Towny on Your Minecraft Server: Towns, Nations, Plots and Taxes

How Towny works

Land is split into town blocks of 16×16, the size of a chunk. Outside towns is the wilderness; inside, each block belongs to the town or to a resident who has bought it.

Someone without a town is a nomad. With /town new they found one and become its mayor; everyone else joins as a resident. Several towns make up a nation, with a capital town and its leader. Each town has a bank anyone can pay into, and that's where the cost of claiming land and the daily upkeep comes from.

How many blocks a town can claim depends on how many residents it has: 8 per resident by default (town_block_ratio in config.yml). So a town grows when people join, which is exactly what brings this kind of server to life.

What you need

A Paper, Purpur or Folia server: since version 0.102 Towny no longer runs on Spigot or CraftBukkit, and it has never run on Fabric, Forge or NeoForge (it's a plugin). At NapNodes, Minecraft servers are delivered on Paper, on the latest version.

An economy, if you want founding a town or claiming land to cost money: EssentialsX (it stores each player's balance) and Vault or VaultUnlocked (the bridge Towny uses to reach it). The economy guide explains how to set it up. Without an economy, Towny still works: everything is free and there are no taxes.

A permissions plugin such as LuckPerms, only to give yourself and your admins the towny.admin permission. Player permissions already come split by rank (nomad, resident, mayor, king) in Towny's townyperms.yml file: there's no need to copy them one by one into LuckPerms.

Installing it

1. Make a backup

   In the panel, “Backups” → create. If you don't like it afterwards, you can go back in a minute.

2. Find it in “Mods & plugins”

   Inside your server, “Mods & plugins” → search for “Towny” → “Install”. Only versions that work with your Minecraft version are shown.

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

   Download the latest version from the official page (TownyAdvanced's “Releases” on GitHub, or Hangar). On GitHub it comes as a .zip with Towny.jar and TownyChat.jar: upload it with “Files” to the plugins folder and press “Decompress”. A .zip that hasn't been decompressed won't load.

4. Restart

   On startup, Towny creates plugins/Towny/settings (config.yml, townyperms.yml and, if you added TownyChat, the chat files) and plugins/Towny/data/worlds with one file per world.

5. Run the wizard: /ta install

   Type it in game, as an op or with towny.admin. It asks you the important things (whether people can build in the wilderness, whether land goes back to how it was when it's abandoned, how many blocks each resident gives and how much a town, a nation and each block cost) and sets it all up without touching any files.

What to decide before you open

The town block size (town_block_size: 16 in config.yml) is decided at the start and never touched again: changing it once towns exist throws everything out of place. 16 matches chunks and is what you want almost every time.

The wilderness: by default nobody can build or break outside towns, to push everyone into joining one. If you'd rather have a normal survival where towns are just protected areas, /ta toggle wildernessuse opens it up (or answer it in /ta install).

Regeneration: by default explosions in the wilderness repair themselves and, when a town gives up land, the blocks go back to how they were before it was claimed. That's what stops the map filling up with half-built houses from people who left. If you don't want it, /ta toggle regenerations.

Prices, if there's an economy: by default founding a town costs 250, a nation 1000 and each claimed block 25 (price_new_town, price_new_nation and price_claim_townblock). Match them to what people earn on your server: if a new player needs a week to save 250, nobody founds anything. Without an economy, set using_economy: false.

Upkeep: every day, at noon by default (new_day_time), the server takes 10 from each town's bank and 100 from each nation (price_town_upkeep and price_nation_upkeep). A town that can't pay is disbanded. It makes abandoned towns disappear on their own; if your server is just for friends and you don't want surprises, set it to 0.

After editing config.yml from “Files”, /ta reload config applies it without restarting.

Founding a town, step by step

This is what every player will do. It's worth writing it on a sign at spawn or in the server's Discord channel.

1. Pick the spot and found it

   Stand where you want the centre of the town and type /town new TownName. That block becomes the home block and you become the mayor.

2. Set the spawn point

   /town set spawn, inside the home block. From then on /town spawn takes residents there.

3. Claim land

   /town claim claims the block you're standing on; /town claim 2, the ones around you in a radius of 2; /town claim auto, as many as your money and available blocks allow. /town shows how many you have left.

4. Check the map

   /towny map draws the surrounding blocks in chat: yours, other towns' and the free ones. With /res toggle map it redraws itself every time you cross into a new block.

5. Invite your friends

   /town add Name sends them the invite (they accept with /accept). Every new resident gives you more blocks to claim.

6. Fill the bank

   /town deposit 100 puts your own money into the town bank; any resident can do it. Claiming costs and the daily upkeep come out of the bank.

Plots and permissions: who can touch what

Towny hands out four kinds of permission: build, destroy, using blocks such as doors, levers or chests (switch) and using items such as boats or ender pearls (itemuse). Each one is granted or removed for four groups: town members, nation members, allies and outsiders.

/town set perm resident build on lets every resident build on the town's shared land; /town set perm outsider switch off stops outsiders opening chests and doors. If a friend helps you build without being a resident, /town trust add Name lets them do anything in the town.

To sell a plot to a resident: the mayor stands on it and types /plot fs 50 (for sale for 50). The resident buys it with /plot claim and from then on it's theirs: they set its permissions with /plot set perm and let in whoever they want with /plot trust add Name.

PvP is set per town and per plot: /town toggle pvp and /plot toggle pvp. The same goes for fire, explosion and mobs.

Nations, allies and enemies

A mayor founds a nation with /nation new NationName (their town becomes the capital) and invites other towns with /nation add TownName. Residents of a nation's towns share the nation group's permissions and get their own chat channel if you use TownyChat.

/nation ally add OtherNation proposes an alliance (the other one accepts it) and /nation enemy add OtherNation marks it as an enemy. Wars with sieges don't come with Towny: they're separate add-ons by the same authors, such as SiegeWar. If what you want is raiding other people's bases, that's a Factions server.

A web map with the towns

Seeing the towns coloured in on a map in the browser is one of the favourite things on a Towny server. You do it with a web map (Dynmap or BlueMap) plus the add-on that paints the towns on top: Dynmap-Towny is by Towny's own authors; for BlueMap there are add-ons made by the community.

The web map needs its own port. At NapNodes every Minecraft server comes with a second port for that, in “Advanced settings” → “Ports” (the one that isn't the main one); the web map guide explains how to set it up. Careful: that extra port is just one, and if you already use it for voice chat, the two won't fit.

Common problems

“I can't build anywhere”: that's the wilderness, closed by default. Open it with /ta toggle wildernessuse or found a town and build inside it.

“You don't have enough money” when founding a town: the price comes from config.yml. Lower it, give the player money with /eco give Name 250 (EssentialsX) or, if you don't want an economy, set using_economy: false.

“Unknown command” when typing /town: Towny hasn't loaded. Check the console on startup: it's almost always a server that isn't Paper, or a Towny version that doesn't match your Minecraft version.

Taxes and upkeep are collected when Towny's “new day” comes around, with the server running. On a server that shuts down when nobody's on, like the NapNodes free server, many days may go by without anything being collected: if your server revolves around Towny's economy, you want one that's always on.

When lots of players get together, what eats memory is people exploring and farms, not Towny. The RAM calculator tells you how much you need based on players and plugins; at NapNodes you change plan from “My plan & invoices” without losing the world or the towns.

Frequently asked questions