Games like Starbound just beg for griefing because of one key component: they are voxel based. This means that the world is designed with fluid resources, no one truly owns any of the resources because once they’re placed into the world they become community property. This means that you can either destroy them and claim the resources as your own as much and as often as you want.

Through the evolution of mods, there have been ways to make it where people would have to be on the allow list to modify an area (Bukkit plugin is a great example) and the griefing has subsided, a little bit, but there is still the very nature of the game where anyone can build and destroy anything that makes us all question our own humanity.

Starbound is great because it has an item known as a bomb and it’s still in its early beta phase where spawn protection hasn’t been considered. Utilizing the ingenious effective method of the bomb I have been able to load into a server and nearly instantly kill anyone who beams down to the default planet by placing them ever so carefully into the pit of lava at the bottom.

Of course, bombs have another delightful use. The fast and efficient destruction and harvesting of player made buildings. Bombs will instantly destroy most forms of materials and stack to deal massive damage quickly, in addition to the ability to drill straight down, requiring the land to be rebuilt.

While bombs are being thrown, a mining pick can take down the backwall, which is the most expensive part of any player building.

In addition, a lot of servers use material like obsidian for their PvP bridges (so that weapons don’t destroy it easily). Bombs make quick work of obsidian thanks to their ability to stack up and fire at nearly the same time.

Other griefing methods include PKing with bombs and weapons that deal splash damage (that hurts anyone) and summoning bosses on unsuspecting players (which will keep spawning enemies waiting to cause destruction).

The big question everyone asks is how do I defend against these attacks. Well first obviously don’t use the spawn planet to build your masterpiece. The spawn planet, no matter what, is going to be destroyed and compromised. Assign another planet as the place everyone builds at and just provide coal at the start so people can get there.

The second is to wait for Starbound to evolve a little bit. Server admins need a few more tools and there needs to be more mods to come along that provide security. Right now there isn’t a lot in the way of security and people on your own ship can take your items as they please from your ship’s locker.

A lot of communities right now require a password to get on their server through joining a forum. This is a good way to get casual griefers out of the way but joining a forum takes all of 3 seconds to get a password, so that’s sort of kind of out of the question.

Anyway, long story short, if you want to grief in Starbound use bombs. They’re efficent, quick, and powerful. You can use trainers to give yourself unlimited amounts. If you want to defend against griefers, make your buildings on another planet beside the one at spawn and wait until mods come along to shore the game up.