Getting Started

So you want to be a pony in Equestria? We can help!

Overview

· Starting Out · Leaving Ponyville · Navigating the Server ·
· Gameplay Changes · Leveling · Economy · Nicknames · Bedrock ·

What is BronyTales?

BronyTales is a community-focused survival multiplayer (SMP) Minecraft server which boasts a large survival map featuring recreations of areas from the show My Little Pony. These recreated areas are primarily used for roleplay, though players are also permitted to rent homes in these towns for the server’s in-game currency; bits!

Starting Out

When you join BronyTales for the first time, you'll start in an area that heavily resembles the caves underneath the School of Friendship. We use this area to showcase some of our more important rules, by going through this area you’ll need to agree to our rules before you’re able to access the rest of the server!

After you get out of the rules area you'll journey beneath the Tree of Harmony's roots where you'll be able to choose a starting race/class. You'll be able to pick from Earth Pony, Unicorn, or Pegasus - for more information, see our page on Classes! Don't worry about which race you pick, you'll be able to change it later - just check out the Info Tent outside of the Ponyville Town Hall or talk to a Royal Guard NPC for more information!

Leaving Ponyville

Sooner or later you’ll likely want to experience the survival part of our server, and to do so you’ll need to exit Ponyville or whichever claimed area you’ve navigated yourself to. The most straightforward way to do this is via the /land wild command, which will teleport you to a random unclaimed area of the map. Please keep in mind that even if a build isn’t claimed that it’s protected by staff, only modify what’s yours!

You can get back to Ponyville at any time by using the /spawn command.

Navigating the Server

Ponyville isn’t the only canon town BronyTales offers, we also have Canterlot, Appaloosa, Our Town, the Prison of Shadows, and the Changeling Hive! To access these areas you can teleport to the Portal Room at any time by using the /warp portalroom command. This is also where you’ll be able to access our Creative, Pixel Art, Resource Worlds, and Player Towns! The resource worlds reset every month and may be used to mine for valuable resources without needing to destroy the landscape of the main world.

Since the resource worlds do reset, we’d recommend not building anything you’d miss. The primary overworld, nether, end, and creative worlds will never reset*. We may opt to selectively delete unused areas of these worlds, however, but if you’ve spent more than 30 minutes in an area this should never be an issue for you.

*Exceptions apply under rare circumstances, though we do try to avoid these as much as possible.

Gameplay Changes

A few things are a bit different on BronyTales than you would find in a vanilla Minecraft game:

