On' button, but change Lava and Water options to 'Dynamic'

Performance Menu:

• Smooth FPS - On
• Smooth World - On
• Load Far - Off
• Preloaded Chunks - Off
• Chunk Updates per Frame - 3
• Dynamic Updates - On

Other Menu:

• Lagometer - Off
• Debug Profiler - Off
• Weather - On
• Fullscreen - Off
• Fullscreen Mode - 1366x768
• Server Textures - On
• Autosave - 20s

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO FACTIONS

What is Factions? Factions is one of the greatest PVP Bukkit plugin. It helps make a better way to fight in PVP wars. Type /f help to see if your server has the Factions plugin.

Note that most information below uses the default settings in the config.yml. Your server may have different settings, e.g allowing opening wooden doors anywhere. Check outhttp://massivecraft....factions/config. I am currently assuming you are using default Factions configurations..

Basics

Power/Land claiming

To claim a chunk of land, type /f claim and it will claim the current chunk you are standing on for your faction. As you should know, neutrals and faction-less people cannot hurt you on your own land, nor can anyone not in your faction build, use or open things on your claimed land. A claimed land is a chunk, or a 16x16 extending from bedrock to the sky.
First, power = land. One piece of land/chunk = 1 power. When you claim a chunk of land, it uses up one power. Every person will usually start with 10 power, so the maximum chunks a 1 person faction can claim will be 10. For every new person in your faction, their power will add up. So for example, a 4 person faction will have 40 power, from the 10 power of each 4 people, and can claim a maximum of 40 chunks.
Power can be lost on death. If you lose power, your faction's total power gets affected too. It is also possible to go into negative power, hindering your faction even more. For example, if Person A has 10 power, and Person B from the same faction also has 10 power, but A dies once, his power may drop down to 7. Before the death, the faction's power is 20, from person A's 10 and B's 10, but with the death, the power is now 17/20, from the 3 power lost on the death of person A., who now have 7 instead of 10 power. Remember, power is the amount of land you can hold. If the faction has 17 power, they can only hold 17 chunks of land. If they have 10 power, they can only hold 10 chunks of land. If, the power of the faction drops lower then the amount of chunks claimed by the faction, then your lands are vulnerable to being claimed and stolen by neutral and enemy factions. Power does regenerate though, at a constant but slow rate.

Lets say Faction A has 2 members, B and C. They have claimed 15 pieces of land. On their /f list it should say 15/20/20, the first number being the lands claimed, 2nd number is the current power, and the 3rd number being the maximum power of the faction. If, A gets killed once, and has his power dropped down to 7, the faction's power would be 17. Because the power is greater then the amount of lands claimed, Faction A is still safe. Lets say Person B also dies once. Now his power is also 7. With 6 powers less then before, Faction A now has 14 power. Because now Faction A has 1 less power then the amount of lands claimed, the faction is vulnerable to having his lands being claimed. If Faction D comes and tries to claim and steal land, they can only take 1 piece of land.
This is why when you raid and steal from a faction, the first thing you must to is to kill the members of the enemy, so they can lose power, and so you can take the lands. The lowest power a person can have is -10, meaning its enough to take another person's power down too. Watch your power at all times.

Relationships

So, there are going to be more then one faction, and you are going to sooner or later meet them, whether in a war or in an alliance. First, as you should know, /f ally, /f neutral and /f enemy can set a relationship. When one faction asks for an alliance, the other faction has to accept the request. Once allies, any faction can break the alliance with /f neutral. When allies, both factions cannot harm the other and attempt to claim land from one another. However allies still cannot use things such as doors and chests, and build or break blocks on claimed land. Allies will be displayed in purple.
When one faction declares another as an enemy, both will be set as enemies. If only one faction declares war, that faction can turn neutral again if they want to, without the consent of the other faction. However, if one faction declares war, and the other faction also types /f enemy, both faction has to accept and agree on an /f neutral request.
Once enemies, both factions can harm the other on even the enemy's claimed lands, but with a reduced damage. You still, however, cannot build or destroy blocks, or use doors and chests etc. on the enemy's claimed lands. /f enemy is usually the only way you can raid or steal from a faction. Enemy factions are displayed in red.

