Minecraft RPG Server with Plugins: mcMMO, AuraSkills and Jobs

mcMMO or AuraSkills: which one

mcMMO is the classic: almost twenty skills (mining, woodcutting, excavation, herbalism, fishing, swords, axes, archery, crossbows, tridents, maces, taming, unarmed, acrobatics, alchemy, repair, salvage…), each with active abilities like Super Breaker or Tree Feller, which chops the whole tree. It comes with parties with their own chat and teleporting between members. It's paid on SpigotMC and Polymart; the source code is open on GitHub.

AuraSkills (formerly Aurelium Skills) is free and more modern: fifteen skills that raise stats (health, strength, regeneration, luck…), mana for active abilities, inventory menus to see it all and, built in, a jobs system that pays money for levelling skills. Its recent versions list Minecraft 1.20 up to 26.3.

Pick one, not both: they do the same thing and both want the /stats command. If your group comes from classic servers and wants the good old Tree Feller, mcMMO. If you're starting from scratch, want health and damage to go up or don't want to pay, AuraSkills.

Both are plugins, so the server has to be Paper (or Purpur). On NapNodes, Minecraft servers are delivered on Paper; if you switched yours to Fabric or Forge, this doesn't apply.

Installing it

1. Make a backup

   In «Backups», before adding plugins to a world you're already playing on. If something goes wrong, you roll back.

2. Find the plugin in «Mods & plugins»

   Inside the server, «Mods & plugins»: search for AuraSkills (or mcMMO) and press «Install». Only the ones that work for your version and server type show up.

3. If it isn't there, upload it by hand

   Download the .jar from its official page (mcMMO, after buying it; AuraSkills, from its website or its GitHub releases) and upload it to the plugins folder from «Files».

4. Restart and check the console

   With «Restart» the plugin loads and creates its folder (plugins/AuraSkills or plugins/mcMMO) with the configuration. If a red error with its name appears, it's usually a plugin version that isn't for your Minecraft.

Changing the language

Both come in English out of the box. AuraSkills ships other languages too: in plugins/AuraSkills/config.yml change default_language: en to the one you want (default_language: es for Spanish), save and restart. Each player can pick their own language with /sk lang, handy if your server mixes players from several countries.

mcMMO also ships translations: in plugins/mcMMO/config.yml, under General, change Locale: en_US (for Spanish, Locale: es). The skill names in the commands (/mining, /woodcutting) stay in English.

The commands everyone will use

In AuraSkills, /skills (or /sk) opens the menu with all the skills and their levels; /stats, the stats; /sk top, the leaderboard; /sk rank, your position; /sk toggle turns off the XP notices in the action bar. Every player can use them without being given permissions.

In mcMMO, /mcstats (or /stats) shows your levels; /mctop, the leaderboard; /mcrank, your position; /inspect Name, someone else's levels; and /mining, /woodcutting, /fishing… explain each skill and what you unlock as you level. They're also for everyone by default.

Parties in mcMMO: /party create Name, /party invite Player and the other one types /party accept. With /p Message you talk only to your party and with /ptp Player you teleport to a teammate.

For admins: levels and double XP weekends

A double XP event is one of the things that gets the most people online on a Saturday. In mcMMO: /xprate 2 true turns it on and announces it to everyone, and /xprate reset turns it off. AuraSkills has no event command like that: you hand out multipliers by permission to a rank with LuckPerms (its wiki explains the permission) and /sk multiplier shows the one each player has.

To fix things by hand: in mcMMO, /addlevels Name mining 10 adds ten levels and /mmoedit Name mining 100 sets it to 100; in AuraSkills, /sk skill setlevel Name mining 10. Type them in «Console» without the slash.

If players level too fast (or too slow), the XP for each action is in plugins/mcMMO/experience.yml and, in AuraSkills, in the sources folder. Change a little at a time and restart.

Jobs that pay: the RPG with an economy

What hooks people most is that levelling up gives money to spend in shops. AuraSkills has it built in: in config.yml, jobs: enabled: true. Each player picks up to two skills as jobs (default_job_limit) and gets paid when they earn XP in them. So players can pick a job with /sk jobs add, give them the auraskills.command.jobs permission with LuckPerms.

For there to be money to earn you need an economy: EssentialsX and Vault (or VaultUnlocked), as in the economy guide. With mcMMO, the classic for the same thing is Jobs Reborn, which pays for mining, chopping or farming without depending on levels.

Watch out for automatic farms: if an iron or mob farm hands out XP and money non-stop, the economy blows up. AuraSkills has an anti-AFK (anti_afk in config.yml, off by default) and mcMMO no longer gives full combat XP in some enderman farms; even so, check the leaderboard during the first week.

How heavy it is on the server

A skills plugin records every block that gets placed so it doesn't give XP for placing it and breaking it again, and it stores each player's data. With a group of friends you barely notice; with lots of players at once, it adds up. If you notice lag, spark tells you in a minute which plugin is taking the time (spark guide), and the RAM guide explains how much memory each type of server needs.

The data is saved in files inside its folder (a MySQL database only if you turn it on), so it goes into the server's backups just like the world.

Frequently asked questions