Towny and Earth Servers

Install Towny and an economy

Towny needs three things: Towny itself, Vault (or VaultUnlocked) to connect plugins to an economy, and an economy plugin that holds players' money.

Install the plugins

1. Open your server in the panel and choose Minecraft Plugins.
2. Search for and install:
   • Towny (by LlmDl). Check the version supports your Minecraft version: the Towny README lists which Towny release goes with which Minecraft version.
   • VaultUnlocked (a maintained Vault replacement that works with plugins written for Vault). If a plugin you rely on insists on the original Vault, install Vault from the Plugins page instead. Install only one of the two.
   • EssentialsX, which includes a simple economy (/balance, /pay, /baltop) and the basics every server needs (homes, spawn, kits, mail).
   • LuckPerms for ranks and permissions.
3. TownyChat is a separate jar. It ships inside the Towny release .zip on Towny's GitHub releases page, and also has its own GitHub releases page. Download the jar that matches your Towny version and upload it into plugins/ with Files → Upload. See Install plugins.
4. Restart the server.

Check it worked

In the Console, run:

plugins

You should see Towny, TownyChat, VaultUnlocked (or Vault), Essentials and LuckPerms in green. Then run towny. It prints Towny's version and the world it's watching. If Towny is red, scroll up in the console for the error; the most common cause is a Towny version that doesn't match your Minecraft version.

Towny creates its configs on first start:

Run the install wizard

Towny has an in-game wizard that sets the six decisions that matter most. Join the server as an op (or with towny.admin) and run:

/ta install

It asks you, one at a time:

You can change any of these later in config.yml. If you prefer to set things yourself, the individual commands are /ta toggle wildernessuse and /ta toggle regenerations.

Configure Towny (config.yml)

Stop the server, open plugins/Towny/settings/config.yml in Files, and work through these sections. The keys below are written as dotted paths: economy.new_expand.price_new_town means the price_new_town line inside new_expand: inside economy:.

Claiming

Prices (economy.new_expand)

Daily upkeep and taxes (economy.daily_taxes)

| Setting | Default | Suggested | Why | |---|---|---|---| | economy.daily_taxes.enabled | true | true | Turns the whole tax and upkeep cycle on. | | economy.daily_taxes.price_town_upkeep | 10.0 | 20.0–50.0 | What every town pays the server each day. | | economy.daily_taxes.town_plotbased_upkeep | false | true on bigger servers | Upkeep scales with the number of townblocks, so huge towns pay more. | | economy.daily_taxes.price_nation_upkeep | 100.0 | 100.0–250.0 | What every nation pays each day. | | economy.daily_taxes.max_town_tax_amount | (see your file) | A cap that stops mayors taxing residents into poverty. | | economy.daily_taxes.per_outpost_cost | (see your file) | Extra upkeep per outpost. |

Bankruptcy and ruins

Turning on both bankruptcy and ruins is the friendliest setup: a town that has a bad week survives, and one that's truly abandoned fades out gracefully.

The Towny day

Pick a time when the server is busy enough that mayors notice, but not during your daily restart. Players can check the time until the next day with /towny time.

Wilderness

EssentialsX economy accounts

If you use EssentialsX as the economy, add NPC: to Towny's bank-account prefixes so Essentials doesn't treat town banks as real players:

economy:
  town_prefix: NPC:town-
  nation_prefix: NPC:nation-

Save the file, Start the server, and run /towny prices in game. It lists the prices Towny is now using; if they're still the defaults, the file didn't save or had a YAML error (the console says which line).

Set permissions

Towny does most permissions itself through townyperms.yml: nomads, residents, mayors, assistants and nation leaders already get the right nodes. A common mistake is copying Towny nodes into LuckPerms by hand. You only need LuckPerms for staff and for a few choices.

Staff

In the Console:

lp creategroup admin
lp group admin permission set towny.admin true
lp group admin permission set luckperms.* true
lp user YourName parent add admin

For moderators who need to help with towns but not change the economy, give individual admin nodes instead of towny.admin. Towny's permission list is on its wiki under Towny Permission Nodes.

