NFE

(as told by xcc2)
This tale begins at the dawn of 2b2t and my first days of adventuring on the minecraft anarchy map that has not been reset since approximately November 2010. I came to know about 2b2t.net through a post on 4chan early in 2011.

At this time there were several daily posts on 4chan either on /b/ or /v/ that would draw 50-100+ players to 2b2t during busy times of the day. I'm honestly not sure when I first logged onto the server, but my earliest screenshots date back to Beta 1.2 which came out in January 2011. I was not much of a minecraft player, having only played in singleplayer survival mode during an early alpha release. I happened to join the server during one of the busiest times and spawn was filled with dozens of people punching eachother to death with their fists. At that time new players spawned at 0,0 and there was an obsidian area on the ground approximately 15x15 blocks square. It was impossible to place any blocks on this slab or build ontop of it. It was usually surrounded by a curtain of lava or water or cobble that had to be navigated to escape.

This does not show the original obsidian slab that I spawned on. 0,0 is located in the upper right of this render, just in front of the stone ridge. Spawn looked somewhat like this for a few years, with house occassionally removing water or lava that caused lag, or even flattening spawn to remove tall structures. The big wall and PEACE sign in the distance as well as the road out of spawn at 42Z drew me to the -X direction. These iconic structures stayed a part of the 2b2t map from the time of my joining until late in 2013.

After adventuring for a few weeks and staying in various ruined structures I stumbled upon a partially destroyed castle which I believed to be abandoned. There were no people around and it was (at that time) reasonably far from spawn, located at approximately -400, 800. The castle was made up of four towers connected by walls with a central courtyard. One of the towers was built almost to sky height (128) and had a room ontop of it. In the courtyard I found some small buildings against the inside wall with signs named for players inhabiting them. One of the names that I remember was 'Pimpmastaflex'. I don't know if he was the original builder of this castle, but he was part of the group of Facepunch users that made up most of the dedicated player base of 2b2t at that time (sequel, chezhead, Phagocitic, etc). The Facepunch players had a long history of creating bases and posting the coords on the forum only for them to be found and destroyed. This could have been one of their early builds.

The earliest version of this castle had no gatehouse

I decided that I would repair the castle and make it my home. It was built all of cobble and easy to fix. After a few days there, I began to notice that other parts of the castle were being repaired, and someone had even created a house nearby.

Eventually I would meet alex02028 and we agreed to continue to build and expand the area around this castle. I built the base's iconic aquaduct and shortly after I constructed the drum tower and arched twin towers. The top of the towers were made of red wool that was produced by dying white wool blocks with roses. Roses were obtained by flying around the surrounding areas and collecting all the red flowers I could find. To produce that much red wool was a massive challenge at the time (sheep could not be bred or dyed yet).

By now several months had passed and more people began to become aware of this base. I offered food and shelter to new players joining the server who were trying to get a start, and I kept trees planted around the castle, asking only that players replant when they harvested wood. At the time the only tree in the game was oak. Many friendly players showed up and some offered to stay around and build things; others showed up during times that I wasn't there and I experienced my first taste of griefing on 2b2t. The griefing took many forms, some much more creative than others. One player offered to stay and build at the base, but instead created the first lavacast I had ever seen, right in front of the castle. He though it was funny, so I waited until he logged out (ontop of the cast) and I quickly took it down. When he next logged in, he fell from his logout height and died right in front of me, blaming me for his death. I took his gear, and used the cobble from the lavacast to construct the gatehouse on the front of the castle.

One group of griefers was known as "Dark Carnival". After griefing they would always leave a sign with their name on it, and the words "HONK HONK HONK". I don't know who any of the individual members were, I only saw their handiwork. They were gentle griefers, usually producing something obscene and taking some items from chests. One of their projects was to create a large pink wool penis in the castle's top tower room with white wool semen running down the side of the tower. True artists.

Somewhere around this time, while flying was allowed on the server, some players showed up and we had a battle in the skies over the base. This was my first meeting of Cold_Storage77 and x0XP. Eventually I would become friends with both of them, and x0XP gave the base it's name: NFE. Named for the corrdiates that it occupied (N)egative (F)ourHundred, (E)ightHundred.

Griefing at NFE became somewhat of a sport, and there were various methods and levels of destruction over the years. Filling the courtyard with water, removing all the torches, covering the tower with lava or water, blasting parts with TNT, chipping down a tower, burning buildings and trees, etc.

