Protection

Towny on survival servers, explained

Towny replaces personal claims with player-run towns. A player founds a town and becomes mayor, the town claims chunks, and residents own plots inside those chunks. It trades individual control for a community and a political layer.

The structure

• Town. Founded with /town new, claims chunks with /town claim.
• Mayor. Controls claims, taxes, plot assignment and usually has permissions over resident plots.
• Plot. Your protected build inside the town. Bought or granted.
• Town bank. Funded by resident taxes, pays a daily upkeep to hold claims.
• Nation. A group of towns with a capital and diplomatic relations.

The upkeep trap

This is the mechanic to understand before anything else. The town pays upkeep daily from its bank. If the bank empties, the town falls, and every plot inside it unclaims simultaneously. You can pay your own tax reliably and still lose your base because the mayor stopped logging in or overclaimed. More bases are lost to this on towny servers than to griefing.

Before you join a town

1. Ask the town bank balance and the daily upkeep. Divide: that is how many days the town survives unattended.
2. Check when the mayor last logged in.
3. Ask what permissions the mayor has over resident plots. On most configurations, quite a lot.
4. Ask what the resident tax is and whether it is fixed or a percentage.
5. Find out what happens to your plot if you are evicted. Usually the build stays and you do not.

Founding your own

Cheaper than it looks to start and more expensive than it looks to keep. Claim conservatively: upkeep usually scales with claimed chunks, so a large empty town bankrupts faster than a small full one. Recruit residents before expanding, not after.

Towny versus personal claims

Towny is better if you want a community, a shared project and politics. Personal claims are better if you want your build to depend on nobody but you. Both appear on our ranking, and the entries say which is which. Our number one at play.talonmc.net uses personal claims.

Next in the survival wiki

• Survival economies: jobs, shops and inflation Money enters every time someone sells to a shop. Find the sinks or the economy is decorative by week three.
• World age, borders and resets on survival servers An old world with a tight border is full, whatever the player count says. How to find out before you join.
• Skills systems on survival servers: mcMMO and the alternatives Skill trees turn ordinary play into permanent progression. What mcMMO does, and what custom systems do differently.
• Survival server ranks: earned, bought, and the difference Ranks are the main thing survival servers sell. The question is whether the same rank is reachable by playing.