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.

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.
2Move backup storage off-site from day one; local-only archives are a single hardware failure away from a full season loss.
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.

24 — ClearLag — Curățare entități

"

Menține TPS-ul stabil prin curățarea automată a entităților și itemelor

#De ce e necesar

Pe orice SMP cu Towny și farming activ:

Fermele de mobi generează sute de entități
Itemele pe jos după bătălii sau mining se acumulează
TPS-ul scade treptat fără că nimeni să observe

ClearLag curăță automat cu avertisment — fără să surprindă jucătorii.

#Download

Sursă:   spigotmc.org/resources/clearlag
Licență: Gratis
Impact vanilla: minimal — anunță înainte de curățare

#Config complet

# data/plugins/ClearLag/config.yml

# Interval curățare — la fiecare 10 minute
remove-entities:
  interval: 600      # secunde

# Avertismente înainte de curățare
warnings:
  - time: 30         # 30 secunde înainte
    message: "&e[ClearLag] &7Itemele de pe jos dispar în &c30 secunde&7!"
  - time: 10
    message: "&e[ClearLag] &7Itemele de pe jos dispar în &c10 secunde&7!"
  - time: 5
    message: "&e[ClearLag] &7Itemele de pe jos dispar în &c5 secunde&7!"

# Mesaj după curățare
clear-message: "&e[ClearLag] &7Au fost eliminate &c{entities} &7entități și &c{items} &7iteme."

# Ce se curăță
remove-items: true          # Iteme pe jos
remove-entities: true       # Mobi excesivi

# Protejate — NU se șterg niciodată
protected:
  - ARMOR_STAND
  - ITEM_FRAME
  - VILLAGER
  - named: true             # Mob-urile cu nume (nametagged) sunt protejate

# Exclude zone (ex: fermele de animale protejate de Towny nu se ating)
# Towny claimed land este automat respectat

#Comenzi

/lagg clear           # Curățare manuală imediată
/lagg check           # Vezi câte entități există acum
/lagg reload          # Reîncarcă config
/lagg tps             # TPS rapid fără Spark
/lagg killmobs        # Elimină doar mob-urile excesive

#Permisiuni LuckPerms

# Jucătorii pot verifica starea
/lp group jucator permission set lagg.tps true

# Staff poate face clear manual
/lp group helper    permission set lagg.check true
/lp group moderator permission set lagg.clear true
/lp group admin     permission set lagg.* true

#Integrare cu Spark

TPS < 17 detectat → /lagg check → dacă >500 entități → /lagg clear
TPS tot < 17 → /spark profiler → identifici cauza reală

#Related Documents

Performance targets → 13_performance.md
Spark profiler → 17_spark_profiler.md
Runbook TPS → 14_backup_recovery.md

~ End of Document ~