Claiming is the best way to protect your items, and form a team. Without claiming your land, you won't have access to properly secure your items, and even invite players to your team.

To make a claim, you must start off with a claim chest. You can craft a claim chest by 1. opening a crafting table, 2. placing a chest on the bottom, 3. placing a door on top of said chest.

Once you've followed those steps, you will have a Claim Chest. From there, you can place it down, and make your team.

Even though you've now made your claim, you must still upkeep it! This means your claim has a timer until it is destroyed! To add more time to this timer, you must deposit coins. The more coins you deposit, the longer your time will last. You can deposit coins at all times, but the largest your claim is (via claim expansions)

If your claim chunk isn't large enough, you can spend your coins to expand it, but this will make your claim upkeep increasingly more expensive.