Building your own minigames server: BedWars, SkyWars and a lobby
Ask a group of Minecraft players what they enjoy most and chances are the answer is a minigame: a round of BedWars with friends, or a quick game of SkyWars in between. The good news is that you don't need a big network for that. With a Paper server, a few solid plugins and an evening of patience you can build your own minigames server, complete with arenas and a tidy lobby. In this guide we'll walk that path step by step, including the honest story about memory, costs and the pitfall that almost every beginning minigames server falls into at some point.
Step 1: start with a Paper server
Minigames run on plugins, and plugins run on Paper. Paper is the standard server software for this kind of server: it performs better than vanilla and just about every plugin you'll come across is built for it. At MC-Node you manage your Minecraft server through the panel, so you set it to Paper and simply drop your plugin files into the plugins folder, followed by a restart.
One thing to watch before you start: minigame plugins often lag a little behind the very newest Minecraft version. So don't blindly pick the latest release, but first check which versions the plugins you want to use actually support. A minigames server on a slightly older, stable version is more fun than a server on the newest version where half of it doesn't work.
Step 2: setting up BedWars with BedWars1058
For BedWars, BedWars1058 has been the obvious choice for years: free, open source and still in active development. You'll find the plugin through official channels such as SpigotMC, Modrinth and Polymart; don't download it anywhere else (why that matters, you'll read further down). Here's how to get from a bare server to your first match:
- Install the plugin. File into
plugins, restart the server, and check in the console whether BedWars1058 loads without errors. - Sort out an arena world. A BedWars map is an empty (void) world with a small island and a bed per team, generators on the islands and better generators in the middle. Building one yourself works perfectly well, but there are also free maps to be found through those same official sources.
- Work through the setup. With
/bw setupArena <naam>you enter setup mode and assign things like spawn points, beds and generators. Take your time here: a sloppily configured arena shows up in-game straight away. - Test with a few people. Play a couple of rounds yourself before you invite anyone. Misplaced spawns or a forgotten generator are easy to catch that way.
Worth knowing: BedWars1058 has several modes. In shared mode the plugin runs alongside other plugins on a single server, in multiarena mode your whole server is BedWars with several arenas at once, and there's a bungee mode for large networks. For your first server, shared or multiarena is exactly right; the network mode only comes into play later.
Step 3: SkyWars alongside it
Once BedWars is running smoothly, SkyWars is the logical second game. The best-known name here is SkyWarsReloaded. Do pay attention to which version you pick: plenty of outdated variants of this plugin are floating around, so on SpigotMC make a point of choosing the version that is actively maintained. The setup resembles BedWars: void maps with small islands, chests with loot and a setup command to assign spawns.
Honest advice: add minigames one at a time. Every extra plugin costs memory and increases the chance of conflicts, for example because two plugins both want to change the scoreboard or the chat. One game that runs well is worth more than three half-finished ones.
Step 4: a tidy lobby
Players have to arrive somewhere, and that somewhere is your lobby. For a single server, a separate lobby world via Multiverse-Core is the simplest route: you create an extra world, set your server's spawn there and build a compact hub with clear entrances to your minigames, through join signs or a menu for instance.
A few rules of thumb for a lobby that works: keep it small and easy to read, make sure players can't take damage or break blocks, and make it clear within ten seconds where they can go. An enormous hub with parkour, secret rooms and ten floors looks impressive, but new players mostly just want to get into a game quickly.
A separate lobby server isn't something you need at this point. That step belongs to a real network, and that brings us to the next question.
When do you grow into a real network?
As long as everything fits on one server, that is simply the best place for it. A network with the Velocity proxy only becomes interesting once you run into concrete limits: the server stutters during busy matches, you want to keep several games with their own world and plugins neatly separated, or your player count keeps growing. With Velocity you put separate servers (lobby, BedWars, SkyWars) behind a single address and players send themselves from the hub to the right game.
Be honest with yourself: a network means managing several servers, updating plugins several times over and higher costs. For most groups of friends and starting communities, one well-configured Paper server is more than enough, and you can always make the switch later.
RAM and costs: the honest story
How much memory do you need? A single minigames server with BedWars, SkyWars and a lobby world runs perfectly well on a mid-range package; think four gigabytes or so for a group of ten to twenty players. At MC-Node, Minecraft servers start from € 0,50 per month and you pay roughly € 1,10 per GB of RAM, so a mid-range package like that costs you a few euros a month. Your server runs on our own hardware with NVMe storage in the Previder data centre in Hengelo, DDoS protection is included and everything is cancellable monthly. Have a look at the MC-Node Minecraft store to see which package suits your group size; you can always upgrade as you grow.
If you go for a network later on, budget more generously: every game server needs its own memory and only the lobby server can really be light. So start small and let your player numbers decide when expanding makes sense, not the other way around.
The classic pitfall: plugins from dodgy sites
This goes wrong on minigames servers more often than anywhere else: someone wants a paid plugin for free and downloads it from a shady site full of leaked files. Don't do it. Those downloads are regularly outdated, often modified and sometimes come with malware that puts your server or your account at risk. The same goes for plugin files from old tutorials or random upload sites.
The rule is simple: only download through official sources such as SpigotMC, Modrinth, Polymart or the developer's own page, and buy premium plugins through the official sales channel. While you're there, always check the last update date and the supported versions. And for BedWars and SkyWars you don't need any paid plugins at all: the free options above are more than enough for a starting server.
Next step: permissions and ranks
With your arenas running and your lobby in place, the next step is structure: who gets to edit arenas, who moderates, and what is a regular player allowed to do? For that you want a permissions plugin like LuckPerms right from the start, with separate ranks for players, builders and moderators. How to set that up properly is covered in our LuckPerms guide. It saves you from the classic scenario where everyone can get at everything, and on a minigames server full of strangers that is hardly an unnecessary luxury.