PDA & STARTER KITS

Your PDA is your all-in-one hub for navigation, missions, base management, and more. Paired with the Starter Kit system, it’s the backbone of everyday survival in QuantumRift. This page covers what the PDA does, how you earn it, and how the starter kit keeps you geared up after a rough death.

What is the PDA?

The PDA (Personal Data Assistant) shows up in your inventory as a compass-styled item — right-click it to open your hub of tabs covering everything from navigation to your team’s economy.

• Appearance: Named “PDA” in aqua text. If the server’s resource pack is active, it gets a custom look; otherwise it’s a plain compass icon. Note that the compass needle doesn’t point anywhere anymore — wayfinding has moved to the Locator Bar (see below).
• Lore on the item reads:
  • “Right-click to open the PDA.”
  • “Stays in your hotbar — cannot be dropped.”
  • “Navigation, missions, base info, economy and more.”
• Home slot: hotbar slot 9 (the last slot) by default. It’s pinned there, but you can move it to any of the nine hotbar slots from the PDA tab of /settings — handy if you’ve rebound your hotbar keys and want slot 9 for a PvP item. The PDA moves the moment you pick, and whatever was in the new slot is swapped into the old one.
• It cannot be: dropped, traded, swapped to your off-hand, moved out of its slot, consumed, or listed on the flea market. All of those locks follow whichever slot you chose. If something else gets forced into that slot (say, by a staff member), the displaced item is pushed to your first free inventory slot — or dropped at your feet if your inventory is full.
• It survives death and will automatically reappear in your hotbar if it’s ever missing, thanks to a background check that runs about once per second. If you ever can’t find it, just run /pda to reopen your hub — it’ll make sure you have one first.

Earning your PDA

The PDA isn’t handed out the instant you join — the Technician, one of the tutorial’s instructor NPCs at spawn, hands it over partway through the new-player quest chain, right before walking you through its tabs. Reach that station and it’s yours for good. If you skip the tutorial (answer the Quartermaster I already know the basics.) or abandon it before the Technician, you get the PDA right away instead.

Once you’ve earned it, it’s yours permanently — you’ll never lose eligibility, even across deaths or relogging. Until you reach the Technician, the PDA’s slot simply stays empty and unused — nothing is taken away, and there’s no penalty.

Staff members with the appropriate permission can access PDA features early for testing purposes.

Staff with the quantumrift.pda.admin.teleport permission also get a Teleport button on the Navigation and NPC Tracker tabs (in the classic chest menu, shift-click the tile instead). It takes them straight to any NPC, the Imperial City, a quadrant landmark, the nearest resource site of a type, or their last death. Landmarks and sites land on the surface; NPCs and the death marker land on the exact spot. Every use is logged for the admin team.

Commands

The Locator Bar

Instead of a compass needle, QuantumRift drives Minecraft’s Locator Bar — the marker strip above your hotbar — directly from your PDA. You can have up to 4 markers tracked at once:

A few things to know:

• Other players never show up as bar markers.
• Markers can’t point across dimensions — if the thing you’re tracking is in a different world, its marker simply won’t show.
• Your markers automatically re-sync after you die, respawn, or change worlds.

The PDA Hub — 15 Tabs

Right-click your PDA to open the hub. Depending on your client and server settings, this appears either as a classic chest-style menu or as a full cursor-driven screen — both show the same information. Here’s what’s inside each tab:

Navigation

Your map and wayfinding center. Features:

• A quincunx layout — four directional quadrants (NW / NE / SW / SE) surrounding a central Imperial City pin at the world’s origin.
• Each quadrant drills into a list of named landmarks in that direction (see the World Map table below).
• Nearest resource site tiles that re-target live as you move: Deserted Wasteland, Bandit Settlement, Volcano Heart, Mines, Oasis, and Farmlands. A site type shows up once one exists on the map. A site the Empire hasn’t opened yet (the Volcano Hearts, until the Empire reaches tier 5) is left out here and in the quadrant lists; if you were tracking one, your waypoint is cleared.
• A Last Death tile showing position, distance, and direction (or “No deaths recorded” if you’re lucky).
• An Open-World Teleporters tile listing your 3 nearest teleporters with distance and direction — click to track the nearest one on your Locator Bar.
• If you’ve locked an NPC from the NPC Tracker tab, it shows up here too.

