Bukkit

How Prices Are Determined

The General Idea

Minecraft is a game of crafting, so prices in Bento's BlueBook are based on what required to craft an item plus some profit for all your hard work. Free items obtained by digging or mining are preassigned a value and are called base items. The price for each obtainable base item is in the config.yml file. There are some items that cannot be obtained naturally, i.e., they have to be /give(n) to a player. An advanced admin can add prices for those to the list if you like. All prices in the config.yml file can be changed if you like.

BlueBook does not provide "market prices" or recommend prices based on what players actually sell their wares for in the game. (That would be a different plugin). If a player wants to sell their diamond sword for $1 they can, and players who have access to the BlueBook will know that that is a bargain. Actually, $1 for any sword is a bargain, but you get the idea.

Why would I change the price of an base item in the config.yml?

Prices in config.yml are for a typical Minecraft server running Survival in a normally spawned world. If you are running a special world, for example, SkyBlock, you will want to adjust the prices to those that reflect the rarity of blocks in your world. For example, dirt in SkyBlock is very rare, so it would make sense to raise that price. The same is true for other base items.

Also, as an admin, you may disagree with the prices in the config or want BlueBook prices to more closely match what is being used now on your server. In that case, change the prices in config.cfg until they fit. The recipes for any item are well known, so just work it out.

How are crafted item prices calculated?

Each crafted item requires a set of base items or other crafted items to make, plus occasionally fuel. You can find the recipes for craftable items on the various Minecraft Wiki's and I will not describe them here! Below are a few items of note:

Fuel

Fuel is used in ovens to convert cobblestone to stone, cook meats, create glass, etc. BlueBook uses the price of Coal as the basis for Fuel.

Dyes

Dyes are created from a variety of base items and in one case (green and its derivatives) a crafted item - cactus green (which requires fuel). Dyes are used in a number of colored items, like colored clay, wool and stained glass.

Fish

Fish are obtained randomly and some are more rare than others. You have to do work to fish (labor) so it's only right that fish have a value and their derivative crafted items also benefit from that value. A lot of work has been done by Minecraft players to discover the distribution of fish that you get from fishing and so a value can be given to each relative to the base value of the common fish:

• Salmon are worth about 2 x regular fish
• Clown fish are really rare and worth about 42 x regular fish
• Puffer fish are a little rarer than Salmon at about 4 x regular fish, and Puffers can be used to craft

Potions

The recipes for Potions are also in the Wiki's and the values follow the value of the ingredients in them with the exception that if you go round and round adding ingredients that don't do anything, the value isn't going to go up. In other words, BlueBook assumes you used the simplest recipe to make the potion.

Durability

Wear and tear has an affect on value. Brand new or mint items are worth the most and worn down items are worth less. The decrease is linear to the wear on the item. The only exception is the Anvil, which has it's own three-stage wear and tear cycle. Anvils have a 12% probability of wearing down to the next level every time you use them. A mint Anvil is worth quite a lot, but a worn one is only worth 12% of the mint one, and a very damaged one only 1.44%.

Profit

This is not really profit. This is a general percentage that is added to every crafted price in order to account for some of the labor involved in making the item. The default is 5%, but can be changed by the admin any time. If the value is zero, then values will be only whatever the raw materials cost. This is a fairly coarse knob an admin can use to adjust prices globally to fit what a server is currently using without getting into the details of every item.

Enchantments (Version 1.4 onwards)

Items with enchantments are more valuable. Value depends on the rarity of the enchantment and its level. The enchant value is determined by calculating a multiplier to the base value of the item, so diamond enchanted items are more valuable than wooden ones. Method to calculate the multiplier is as follows:

1. Add the value of all the enchantments on the item The value is determine by the probability of obtaining the enchantment as follows:

Armor

• Protection 1
• Feather Fall 2
• Fire Protection 2
• Projectile Protection 2
• Aqua Affinity 5
• Blast Protection 5
• Respiration 5
• Thorns 10

Sword

• Sharpness 1
• Bane of Arthropods 2.5
• Knockback 2.5
• Smite 2.5
• Flame 5
• Looting 5

Bow

• Power 1
• Flame 5
• Knockback 5
• Infinity 10

Rod

• Luck of the Sea 1
• Lure 1

Tools

• Efficiency 1
• Unbreaking 2
• Fortune 5
• Silk Touch 10

2. For each enchantment, the level of the enchantment multiplies its value, for for example level 3 Thorns will be worth 30 (3 x 10).

3. The value of the item is then calculated as = (Base Price + Base Price * Multiplier)