  • Stonecutters are sharp! Don’t step on them!
  • We have a few extra enchantments than you might expect on a normal Minecraft server.
  • Your inventory won’t get lost if you die, but you will lose exp levels and vanishing or binding cursed items.
  • Trees fall down when you cut them down with an axe. They also sometimes drop golden apples!
  • Nether portals can blow up if you build one too close to a protected area - watch out! If you get stuck, you can always use /spawn
  • Racial abilities based on what class you choose. Some races even have more or less health than normal.
  • You can use /sethome and /home to set warps for yourself. Note: You can set up to 5 homes. Teleports cost food levels!
  • Teleport to other players with /tpa <player> or ask them to teleport to you with /tpahere <player>
  • Return to where you just warped to or back you where you died with /back. Note: This doesn’t work with Lands teleports!
  • Smelt rotten flesh into leather, or even tools into raw materials!
  • Left-click an anvil to repair an item with just exp or with bits. (Shift+Click to mine an anvil).
  • Trampolines can be built by putting iron, gold, diamond, emerald blocks, or beacons underneath a slime block!
  • PvP is disabled by default - you can toggle it on or off for yourself with /pvp toggle
Crafting Tweaks:
  • Blackstone can be crafted with basalt + coal/charcoal.
  • Blackstone can be used in recipes that require cobblestone.
  • Coal and Charcoal and be crafted into black dye.
  • Concrete Powder can be smelted into Colored Glass!
  • Coral blocks can be crafted using coral tube and/or fan blocks.
  • Droppers can be turned into dispensers.
  • Dyeable blocks can be re-dyed.
  • Gravel is craftable with 4 flint.
  • Ice, Nether Wart Blocks, and Wool can be "unpacked."
  • Many recipes have been made shapeless.
  • Name Tags can be crafted using 2 iron, 1 string, and 2 paper.
  • Sandstone can be dyed red.
  • Slabs can be made with just one block instead of 3. (Old option still works!)
  • Stairs and Slabs can be crafted back into their base blocks.
  • The Brick block recipe has been changed to give you 4 brick blocks instead of 1.
  • You craft 12 trap doors per recipe instead of 3.
  • You get 1 more bark block per recipe (4 total, was 3).
  • You get 4 more stair blocks per recipe (8 total, was 4).
Gameplay Tweaks:
  • Anvils can be repaired with iron ingots.
  • Bees no longer die when they sting. Gameplay is more fun than realism!
  • Cat collars will default to the orange color.
  • Composters allow bulk processing by sneaking.
  • Conduit range has been doubled from 16 to 32.
  • Copper blocks can have their weathering stages sped up by using kelp.
  • Cows have a 1% chance to spawn as aggressive.
  • Creepers have a 1% chance to spawn charged.
  • Dispensers can place anvils.
  • Dolphins have a 1% chance to spawn as aggressive.
  • End Crystals can be used as an anti-air weapon against phantoms, protecting the skies in a 20 block radius!
  • Ender Dragons (respawned) will always drop the full amount of XP.
  • Endermen will ignore you if you're wearing a dragon head.
  • Entities that can pick up loot will continue to pick up loot.
  • Entities will retain their name when broken (armor stands, boats, etc). Tile Entities will also retain their custom names AND lore (chests, furnaces, etc).
  • Ever been stuck in a portal loop before? A setting we turned on should fix that!
  • Evokers bypass mob griefing (if they're ever spawned for some reason). This means they can use a spell to change the wool color of sheep!
  • Farmland can no longer be trampled by mobs.
  • Farmland can be watered by having water beneath the soil.
  • Farmland trampling is affected by feather falling. (Safe for about 3.5 blocks!)
  • Foxes can have their "type" changed with tulips. White tulip = snow fox. Orange tulip = regular fox!
  • Giants have had their AI re-enabled and will be hostile if they're ever spawned. Their damage has also been nerfed from 50 to a more sane 25.
  • Glow Berries will make you glow for 30 seconds.
  • Iron Golems will forgive you if you give them a tulip or heal them.
  • Lapis will stay in the enchanting table when you leave.
  • Mending will repair your most damaged gear first.
  • Mobs killed by the cramming gamerule shouldn’t drop loot.
  • Note blocks ignore blocks above them and will continue to play, regardless.
  • Parrots are breedable by using any seed.
  • Phantoms will avoid players holding torches.
  • Piglins bypass mob griefing, allowing you to trade normally with them.
  • Pigs will drop their saddles if they die.
  • Polar Bears are breedable with Beef.
  • Sheep will drop random wool if they're Jeb'd. They also bypass mob griefing.
  • Shulkers (the mob) will spawn as random colors when spawned from shulker bullets. They can also be dyed by right clicking them with dye if you want to do that for some reason.
  • Silverfish bypass mob griefing.
  • Skeletons can be converted into Wither Skeletons by using 8 wither roses.
  • Slabs can be broken, individually, by sneaking.
  • Snow Golems can have their pumpkin added back if you decide to take it away from them.
  • Snowballs can extinguish fires, candles, and campfires.
  • Squids have decided that water isn't good enough for them. (They fly now?!)
  • Striders will give their saddle back if killed.
  • The Wither will no longer play the spawn sound, globally, when spawned. No more jumpscares!
  • Turtle egg trampling is affected by feather falling. (Safe for about 3.5 blocks!)
  • Villagers bypass mob griefing, will follow you if you hold an emerald block, and can also be led with a lead.
  • Villager Clerics will farm nether wart.
  • Vines can be grown with bonemeal.
  • Wandering Traders will follow you if you hold an emerald block, and can also be led with a lead.
  • Wolf collars will default to the orange color.
  • Wolves (untamed) have a 5% chance to spawn rabid. Milk can cure them!
  • Zombie Horses have a 15% chance to spawn instead of Skeleton Horses during thunderstorms. (Skeleton horses still spawn!)

Leveling

You can level your pony race by completing tasks, which are listed for you when you run the command /pony - as you level up, you gain more abilities! You can also level up your McMMO abilities, such as unarmed (increase damage without a weapon), acrobatics (dodge attacks and avoid fall damage), excavation and mining (special or double drops and super breaker abilities), and more!

