What "vanilla-plus" means, and where Sunday Market sits
Semi-vanilla and vanilla-plus describe Minecraft servers that keep the survival game as it ships and add their own systems around it, with no client mods to install. This explainer sets them against vanilla, modded and minigame servers, then shows what Sunday Market leaves alone, what it adds, and the changes a purist will notice.
By Sunday Market · Published
Semi-vanilla and vanilla-plus describe much the same kind of Minecraft server: the survival game you know stays as the base, and the server adds systems on top, all of them working with an ordinary client. Sunday Market is one. Mining, combat, crafting and mobs stay vanilla, and the additions include land claims, a coin economy, golem jobs, cooking, brewing and trains.
The labels come from players and server lists, not from Mojang, so neither has an official definition. People use them to sort servers by how much of the game is still the game. A server can change nothing, change the edges, change the whole thing with mods, or set survival aside for matches, and the words line up with those four choices.
Vanilla, vanilla-plus, modded and minigame servers compared
| Kind | What you install to join | What the server changes | The survival loop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vanilla | The ordinary game | Nothing beyond settings such as difficulty | Untouched |
| Semi-vanilla or vanilla-plus | The ordinary game | Adds systems on the server side: claims, an economy, new crafts | Kept as the base |
| Heavily modded | The same modpack the server runs | Adds machines, magic, items and dimensions through mods | Often reshaped by the pack's own progression |
| Minigame | The ordinary game | Swaps survival for short matches with their own rules | Set aside; each match starts fresh |
The two middle terms get swapped for each other all the time, and some players use semi-vanilla for a server that strays a little further. The useful test is the same for both. You join with the game as it came, and the climb from wood to diamond works the way it does in single-player.
What stays vanilla on Sunday Market?
Sunday Market calls itself a vanilla-plus survival SMP. Its gameplay guide lists what it leaves alone: mining, fighting, crafting and building; every vanilla block, mob and recipe; vanilla physics; and the usual rules for gravity, growth and weather. The server runs on Normal difficulty with standard combat and mob damage. There is no keep-inventory, so your items drop when you die, and a Recovery Chest catches them.
Farms are where the promise counts, because a farm design only works if the game's rules hold. The farming guide says the server's farming additions run "on vanilla blocks and vanilla rules, so a farm you already have keeps working as it is." The cheat rules call iron farms and mob farms vanilla designs that are fine to build, and they list pearl stasis chambers as a vanilla mechanic rather than an exploit. A mob farm runs as designed, though the coins it earns per kill sit on a cooldown.
Nobody needs a client mod. Java and Bedrock players join with the ordinary game, and Bedrock players need no Java account, as the version page explains. The one download is the server's own set of textures, which you accept when you join. On Java the prompt marks them as required for the new crops, cooking and furniture, and Bedrock fetches them on its own.
What does Sunday Market add on top?
Each addition sits beside the vanilla game instead of replacing a piece of it, and most of them start with a block you place or an item you craft rather than a command you type.
| Addition | What you get | Guide |
|---|---|---|
| Wards | A block you place in your build; the land around it becomes your claim. Three tiers guard 10, 30 or 50 blocks out for 20, 60 or 100 coins, and each one can also be crafted | Building and claiming |
| Coin economy | Coins for ordinary play, such as mining rare ore, fighting and fishing, plus five coins for each hour online | How it pays |
| Work Orders | A slip of copper, paper and a tool that gives a copper golem one of seven jobs, from hauling to farming | Work Orders |
| The kitchen | Seven new crops beside your wheat, and cooking stations that make more than 100 dishes and drinks | The kitchen |
| The Tavern | Brewing in a cauldron, distilling, and aging in barrels, with 53 drinks on the menu | The Tavern |
| Trains | Ordinary minecarts on ordinary rails that link into trains of up to 12 carts and run up to 2.5 times faster than a vanilla cart | Trains and stations |
| Astral runes | Travel built from an emerald and an Eye of Ender, saved to a spot and used by hand | Astral runes |
The economy is the one that touches everyone, since Java and Bedrock players share it, each with a balance of their own. The economy guide states that there is no real-money item store or donor tier, and that ordinary players buy the same Ward and pack options through in-game menus. Coins come from play and from trade with other players.
Work Orders show the vanilla-plus idea at its plainest. A copper golem is a vanilla mob, and the server gives it a job without turning it into a machine. The golems walk their routes, move items around your base rather than conjuring them, and work only while a player is within 64 blocks.
What will a vanilla purist notice?
Vanilla-plus is not vanilla, and a few changes reach into parts of the game people know by heart. The biggest is the clock. A full day here lasts 55 real minutes and night lasts 5, against vanilla's 20-minute cycle. One sleeper skips the night for the whole server, and the crops around that player grow by the time skipped. The day and night guide has the rules.
The land is different too. The Overworld runs on reworked terrain, with biomes such as autumnal forests, marshes and snowy cherry groves beside the familiar ones, and older regions keep the skylands and canyons of earlier generation. The exploring guide maps what you might meet.
Then there are the small conveniences listed under quality of life. Break one log of a natural tree with an axe and the whole tree falls, though placed logs never do and you can switch the feature off. Farmland keeps its shape when players walk on it. Matching double doors open together. Each one saves a chore, and each one is a small step away from the game as it ships.
Who is Sunday Market's version of vanilla-plus for?
It suits players who want survival to stay survival and still have neighbours, a claim that holds, and a reason to trade. It suits farm builders, since the rules their designs depend on stay in place. It suits friends split across a computer and a phone, because Java and Bedrock share one world, as the crossplay page explains. The server is 18+ and has 20 player slots.
It is not for everyone. A purist who wants the default clock and untouched terrain will find both changed. A player looking for a tech or magic modpack will find no new machines to wire up. Anyone after quick matches belongs on a minigame server.
Bedrock players should know the gaps the wiki records. Proximity voice works only on Java with its optional client mod, so Bedrock players use text chat. Some chat formatting, such as gradients and hover cards, shows in a simpler form on Bedrock, according to how crossplay works. And the kitchen crafting recipes may not appear in the Bedrock recipe book, though laying the items out by hand in the grid still makes the result.
If that line sits where you want it, the address is marketsunday.com, and Bedrock uses port 19132. The join page walks both editions through the first connection, and the gameplay guide keeps the full list of what is vanilla and what is not, so you can check before you build.