How to make successful town

Inspired by The_Yogs and his "How to plan a town" guide.

0. Do you really need to have your own town?
There are many towns already and its easier to join existing one. Maybe you have been in some town but you had some argument with mayor or assistants, maybe you have been stolen from, maybe you just got bored... Still you can find and join another town that fits you better.
How long time do you expect to run your town? Few weeks during vacations is not enough. You should think about few months at least. Will you be able to play all that time? Will you be able to play much and find ways to entertain yourself and others? Will your be able to keep active and loyal residents and assistants?
Did you answer yes to all those questions? Well okay, i tried to stop you but nevermind, lets continue.

1. You have to select Nobility class and rank up to Lord
This is easy. Just put few posts on forums, spend some time online, vote few times, earn 1500 dei and its done. Also you should learn about Lord perks and how to use them.

2. You have to earn money to start a town
This is hard, especially when doing it without help of others. Town starting price is 50.000 dei and it seems impossible to reach it without donating, however i do NOT recommend to donate just to get enough dei to start a town. Check "Dozer's guide to making dei" to learn some ways to earn money. Hardcore way just by voting and mining gold would take at least 35 days with few hours each day spent in mining world. Join events to relieve yourself from mining and maybe to win some prize money. Gather all possible resources and sell them to others. You need nothing but few sticks and diamonds plus some torches and food.
Best way to make this effort shorter is to get some loyal friends to help you. With few dedicated people, earning money is matter of one week or less.
If you are able to get money this way, it will be easy for you to supply your town's budget and get enough building materials for town projects. If you are not able to get money this way, your town will most probably fall into debt.
Start your town as soon as you have 50.000 dei. Do not listen to anyone telling you that you need at least 20.000 more dei to claim plots. They are wrong. Yes, plot claiming costs money, but you can earn those money later - expanding a town is not matter of few days and you proved you can earn maybe over 1000 dei daily, which gives you enough money to pay basic 200 dei town tax and save money for claiming plots.
There is one way to lower starting price - if someone decided to sell his town for less money. Before buying it, check plots and resident activity, so you will not get into trouble by buying ghost town and losing big money each day for supporting useless plots.

3. You have to find suitable place for your town
Did you start a town just by yourself, without any assistants? Then forget about expanding hundreds of blocks away, you will never be able to get so far. Good thing is that small town can fit into small place. If you make a deal with neighboring towns about expansion plans, you will get good neighbors and in future it may help to join them in one kingdom.
Did you leave your former town after argument with others, or have you been kicked and do you now want to start another town to fight them? That's stupid. No town based on anger can be successful.
Do you want to create massive town? So you probably met some people to help you get money and create it. If not, forget about it and be happy with small one. If yes, prepare town projects and rough idea about different parts of town. Having districts in small town is silly, having districts in massive town is necessary. Also you have to care more about suitable land. There is no need to find totally empty place with no settlements within 1000 blocks around but i recommend to avoid starting on island in the middle of ocean.

4. You have to keep town active
This is hardest of all parts. Even if you are super active and friendly, your residents and assistants can get bored, banned, tired or disappointed. Sometimes it is hard to get over it, but you have to let them go elsewhere. They might join back, be prepared to welcome them again. There are some general mistakes you should avoid:
- massive recruiting. It will bring you one week or month of glory before people will either leave or become inactive. Then you have to wait another month or two until you are allowed to take and resell their plots and stuff (check wiki for these rules). It always happens. But it is better to have small steady flow of people than big wave of new residents followed by big fall.
- pushing people away from spawn. If they have to take longer walk from town spawn to their house than from mining world spawn to mining place, something is wrong. What is the point of awesome spawn if you cannot find way to your house? Keep spawn as small as possible, it has to be functional place, not dead monument.
- restricting people from making their projects. What can one do after he joined a town, bought one or four plots and made a house? Although we have events, Minecraft is basically about mining and building. Learn to recognize good residents and maybe offer them assistantship before they will leave and become assistants or mayors elsewhere.

5. There are other things to mention
First, timezones. If your residents live in different timezone, you will have hard time to meet online and have fun together. This also affects your chances of recruiting new members and keeping town healthy - in big towns there should be some assistant online in any time of day to serve for residents and to hunt griefers and thieves.
And last and least popular, possible map reset. Nobody wants to start and run a town if there will be reset and his town will get deleted. But if you want to start and run good town after reset, you have to be active and recruit people until very last day before reset and explain to them what is going to happen. Most of them will join again after reset and help you to raise town plot limit, to gather building materials, and to build and expand. Stopping your activity when you hear rumors about reset lowers your chances to make successful town.

