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Case Study

IceLegends SMP

A vanilla-first Romanian Minecraft SMP built for clean 3–4 month seasons.

The Problem

Running a community SMP means balancing plugin depth against vanilla feel, managing a world-reset cycle, and keeping operations simple enough for a solo admin. IceLegends SMP solves this with 11 carefully chosen plugins, strict feature gating per a "vanilla-first" principle, and fully automated backups and world resets.

My Role

Designed, configured, and deployed solo — server architecture, 11-plugin selection and configuration, LuckPerms permission model, economy and nation design, Docker infrastructure, and Cloudflare Tunnel ingress for Dynmap.

Join the Server ↗

Highlights

  • PaperMC 1.21 on Docker with a hard 11-plugin cap — every plugin is justified and none are redundant
  • Towny nations with seasonal quests (Quests + Citizens NPCs) and a single manually-spawned MythicMobs boss per season
  • AureliumSkills passive bonuses only — active abilities disabled to preserve vanilla combat (P-01)
  • DiscordSRV bridge logs every death, join, and chat event to dedicated Discord channels in real time
  • Daily automated backups with 7-day retention; resource world resets every Monday at 05:00 via cron

Stack

PaperMC 1.21DockerCloudflare TunnelLuckPermsTownyAureliumSkillsMythicMobsDiscordSRVDynmap

Constraints

  • Solo admin — every operation must complete in under 10 minutes (P-02).
  • Vanilla-first (P-01): if any plugin disappeared tomorrow, the game must continue unchanged.
  • 11-plugin hard cap — every addition must displace something or prove unique, irreplaceable value.

System Architecture

Edge
Cloudflare Tunnel (Dynmap web map)
TCP :25565 open (Minecraft clients)
Runtime
Docker + docker-compose
itzg/minecraft-server image
Core
PaperMC 1.21
Vault
LuckPerms
EssentialsX
CoreProtect
Gameplay
Towny
AureliumSkills
ShopGUI+
Quests + Citizens
MythicMobs
Multiverse-Core
Ops
DiscordSRV bridge
Daily backup cron (04:00)
Weekly world reset cron (Mon 05:00)

Key Trade-offs

The decisions worth defending — what I chose, what I turned down, and why.

Plugin count cap

Chose

Hard cap at 11 plugins

Rejected

Unlimited plugin stack

Each plugin is a maintenance surface and a potential conflict point. The cap forces prioritisation and keeps the dependency graph legible for a solo admin.

Public ingress for Dynmap

Chose

Cloudflare Tunnel (no open ports)

Rejected

Expose :8123 directly via UFW

No origin IP exposure, free DDoS protection, and zero firewall rule maintenance — the same pattern used by the IceLegends portfolio site.

AureliumSkills scope

Chose

Passive bonuses only, active abilities disabled

Rejected

Full AureliumSkills feature set including active combat abilities

Active abilities alter vanilla combat — a direct violation of P-01. Passive bonuses reward playtime additively without changing the combat model.

Season lifecycle

Chose

Full world reset every 3–4 months

Rejected

Incremental map expansion with no reset

Resets keep the world fresh, prevent terrain exhaustion, and give every new player an equal start — critical for community health in a small SMP.

What I'd Do Differently

An honest retrospective — the stuff I'd change with more time, more users, or a second pass.

  1. 1Add a staging compose stack so plugin updates can be tested before touching the live season — one bad update cost several hours of rollback work.
  2. 2Move backup storage off-site from day one; local-only archives are a single hardware failure away from a full season loss.
  3. 3Wire Dynmap as a named Docker service rather than relying on the host port, so the Cloudflare Tunnel config survives container IP reassignment on restart.

Technical Deep-Dive

Architecture, specifications, and implementation details.

05 — Skills & Progression

"

AureliumSkills — passive only, grows from normal gameplay

#Philosophy

Skills grow invisibly from what players do anyway. A miner gets better at mining. A farmer gets better harvests. Players discover their skills have grown — they don't grind them intentionally.

Active abilities are fully disabled. Vanilla combat is untouched.

#Active Skills

SkillGrows FromPassive Bonus
MiningBreaking stone, ores+drop rate, +mining speed
FarmingHarvesting crops+crop yield, chance to auto-replant
ForagingChopping wood+log drop count
FishingCatching fish+rare drops, +treasure chance
ExcavationDigging gravel/sand/dirt+bonus drops
FightingKilling mobs+melee damage per level
ArcheryBow kills+arrow damage, chance to retrieve arrows
DefenseTaking damage with armor+damage reduction

#Disabled Skills

SkillReason
AlchemyReplaces vanilla brewing mechanic
EnchantingReplaces vanilla enchanting table
SorceryToo RPG-heavy, violates P-01

#Config Values

# plugin-configs/aureliumskills/config.yml

max-skill-level: 100
enable-active-abilities: false      # MANDATORY — keep vanilla combat

boss-bar:
  enabled: true
  duration: 3                       # subtle 3-second notification on level-up

# Messages file: messages_ro.yml    # Claude Code generates full Romanian translation

#Level Milestones (examples)

LevelMining Bonus
10+5% ore drop chance
25+10% mining speed
50+15% ore drop chance, +15% mining speed
100+25% ore drops, +25% speed, rare gem chance

#Player-Facing Commands

/skills              # Open skills menu
/skills <skillname>  # View specific skill details
/sk top mining       # Leaderboard for mining skill

#Related Documents

  • Plugin stack → 02_plugin_architecture.md
  • Quests that reward skill XP → 06_quests_storyline.md
~ End of Document ~
Kiwi