Creating a faction

To create a faction, type /f create <faction's name>. Sometimes, a server may also require you to have money to create a faction. Once you created a faction, you may change the description of your faction with /f desc <description here>. You may open or close your faction with /f open, which will toggle your faction open and close. If your faction is open, anyone can join your faction if they wish to. If your faction is closed, they may only join if you or a faction mod gives them an invitation with /f invite <player's name>.

The Base

Now that you have a faction, you must now set a good spot for your base. While it is better to build further away from the server's spawn, it may be harder to get to if your faction's home is ever to be claimed by an enemy. Always claim, then build. You can save a lot of power this way. When building, think more about the defenses, then how it would look. How can an enemy faction get into your base? For starters, while they cannot just go in and destroy your blocks, they can use many other tools, such as a flint and steel which can burn down wooden bases, a TNT cannon which can blow up your base from far away, or even Endermen who can tear holes in your base. Unless your server disabled them, those are the first things to watch for. Second, people can use Enderpearls, teleporting over the highest walls or the most dangerous traps, safely transporting themselves into your base. Finally, they can even use nether portals, whether from those you have built inside your base, or one created through traveling in the Nether.
So, first we need a place to build our base. In the middle of an ocean is one of the best spots to build, as swimming is slow, TNT Cannons are hard to build, and not many people actually would really go search for factions in the middle of a wide, blank ocean. There is also the Nether and the End. The Nether is treacherous, but can actually be a safe spot for a faction, as not many people would actually go search there. However, they CAN use Ghasts to blow up holes into your base, and there are many, many things that you can only do/have in the Overworld, such as water. The End is actually the most safest spot. Once you kill the Enderdragon, you are safe. Just claim the obsidian platform you spawn in from the portal, lock it in, set a faction home, and no-one can actually get you. But again, like the Nether, there are many restrictions.
If you are going to build underground, avoid big caverns, and try to build as deep as you can. This way, faction hunters cannot see the name tags as you are too far underground, although there is the annoying void fog to watch out for. Another good place to build is building a base floating in the sky. The only way someone can get to it is through an Enderpearl, or pillaring. Where ever you choose, remember, think about how an enemy can infiltrate.
Now that you found a nice spot, it is time to build. The first thing, as I said before, is claiming. When you claim, you need to watch for your power. Try to use as low power as you can. Remember, while every person in the faction adds 10 power, every person can also take away 20 from the faction, from the 10 they add to, and the -10 power minimum. This you need to keep in mind. 2nd, look at your faction members, and the amount of land you are claiming. Can your faction support your land? Are you totally relying on your members, and betting that they won't leave, betray, or die multiple times? For me, members are not to have extra lands for your base. For me, more members are to make it harder to raid my faction, to making the enemy have to kill more before they can lower my power enough. If your faction has 5 members, and you claim 40 lands, all it takes is for 1 member to leave, or about 3-4 deaths before your lands can be claimed. So, bear this in mind before you start building big cities. The less lands claimed, the better. Now, why do you have to claim lands first, then build? This is to make your base "Chunk-aligned". When a base is chunk aligned, it will fully utilize your land to the 100%. If, you are to build a base first, then claim, you may find that you are actually using up more claims to claim something that may only require one claim. Chunks are to coordinates. You do not set the boundaries yourself. If you claim first, you know where your land's boundaries are, and where you can build, and how big your base can be. Set up the boundaries of your claimed chunks with some blocks, and then build. To find the boundaries, type /f map, and just walk until the map says "Wilderness". This is your boundary. Find all 4 sides of a piece of land, and it should be 16 blocks on each side. Finally, the last thing to remember: The shape of your base. Since enemies have to start from the edge to claim, as they cannot claim chunks surrounded by other claimed chunks, it is better to put your land in a diamond shape, with the most important chunk (the faction home/storage) in the middle. Do NOT put your chunks in a straight line or anything where all the chunks are touching wilderness, or the enemy can claim any chunk they wish.