The worst of the griefers was a group from Finland that called themselves Pyylaandia. The members were Fenster, Poersijn, Vaquera and their leader, Arthur_McGuire. These guys made it their mission to completely destroy the entire place... and they succeeded. One day I logged out in the castle, as usual; when I logged back in later I was met with utter destruction. There was not a single stone left of the castle and all that remained with a giant hole. The team from Finland had brought four inventories of TNT and decimated the place. I didn't know at the time how they had obtained so much TNT. There was no available dupe methods and in fact nobody had ever considered the possibility to dupe anything. At this point it was too much for my friend alex0208 and he left 2b2t. I saw him log on one or two more times over the years, but we never based together again, and I don't think he ever played on the server much after that.

With nothing left for me at NFE I eventually left and went to a new base with someone I had met named passie05. We would go on to build together at Squidbase, Plugin Town, Ziggybase and several other famous places together.

Over the months I would eventually return to NFE when one of the other bases I was at fell, and it would be completely repaired. The various friends of NFE that I met over the years would usually assist me. Aaron, Fisky, policemike55, JDW9966, x0XP, Ziggy_S, Spikain, Leonnorius, livelion, CytotoxicTcell and many others. Some people even showed up when I wasn't there and performed their own rebuilds or repairs, and contributed by building their own buildings. toobin built his church, Ziggy_S made the farms below NFE, drheavy created his obsidian egg tower, Sato built the Valkyrian embassy and a player from the Broville server even made a house. Sometimes I would get a message from someone I knew telling me to come to NFE. I would arrive, and find it completely repaired.

I would spend months there, guarding and repairing the base after each grief, usually none as bad as the one performed by the Pyyland team. These guys would be gone from 2b2t for months, and then show up randomly just to TNT the base into rubble again. They did this three different times until one day when I was talking to policemike55 I mentioned that they must be grinding gunpowder somewhere nearby, since I was seeing them online a lot. He told me that he thought he found a grinder a few thousand blocks away and he went looking for it. On that day polimike55 found the grinder and the guys from Pyyland AFK while it collected gunpowder. I met him there and we killed them all and TNTd their grinder, stopping them from their final grief of NFE.

Other notorious griefers did their work at NFE over the years. Harblax and Uzify were two players who constantly harassed me at NFE. During one exchange while NFE was in it's ICE phase Harblax and popbob had an epic battle on the ice with speed hacks right in front of the twin arched towers. As Harblax and popbob ran off into the distance and battled, I stayed and fought Uzify. I remember him running away back towards spawn after his armor broke, and I launched a single arrow at him from about 50 blocks away. The long arch of the arrow found it's mark as he ran and Uzify died on the ice. popbob would waver between being a friend of mine (and NFE) and it's enemy. One day I logged in and found popbob at NFE on one of his alts, creating a huge lavacast over the castle. For months he claimed that it was not him doing it, but someone else with access to the alt.

With new versions of minecraft came strange new problems to the map. Different terrain generation, the rising of the oceans and even a seed change that went unnoticed by house for several weeks. This caused many of the strange phenomena that can be seen at various parts of the map, and also explains why some of the terrain generated in Amidst doesn't match what is found on the server. At some times NFE was in a tundra biome and the oceans were frozen.

NFE was home to 2b2t's first operating END portal which I constructed out of end frame blocks produced during the first backdoor hack of the server. policemike55 and some others had tried to create a portal weeks earlier but they were unaware of the correct eye of ender orientation requirements. With polimike55 present I lit the END portal in a special room I contructed under NFE to look exactly like a real stronghold END portal room:

policemike55 and I were the first to enter the END and generate the original the_end map on 2b2t. Later that day JDW99666 and I slew 2b2t's first END dragon. Ultimately many more portals were created on the server with hacked end frames and House became aware of this. He removed all the portals he could find, and even removed all of the endstone blocks brought back to the overworld by using WorldGuard. The current END map is the second one to be created after House built his own END portals and allowed access officially.

Ultimately I grew tired of doing repairs, and the griefing got too intense. With the new world height of 256 the lavacasts grew too large. Dozens of withers were released under NFE and the entire underground which had housed crops, animals, horses, and rooms dating back to 2012, were completely carved away. I lost interest in repairing NFE and completely abandoned it after it's last griefing. The base fell for a final time in January 2014.

I still consider NFE to be hallowed ground and I in the spirite of the base I sometimes roam it's grounds and will hand out supplies and gear to new travelers who find their way there. Maybe our paths will cross on 2b2t some time. I will most likely not be friendly to you unless I happen to find you amidst these ruins.