Destroying a Server's Economy with Millions of Slimeballs

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]So, there I was scrolling through Minecraft servers, when suddenly I found it. A server with a small player count and a leaderboard spot ripe for the taking. How bad could it be? Upon entering the server, I was greeted with an array of loot crates and overpowered kits, all of which needed to be paid for with real life money. A pay-to-win server? Not on my watch. The only person that should be stealing money from children is me. An interesting thing about this server is that when you log on for the first time, you get some basic armor and tools. And I'm feeling pretty broke right now. May as well sell this stuff to get some starting cash.

[00:00:30]Oh.

[00:00:31]Wait a minute.

[00:00:33]After this, I RTP'd, collected some stone, and had dinner with the local sheep population. I also got a request from somebody to teleport to them. Yo, dude, TP to me. I got free loot. I feel as though you are just going to kill me.

[00:00:48]He did not respond to me. While I was wandering, I obtained some sugarcane and found it to be worth way more than it should be. Remember this. It'll be important later. I've just found the most insanely profitable item in the entire game. One iron $27. Nine iron is worth $243.

[00:01:03]And when you put that into its block formation, you lose $198.

[00:01:09]Incredible. All right, I have no idea how. I was just sitting there smelting iron, minding my own business, when suddenly default crate key appears.

[00:01:17]Let's do this.

[00:01:21]>> [bell] >> I I got an advanced crate key.

[00:01:27]>> [bell] >> Well, that was worthless. But Waffle, why is this worthless? It's free diamonds. Well, you see, reason one is that I can just purchase diamond gear from the shop for a small fee. But reason two is that the only truly good loot is in the pay-to-win crates further down the line. And I know what you're thinking. Um, actually, because you can obtain the keys in survival, it doesn't count as pay-to-win, even though you can get the exact same benefits by paying an absurd amount of money for it. Silence.

[00:01:52]I did the math. The odds of getting a golden crate key purely by gambling is a one in 43,904 chance. Even if you waited in the AFK pool for shards to build up, you would still have to wait 700 hours to get enough keys to get any given item. Do you know how many videos I could make in that time? Almost one. Besides the ranks given out their respective crate keys, they're also linked to a system of kits which just give you the overpowered items for free with no gambling. But without the rank, it's not like you can just take from the menu. Wait a minute.

[00:02:25]All this to say that I deem loot crate items as contraband and therefore I won't be using them. Wait, I could use that for tools.

[00:02:34]Oh, I'm going to be rich. Back in 1.21.6, a small event occurred in which saddles were finally given a crafting recipe after years of just being a rare drop. This nearly unnoticeable change can seriously mess with economy servers due to the price of a given item being set by the owner themselves. So for the low low price of $87, you can craft an item worth over five times the original value.

[00:02:56]Free money. Finally, I can afford a better axe. The reason for getting an axe is that I'm going to need funds in order to build an iron farm and a cow farm and I only know one way to do it.

[00:03:07]If one oak log is worth $60 and the average tree contains around five to six logs, then technically Okay, I chopped down the entire forest except for that part. We don't talk about those trees. I made a decent amount of money from this ordeal but not even close to enough to rationalize the four hours I spent chopping trees. After buying diamond armor, I checked my current position on the leaderboard, 76th place. After boating across the ocean, I ran into a village in which I befriended every resident and began work on my cow farm.

[00:03:37]Nah, I'm just kidding. I kidnapped them all and trapped them in an iron farm.

[00:03:40]Anyways, while I was working on my weed farm, I began to notice a build up of useless keys and since saving the environment is incredibly important, I constructed the most eco-friendly trash can money could buy.

[00:03:52]After defeating the hordes of mobs in a nearby trial chamber, I was awarded a trial chamber key. With it, I would be able to unlock basic vaults in order to get incredibly valuable loot. And the key doesn't work. Once back at the surface, I began farming my wheat and breeding a massive herd of cows until I was certain that it was enough. Wait a minute. I think I've done this before.

[00:04:11]After slaughtering all but two of my cows, I collected iron from my farm and crafted the saddles. And after loading them all into shulker boxes, I sold them and made 5 million What was that? I immediately went into panic mode due to the person in first place having over 43 million dollars. A number so astronomically high that if I continued to do my method at my current pace, it would take 447 hours. At this point, I knew there was something I was missing. And in order to learn more, I decided to go to the one place no one ever should, the Discord.

[00:04:44]While I was here, I ended up interacting with a few people that claimed to be fans of mine. But after talking with some of them, I saw that they had been posting weird stuff and harassing people in their private DMs. This is a message to everyone out there. Don't be a nerd, spread positivity.

[00:05:00]Unless they don't like waffles, then they're dead to me. In the announcements tab, I stumbled across an event set for the coming weekend. And I saw an opportunity. You see, due to the promise of overpowered loot, I knew that the players on the top of the leaderboard wouldn't be able to stop themselves from showing up. This meant that there would be a time frame in which I could sell rare items in exchange for their money.

[00:05:19]A favorable strategy due to it lifting my wallet up while pushing others down.

[00:05:23]But right as I went to work on my new plan, I stumbled across the greatest treasure of all, an exploit so dumb that I was confident nobody else had found it. Remember earlier when I was talking about how in its crafted form, iron was worth $198 less than what it should be?

[00:05:38]Well, as it turns out, the effect where blocks are worth much less than the items they consist of is actually a universal principle and applies to all sorts of different things. One of which just so happen to be the slime blocks sold in the shop for $100. The nine slime balls used to craft a slime block being worth a combined 35% more than the original product, I had an idea. If I filled a chest with slime blocks and then decrafted them four stacks at a time, I found that my new method could make 3.2 million dollars per hour with perfect play. Just give me a few seconds.