Now that you have found your boundaries, you have to build a wall. One very common mistake to avoid, is to build on CLAIMED LAND. Many factions I have raided, has carelessly built their walls on the wilderness, where it can be easily destroyed and broken into. Check with your faction map, or see your chat to see what land you are currently on. If building underground, dig until you reach wilderness. When placing the walls of your underground base, remember to put on the sides of your claimed chunk, on CLAIMED LAND. So, you are really actually using a 14x14 chunk instead of the full 16x16, as part of it will be your walls.
Even before building your walls, you should set a faction home with /f sethome, so you can teleport back to it, if you were to die or get lost.
Lastly, even if you are not building underground, have a roof. It may not look good if you want a city, but trust me. A roof is the only way to hold back an Enderpearl, or someone pillaring.
Now that you have gotten your base set up, it is time to build on the inside. First, is your faction home. What I recommend, is that it is a one way access. Build it on a high platform with a pool on the bottom, build it with a one way Iron door, whatever so that no-one can go back to the faction home without typing /f home. The only opening in the room is an Exit, no Entrance. This way, if your base is under attack, they can't get to your faction home and spawnkill you over and over again. Another thing to have in your faction home room is some sort of chest, stocked up with food and weapons. Room, not chunk. A chest where you can easily open before going out to your other chunks. This way, you can kill the attackers in your base. The faction home may even be your storage.
Remember, less chunks are better. So it is recommended to actually build rooms on the faction home chunk, instead of on new claimed chunks. These rooms are generally required: A storeroom, a food farm, and  a water and lava source. Those are basically it. I do not recommend putting a mine near your base, or on your base. Mines may be big, and may connect to caverns. Someone can easily go into the wilderness parts of your mines and infiltrate your base.
The last thing I recommend about your base, is doors and trapdoors. Try to put them everywhere. This can make it hard for the attacker to move around, as they cannot open them. Put them in anywhere you can. For doors going out your base and going out of your faction home room, put pressure plates so you and your faction members don't have to worry about closing them, as they will close on their own.
Remember, to defend your faction, think about how they can infiltrate. Remember, that they cannot break or place blocks inside claimed land, nor use chests, doors and containers. They can, however use pressure plates, levers and buttons.

Expanding your faction

Now that you got a base, you are ready to start recruiting. I never recommend you to leave the faction to open, as anyone can join, spy on your coordinates, and betray you. Instead, look and see which people you think you might trust, and may fit your faction's style. People generally join the biggest faction or the most powerful, so a reputation may help.
There will be a time when you, the faction's admin cannot be there to lead the faction. This is when you need to appoint faction moderators. Here are a few things Moderators (And admins too) can do:
Set the faction home
Claim and unclaim land
Kick normal members
Set Faction's relationships with other Factions
Change Tag/Name
Change Description
Appoint titles
These are  the things only the Admin can do:
Promote/demote Mods
Hand over Adminship
Set ownership of claimed lands
Kick Mods
Disband the faction
Be careful with moderators, even one untrustworthy moderators can destroy your faction, with unclaiming and inviting enemies. Also, remember your power. While one new member adds another 10 power, one new member can take 20 away too.

