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
/pdato 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.
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.
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/pda |
Opens your PDA hub. If you’re eligible but don’t currently have one, it hands you one first. |
/pda give <player> |
Staff only. Grants a PDA to a player immediately, bypassing the tutorial requirement. Target must be online. |
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:
| Marker | Color | Shows |
|---|---|---|
| Target | Gold (bowtie icon) | Whatever you’ve currently selected to track from the Navigation, Quest, or NPC Tracker tabs. Never distance-limited. |
| Death | Red | The location of your last death. |
| Base Core | Blue | Your team’s Base Core, if one is placed. |
| Nearest Teleporter | Cyan | The closest open-world teleporter. |
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 — 11 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: Caves, Bandit Settlement, Volcano Heart, Mining Outpost, Oasis, and Farming Zone.
- 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.
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.”
- A list of trackable service NPCs: the spawn-plaza NPCs (Quartermaster, Medical Merchant, Engineering Merchant, Spawner Depot, Defense Depot, Cosmetics Merchant, Teleporter Operator, Administrator, Crate Master), City NPCs including the five tutorial instructors (Engineer, Warden, Scavenger, Prospector, Technician), and the 5 rank envoys (Hero, Mercenary, Aurora, Legend, Imperial).
- 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.
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, Storage, and Step. 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.
Kit
A single toggle: “Death starter kit: ON/OFF.” Turn it off and you’ll stop receiving the automatic starter kit after death. The 2-hour cooldown described below still runs in the background while the toggle is on.
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).
- A bank summary.
- Three leaderboards: Top Wallets, Top Donors, and Top Team Balances.
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:
| Quadrant | Banner Color | Landmarks |
|---|---|---|
| North-West | Red | Volcano, Oasis, Mining Outpost |
| North-East | Blue | Farming Zone, Bandit Camp |
| South-West | Green | Farming Zone, Bandit Camp |
| South-East | Yellow | Volcano, Oasis, Mining Outpost |
Landmark icons: Magma Block for Volcano, Water Bucket for Oasis, Iron Ore for Mining Outpost, Wheat for Farming Zone, 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 8 items when you loot it.
How it works
- First spawn: no automatic kit — you get the same 8 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
| Situation | Message |
|---|---|
| First-ever spawn (only if the server enables the first-spawn hand-out) | “Starter kit issued — welcome aboard.” |
| Kit issued after cooldown | “Starter kit issued. Next kit in 2h.” (time reflects your server’s configured cooldown) |
| Inventory full | “[kit] Inventory full — overflow dropped at your feet.” |
Kit contents
Every starter kit contains the same 8 items — solid, dependable Tier 1 gear that’s always useful no matter how far you’ve progressed:
| Item | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Wooden Sword | 1 |
| Wooden Pickaxe | 1 |
| Wooden Axe | 1 |
| Wooden Shovel | 1 |
| Leather Helmet | 1 |
| Leather Chestplate | 1 |
| Leather Leggings | 1 |
| Leather Boots | 1 |
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: 11 — Navigation, Base Info, Machines, NPC Tracker, Missions, Referrals, Quests, Mount, Cosmetics, Kit, Economy.
- Locator Bar markers: up to 4 — Target, Death, Base Core, Nearest Teleporter.