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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.

08 — World Management

"

Main world, resource world, weekly reset procedure

#World Architecture

minecraft-smp/data/
├── world/          ← Main world — PERSISTENT for entire season
├── world_nether/   ← Nether — persistent
├── world_the_end/  ← End — persistent
└── resurse/        ← Resource world — RESETS every Monday 05:00

#Main World

  • Type: Normal survival world
  • Generation: Default vanilla generation (no custom gen plugin)
  • Persistence: Full season (3–4 months)
  • Backup: Daily at 04:00 → /opt/mc-backups/
  • Reset: End of season only

#Resource World

The resource world exists so players can mine freely without destroying the main world's landscape. It resets weekly so resources never run out.

# Multiverse-Core setup commands (run at first setup)
/mv create resurse NORMAL
/mv modify set pvp false
/mv modify set alias 'Lume Resurse'
/mvwarp create resurse    # run while standing in resurse world

##Resource World Reset — scripts/reset-resurse.sh

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail

RCON="docker exec mc rcon-cli"
DISCORD_WEBHOOK="${DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL}"

# 10-minute warning
$RCON 'broadcast &cLumea de resurse se resetează în 10 minute!'
sleep 540

# 1-minute warning
$RCON 'broadcast &eLumea de resurse se resetează în 1 minut!'
sleep 60

# Unload and delete
$RCON 'mv unload resurse'
rm -rf /opt/minecraft/data/resurse/

# Recreate
$RCON 'mv create resurse NORMAL'
$RCON 'mv modify set pvp false'
$RCON 'broadcast &aLumea de resurse a fost resetată! /warp resurse'

# Discord notification
curl -s -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"content":"🔄 Lumea de resurse a fost resetată! Folosiți `/warp resurse`"}' \
  "$DISCORD_WEBHOOK"

##Crontab — Automatic Monday 05:00

# Edit with: crontab -e
0 5 * * 1 /opt/minecraft/scripts/reset-resurse.sh >> /var/log/mc-resurse.log 2>&1

#World Border

# Set world border (recommended: 5000 radius = 10000x10000 map)
/worldborder set 10000

# Resource world border (smaller — resets anyway)
# Set while in resurse world:
/worldborder set 4000

#Dynmap Coverage

Both worlds are rendered by Dynmap:

  • Main world: full render, visible to public
  • Resource world: rendered but labeled "Lume Resurse (resetare săptămânală)"

#Related Documents

  • Backup procedure → 14_backup_recovery.md
  • Season end reset → 15_season_lifecycle.md
  • Dynmap config → 10_discord_integration.md
~ End of Document ~
Kiwi