2B2T (2b2t.org) is an ancient Minecraft server, famous for being unmoderated and chaotic. There are many clickbait titles online that make it sound terrifying: “Veteran player survival rate only 20%! 2B2T Survival Guide, how many days can you survive?” Out of curiosity, I also wanted to challenge myself on this legendary server. I read several posts and saw that many players didn’t last long before dying, but after joining the server, I discovered that as long as you master certain techniques, you can easily survive indefinitely. (Though I was indeed lucky - if I had spawned very close to origin, escaping would have been much more difficult.) I won’t waste time introducing the server as there’s plenty of information online - let me get straight to my experience.
First, this is an international server requiring a legitimate Mojang account (my ID was rakc at the time, now changed to hqak), and the server is crowded, requiring queuing to enter. Before joining, I did some preparation work and read some survival guides. The biggest threat to newcomers is hunger, as there’s no food within several kilometers of spawn.
The guides I read said the first thing to do upon joining this server is to walk away from spawn to find food, so never sprint and avoid jumping when possible. The Nether isn’t great either, as there might be traps or player killers on the other side. At my urging, Hadroncfy also decided to play this server with me. Although this server lacks management and hackers (called “scientists”) are standard, we decided not to use hacks initially and survive on our own abilities for a while. Hadroncfy queued in before me and said he went in the x- direction. After entering spawn, I headed in the x- direction to find Hadroncfy.
This seems to be one of 2b2t’s landmarks, a huge trench created by TNT bombers:
Saw the legendary cross flags:
The scenery along this route was truly unique. After walking over 3km, I finally found the first forest, but no food. After circling around, I found two apples on the ground! And a small house nearby. I was instantly saved!! The biggest threat to 2b2t newcomers is lack of food.
Later I made a boat with wood to slide on ice for faster travel, but accidentally got stuck and fell under the ice. The ice layer prevented me from surfacing to breathe! Fortunately, I calmly broke the ice in time and ran up, otherwise I would have drowned! Breaking ice underwater is very slow - if I had reacted a bit slower, I would have died. You could say I brushed past death! (Never dared to boat on ice again, too fast)
Meanwhile, Hadroncfy said he found an ice highway, but he was also boating too fast and fell straight off the highway to his death, respawning at spawn! I continued heading x-. Later I reached 10,000 blocks, where someone had built a long road as a memorial.
Later I found my first wheat farm, but not much was ripe, and only one watermelon was ready.
Soon the server restarted (server gives restart notice). Hadroncfy didn’t queue back in quickly. I was 112th in queue while Hadroncfy passed my position and continued forward. After joining, I continued x- but one night I saw skeletons wearing iron and gold armor. I could only stay far away. Then there were spiders with red potion effects. I killed it with the stone sword I’d made earlier, but my health was down to 1/3. I immediately ate to recover health, but healing consumed all my food. (Earlier I had put some food supplies in an ender chest, now regretting it) I could only frantically punch oak leaves and finally got an apple. Continued to the desert, no food again, night fell again, even less willing to move. I had to build a 1x1 temporary cobblestone shelter for the night. At this time, Hadroncfy said he’d found sheep and made a bed to sleep (so after death he could respawn at the bed instead of default spawn), saw horses, etc. Later I backtracked to find the nearest oak tree, punched for a long time and got another apple. Wanted to get one more before continuing, but night fell again. With the experience of being bitten by spiders, I decided not to wander around and built a 1x1 temporary shelter for the night. But since I stood still in the shelter, after a while it directly showed connection lost - must have been kicked by the server for being AFK.
Next login was near nightfall, but still had to travel. Later saw an abandoned shelter not far away. I had mined iron earlier, perfect for smelting to make an iron sword and iron boots. I hid through the night and set out again at dawn. I encountered a main road and continued along it (x- direction), found a safe house beside it. The sign said there were lots of watermelons in the left chest! I opened it! Over a stack of watermelons + an apple. (Regrettably forgot to screenshot) I took a stack, but rubber-banded back. I only took 40 (too greedy), and put an iron ingot in as thanks (though who cares about iron ingots, everyone lacks food).
I continued along the road, uphill, getting higher and narrower, finally a one-block wide sky path over a river with no more road. Sign said “jump”. I aimed at the water and jumped down with trepidation, continued traveling.
During travel I often saw these large chunk errors, supposedly caused by terrain algorithm changes after 1.8 update causing faults where old and new chunks meet.
