Prison mine layouts that work

Grow the mines with the ranks

Each rank should get a bigger, deeper mine with better blocks. Players feel the step up, and later mines take longer to empty when more players share them. In our Dwarven Quarry Prison pack the pits grow like this:

Use a plain mix early and save the bright, rare blocks for the late mines, so players can tell their rank at a glance.

Layouts that play well

• Open pit with a walkway. A square pit with a path all the way round. The top of the fill sits level with the path, so players walk straight onto it. This is the base of almost every good mine.
• Stepped quarry. Benches cut into the sides around the pit look like a real quarry and give the eye somewhere to go, without getting in the way.
• Walled keep. Walls and towers around the pit make each mine look like its own place. Keep the walls back from the edge so they do not block the swing.
• Cavern under a roof. A rock roof held by supports, with lanterns hung from chains. It looks great, but keep the roof high enough that players do not mine into it.
• Floating island. Each mine on its own island with void around it. Easy to place and easy to swap later.

Where the spawn and sell NPC go

Put the warp point on a pad at the edge of the pit, facing the mine, so players arrive ready to dig. Put the sell NPC a few blocks to the side, behind a counter, so players never have to walk around the pit to sell. Every mine in a set should use the same layout, so players learn it once.

Setting up the regions

Your mine plugin needs the two corners of the fill. Select them with WorldEdit, then create the mine in the plugin with its own command:

//pos1   (stand at or look at one corner of the fill)
//pos2   (the opposite corner, at the bottom)

Protect everything else with WorldGuard, then open the pit only:

/rg define prison_world    (with the whole prison area selected)
/rg flag prison_world block-break deny
/rg define mine_a          (with the pit selected)
/rg flag mine_a block-break allow
/rg setpriority mine_a 10

The region must match the fill exactly. If it is one block too big, players break the walkway. If it is one block too small, the reset leaves holes.

Keep the decor as built

Leaves, vines and plants change over time. To stop that, run /gamerule random_tick_speed 0 on 1.21.11 and newer, or /gamerule randomTickSpeed 0 on older versions. Prison worlds rarely need crops to grow.

Questions