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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.

23 — HeadDatabase — Capete decorative custom

"

Mii de capete decorative pentru builds și trofee

#De ce e interesant

HeadDatabase oferă acces la o bază de date cu 30.000+ capete custom. Jucătorii le folosesc pentru:

  • Decorațiuni în baze (fructe, obiecte, simboluri)
  • Trofee după Boss Fight
  • Steaguri și embleme naționale
  • Iteme de colecție per sezon

#Download

Sursă:   spigotmc.org/resources/headdatabase
Licență: Gratis (versiunea de bază)
Impact vanilla: zero — doar cosmetic

#Instalare

cp HeadDatabase-*.jar data/plugins/
docker compose restart mc

# La primul start descarcă baza de date (~50MB)
# Necesită internet din container (deja configurat)

#Categorii disponibile

Animale, Mâncare, Simboluri, Alfabet, Culori,
Crăciun, Halloween, Minecraft Mobs, Jocuri,
Blocuri Custom, Obiecte, Personaje, și multe altele

#Comenzi

/hdb                    # Deschide meniul principal
/hdb search <termen>    # Caută capete specifice
/hdb give <player> <id> # Dă un cap specific unui jucător (Admin)
/hdb category <nume>    # Deschide o categorie

#Permisiuni LuckPerms

# Toți jucătorii pot browse și cumpăra
/lp group jucator permission set hdb.open true
/lp group jucator permission set hdb.search true

# Doar Admin poate da capete gratis
/lp group admin permission set hdb.give true

#Integrare cu economia

# Costul per cap — configurabil în HeadDatabase config.yml
economy:
  enabled: true
  cost: 50          # 50 monede per cap cumpărat
  free-for-ops: true

#Trofee de sezon

La finalul fiecărui sezon, Admin dă manual câștigătorilor capete speciale:

# Cap custom de trofeu pentru Boss Fight killer
/hdb give NumeJucator <ID_CAP_TROFEU>

# Sau folosești capetele jucătorilor direct:
/give NumeJucator minecraft:player_head{SkullOwner:"UmbraSenina"}

#Related Documents

  • Boss events (trofee) → 07_boss_events.md
  • Economy (cost capete) → 03_economy_design.md
  • Season end (awards) → 15_season_lifecycle.md
~ End of Document ~
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