Who can found nations

By default every mayor has towny.command.nation.new (it's in the mayor: section of townyperms.yml). On an Earth server this lets the first ten players declare ten superpowers on day one. A good launch plan:

1. Open plugins/Towny/settings/townyperms.yml and remove - towny.command.nation.new from the mayor: list.

2. Give it to a rank instead, for example players who have played for a week, or a "Founder" rank you hand out:

   lp creategroup founder
   lp group founder permission set towny.command.nation.new true
   lp user PlayerName parent add founder
   

3. Reload Towny's permissions with /ta reload perms.

Wilderness use (if you skipped the wizard)

towny.wild.* gives build, destroy, switch and item-use rights in the wilderness. Either add it to the nomad: section of townyperms.yml (everyone) or give it to a LuckPerms group.

Town ranks

Mayors promote residents with /town rank add <player> <rank>. The default ranks in townyperms.yml are assistant, helper, sheriff, vip and donator. You can add your own, such as a builder rank with towny.claimed.owntown.build.*. After editing, run /ta reload perms.

Set up TownyChat

TownyChat adds town, nation and alliance channels and puts town and nation tags in front of names.

The default channels in plugins/Towny/settings/channels.yml:

Players switch channel by typing its command alone (/tc), or send one message with /tc hello. Give staff the staff channels:

lp group admin permission set towny.chat.admin true
lp group admin permission set towny.chat.mod true

Using another chat plugin? If you'd rather format chat with another plugin, set modify_chat.enable: 'false' in chatconfig.yml. Towny then leaves global chat alone, and you can show town names with Towny's PlaceholderAPI placeholders instead.

After editing either file, run /townychat reload.

Show claims on a live web map

A live map is the best advertising a Towny server has: players love seeing their nation's borders. You need a web-map plugin and a Towny add-on for it.

MapTowny (from TownyAdvanced) supports Pl3xMap, squaremap, Dynmap and BlueMap. Install one web-map plugin and one matching add-on, not several.

Set up squaremap with MapTowny (recommended)

1. A web map needs its own port, because it runs a small website. Open Network and check whether you have a second allocation. If not, add one if your plan allows it, or ask us for one. Note the port number, for example 25570.

2. Install squaremap from Minecraft Plugins and MapTowny from its GitHub releases page (upload it to plugins/). Restart.

3. Open plugins/squaremap/config.yml and set the web server to your extra port:

   settings:
     internal-webserver:
       enabled: true
       bind: 0.0.0.0
       port: 25570
   

4. Open plugins/MapTowny/config.yml and make sure your world name is listed under enabled-worlds.

5. Restart, then render the world once: /map fullrender world (tab-complete shows the exact world name).

6. Open http://your-server-address:25570 in a browser. Town claims appear once MapTowny's first update runs.

BlueMap and Dynmap work the same way: give them the extra port (BlueMap's plugins/BlueMap/webserver.conf, Dynmap's plugins/dynmap/configuration.txt), render, then add the Towny add-on. BlueMap also asks you to accept its resource download in core.conf before it renders anything.

Protect spawn and make a server town

Towny protects towns, but the spawn area belongs to nobody. The Towny way to protect it is an NPC town that no player owns:

1. Stand at spawn and create the town: /ta town new Spawn npc. It costs nothing, and the mayor is a fake NPC resident, so no player owns it.
2. Remove its claim limit: /ta town Spawn toggle unlimitedclaims, and stop it paying upkeep: /ta town Spawn toggle upkeep.
3. Claim the area around you: /ta set plot Spawn rect 6 claims a square 6 townblocks out in every direction (about 200 x 200 blocks). Run it again elsewhere to extend.
4. Make it public so players can travel there with /t spawn Spawn: /ta town Spawn toggle public.
5. Check it: /town Spawn shows the town; walk in with a non-op account and try to break a block. Outsiders can't build in a town by default.

The claiming distance rules from step 3 keep player towns from crowding right up against spawn.