My destination was the shelter with bed that Hadroncfy built, needed to go z+ direction. After sleeping I placed a “rakc was here” sign and continued traveling, as Hadroncfy was already at x = -23k. Ahead was a huge ocean, traveled for a day and night. Boating was very laggy, kept falling off. I fell off the boat at sea and lost connection.
When queuing to rejoin it was past 11am. At 1:30pm I checked and found I’d already lost connection. (Normal queue definitely wouldn’t get in by 1:30) But Hadroncfy said he just disconnected too, so it was another server restart. I kept clicking join server, hoping to squeeze in the instant the server opened, and really got in without queuing! I continued traveling, past 30k found someone’s home that hadn’t been raided by others yet. Their chest had iron ore, various iron tools and an almost broken diamond pickaxe! But my inventory was full, could only pick some things to take. I took two saddles, iron tools, bucket, a bed (from the chest, wouldn’t break the placed one - that would be too mean), redstone, an obsidian.
At this time Hadroncfy wasn’t far from me. I went to find Hadroncfy at his newly built shelter. I made full iron armor and a shield. Then we continued traveling together.
At 34k at a place with a lava pool, now that we had buckets, Hadroncfy used water and lava to cast a portal. But I told him not to enter, because 34k converted to Nether was still too close, afraid it would be dangerous on the other side. So after lighting the portal we abandoned entering and continued traveling. At sea I fell off the boat again. I got on Hadroncfy’s boat (can carry 2 people), but Hadroncfy said it’s better to find a boat. Then we both disconnected. Our plan was to travel 20k each day, today’s mission accomplished.
This morning after joining, continued traveling. Hadroncfy had something in the morning, so I went first. Saw floating mooshrooms at sea then saw a mushroom island (with a crafting table someone placed), continued to a destroyed temple. It was night, didn’t dare enter, so dug a hole nearby to sleep. Next day went in and found nothing inside, but I broke the string on the tripwire hooks to make a bow (didn’t dare fight spiders before so had no string to make bow, only string was from someone’s chest). Then arrived at another person’s home, went down to y=12 mineshaft, I took all the coal from the furnace. It was lunchtime, in the mineshaft I wanted to test if AFK pools worked, as I’d seen one before. Later when I came back found connection lost, proving it didn’t work. Re-queued, then came out of the mineshaft and found a tall pillar next to the house with a house above the clouds on top, but going up only found redstone repeaters (I wanted comparators, as they can allegedly make item duplication machines with hoppers using bugs), looked like an abandoned mob farm. Many large chests, but all empty.
After coming down I tamed a horse for the first time, but the speed wasn’t as fast as I imagined. I reached a village but nothing good, continued to chunk fault, abandoned horse to jump in ocean and boat. But this ocean started from about 51k and still hadn’t ended at 59k! After entering ocean not far found an uninhabited large mushroom island, placed bed and slept, then kept going and disconnected. Afternoon queued in, continued boating and disconnected again! From 51k to 59k only islands in between, no large land. Evening continued to 62k before landing, actually I could have continued by water but afraid of being kicked again. While traveling first encountered burned village, then encountered a base. I found blaze rods and slimeballs in chests! Continued traveling, found my first unvisited village! (69k) (Previous ones were all already looted) I took three gold from the blacksmith’s chest and continued. Later encountered ocean again, I listened to Hadroncfy and swam directly without boat. Around 76k I was still kicked! Maybe I hadn’t moved for too long swimming in one direction. Hadroncfy said forget it from now on, still use boats.
The later journey was rather monotonous, more and more unvisited villages, fewer and fewer shelters, occasionally could still see some lonely portals. The largest structure was a hollowed-out ocean monument.
Continued like this until x coordinate was almost -110k. The road became increasingly boring, motivation to continue decreasing. Didn’t log in for over half a month. Until Hadroncfy downloaded the Impact hack client, he used Impact’s auto-pathfinding feature (Baritone) to travel, used X-ray to mine diamonds, walked to 200k and wanted to first establish a temporary base. I finally had motivation again. Anyway, I ran from spawn to 110k in one go, already proving I had survival ability, so now decisively decided to use hacks to experience new gameplay. I now need to get to his base, first get our gear at least enchanted together then continue developing. Hadroncfy said he found a skeleton spawner, so there’s an XP source for enchanting, but not enough sugarcane to make bookshelves. Today I also started using Impact to travel. After testing pathfinding ability, I first turned on x-ray and mined some diamonds (didn’t dare use auto-mine, don’t trust AI), made sword and armor except pants (because wanted to hurry and meet Hadroncfy), then kept walking.
