A real player economy
Most servers hand out money for playtime and call it an economy. Here, wealth has to come from somebody else's pocket.
Currency is earned, not granted
Your balance reflects money actually held and traded. There is no drip of coins for standing in a lobby, no daily reward, no vote-for-cash loop. If you have money, somebody paid it to you.
That single rule keeps prices meaningful. When currency is printed for free, everything inflates and trade stops mattering.
Everyone can open a shop
Shops are not a donor perk or a staff privilege. Any player can set one up on their first day, stock it, and set their own prices.
The result is a genuine market. Prices move because of what people are actually willing to pay, and undercutting a rival is a legitimate strategy.
The server shop is deliberately terrible
There is a server shop, and it is priced badly on purpose. It exists as a price ceiling, not a convenience — a guarantee that no item can ever be cornered and held hostage.
In practice a player shop is almost always the better deal. That is the intent: the server shop should be the option you resort to, never the one you prefer.
Emeralds and villager halls
Emerald rates are scaled so that villager trading only becomes profitable at genuine industrial volume. A small trading hall will not fund an empire.
This keeps the classic villager exploit from flattening the economy in week one, while still rewarding players who commit to building real infrastructure.
Anti-exploit work
- Infinitely farmable items are worth nothing to the server shop — around sixty items are zeroed, so no AFK farm prints money.
- No craft arbitrage. Block-and-ingot prices are exact multiples, so crafting up or down can never turn a profit.
- No buy/sell gap anywhere in the item list that could be looped for free income.
What money is actually for
Funding a town, buying materials you do not want to gather, paying someone to build something, and settling the treaties and border deals the server is named for.