Choose a war system (optional)

Towny itself no longer includes a war mode; war comes from separate add-ons listed on Towny's War Hub (townyadvanced.github.io/wars.html).

Pick one, read its own wiki before installing, and start a test war on a copy of the server first. War add-ons add a lot of configuration (siege costs, battle sessions, plunder, occupation), so don't launch with war on: let towns settle for a few weeks, then announce a war season.

If you don't want war at all, players can still fight in towns where PvP is on (/town toggle pvp), and Towny's outlaw and jail features add plenty of conflict.

Choose an Earth map

Skip to step 12 if you're running a normal Towny world.

An Earth map is a pre-built world. You choose a scale: how many real metres one block represents. Smaller numbers mean a bigger, more detailed world.

Earth Tiles (earth.motfe.net)

The best-known free source is the Earth Tiles project by DerMattinger at earth.motfe.net, made from real elevation and OpenStreetMap data. It publishes maps from 1:500 up to 1:18000. Sizes from its download list:

The list also gives each map's world-border corners, for example -18432 -9216 18431 9215 for 1:1000. Note them down.

Things to know before downloading:

• Maps are built for older Minecraft versions (the list shows 1.16.5, 1.17.1 and 1.19.x builds). A newer server upgrades the chunks as players load them, which works but costs CPU. See step 11 to upgrade ahead of time.
• Downloads come in several parts through ad-link pages, and must be joined with 7-Zip on your own computer (open the .001 file).
• The site also links a fan-made, hand-painted Diamond Edition for newer Minecraft versions (at mcearthmaps.com). Check its own terms.
• The project offers a tool (Tiles) to generate a custom area or scale yourself, if you want only Europe or one country.

Paid maps

Marketplaces such as BuiltByBit sell Earth maps at 1:500 and 1:1000 with custom terrain and biomes. They're usually more polished, and the licence is clearer: you buy the right to run it.

Licensing

A world from the CurseForge page

The panel's CurseForge page has a Minecraft Worlds tab. Search for Earth, check the map's scale, Minecraft version and size on its page, and choose install. The panel downloads it and unpacks it into curseforge-worlds/<name>. Then set level-name (see the next step) to that folder path. This is the easiest route when a map you like is on CurseForge, because nothing goes through your own computer.

Install the Earth world

Check your disk first

A 1:1000 world can be 15–45 GB before backups, a web map and player growth. Each backup is another compressed copy. Look at your disk on the Console page, and contact us for more disk before uploading, not after it fills up.

Upload it

1. On your computer, extract the download with 7-Zip. Open the folder and find the one that contains level.dat and a region folder. That's the world folder. Rename it to something simple such as earth.

2. In the panel, Stop the server.

3. Connect with SFTP (WinSCP or FileZilla). The browser upload is not suitable for files this size. SFTP

4. Upload the earth folder into the server's main folder (next to server.properties). Tens of gigabytes take hours; SFTP apps can resume if the connection drops.

5. In Files, open server.properties and set:

   level-name=earth
   

   For a CurseForge world, use the folder path the panel created, for example level-name=curseforge-worlds/earth-map.

6. Check that level.dat sits directly inside that folder, not in a sub-folder like earth/earth/level.dat.

7. Start the server and watch the console. The first start of an old world can take several minutes while Minecraft upgrades its data.

Check it worked

Join and run /tp @s 0 200 0 (or the coordinates the map's overview gives for a known place). You should see real terrain. The map download page has a coordinate calculator that converts real latitude and longitude into block coordinates, which is handy for setting spawn and for players looking for their home town.

Border and upgrade the Earth world

Set a border

Earth maps are rectangles twice as wide as they are tall, but the vanilla world border is a square. You have two options:

• Vanilla border, square: worldborder center 0 0 then worldborder set 36864 (the full width for 1:1000). Players can still reach the empty area above and below the poles, which is usually just ocean or void. Fine for most servers.