Raiding

Now, you are feeling confident with your faction. First, what is your reason for raiding? Do you wish for some more resources, perhaps getting some more diamonds? Did the faction or their people anger you in some way? Did they attack or declare war on you? Or are you just wishing to have bloodshed? Most Faction battles follow these steps:
They attack each other, try to infiltrate the other's base, kill each other, claim land,  and steal. However, your reason may determine how the war will end and how you will win. If you are just raiding for more goods, your goal is to just get that chest, steal, and leave, perhaps returning their land and tools to them, so you can re-farm them again later. If you are waging a total war, you may end up griefing, keeping land, or even utterly destroying the enemy faction.
First, a war starts with a target. If you are raiding for resources, obviously you should go search for a faction that is rich, and easy to attack. /f list is a most useful tool for all attackers. If an enemy has a lot of people, but less land, obviously they will be an extremely hard faction to kill. You even need a majority of their members to be on, just so you can kill enough people to lower enough power. What you should search for, is a faction with reputation, and with a lot of lands claimed. One thing I extremely recommend, is stalk other faction's information. Use /f list and /f show regularly on factions, especially potential raiding targets. Not only does it show their claimed lands and their power, it can also allow you to see when a faction is vulnerable to claiming. Use /f show all the time. Use it before raiding, and during raiding to see when you have killed enough people so you can start stealing land.
There are 3 numbers in /f list. Like I shown before, it would be something like 4/10/10. When the 2nd digit is lower then the 1st digit, they are vulnerable to claiming. You might even just win a raid without killing their people, by just checking the /f list and seeing their power drops. Not many people realize that they are dying multiple times and that their power is actually getting low.
Now that you have a target, you have to find their base to attack. The best thing to do is just wander around, with /f map on, until you find some claimed land on the map, or try to deceive them or someone else into giving you the coordinates. Once you got the coordinates, remember them, write them down somewhere. The 2nd step is to get into the base and start your kills. The one thing I do not recommend, is to declare your faction as an enemy until right before you jump down and start your kill. Keep your faction neutral, so you do not provoke your enemy and alert them. Like I said before, there are many ways to get in a base. All bases have flaws, no matter how defensive it is or how impenetrable they claim. Leap over walls with an Enderpearl. If their walls are near the wilderness, pillar up and jump over them. If TNT and Fire is enabled, blast open a hole or burn them down by placing nearby wood. Alternatively, you can look down at the ground and see if you can find any name tags walking around. It could probably be their mines, which you can break into from the wilderness and sneak up into their base. The main thing, is remember to sneak and press shift at ALL TIMES. Last thing, however you break in, remember to try not to let the enemy know. This way, they won't seal it up. And if you find multiple flaws, alternate between them. Flee/exit with teleportation (/f home, /spawn, etc.), not back through your hole if you can. Just dig around the wilderness around their base, and you may eventually find a tunnel or a careless mistake. Lastly, if they got a Nether portal, it's bound to be the one first created near their area. Just create another Nether portal, go into the Nether, go back through the portal, and (hopefully) you are in their base.
Now that you find your flaw, it is time to attack. Remember, the only way to capture land is to kill. It is always good to attack at a time when the enemy is least prepared, such as when they are mining, and when a lot of their members are on. Remember, sneak before attacking. Also, remember, remain in a neutral relationship. Once you are ready to leap down and attack, quickly switch to /f enemy. Make sure you faction is an enemy, or you won't be able to damage them, and you may lose your element of surprise. For more tips on PVPing, go here.
Now, the main goal when attacking is to kill your enemy. But also remember, you cannot open doors, containers, or build and destroy blocks, and your damage is reduced by 30%.

Tips

1. Deceive your enemies with tricks. Maybe offer an alliance and then offer to go to their base.
2. If being attacked, and only you declared war with /f enemy, you can quickly /f neutral the attacker so that they can't damage you, allowing you to get an easy kill.
3. Remember to stalk other factions. Type /f list and /f show routinely, so you can see if an opportunity arrises.
4. One of the best time to attack, is if your enemy has already died multiple times. This way, you will only have to kill less.
5. Remember, if you or your faction is low on power, avoid dying, so avoid doing dangerous activities until your power regenerates. Also, typing /spawn and /f home can help you escape getting killed. You cannot type /f home if you are on enemy territory and if their is an enemy nearby.
6. Take notice of your surroundings. Do you see any players or name tags moving? Use the enemy base's environment to your advantage. You can easily snipe enemies from high city walls.
7. Remember, you cannot open enemy doors. Many times careless factions may leave their doors open, allowing you to walk in.
8. Likewise, remember to close doors and trapdoors in your own base. Add pressure plates for automatic closing on one way exits.
9. To make it extra hard for an enemy to navigate around, put as many one way exits as you can, such as dropping into a pool of water instead of ladders.
10. Put doors around your Nether portal so enemies cannot use it to get into your base.
11. When stealing land from enemies, you cannot claim chunks that have 4 other chunks surrounding it. The border chunks must be claimed first. 