Roleplay Housing

Server roleplay towns like Ponyville and Canterlot have special buildings that you can play in and some that you can even rent out for yourself and your friends! To rent an area, or to extend your rent, you can right-click on the sign attached to the building. Friends can be given permission to use your rented area with /arm addmember <player> To unrent an area, hold your sneak button and left-click the rent sign. (It will ask you if you’re sure, so you don’t accidentally lose the stuff in your house!) Alternatively you can use the command /arm sellback <region>

Certain locations are given to those who have canon roles for the duration that the user is playing that specific role. For example, a user who has the Rarity role would get access to the Ponyville and Canterlot boutiques. These do not require payment to keep, but they are revoked after 7 days if the role is ever dropped. For more details on our canon/roleplay system, visit our RP page!

Economy

Before you’ll be able to spend your bits on things you’ll have to earn some, first! There are a few ways to do that:

  • Server/NPC shops are located all across Equestria, they can buy and sell nearly every resource! You can find most of the NPC shops marked on our Dynmap! The Royal Guard NPCs that are in most of the canon towns can also point you in their direction. For a list of what the NPC shops buy and sell, take a look at the following spreadsheet: BronyTales - Server Shop Economy Spreadsheet
  • Chest Shops are a great way to earn money from other players even while you're offline! You can find a tutorial for those here: BronyTales - Chest Shop Tutorial
  • Hostile mobs can reward you with money or heads you can sell when they die! Mob heads can be sold with the /sellhead all command.
You can check your current balance at any time by using the /balance command, or /bal for short.

The Wilderness - Freebuild

As long as an area isn’t claimed or otherwise occupied by other users, you can build anywhere outside of the main server areas! Please be sure to be respectful to those around you when planning out your builds. There’s a lot of space in the world, so we’d recommend avoiding building close to others if you believe your expansion may be limited.

When creating a house, town, or any other form of build, we’d recommend claiming the entirety of your build with Lands to help prevent griefing and other forms of unwanted modifications to your build. For a basic tutorial for how to use Lands we’d recommend checking out Lands’ How to Start as a Player wiki!

Be sure to only modify what's yours! Even if a build isn't claimed, it's considered protected under the rules! Always get permission, first! If you'd like to get an abandoned build transferred to yourself, you should contact staff. This applies for all worlds on BronyTales, even the resource worlds!

Nicknames

You can set a fun nickname for yourself with /nick, and if you don’t change it for 7 days, you can lock it to yourself with /locknick.
Locked nicknames have a longer reservation time before someone can claim it again. Temporary/unlocked nicknames can be claimed by other users if you haven’t logged in for 5 days, and a locked nickname is kept reserved for you for 180 days. When you have a locked nickname, you can set a temp nickname to yourself without losing your locked status - just use /nick without any arguments to clear your temporary nickname. If you want to release your nick so you can switch to another, you can use /clearnick.
Certain nicknames cannot be set, even if they aren’t taken. Reserved nicknames need to be applied for in Canon Applications.
Names have prefixes based on the status of the name: ~Temp, *Locked, ’Canon, ~*Locked with a temp, ~’Canon with a temp.

Bedrock

While it’s not the intended way to play on BronyTales, we do support the ability to connect to the server with a Bedrock client! Bedrock tends to have more issues on BT than Java has, which is why we strongly recommend playing with a Java client if you’re able! Bedrock connectivity has been tested as working with Windows 11 and Android clients. 1-to-1 functionality parity is not guaranteed.

If you have a Java account that you want to play on from Bedrock, you can use /linkaccount from your Java account. It’ll give you a command to run from your Bedrock client on the server, and then afterwards when you connect from Bedrock you’ll have your inventory, skin, and other saves from your Java account! There is a timeout on the code, though, so it’s easiest to have both connected at the same time to connect the two.

Account linking is only one way, it will only ever link the Bedrock account to the Java account. If you’d like to link your accounts we’d recommend doing so when you first join the server, especially if you intend to primarily play on Bedrock! Otherwise, you’ll lose all of your progress, locks, claims, etc. on your Bedrock account if/when you go to link the two.

More Stuff!

There are many more things you can use on BronyTales, from well-known plugins such as LWC, AdvancedRegionMarket, McMMO, Dynmap, Citizens, CookieMonster, and ChestShop, to fun plugins such as a Armor Stand Editor (use flint to open the editor), /bwb, /heads, /sit, /lay, and /hug (sneak+right click on a player to hug them, this feeds changelings!)