Minecraft Skyblock server: islands and plugins

A Skyblock server is a Paper server with an island plugin. The plugin creates a void world, pastes a small starter island for each player or team at a fixed spacing, protects it, and gives players /island commands to create, reset, invite and teleport. BentoBox with its BSkyBlock addon is the free, maintained default; SuperiorSkyblock2 and IridiumSkyblock are the main alternatives. The plugin is the easy part. What decides whether a Skyblock server survives its first month is the economy you build around it and the lag that islands accumulate once players start automating - every island eventually becomes a farm, and farms are what bring Skyblock servers to their knees.

How Skyblock works on a server#

Single-player Skyblock is a map: one island, one player. Server Skyblock is a plugin-managed grid. The world is empty void, and the plugin places islands at regular intervals - a few hundred blocks apart - so that islands never see each other and each sits inside its own protected square.

Three consequences follow from that layout:

• Chunks are cheap until they are not. A void chunk costs almost nothing to generate or store. An island with a decade of builds on it costs as much as any survival base.
• Islands only tick when someone is near. An offline player's island is unloaded unless a chunk loader or plugin keeps it loaded. That is good for the server and a source of player complaints ("my farm didn't run while I was offline") that you should answer in your rules, not with chunk loaders.
• Each island is a protected region. The plugin handles who can build, open chests and use doors, based on island membership and per-island settings. You do not need a separate claims plugin.

Choosing an island plugin#

BentoBox is a framework, not a game mode. It handles islands, protection and teams; the game mode comes from an addon - BSkyBlock for classic Skyblock, AOneBlock for the one-block variant, AcidIsland and CaveBlock for others. Features come from more addons: Level (island level calculation and top lists), Challenges, Warps, Upgrades, Biomes, Limits. You install only what you want, which keeps the server lean and makes it obvious where each feature's config lives.

SuperiorSkyblock2 puts everything in one plugin: upgrades, missions, island values, generators, bank, top lists. It is very configurable and has a large hook list for other plugins (stackers, economy, shops). The trade is a large config surface and a heavier plugin.

Older plugins - ASkyBlock and uSkyBlock - are no longer maintained for current versions. If a guide tells you to install one of them, the guide is old.

Whichever you pick, check it supports your exact Minecraft version before you install, and plan to keep the server on that version for a while; island plugins touch world generation and protection, and they lag behind new releases more than most.

Installing BentoBox and BSkyBlock#

1. Run a normal Paper server once, then stop it.
2. Put BentoBox.jar in plugins/, start the server and stop it again. BentoBox creates plugins/BentoBox/ with an addons/ folder.
3. Put the BSkyBlock addon jar (and any other addons) in plugins/BentoBox/addons/.
4. Start the server. BSkyBlock creates its worlds - by default an overworld and, optionally, nether and end worlds - and writes its config to plugins/BentoBox/addons/BSkyBlock/config.yml.
5. Stop the server, edit that config (below), delete the generated island worlds if you changed world settings, and start again.

Step 5 matters. Several settings, including island spacing and world names, cannot safely change after islands exist. Settle them before anyone creates an island.

The main settings to review in the BSkyBlock config, by what they control rather than exact key names (they move between versions, and the file is commented):

• World name - the name of the island world folder.
• Distance between islands - the spacing of the grid. Larger spacing means more empty void between neighbours and room for bigger islands.
• Protection range - how far from the centre an island's protection extends. Island upgrades usually raise this up to a maximum, which must be smaller than half the spacing.
• Island height - the Y level islands are pasted at.
• Nether and end - whether players get islands there, or share standard nether and end worlds.
• Reset limit - how many times a player can reset their island, and whether resetting clears their inventory and money. Unlimited free resets are an exploit: players farm the starter chest.

Players then use /island (alias /is) to create, go home, invite and manage. Admins use the BSkyBlock admin command, /bsbadmin, for teleporting to islands, changing owners, resetting and deleting. Both have tab completion; /bsbadmin with no arguments lists the subcommands for your version.