Base Info

Your team’s Base Core dashboard at a glance:

• Core level / max level, HP / max HP.
• Team balance and claimed chunk count vs. cap.
• Shield status (ACTIVE/INACTIVE), banked hours:minutes, and remaining time if the shield is currently up.
• Upkeep cost per machine tick.
• An Active Machines summary — counts by type, plus paused counts and reasons.
• Your full team roster with online/offline status.
• Your allied teams (up to 5 shown, then “…and N more”), each with online/total member counts, machine count, and upkeep.

Defense

Your base’s war room: the shield, your sentries and your raids. Running /shield on its own opens this tab (/shield status still prints a one-line status in chat).

• Shield: up or down, charge banked out of the 22h cap, how fast it’s charging right now (in seconds banked per second), and, while it’s up, how long is left and when it ends (server time, UTC).
• Activate / Deactivate: pick a length with the MIN / -1h / +1h / MAX buttons (2h to 22h), then Activate. Deactivate asks you to confirm first, since your base can be raided the moment the shield drops; unused charge stays banked. Only Officers and above can use these. Everyone else sees them locked with “Officer+ only”. If the server charges credits for an activation, you’re asked to confirm that too.
• Sentries: every sentry your team has placed, with its state (standing, back in N minutes, no power, respawning), its live health, its position with distance and direction, its range and its power draw. Health is read when you open the tab and shows “unloaded” when the sentry’s chunk isn’t loaded. A dead sentry stays down while your base has no power.
• Under siege: a warning line appears while siege weapons are hitting your base. Core upgrades are locked and passive Core repair is paused until the attack stops.
• Raids by your team: the last 10 enemy Base Cores your team destroyed, with the date, who landed the final blow, and whether the loot window is still open.

Machines

A deep-dive automation report for your team:

• Total energy supply, demand, and net (in energy/tick).
• Total credit upkeep per tick.
• Per-machine-type breakdown: count, paused count, and per-unit energy/upkeep.
• A footer breaking down why machines are paused.

NPC Tracker

• Your bandit reputation score, ranging from -500 to 2000. It’s described in-game as “a trust gate for bandit missions and trade — persistent, private, non-spendable.”
• Every trackable service NPC, sorted into four groups you can filter by (All, Shops, Services, Ranks, Tutorial; the list opens on All):
  • Shops: Quartermaster, Field Medic, Chief Engineer, Spawner Depot, Defense Depot, Wardrobe Master, Crate Master, Stable Master, Tag Merchant, Blacksmith.
  • Services: Imperial Merchant, Flea Auctioneer, Imperial Banker, Master Smith, Beacon Operator, Empire Officer, Bounty Board, Imperial Administrator, Empire Historian.
  • Rank envoys: Hero, Mercenary, Aurora, Legend, Imperial.
  • Tutorial: the five instructors (Engineer, Warden, Scavenger, Prospector, Technician).
• In the classic chest menu the filters are the tiles along the top row, and a long list (All) turns over with the Previous page / Next page arrows. The filter goes back to All when you leave the tab.
• Click any NPC to lock it as a Locator Bar waypoint.
• Bandit NPCs are deliberately left off this list — find them by tracking the Bandit Settlement point of interest on the map instead.

