Economy on a Minecraft Server: Money, /pay and Sign Shops

The three pieces

EssentialsX stores each player's money and comes with the usual commands: /balance, /pay, /baltop and /eco for admins. On its own it's already a complete economy.

Vault is the bridge: it doesn't do anything you can see, but it lets other plugins (shops, jobs, auctions) use EssentialsX's money. Today people mostly use VaultUnlocked, its continuation, which works just the same for plugins that ask for Vault.

ChestShop turns a chest with a sign into a shop: each player sells their own stuff and the money moves from one account to the other automatically. QuickShop-Hikari does the same in a different style; pick one, not both.

They're 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 won't work (mods go there).

Installing it

1. Make a backup

   If your server has backups, make one in “Backups” before adding plugins. If something goes wrong, you're back in a minute.

2. Install EssentialsX

   In the panel, “Mods & plugins”: search for EssentialsX and press “Install”. Only the main one is needed for money; EssentialsX Chat or Spawn are separate and optional.

3. Install VaultUnlocked and ChestShop

   Search for them the same way. If one doesn't show up in the search, download the .jar from its official page and upload it to the plugins folder from “Files”.

4. Restart and check the console

   Plugins load on startup. If ChestShop says it can't find the economy, Vault is missing or EssentialsX didn't load: the console tells you which.

Tuning the money

Everything is in plugins/Essentials/config.yml (open it from “Files”). The settings people change most: starting-balance, what each new player starts with; currency-symbol, the currency symbol (with currency-symbol-suffix set to true it goes after the amount, like “100€”); and max-money and min-money, the limits. Save and restart.

Keep the starting balance small: if everyone starts rich, money is worthless. Normally it's earned by playing: selling to the server with /sell (prices go in plugins/Essentials/worth.yml, or with /setworth while holding the item) or with a jobs plugin like Jobs Reborn, which pays for mining, chopping or farming.

The commands everyone will use

/balance (or /bal) tells you how much you have; /pay Name 50 sends 50 to another player; /baltop shows the richest; /sell hand sells what's in your hand at the worth.yml price.

For admins: /eco give Name 100, /eco take Name 100 and /eco set Name 100. Careful with the asterisk: /eco set * 0 leaves every player with no money.

Without a permissions plugin, these commands are op-only. For regular players to use them, give them the permissions with LuckPerms (essentials.balance, essentials.pay, essentials.balancetop, essentials.sell); how to do it is in the LuckPerms guide.

Setting up a shop with ChestShop

Place a chest with what you want to sell and put a sign stuck to it (on the chest or right above it). Example of a sign that sells 16 bread for 10 and buys 16 from you for 5 (the first line is left empty):

(empty)
16
B 10:5 S
Bread

1. Line 1: empty

   It fills in by itself with your name: the money from sales goes to your account.

2. Line 2: the quantity

   How many items are bought or sold each time: 1, 16, 64…

3. Line 3: the prices

   “B 10” if you only sell (the player buys for 10), “S 5” if you only buy, and “B 10:5 S” for both.

4. Line 4: the item

   Its English name, or a “?”: then you right-click the sign with the item in your hand and it fills it in. For enchanted items, /iteminfo while holding it tells you what to write.

Buying, selling and the server shop

With the default config, right-click the sign to buy and left-click to sell. If the chest runs empty, the shop stops selling; if the owner runs out of money, it stops buying.

A server shop (one that never runs out and pays out of thin air) is made the same way by writing “Admin Shop” on the first line. Use it wisely: if the server buys something pricey that's easy to get, money spirals out of control. Protect the shop area with GriefPrevention or WorldGuard (griefers guide) so nobody breaks other people's chests.

And don't sell that money for real euros: Mojang's rules don't allow selling an advantage. What you can charge for on a server is in making money with your server.

Frequently asked questions