• A true rectangle with Chunky Border: install Chunky and Chunky Border from Minecraft Plugins, then:

  chunky world earth
  chunky shape rectangle
  chunky center 0 0
  chunky radius 18432 9216
  chunkyborder add
  

  The two radius numbers are half the width and half the height (half of 36,864 x 18,432 for 1:1000). Use the corners from your map's download list to check.

Upgrade every chunk ahead of time (optional, recommended)

Because the map was saved by an older Minecraft version, every chunk gets converted the first time anyone visits it. Players flying across a continent trigger thousands of conversions and the server lags. Running Chunky over the whole map loads and re-saves every chunk once, so the work is done before launch:

chunky world earth
chunky shape rectangle
chunky center 0 0
chunky radius 18432 9216
chunky start

On a 1:1000 map that's about 2.6 million chunks: expect it to run for a day or more. Run it with nobody online, after a locked backup. chunky pause and chunky continue work across restarts. See Pre-generate.

The Nether and the End

Earth maps include only the Overworld. The Nether and End are generated normally. Pre-generate a modest area with Chunky and border them, or turn them off with allow-nether=false in server.properties and settings.allow-end: false in bukkit.yml if you don't want them.

Backups for Towny servers

Towny data and the world must always be restored together. If you restore the world from Tuesday and Towny's data from Thursday, claims point at land that doesn't match.

Where Towny keeps data

• Flatfile (the default): everything under plugins/Towny/data/. It's included in normal panel backups.

• MySQL: Towny can store data in a database, which is better on very big servers or when several servers share Towny data. Set it in plugins/Towny/settings/database.yml:

  database:
    database_load: mysql
    database_save: mysql
    sql:
      hostname: 10.11.30.202
      port: '3306'
      dbname: s22_towny
      table_prefix: towny_
      username: u22_xxxxxxxx
      password: 'paste-from-the-panel'
  

  Use the details from the panel's Databases page. Databases Towny's wiki explains converting existing flatfile data to SQL; follow it rather than switching a live server cold. Panel backups don't include databases, so keep Towny on flatfile unless you have a reason, or export the database regularly.

Towny also makes its own daily backups into plugins/Towny/backup/ (plugin.database.daily_backups), deleted after plugin.database.backups_are_deleted_after (default 90d). On an Earth server, add backup to your panel backup's Ignored Files so you don't back up the backups.

A schedule that fits

Set this up on Schedules. Backup schedules

Map tiles can be re-rendered, so leaving them out of backups saves a lot of space. Earth worlds are big: if backups take too long or fill your slots, back up every 12 hours and download a copy weekly.

Before any Towny or Minecraft update, make a backup and lock it.

Performance for big worlds

Town claims themselves are cheap; what costs CPU on Towny servers is the same as anywhere: farms, redstone, entities and live chunk generation. If it lags, profile with spark (/spark profiler start, wait a few minutes, /spark profiler stop) and read Fix lag. Also render maps outside peak hours: full renders use all your CPU.

Launch and run the server

Before opening day

• Prices tested: make a test town with an alt account, claim land, and run /ta newday to force a Towny day. Check upkeep and taxes were taken as expected with /town.
• Starting money: give new players enough to found a small town after a few hours of play, not instantly. EssentialsX's starting-balance in plugins/Essentials/config.yml sets it.
• A way to earn money: Towny doesn't create money. Players need jobs, a shop, mob drops sold to the server, or vote rewards. Without one, the economy stalls within a week.
• Spawn town made, map rendered, staff permissions working.
• A short rules page: what counts as griefing outside towns, whether raiding is allowed, and when war seasons happen.

Weekly jobs

• Check /towny top and /baltop for inflation. If everyone is rich, raise upkeep or add money sinks.
• Look at the live map for towns that are empty or ruined, and clean up with /ta town <name> delete if needed.
• Check disk use on the Console page.
• Read the console for Towny warnings after restarts.

Seasons and resets

Earth and Towny servers often run in seasons of several months. When starting a new one: lock a final backup, download it, then delete the world and plugins/Towny/data/ together (or upload a fresh copy of the Earth map). Keep the configs you've tuned.