This post will provide you with guidance for installing and setting up this ever-popular game mode on your server.
Skyblock is one of Minecraft's most enduring game modes, and lives in many players' hearts as one of the best reasons to play Skyblock.
As a server, you can set Skyblock seasons which run for a configured amount of time. At the end, you can reward various winners with gift cards or packages for taking part - or create custom achievements or titles. Rewarding your players for taking part in your Skyblock is a byproduct, the real draw of the game mode is the challenge of the game itself!
Players start on a small island with incredibly limited resources and must use their Minecraft knowledge and abilities to expand their island, reach goals and maybe they'll end up being one of the season's top achievers.
Our tutorial is using a 1.19.2 Spigot server hosted on GTX Gaming. We're also using the latest version of Classic Skyblock, from the BentoBox collection. Because BentoBox comes with various game modes, we will only be focusing on the classic version of Skyblock for this tutorial. You should open up the BentoBox wiki ready for installing the plugin, found here.
Installation
We want to head to download the Classic zip file, found here. By default, Classic will also come in a bundle with other plugins that enhance the experience, and we have opted to install all of the recommended plugins, including BSkyBlock, Challenges, Level, Warps, ControlPanel, DimensionalTrees, Biomes, and Bank.
Once you download the .zip file, extract it, and you need to go to your /File Manager > /Plugins where you should upload the BentoBox.jar file, and upload the folder called BentoBox directly into your Plugin folder.
Once done, restart your server and head ingame.
Configuring Skyblock
Ingame, you will see you have various new commands at your disposal. Let's give it a try, let's type '/skyblock' and see what happens.
We are presented with 4 types of island, each has different difficulties and game play choices.
We have chosen the first option, which is the classic experience. When we select an island the plugin will generate a plot for us and teleport us directly to it - this makes it very easy for your players to start the game without any further travel needed.
Easy as pie, our Skyblock plugin is working exactly as intended, and we can let players enjoy the challenge. We do have a config.yml to customise though, so let's go take a look now.
Go to /Plugins, /BentoBox, and you will see the config.yml, let's open it and take a look at the various options available. You should take some time to configure the settings to suit the needs of your server.
But because we have installed the recommended addon pack, we have other configs to investigate. Go to /BentoBox > /Addons, and inside each folder, you will find a config.yml for the respective addon. Spend some time now reading through them and understanding what you can configure and edit.
Create Your Skyblock Lobby
It will depend on your server, but you can create a Skyblock lobby as a starting point for players when they want to join the game. You could set up an area for shops, or even player shops, provide tutorials for playing the game or information if you are running a Skyblock season.
You could create your own build for your lobby but there are also tons of fun and free build schematics available online, you should take a look and see if you find any that you like. The plugin has its own schematic system, and you may find the video tutorial by BentoBoxWorld useful.
Permissions
There are a ton of permissions available for admins and for players, and you should make sure you are comfortable using a permission system such as LuckPerms to make assigning permission nodes to groups quick. You can find out more about LuckPerms by watching our video tutorial here, or our text tutorial here.
You may want to have staff members whose main role is to help players in Skyblock but not the main world, or, perhaps you want to have different levels of staff members managing Skyblock - if so, now is the time where you need to think about who will be given which permission node.
For players, perhaps you want to reward progress with the ability to use some commands, either through completing challenges, completing achievements, or some other mechanism. You can add more depth of play by rewarding players with command usage (within reason!) for progressing into the game.
Skyblock Seasons
Many servers, including some of the world's biggest, run Skyblock seasons, and this is a great idea! Refresh the challenges for your players, and optionally, reward your players for placing in the top 10.
Here are a couple of tips:
Here is how you can reset your Skyblock season:
Once you reach the advertised end date of your Skyblock season, it's time to do your maintenance. Whether this is your weekly, or daily maintenance, it's good to know that you will need to have your server offline for a few minutes.
- Make a list of your top 10 players - you need this so you can reward them.
- Turn off your server.
- Go to your /File Manager, and delete bskyblock_world, bskyblock_world_nether, bskyblock_world_the_end folders. These folders contain the world progress, such as island builds, and we need them to be wiped by deleting them.
- Go to /Plugins and then /BentoBox, and delete the database, and database_backup folders. These folders contain all of your player data and Skyblock history, such as levels, islands etc. This needs to be wiped by deleting them.
- You can now safely restart your server (if your other maintenance is done), and announce the fresh start of a new Skyblock season.
By deleting the folders, all progress is wiped and the server will generate new folders when you start the server again for the first time. This means a fresh start, and a fresh set of challenges for your players.
Popular rewards for placing in the top 10 for a Skyblock season include store gift cards, forum/Discord/player titles and roles, one-off deep discount coupons, and custom packages that are only obtained by winning the season.
Challenges
There are default challenges that come with the plugin, but you should spend some time creating your own, and you can change these for each season to give your players something totally new to aim for and achieve.
Ingame use '/bsbadmin challenges' and you'll be presented with a GUI that allows you to create your own challenges, or import existing ones.
The types of challenges that you create are entirely up to you and reflect the 'flavour' of the current season. You can be very creative, and you can also make very tough challenges or very easy ones - it's all up to you!
Skyblock Classic by BentoBox is a versatile plugin, and if you use the recommended plugin bundle, incredibly quick and easy to set up. We hope this tutorial has given you some ideas of how you can get started with your own Skyblock season, and add some new gamemodes to your server. Don't forget, Bentobox also provide other Skyblock gamemodes such as AcidIsland, CaveBlock and more. Go try them out!
When you're setting up your Minecraft server to work with Tebex, don't forget that there are tons of ideas you can use for ingame events, and you can use our tools for creator codes, coupons and sales to reward your players for being part of your community. If you're brand new to Tebex then we recommend working through our 6-part basics tutorial which will walk you through setting up your store. You may also find our other tutorials useful, such as how to create a custom fishing event, how to set up player ranks, and how to create your server spawn.
We hope you have fun with Skyblock, and if you want to get in touch, our friendly support team will be happy to help you get started with your store at support@tebex.io.