The world: void generation and Paper settings#

The island plugin supplies its own void world generator, so you do not need Multiverse or a separate void-world plugin for the island world. You do need a normal world for spawn or a lobby, unless the plugin's world is also your spawn; many servers keep a small hand-built spawn in the main world and send players to islands from there.

Some Paper and vanilla settings behave differently in a void world and are worth adjusting:

view-distance=8simulation-distance=6spawn-protection=0allow-nether=true

hopper:  cooldown-when-full: true  disable-move-event: falseentities:  spawning:    per-player-mob-spawns: truechunks:  max-auto-save-chunks-per-tick: 24

Why these, on Skyblock in particular:

• View distance can be lower than on a survival server: there is nothing to see past an island's edge. Simulation distance controls how far around a player farms run, which on Skyblock is the most important lever you have.
• Per-player mob spawning (Paper's default) splits the mob cap fairly among players. Without it, one player's mob farm can starve everybody else's island of spawns.
• Mob spawning in a void world concentrates on the few spawnable surfaces that exist - which is to say, players' islands and their mob farms. Expect farms to be very effective, which is the next section's problem.

The full set of Paper performance settings is in the Paper optimisation guide. On Skyblock, the hopper and entity sections matter most.

Generators, farms and where the lag comes from#

Skyblock is an automation game. Every island ends up with a cobblestone generator, crop farms, mob farms and a sorting system, and on a server with a hundred islands those systems are the server's workload. In rough order of how often they cause trouble:

1. Hoppers. Every sorting system and every farm collection line is hoppers. Each one checks for items every tick it can. A hundred islands with a hundred hoppers each is ten thousand ticking block entities. Paper's cooldown-when-full helps; a hopper limit per island helps more.
2. Item entities. Farms that drop items faster than hoppers collect them leave item entities on the ground. Merge radius in spigot.yml (merge-radius.item) groups nearby items, but the real fix is farms that collect what they produce.
3. Mob farms and spawners. Spawners are often sold in Skyblock shops. Each active spawner spawns mobs that each run AI. Stacker plugins (WildStacker, RoseStacker) merge mobs and spawners into stacks so a hundred zombies are one entity with a counter - close to mandatory on a busy Skyblock server.
4. Crop and tree growth. Random ticks on large farms. Lowering random-tick-speed slows every farm on the server and is a balance change, not a performance fix; limit farm sizes instead.
5. Redstone clocks. Fast clocks on many islands. Paper and plugins can limit them; rules can ban them.
6. Island level calculation. Level plugins scan every block of an island to compute its value. Done on demand for a large island, it is a lag spike; good level plugins do it asynchronously and rate-limit it.

The cure is limits set before players build, not after. BentoBox's Limits addon (or the equivalent in other plugins) caps entities and block types per island: so many hoppers, so many spawners, so many villagers. Players accept limits that exist from day one; limits introduced after someone built a thousand-hopper sorter cause a revolt.

When lag appears anyway, measure before guessing. spark will tell you whether ticks go to hoppers, entities or a plugin, and its per-chunk data points at the specific island.

Ore generators and progression#

Most Skyblock servers replace the plain cobblestone generator with an ore generator: when lava meets water, the block produced is sometimes coal, iron, gold or diamond ore instead of cobblestone, with odds that improve as the island levels up. SuperiorSkyblock2 has this built in; with BentoBox it is the MagicCobblestoneGenerator addon; standalone plugins exist too.

Ore generators are the main resource faucet on the server, so tune them as an economist rather than as a player:

• Start rates low. Diamonds from a generator at 1% are a flood once fifty players run ten generators each.
• Tie better tiers to island level or paid upgrades, so they are a goal.
• Watch what players sell. If one ore dominates shop sales, its generator rate is too high.

Generators themselves are cheap on the server - they are block updates. The cost is what players build to automate mining them, which brings you back to hoppers.