[00:06:14]I managed to amass a whopping 20 million dollars, placing me fifth on the leaderboard. And with the event just a day away, I began my search. You see, in 1.20 smithing templates were added, putting a new barrier in front of the best armor in the game. The reason that this is such a big deal is that it's a rare drop from bastion chests, and on a public server it lowers my chances of finding one to almost Okay. While I was searching through the nether in hopes of ancient debris, I received the scariest chat message I have ever seen. Look at this. The owner of the server wants to teleport now this guy wants to teleport to me. That's the number one player on the leaderboard. Oh, but what's the big deal? They just wanted to meet up with you. They were watching me. They knew what I was doing. Whatever, I'm sure that won't evolve into anything important. The event began and I listed my shoes on the AH for 750,000 each, expecting maybe one pair, maybe even two pairs to sell. But just as I had planned it, all four were quickly sold to the number one guy. If only he knew. The event had promised that rare items would be handed out players in the lobby. But due to the high amount of people in one place, it lowered my overall chances of actually getting my hands on anything expensive. At least, that's how it should be. See, when you're playing on a server and an item is dropped near two players, whoever gets the item is not determined by luck, but is instead determined by whoever has been online the longest. So if I have a second player and I logged on before them, I'll always pick up the item. But if I disconnect and then reconnect, they'll always get it instead. And that's how I stole all the loot. After doing some math, I gathered that after purchasing all of my shoes, the number one player should be around 40 million.

[00:07:48]But after checking the leaderboard, I saw that his numbers were increasing.

[00:07:51]But how was this possible? I knew it couldn't be the slime block method due to the speed at which his cash increased. And after observing him momentarily, I saw it. I found that cherry leaves could be bought for 25 and then sold for 40. A 60% increase in price that could be done directly in one's inventory at maximum speed. This new method was able to make 11.9 million an hour, over three times the speed of my old method. In just a few hours, I had done it. I was number one on the leaderboard. Unfortunately, this seemed to attract some unwanted attention in the form of being stalked and teleported by the owner. But overall, I would say it was a good day. I had heard wind of a large stash containing all of the server's elytra. A disheartening rumor due to it meaning that the only way to get an elytra was through buying a rank.

[00:08:31]Because end cities spawn in a grid-like pattern, I used Desmos to find spots in which they would most likely be located.

[00:08:37]But as I was doing this, I suddenly received the scariest message of my life. I know about the pedals, Waffle.

[00:08:43]You don't know anything. Probably. He did not. What he meant by pedals wasn't actually the cherry leaves, but were instead the smaller pedals that you can find on the ground. Assuming that he had the most efficient farms built with his 120 skeleton spawners constantly running, he would only be making $450,000 per hour. For reference, I make more than that in 3 minutes. After hours of searching and only one dragon skull obtained, I realized the rumors were true. And that's when I discovered crimson stem. While I was testing out various items to see if they were worth selling, I would go through a three-step process. I first checked the price of the item, then the amount gained per item sold, and finally, the speed at which I could sell them. This process is helpful in outlining why selling units of cherry leaves is more efficient than selling slime balls despite earning more money per slime block they crafted. So, you can imagine my shock when I realized that crimson stem doesn't just have a 60% sell increase like cherry leaves, it has a 166% increase. Not only could I make this money in my inventory, meaning no crafting was needed, I was the only one that knew this even existed. With this new method, my profits rose from 11.9 million an hour to 74.4 million, and I immediately set my sights on a new goal.

[00:09:50]While I was doing this, one of the owners of the elytra stash contacted me about a potential trade, my money-making method for one elytra. So, I did what any rational person would do, and lied.

[00:09:59]But then they actually gave me an elytra. On one hand, it was probably immoral to keep this elytra. I mean, they owned all the other elytras on the server and wouldn't miss one, but even still, I got it through deceptive methods. But on the other hand, we Within the hour, I had 100 million. But as I celebrated, my worst fears were realized. Someone had achieved 1 billion. This amount had been obtained in a previous version of the server, but still, it meant there was a new record I had to defeat. However, it wouldn't be as simple this time. You see, ever since I had achieved 100 million, I had been being watched by the owner in spectator mode. And when he eventually asked me about my method, I claimed I had obtained it through sugarcane. And then he lowered the sell value of it by 50%.

[00:10:40]In this moment, I realized that if I was going to achieve 1 billion, I was going to have to fight fire with more fire. I began watching the owner's Discord profile status until I memorized when they went offline every night, and that's when I'd make my move, generating hundreds of millions of dollars. With 140 hours of total playtime and complete support from my friends, I achieved 1 billion, collected enough extra funds to push myself just over the record. But on May 2nd, an announcement hit the Discord. The server had been reset. But what if I said this was part of my plan?

[00:11:09]You see, back when I first learned of the elytra stash, I knew it was going to be a nearly impossible goal to locate it. And with the only other elytras being locked behind a paywall, it was incredibly important that I found a solution. I realized that in order to bring elytras back to the players, I would have to get the owner to reset his own server. I had seen him reminiscent on an era of the server in which tons of people were online at once, and that's when it hit me. If I was able to control the player count and have it sit at a low level for long enough, he might reset it in hopes of bringing the prime back. When players join in an economy server, they usually aim for one of two things: an incredible amount of money or an elytra. You ever wonder why my money calculations and the hours I had played never exactly lined up? I had been spending my time giving out millions of dollars to new players, thus removing any ambition to play because all of the elytras were already gone. And after two months, a poll was put out to determine if the server should be reset. I'll give you one guess as to which option I picked. But with that, I had done everything I had set out to do. I built a statue in honor of myself and logged off one final time. And then I wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

[00:12:14]Hey, Waffles Syrup 100, heard you've been committing some crimes recently.

[00:12:20]Sounds like you've been breaking bad.

[00:12:24]>> [music]