Missions

• The current server-wide Empire mission, with progress, type, and reward unlocks.
• Your personal mission slots: Daily 1 & 2, Weekly 1 & 2.
• If you’re on a team: Team Daily 1 & 2, Team Weekly 1 & 2.
• Each slot shows progress, credit reward, and a description of the objective.
• Each slot also shows when it resets (“Resets in 5h 12m”): daily slots at 00:00 UTC, weekly slots on Monday at 00:00 UTC. At that moment the mission is replaced; progress on an unfinished one is lost, and a finished one was already paid.

Referrals

Your referral code, stats, a flow for entering someone else’s referral code, and paginated progress tracking toward referral milestones.

Quests

• Counts of your active and completed quests.
• Up to 9 active quest tiles, each with title, current step, and a hint.
• Left-click a quest to pin it as your Locator Bar target.
• Right-click to abandon a quest — you’ll be asked to confirm, since abandoning destroys your progress permanently.

Mount

A 3×3 grid crossing Mount Type against Mount Tier. Each owned mount shows its upgrade levels for Speed, Durability, and Step, and the size of its cargo hold. Click a mount to summon it, or use the Dismiss button to send your active mount away.

Cosmetics

• A master ON/OFF toggle — switching cosmetics off hides all your particles, trails, pets, and other effects from everyone, including yourself. It’s framed as “great for low-end PCs or clean PvP.” Note that other players’ cosmetics will still show to you even with yours off.
• 6 category tiles, each opening its own sub-menu: Pet, Trail, Particle, Jump, Attack, Kill Emote. Each shows how many you have active vs. owned.
• Chat Tags — lists every tag you have unlocked, each with a line saying how you got it (for example “You killed 100 hostile mobs.” or “Your wallet reached 2,500 credits.”), and lets you equip or unequip it from there.

Kit

A single toggle: “Death starter kit: ON/OFF.” Turn it off and you’ll stop receiving the automatic starter kit after death. Under the toggle, the tab tells you where your kit stands (as of when you opened it):

• “Ready. You get a kit the next time you die.” No cooldown is running.
• “Next kit ready in 1h 12m” Your cooldown is still running; die after that and you get a kit.
• “Kit owed. It arrives in 1h 12m” You died during your cooldown, so a kit is owed and lands by itself when the cooldown ends.

It also states the rule, for example “One kit per death, at most one every 2h”, using your server’s configured cooldown. The cooldown keeps running whether your toggle is on or off. If starter kits are switched off for the whole server, the tab reads OFF with “Kits are off on this server.” and the toggle is hidden; your own choice is kept for when kits come back.

Economy

Your financial dashboard:

• Personal credit balance.
• Team balance, plus reminders for /team deposit <amount> and /team withdraw <amount> (Officer rank and above only).
• Your active flea market listings (up to 5 shown).
• Browse the Flea Market (the FLEA MARKET row’s BROWSE THE BOOK button in the new menus, the compass tile in the classic chest menu): the Flea Market’s whole order book from anywhere, with the same search, sort and categories as at the Auctioneer. Click an item to see both sides of its book at once: the best ask, the best bid, the spread and the top orders on each side, with your own marked YOURS. It is read-only, even inside the Imperial City: buying, selling and bidding happen at the Flea Auctioneer. Back to PDA returns you to this tab.
• A bank summary.
• Leaderboards: Top Wallets, Top Donors (all-time, every mission so far), and Top Team Balances. In the classic (chest) menus there is also Top donors — this mission: the top 10 donors to the current Empire mission, refreshed each time you open the tab. The top donors are also shown on a board in the Imperial City.

Gear

Your own gear tier (also reachable with /gear):

• GEAR TIER n / 7 and where it comes from: your team’s research, the solo cap, or the staff bypass.
• The seven-tier ladder: each tier’s armor and tool material, the single-tier weapons, and which research unlocks it. Tiers you can use are ticked, the rest locked.
• What you are wearing and holding (helmet to boots, main hand, off hand), each marked Usable, above your tier, or never wearable.
• The research that raises you next and its status (waiting on the Empire, needs an Empire mission, ready to queue, queued, or in progress).

