How it pays

The shape of the economy — what earns coins, why the curve looks the way it does, and how to play your way to a healthy balance.

You earn coins just by playing. Every action has a chance to drop a payout, with the chance weighted to how rare or valuable the action is in vanilla terms. Mining stone whispers. Mining diamond sings. The XP-orb pickup sound is your cue: that was a payout.

You don't farm coins — they accumulate while you do whatever you'd be doing anyway.

What pays

Mining ore

The deeper-rarer the ore, the bigger and more frequent the payout. Diamond and emerald are basically guaranteed coins on every block. Lapis pays often. Coal and quartz pay sometimes. Common stone pays a whisper — strip-mining cobble for coins is not the play.

The curve mirrors vanilla rarity. If an ore is harder to find, it pays better.

Combat

Killing a hostile mob pays a small amount with a quick cooldown — enough that a fight feels rewarded, not so much that an AFK mob farm becomes the optimal play. Killing a player pays a little more, with a per-victim cooldown so you can't farm the same opponent.

Dying costs you a small coin penalty with its own short cooldown — a soft tax, not a wallet-drain.

Living in the world

Sleeping in a bed, fishing, eating, crafting, opening chests, enchanting, leveling up, riding boats and minecarts, taming animals, taking your first trip through a portal, walking into a new dimension — they all roll for a payout. Some pay often, some occasionally, some rarely. Just play and you'll notice the orb-pickup sound throughout the session.

Discovery

Earning an advancement, unlocking a new crafting recipe, traveling between dimensions — these reliably pay. The world rewards exploration: walking into the End for the first time pays differently than walking around your overworld base.

Just being here

A small steady drip while you're online, plus a little bump when you join and when you leave (with a cooldown so reconnecting doesn't abuse it). The drip is modest but reliable — it's the floor under everything else.

Streaks and milestones

Log in on consecutive days for an escalating bonus — the longer the streak runs, the bigger the reward gets. Miss a day and the streak resets to zero.

This rewards habit without demanding it. You don't have to log in every day; the bonus is just a nudge for players who want it.

Lifetime milestones

One-time payouts for crossing big lifetime thresholds — mob kills, fish caught, animals bred. Your first small milestone earns a small reward; the big lifetime marks earn chunky ones. These fire once and stay quiet until the next threshold.

Milestones are silent achievements — you'll know you crossed one when the toast-style sound plays and the message lands in chat.

Brewing as income

A separate income stream worth highlighting: brewed drinks are prized trade goods. Quality is locked in once bottled, so high-quality brews command premium prices in player deals. Barrel-aging takes wall-clock minutes (1 in-game year ≈ 20 real minutes), so a brewing operation is slow but reliable. A few aged barrels turn into steady coin through /trade and direct sales — post what you've got in chat and let the buyers come to you. See The Tavern.

What doesn't pay

Standing AFK (the online drip still ticks, but no rolls fire on actions you're not taking)
Re-crafting items you've already discovered (the discovery bonus is on the first craft of a recipe)
Repeatedly killing the same player (the per-victim cooldown locks the reward)

Soft anti-farm

There's no hard daily cap. Cooldowns handle abuse:

Mob-kill cooldowns space out so a mob farm pays in drips, not torrents
Player-kill cooldowns lock per victim so you can't farm an alt
Death cooldowns prevent self-killing for coin tricks
Bucket and vehicle actions have their own short cooldowns

The cooldowns are short enough to not feel restrictive in normal play and long enough to break the "farm = optimal" pattern.

If a creative new farm appears that breaks the curve, staff retune and announce. For now: play normally and the coins come.

Why the curve looks the way it does

Two failure modes shaped this design:

Too generous — players accumulate so fast that prices skyrocket and the market becomes meaningless
Too stingy — players feel like they're grinding for nothing and the system is decorative

The middle is a small steady drip with occasional satisfying spikes. The online drip says "you exist, you matter." The diamond-mining payout says "you did something rare, here's a real reward." The advancement payout says "the game noticed."

This is why it's deliberately not "every action pays the same." Flatten it and the satisfying spikes go away. Spike-only and the floor disappears. Both shapes existed in past iterations; both failed.

A few practical patterns

First few hours: focus on getting to a base and starting to collect. Coins will trickle in just from existence.
Hours 5–20: a few short branch-mines past coal will start producing diamond and emerald payouts. Combine with mob-killing during night and you'll have steady income.
Selling surplus: once your farms outpace your needs, sell the extra through /trade — food, building blocks, and enchanted books all move fast.
Long-term: brewing income is the most reliable passive — barrel a tavern's worth of stock, sell at premium.