Admin & Ops Guide

01  The lay of the land

AoW SMP runs Paper 1.21.8 on Java 21 (Temurin), backed by a 4 vCPU / 16 GB Hostinger VPS with a 8 GB heap tuned via Aikar flags. The stack is 6 consolidated in-house packs plus ~21 third-party. This page is for operators — everything below assumes shell access to the box and op (or LuckPerms-granted) permissions in-game.

02  Becoming an operator

There are two ways to act as staff: server-level op and rank-based permissions via LuckPerms 5.5.57. Op is the blunt instrument; LuckPerms is how you run day-to-day staff.

Granting op from the console

From the server console (no slash prefix needed at the console) or as an existing op in-game:

op Steve
deop Steve

Op vs LuckPerms — which to use

03  Ranks with LuckPerms

LuckPerms drives every rank, prefix and permission on AoW. Manage it in-game with /lp or from the web editor.

04  Spawning Champions

The Fractured Veil is the centerpiece. As an operator you can hand-place any titled Champion for events, testing, or just to terrorize the regulars. The command:

/champions spawn <tier> <mob> [title] [stars] [subtitle]

# A straightforward Elite chicken (Queen of the Roost / Sir Cluckalot themed)
/champions spawn elite chicken

# Fully rolled — random tier, mob, title, everything
/champions spawn random

# A Legend zombie with 3 Ascension stars
/champions spawn legend zombie 3

# A Blessed Elite skeleton that drops Veilweaver tomes
/champions spawn elite skeleton blessed

# An Enriched Mythic pig — 2x loot, for a loot-drop event
/champions spawn mythic pig enriched

05  Tuning the AoW systems

Every in-house plugin ships its own config and a reload command. The pattern is consistent: edit the config, then reload that one plugin — no full restart needed.

# Generic shape — replace <plugin> with the plugin's command root
/<plugin> reload

# e.g. reload the Champions / Fractured Veil config
/champions reload

06  CoreProtect — rollback & lookup

CoreProtect 23.2 logs every block change, container access and kill. Use it to undo griefing and investigate.

07  WorldEdit & WorldGuard

WorldEdit 7.4.4 for terrain edits, WorldGuard 7.0.17 for protected regions. The WorldEdit selection wand is a blaze rod.

//wand            # gives you the blaze_rod selection tool
# left-click pos1, right-click pos2 to select a region
//set stone       # fill the selection
//replace dirt grass_block
//copy            # then //paste at a new location
//undo

# With a WorldEdit selection made:
/rg define spawn
/rg flag spawn pvp deny
/rg flag spawn mob-spawning deny
/rg addmember spawn .Steve

08  Pre-generating chunks (Chunky)

Chunky 1.4.40 pre-generates terrain so players aren't generating lag in real time. Run it off-hours; it auto-throttles but still uses CPU.

/chunky world minecraft:overworld
/chunky radius 5000
/chunky start
# check progress / pause:
/chunky progress
/chunky pause

09  Web map (squaremap)

squaremap 1.3.12 renders the live web map served at map.aowmc.com (behind nginx + Let's Encrypt). It updates incrementally, but you can force a full render after big terrain changes.

# Full render of the overworld
/squaremap fullrender minecraft:overworld

# Cancel a running render if needed
/squaremap cancelrender minecraft:overworld

10  Restart, logs & backups

The server runs as a systemd service named minecraft. Operate it from the VPS shell.

systemctl restart minecraft
# status / stop / start
systemctl status minecraft
systemctl stop minecraft
systemctl start minecraft

# Live server log via the systemd journal
journalctl -u minecraft -f
# last 200 lines
journalctl -u minecraft -n 200

Backups live in /opt/backups. Check what's there before relying on a restore:

ls -lh /opt/backups

11  Gotchas worth memorizing

A few sharp edges specific to this stack and version. Learn these and you'll save yourself a confused half-hour.

12  Operator quick reference

The whole admin toolkit in one place.