Friends

Your friends list (the same one as /friend list):

• An overview of how many friends are online, then friend requests sent to you, requests you sent, and your friends — online ones first, each with a green (online) or grey (offline) dot.
• Requests to you: accept or deny them (in the classic chest menu, left-click accepts, right-click denies).
• Requests you sent: click to cancel.
• Friends: remove one (in the classic chest menu, shift-click so a stray click can’t cost a friendship).
• New requests are sent from chat: /friend add <player>.

Contracts

Your work for the Companies (Companies), read-only (/contracts):

• Your rank and standing with each of the eight companies, and how much standing the next rank needs. A company you cannot climb because you lead its rival says so.
• Your active contracts: what each asks for, how much you have delivered, the deadline and the pay booked so far. Deliver at the company’s office.

World Map — Navigation Quadrants

The Navigation tab’s quadrant layout is centered on Imperial City at the world origin (marked with a Beacon icon). Here’s what’s in each direction:

Landmark icons: Magma Block for Volcano, Water Bucket for Oasis, Iron Ore for Mines, Wheat for Farmlands, Crossbow for Bandit Camp.

Bandit Reputation

Every player has a bandit reputation score, ranging from -500 to 2000, tracked privately per player. It’s visible on the NPC Tracker tab and serves as a trust gate for bandit-faction missions and trade — it can’t be spent or transferred, it simply reflects your standing.

Spawn Leaderboard

Some servers may display a physical, floating leaderboard board near spawn showing one of: top donations, top wallets, or top team wallets. If enabled, it refreshes every 5 minutes by default and shows up to 10 rows. It’s a decorative, in-world companion to the same leaderboard data found in your PDA’s Economy tab — not every server will have one active.

The Starter Kit

The starter kit is a death kit — it’s not a recurring stipend, but a safety net that re-arms after every death. Your very first set doesn’t come from it: the tutorial’s Loot Chest (the Scavenger’s station at spawn) hands you the same items when you loot it.

How it works

• First spawn: no automatic kit — you get the same items from the tutorial’s Loot Chest instead. (Servers can switch the old first-spawn hand-out back on with pda.kitOnFirstSpawn.)
• After death: You’ll receive the kit again once your cooldown has expired — the default cooldown is 2 hours.
• Dying again while on cooldown doesn’t grant you an extra kit right away, but it “arms” your next one — as soon as your existing cooldown runs out, the kit will land automatically. You’re never owed more than one kit at a time.
• Delivery happens through the same background check that keeps your PDA in your hotbar, so after respawning you can typically expect your kit within about a second.
• If your inventory doesn’t have room for everything, the leftover items will drop on the ground at your feet instead of being lost.
• Kit delivery always happens after your PDA reclaims its hotbar slot, so a kit item can never bump your PDA out of place.

Messages you’ll see

Kit contents

Every starter kit contains the same items: starting-tier gear anyone can use, and some food:

Each item comes fully stamped with its stats, exactly as if you’d crafted or looted it yourself — there’s nothing “kit-only” or watered-down about the gear.

Opting out

Don’t want the starter kit? Flip the toggle off in your PDA’s Kit tab and you won’t receive one at all until you turn it back on. This is completely independent of your PDA itself — you can keep full access to your PDA hub while opting out of the kit specifically.

Quick Reference

• PDA hotbar slot: 9 (the last slot) by default; movable to any hotbar slot from the PDA tab of /settings. Undroppable wherever it lives.
• Starter kit cooldown: 2 hours (default).
• Bandit reputation range: -500 to 2000.
• PDA hub tabs: 14 — Navigation, Base Info, Defense, Machines, NPC Tracker, Missions, Referrals, Quests, Mount, Cosmetics, Kit, Economy, Gear, Friends.
• Locator Bar markers: up to 4 — Target, Death, Base Core, Nearest Teleporter.