Economy, shops and challenges#

A Skyblock economy needs Vault and an economy provider (EssentialsX is the usual one), a shop for selling farm output and buying what islands cannot produce, and things to spend money on. The general design - faucets, sinks and why every server ends up with a trillionaire - is in the economy guide. On Skyblock specifically:

• The sell shop is the faucet. Everything players farm, they sell. Prices set at launch decide inflation for the life of the server. Price farmable items low and review them weekly in the first month.
• Upgrades are the sink. Island size, member slots, generator tiers, limits. These are the best sinks because they remove money and give players something real.
• Challenges give structure. BentoBox Challenges or SuperiorSkyblock2 missions turn "build stuff" into a list of goals with rewards. Rewards are another faucet, so keep them modest.
• Island top lists drive competition. Top lists by island level give a reason to keep playing; they also give a reason to exploit, so watch for value from duplicated or cheaply generated blocks.

A Skyblock season usually ends with a reset: new worlds, new economy, rewards for the top islands. Plan seasons from the start, and keep the world and economy data of a finished season as a backup rather than deleting it.

Sizing a Skyblock server#

Skyblock is lighter than survival per online player at the start - no terrain to generate - and heavier later as islands fill with automation. Size for the late season.

As with every Paper server, memory is rarely the first limit. The main thread is: one core ticks every loaded island. That is why limits matter more than plan size, and why the RAM sizing guide warns against assigning a huge heap to a server whose problem is tick time.

Disk is the slow-growing part. A void world starts tiny but every island adds region files, and resets leave old islands behind unless the plugin deletes them. BentoBox can delete island chunks on reset; make sure that option is on, or the world grows with every reset forever.

On RE:NODE, Minecraft plans run Paper with the matching Java version and the EULA accepted, so installing BentoBox is a matter of uploading jars through the file manager or SFTP; nothing is whitelisted or blocked. Backups are included on every tier and can be scheduled - worth doing nightly on Skyblock, where an island lost to a bug or a griefed co-op member is a player lost.

Troubleshooting#

`/island` creates nothing, or players are sent to the void. The island world was generated before the addon was configured, or the world was created with another generator. Stop the server, delete the island world folders (only before any real islands exist), and start again.

Islands overlap or protection seems to leak. Protection range has grown larger than half the island spacing, usually through upgrades. Cap the maximum range below half the distance.

Players fall into the void on teleport. The island's home location is above a block that was removed. Island plugins check for a safe spot, but /is sethome on a safe block fixes it for good.

TPS drops when one particular player is online. Their island is the load. Teleport to it with the admin command, look at hopper and entity counts, and check spark's chunk view. Usually one oversized farm.

Level calculation causes lag spikes. Level recalculations on huge islands. Rate-limit the level command and run full recalculation at quiet hours.

The world folder keeps growing after resets. Old island chunks are not being deleted. Enable island deletion on reset in the plugin, then trim the world with a tool such as MCA Selector while the server is stopped.

FAQ#

Do I need Multiverse for a Skyblock server?

No. Island plugins create and manage their own void worlds. You would only add Multiverse for other worlds you want alongside Skyblock, such as a resource world or event map.

Can I add Skyblock to an existing survival server?

Yes. The island plugin creates separate worlds, so survival stays where it is. Give the two modes separate economies, or at least think carefully before linking them; Skyblock farm output will flood a survival market.

How far apart should islands be?

Far enough that islands never render each other and protection can grow through upgrades. A few hundred blocks is typical. Decide before launch, because changing spacing after islands exist is not safe.

Why does my server lag only in the evening?

Because islands only tick when their owners are online. Evening is when most islands are loaded at once. Measure during peak, not during a quiet test.

Should I allow chunk loaders on Skyblock?

Usually not. Players will want offline farms; every loaded island ticks whether anyone is there or not, and your server pays for it all day. If you allow them, cap them per island and price them high.