MARSCRAFT
A Minecraft survival RPG, rebuilt for a new eraMARSCRAFT was a custom-coded Minecraft server I ran in the early 2020s, with an RPG/Incremental experience inspired by OldSchool RuneScape and Stardew Valley. The server blew up, reaching 80,000+ all-time players and ranking #151 globally at its peak, but shut down in 2023. After years of downtime, the dev team brought it back in 2025 with the aim of modernizing MARS and reaching even bigger heights. Many files were corrupted and much of the server's design had become dated, which meant a rebuild was overdue.
Original rebuild design documentation and project overview.
VIEW DESIGN DOCUMENT PDF ↗PROJECT DETAILS
DEVELOPMENT
Sep 2025 – Jul 2026
ENGINE
Minecraft
TEAM SIZE
7 members
Lead Designer · Manager · Developer
ECONOMY REWRITE
MARSCRAFT’s premise is simple: Gain EXP by mining, killing monsters, selling produce, completing quests or more, and for every level up the player gets a new reward. Rewards progress players and unlock new paths. The server’s horizontal progression unlocks mob barns, super enchants, cosmetics, armor, items, quick moment minigames, and more. The experience combines structured progression with player-driven freedom, accommodating casual players seeking relaxing routines or a peaceful experience, and players pursuing mastery, wealth and prestige alike.
After the shutdown, with so many adjustments, lost files and data, and outdated design style (restrictive free-to-play gameplay, overexposed outdated tech, and changing gaming/Minecraft trends), it was clear MARSCRAFT's economy needed an overhaul. MARSCRAFT’s overall economy is massive, with four main economies: Money, Junk, Levels and Team. Each activity must play a role in MARSCRAFT. To do so, I divided the design around three types of players:
- Casual MC players: Enjoy the classic Minecraft experience, but rather than delivering nostalgia directly, the aim is to recreate the original feelings: engaging, interesting, expressive and whimsical. Think Survival, Terraria, RuneScape.
- Competitive MC players: Keep them empowered, engaged, excited, ambitious and full of anticipation. Think Bedwars, Cookie Clicker, Grow-A-Garden.
- Cozy MC players: Find the server's activities engaging but relaxing, including mining and quests.
LEVEL OVERHAUL
Due to a lack of material keeping track of the design, tweaks over time, and my own growth in design skill, it felt like the time was right for a leveling-economy overhaul.
The premise is simple: You gain EXP by many means, chief among them mining, questing or selling. Every level has an EXP requirement and a reward upon reaching it. I didn’t want rewards to simply be boosts, but also on aggregate to convey certain emotions, the right ideas to players, and proper horizontal progression, while remaining well-paced cognitively.
There are several emotions and qualities I wanted the rewards to convey:
- Exaggeration: A reward feels overpowered or becomes an exaggerated version of an understood idea (e.g., a sword with Sharpness 8).
- Survival: Directly useful or relatable to Survival Minecraft.
- Customization: Allows players to distinguish or express themselves through strategic, gameplay or cosmetic expression.
- Other triggers included Alternation, Storytelling, Guild, Experimentation and Status.
The system didn’t just function as a tool for giving rewards, but as a tool of conveyance as well, teaching players things about the game and its nature.
- Placing items inside this structure hinged on many factors. I divided the table into “directions”, where the server developed one part of itself before moving to another. The starting direction was Mining, then Quests. I also had to cut a lot of fat at the start.
- The curve was simple. Numbers were edgy, although they always ended with a 0. The early levels were methodical, focused on time per level and cognitive load; some levels were designed to feel like bosses, such as a significant EXP requirement every ten levels.
FARMING REWRITE
Selling is MARSCRAFT’s core economic system for cash. Players sell farmable items, known as Stocks, up to a daily limit. Hitting the limit awards a Booster, which increases that stock’s cash value permanently starting the next day — a streak ramp-up technique.
(L100 Bonus is a 100× multiplier after reaching Level 100; otherwise 1×.)
This system rewarded project building, daily grinding and teamwork, and added incentive to treasure hunting for Bedrocks. Eventually, however, players would hit diminishing returns, which meant I had to come up with two solutions:
- Exponential Progression: Switching from linear to exponential progression to give players clearer yet more ambitious milestones — billions, quadrillions, and beyond — similar to Cookie Clicker, while controlling how fast those milestones are reached.
- Mutations: A new system that makes crops mutate randomly, multiplying their sell value and allowing them to sell past the daily limit. This controllably rewards farm scale and opens the door to jackpot moments.
After reaching Level 100, players gain the ability to use Bedrock. Bedrock comes from treasure hunts — a very active element of play — and, when carried, multiplies cash rewards. Beyond its role as an unusual active-play reward, Bedrock encourages team play as players share them, and accelerates cash rewards after Level 100.
The Booster and Bedrock systems must be functional in the long run and rewarding in the short term, pushing momentum early while remaining brute-forceable by sacrificing involvement in the other economies (Team, Levels and Junk). Realistic milestones should still remain on the horizon.
The server uses three values to calculate cash reward:
Sell Boosters add a new multiplier to each item every day its sell limit is reached. For example, one booster gives a 1.55× boost on that item’s reward. A second adds 1.47×.
| Booster Level | Multiplier |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1.55× |
| 2 | 1.47× |
| 3–39 | 1.40× |
These numbers stack. Although growth is exponential, the percentage increase from each additional booster declines as progression advances. Interestingly, these values were only slightly adjusted after Bedrocks were added.
Once players unlock the Bedrock bonus, a saturating exponential function rewards collecting Bedrock. The first boost was intended to feel mind-blowing, replicating the impact of the server’s old Level 100 unlock. With no Bedrock the bonus is 1×; otherwise the formula is:
e refers to Euler’s number, used here in a saturating exponential function that produces diminishing returns as the multiplier approaches a maximum of 751×. The original target reflected Minecraft’s 2,304-slot inventory limit (35 free slots plus one offhand across inventories of 64-stack items). Carrying so many Bedrocks would be inconvenient, slow progression, and collide with vanilla inventory constraints, so the effective cap was instead set to 751×.
Using Excel, I began applying the formulas to long-term projections. A key modeling assumption was 10 Bedrocks and 1.2 sell boosters per day (because crates can rarely provide extra boosters).
With these formulas in place, I adjusted the curve. As mentioned earlier, relatively little adjustment was required; the final booster schedule looked like this:
| Booster Level | Multiplier |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1.55× |
| 2 | 1.47× |
| 3–39 | 1.40× |
| 40–79 | 1.25× |
| 80–159 | 1.10× |
| 160–299 | 1.05× |
| 300–699 | 1.015× |
| 700–849 | 1.021× |
| 850–1749 | 1.0087× |
| 1750–2799 | 1.0072× |
| 2800–5599 | 1.002525× |
| 5600–8599 | 1.001525× |
| 8600+ | 1.00035× |
RESULTS
While MARSCRAFT struggled to re-achieve its 2022–2023 heights, it maintained a playerbase that grew slightly. Posts relating to the server on TikTok reached hundreds of thousands of views, with many likes.
The server also received strong community reviews on minecraft-server-list, reaching 4.8 stars across 88 reviews. Most of the substantial reviews, however, came during the earlier 2022–2023 period.