Soon encountered someone’s shelter with two portals. The shelter chest contents were average, except for 29 ender chests! I took them all, placed one on ground to use (since I don’t have silk touch, can’t take ender chest even if I have one). At night I needed to eat dinner, normally would have to log out, as the server can automatically detect and kick AFK players, but now with auto-pathfinding, I planned to leave it on. For safety, I specifically slept before leaving (afraid of coming back to find myself dead). Later came back from dinner and found nothing happened, I was still traveling. Later on the road I opened chest searcher and also found a skeleton spawner, but only useful thing inside was a Protection IV enchanted book. Kept walking like this, then near 150k suddenly disconnected - server had restarted. Later connected and walked to a village past 160k, was about to place bed to sleep and disconnected. Today (in real life) from noon to evening walked from under 110k to over 160k, using hacks is indeed extremely efficient.
Today continued using hacks to travel, but didn’t see any signs of civilization all day, only NPC villages. I broke all the bookshelves, got 63 books for Hadroncfy to use for enchanting. Midway also went to a desert temple (dug TNT, checked chests, had a golden apple). Before dinner as usual slept, then auto-pathfinding AFK. Later walked to 197k and disconnected once, then logged back in and walked a bit more then disconnected again.
Today continued traveling, finally reached the coordinates Hadroncfy sent. But nothing around, after looking around a bit, I discovered underground large chests and furnaces, but didn’t know how to find the entrance. I turned on freecam (commonly called “soul leaving body”) and found the entrance. I made all the books I’d collected into bookshelves, placed the ender chest down, started testing if item frames and pistons could duplicate items, but tried for a long time without success.
Then walked a few hundred meters forward, opened a Nether portal, finally gathered courage to enter. The Nether showed no signs of visitation. I saw a Nether fortress and quartz ore at the bottom of distant cliffs. I was very tired at this point and logged out. In the evening Hadroncfy logged in and also went to the Nether. He said he only found quartz very far away. Oh right, I won’t post more pictures from here on, because 2b2t’s seed is public and there are tools that can automatically brute-force search and match coordinates through terrain features, so to save my life I won’t post pictures with natural terrain.
Later Hadroncfy and I went to the Nether fortress together, saw someone had dug a path to the fortress nearby! Using freecam discovered there was actually a path under the lava ocean! This path extended from origin direction toward x-, we decided to trace this path, might find portals or player bases. But after just a few steps toward x- it ended. I used freecam to look - it was right at our portal. Probably the person digging also saw the fortress through freecam and decided to come up. But after coming up didn’t know where they went, as the Nether fortress was too big with many branches. We later went to the blaze spawner to farm blaze rods. After I was hit and set on fire by a blaze once, I suddenly disconnected! Hadroncfy later returned to the overworld alone.
When I logged in again I found I was still on fire, then crashed again! Tried logging in twice more with the same result! I remembered the recent story about ban books: near spawn people leave free shulker boxes full of a type of book, if you open it you get kicked from server, then can never get back on, logging in just crashes. Some tried throwing away inventory items or typing suicide commands but nothing worked. Supposedly there are also sign bans that ban without picking up boxes, specific mechanism unclear. But I’m in the Nether at over 20k! So few people here, shouldn’t be sabotaged by others. Did I discover a new ban method? Can I only wait for server owner hausemaster to patch these ban exploits before I can play? Thinking this, I suddenly noticed I had turned on an anti-fire hack. I quickly asked Hadroncfy - he said he hadn’t used this hack at the time, and I’d seen him on fire without being kicked, so that must be the reason! But the server’s too crowded now, probably can’t queue in tonight.
Perfect timing - Hadroncfy saw someone saying in Chinese pinyin in chat that newcomers joining QQ group get benefits, so we joined the group called Avengers Alliance with 18 people when I joined. Group owner said he’d give benefits at roughly x=2k, z=3k! Too bad I couldn’t get in server, even if I could it’s too far from spawn. Dying back would be a shame. Heard there’s a way to glitch ender pearls for long distance teleport, but worried if it failed I couldn’t come back. Later only one person arrived at the benefits location, and the group owner really gave him lots of stuff including elytra, 32k (godly weapons, named for 32768 enchantment level), totems, etc.
After turning off the anti-fire hack, finally after long queue I entered the game! But I was still on fire, my health kept decreasing. Only then did I remember I should quickly eat mutton to recover health, but I reacted too slowly. The healing speed was less than fire damage speed. That’s right, I died! I believe if I hadn’t disconnected I wouldn’t have died. I walked 200k from origin without dying, but got killed in the Nether by Impact’s hack.
To be continued…