Minecraft Essentials

USER[white names in game] and above:
/help - displays the help menu for commands in game (this actually works now)
/me [message] - displays a message as an emote
/spawn - Teleports you to spawn
/mail [read|clear|send] [to] [message] - read your in game mail, clear your inbox, send an in-game mail to a player
/motd - displays the logon message
/afk - sets you into afk mode
/kill - kill yourself
/msg || /tell || /m [player] [message] - sends a private message to another logged-on player
/rules - display the basic server rules
/ping - PONG!
/compass - displays your current bearing
/depth - in game altimeter
/getpos - display your exact position on the map
/realname - if you have been assigned a nickname, it will display your real logon name
/helpop - sends a query to all online ops (I wouldn't recommend using this, you'll get a faster response via any other medium)
--teleportation--
/tp [Player] - Teleports to player
/tptoggle - enables/disables other players from teleporting to you (can be overridden by admins)
/tpa - request a teleport to a player
/tpaccept - accept a pending teleport request
/tpdeny - deny a pending teleport request
/list || /who || /L - lists all connected players
--home commands--
/home - Teleports you home
/home set - Sets your home to your current position
/home delete - become homeless
/home [playername] - teleports you to said player's home (if you are invited)
/home list - show all homes you are allowed to go to
/home ilist - show all players invited to your home
/home invite [player] - invite [player] to your home
/home uninvite [player] - and STAY out!
/home public - invite everyone to your home
/home private - get some privacy
/home point - displays the direction to home (broken atm)
--block protection--
(works on: Chests, Dispensers, Furnaces, Doors, Signs)
This part can get really complicated, so I'll just leave this here.
However, the most common uses are:
/cprivate - make the next block you click private
/cpublic - make the next block you click public
/cpassword <password> - creates a passworded block
/cunlock <Password> - unlock a block with the correct password
--Economy--
(Keep in mind that names are case-sensitive for the economy commands)
/money - shows you how much money you currently have
/money rank (player) - Show the economic ranking of yourself (or other player)
/money top (amount) - who has the most minecash?
/money pay <player> <amount> - give money to another player
/gsworth || /gsprice - display the current selling price for gold

DEPUTY(3) and above:
/kick [player] <reason> - kick said player, with a reason if desired
/nick <target> [nickname] - set nickname for said player
/tphere <player name> - teleport said player to your location
/whois [player] - display detailed information about a player
/burn <player> <duration> - ignites the specified player for x seconds
/ext <player> - extinguish flames on said player
/kill <player> - slay the specified player
/togglejail || /tjail [player] [jailname] - sends or removes said player from the specified jail point

ADMIN(4) and above:
/clearinventory <player> - clears your inventory or the inventory of the specified player
/banip [Player] - Bans the player's IP
/unbanip [IP] - Unbans the IP
/ban [Player] <Reason> - Bans the player
/unban [Player] - Unbans the player
/time [Time|day|night] - Changes time
/plugin <list> [enable|disable|reload] <plugin name> - actions for plugin states
/essentials - reloads essentials configuration
/reloadall || /rel - reloads all plugins
/spawnmob [mobname] <amount> - works for hostile and peaceful creatures, also, creature names are case sensitive (e.g. Creeper)
/whitelist [operation (add or remove)/toggle] [player]
/tpo <player> - force teleport to player (ignores tp status)
/tpohere <player> - force player to tp to your location (ignores tp status)
/tppos <x> <y> <x> - teleport to a specific location
/broadcast <message> - broadcast a message to all online players
--Economy--
/money grant <player> <amount> - Give said player some minecash (use negative amount to take away funds)
/money set <player> <amount> - Forcefully sets a player's account balance to the specified value
/money hide <player> <true/false> - Toggle the visibility of an account
/money create <player> - Create a player's account
/money remove <player> - Delete a player's account
/money reset <player> - Resets a player's account
/money stats - shows a general overview of economic statistics
/gsreset || /gsclear - resets the worth of gold to it's base value (does nothing on our server, which has static pricing)
--griefer control--
(again, this part is a little complicated, so i'll link you to the command guide)
some basic examples:
/bb here <username> <range>- show recent activity within your current area, [range] can increase the default radius, you can also filter out only changes made by a particular player
/bb rollback <player> - undo all modifications said player has done to the envirionment

ROOT(5) commands:
(EVERY command is available to root/ops, I can't remember them all but here are some root only commands)
/item [ID] [Amount] <Player> - Gives items to you or others
/give [player] [item|item:damage value] <amount> - give a player an item
/setspawn - Sets the spawn point to your position.
/setjail [jailname] - creates a jail at your current location
/gc - display chunk, memory, and world info
/antioch - blow up that thing you're pointing at
/god - toggle god mode
/heal <player >- heal yourself or other player
/jump - teleport to your crosshair's location