 

nice tips, number 0 is the best

 

All I could say is that you are amazing .

 

One reset and almost two years later you know how to earn money and recruit people so your town can survive happily and easily... or not?

6. Rules and common sense
You are the mayor, it is your town, your rules. At least until a moderator tells you to change your rules because you disrespect some of general town rules of the server.
Have you read and understood all of them? Have you ever checked them at least? No? Nevermind, you still can do it.
Most people dont read these rules, neither they would read and learn your town rules. Therefore the first rule for you is: don't expect much success from a forum post or a bunch of signs telling people what to do. You will still have to explain everything in the chat again and again when your residents do some wrong thing.
Above all rules, common sense helps the most. Do you like your items to be taken without you knowing? Of course not, so don't do that to your residents. Server rules allow you to take resident's plot and items if they are inactive for 30 days (with a proof!). Well okay, if you need that plot or the house is ugly, do it as soon as 30-days period passes. But store all resident's valuables in a chest with their name and keep them forever, if necessary (if you have enough common sense to do it, you also have enough common sense to see what items are considered as "valuables"). Then when a resident comes back after a year long delay, you can be like "sorry dude, we had to take your plot, but here is your stuff. Do you need another plot and building materials?" and even if the resident wants to move to another town, let him take that one-year-stored stuff with him.

7. Plots and building
Offering a first plot free is nice but you don't have to do that. Explain your resident that you need to pay money to claim a new town plot first and then you need more money to pay town tax for that plot. And as soon as your resident gets the plot you can expect to see some building that just doesnt look the way you like. Well... Forget about building rules, especially about "hey, your house is one block too tall" or "there is too much cobblestone in your build" and similar. These don't help. Rather show some good examples of how it should look like.
Showing them some nice houses usually results in "can i have some materials?" which you can turn into "build it in creative world and show me, i will see". So they go to creative, build it there, get your approval and materials... and after that you catch them flattening the whole plot. Or maybe your whole town is supposed to be flat? So it is up to you.

8. Troublesome residents
They happen, so be patient with them as much and as long as you can and take that as a lesson for recruiting. But be careful, too much patience with bad residents can push good residents to leave. If your patience is over, kick them from the town even if they didnt break rules directly, but always let them to take their items. They may live happily in another town, they can happily bash your town by "they kicked me for no reason" whining, and your town can happily live without them.

9. Unwanted neigbors
You are granted to have 300 blocks area around your town plots but people dont respect that. Catch them and tell them to move or just make a ticket and let moderators deal with them, these random builders dont last long. Worse thing is to have another town starting too close to you. Even 1000 blocks may be too close after a year of development and expansion. So watch the live map every day and if you see some new town being too close, have a talk with that mayor before he plants too strong roots there. You can even pay him to move (admin cost for moving the town starts at 5000 dei).

10. Giving up
Are you tired of being the mayor? Do you feel burned out, exhausted? Did real life stuff happen and you cannot play so much anymore? Remember that you recruited people and you have responsibility for them, for their houses and items. The least you can do is to sell some of your own stuff and put all money to the town bank so the town can survive some time until new mayor gets the control of it. Done that? Time to find someone to take over and carry on. Look among your assistants or residents first, they live in the town, they know how it works, they have houses there and they don't want to lose them. If this fails, look for someone trustful outside the town. Do not ask for money for promoting new mayor, towns aren't goods and you shouldn't just sell them for profit, although it happens quite often.

 

Nice tips, BarryX15.

 

Thanks for the info! Im new to minecraft and its so addictive!

 

Assistants get tax relief so when you have a boat load of assistants , if they do not re invest this money back into the town then they should be fired.

 

Thanks! Great advice

 

Thanks for the advice!

 

Although I do not plan to start a town, this is some useful information to know.

Thanks for the informative post.

 

i came here to ask questuins but they have already been answered thoroughly. great tips!

 

Thank you for the tips, will definitely keep it in mind.

 

Sell, sell, sell!

 

I think this should at least be linked to from the town help page.

 

Those tips are great! Thx so much.

 

Thank you for your tips when I have enough money i will start a town and I will use your guide. Thank you so much.

-TheExtreme

 

Nice idea, I would have never thought of that.