A well-designed economy keeps players engaged long after the initial build phase. But a poorly balanced economy breaks the server faster than any griefer. Here's how to set one up right.
Core Economy Stack
You need four components:
- Vault - The API bridge. Most economy plugins talk to each other through Vault.
- Economy provider - The actual money system. EssentialsX Economy, CMI, or TheNewEconomy.
- Earning mechanism - How players get money. Jobs, selling items, quests.
- Spending mechanism - How players spend money. Shops, land claims, cosmetics.
Install Vault first - it's the foundation everything else builds on.
Setting Up EssentialsX Economy
EssentialsX includes a built-in economy module. In config.yml:
currency-format: '€{0}'
starting-balance: 100
max-money: 10000000000
min-money: -10000
economy-log-enabled: true
- Starting balance: Give new players enough to get started but not enough to skip progression. €100-500 works for most servers.
- Max money: Cap at a reasonable level to prevent overflow or absurd wealth accumulation.
- Min money: Allow slight negative balances for fines/penalties, or set to 0 for no debt.
Jobs Plugin
Jobs Reborn is the standard earning plugin. Players choose jobs (miner, farmer, builder, hunter) and earn money for doing those activities.
Key balance settings:
- Income per action: Start low. Mining stone = €0.50, diamond ore = €5.00
- Level scaling: Higher job levels earn slightly more
- Max jobs per player: 2-3 prevents players from earning everywhere
- Payment cooldowns: Prevent botted farming
Sample job configuration (Miner):
Miner:
max-level: 100
Break:
STONE:
income: 0.5
experience: 1.0
DIAMOND_ORE:
income: 5.0
experience: 10.0
DEEPSLATE_DIAMOND_ORE:
income: 6.0
experience: 12.0
Player Shops
ChestShop - Simple chest-based shops. Players place a sign on a chest with item and price. Low server overhead.
ShopGUI+ - Premium GUI-based admin shop. Fixed prices for buying/selling items.
QuickShop - Modern chest shop with built-in features like tax and holographic displays.
Best approach: Use an admin shop (ShopGUI+ or custom) for essential items at fixed prices, and let players create ChestShops for everything else. This creates a player-driven market while preventing bottlenecks.
Auction House
zAuctionHouse or AuctionHouse let players list items for sale server-wide. This creates a dynamic marketplace where prices are set by supply and demand.
- Set listing fees (2-5% of asking price) to prevent spam
- Set a listing duration (24-72 hours)
- Tax successful sales (5-10%) as an economy sink
Preventing Inflation
The biggest economy killer is inflation - too much money enters the system without enough leaving. Money sinks are essential:
Active sinks (players choose to spend):
- Land claim expansion costs
- Warps/homes (charge for additional ones)
- Cosmetic items and titles
- Auction house fees
Passive sinks (automatic removal):
- Sales tax on all transactions (3-10%)
- Death penalty (lose a percentage of balance)
- Inactivity tax (reduce balances of players offline 30+ days)
- Repair costs
Rule of thumb: For every €1 entering the economy (jobs, quests), €0.50-0.70 should leave through sinks. Check /baltop weekly - if the richest players' balances grow exponentially, your sinks aren't strong enough.
Testing Your Economy
Before opening to the public:
- Play through 10 hours as a normal player
- Track how much you earn per hour
- Check how long it takes to afford useful items
- Verify the progression feels rewarding but not trivial
A healthy economy makes the first 10 hours engaging and keeps month-old players still working toward goals. If players max out everything in a weekend, your prices are too low.
Server hosting costs matter here too - a lagging server disrupts the economy experience. Every job action, shop transaction, and auction bid needs to process without delay. Space-Node's Ryzen 9 7950X3D servers handle the constant database writes and plugin calculations that economy systems generate.