Claiming and regions

Last updated 11 September 2026. Report a discrepancy through the GeoNations Discord.

Ground in the overworld is either unclaimed or part of a Region. Unclaimed ground has no block or container protection. Claimed ground has a purchase cost and weekly upkeep and can be transferred through the war system.

Claim protection

Unclaimed builds may be broken, burned, or looted without a war declaration. Claiming is the system that protects blocks and containers. Inside a Region, untrusted players cannot build, break blocks, or open containers while the owner is online or offline.

Which also means: an expired camp is wild ground. A Region whose owner stopped paying upkeep is wild ground. The chunk your chest sits one block outside of is wild ground. Check your borders.

Attempting to bypass claim protection or use a protection failure is prohibited. Claimed territory must be contested through the war system.

Claiming ground

/claim founds a Region named after you on the chunk you stand in. That first chunk costs $250, and every chunk after it costs 7% more than the last. If you cannot pay, or somebody already owns that chunk, the Region is still founded with no ground and the game says why. For every chunk after the first, stand in the chunk you want and run /land [your region name] claim, with your Region's name in place of the brackets. That takes the 16 by 16 chunk you are standing in, from bedrock to sky. The golden hoe you were handed and the map in /lands claim too. After that, /lands menu is where you rename it, trust people, set roles, flip flags and manage the bank.

Overworld only. The Nether cannot be claimed, the hub cannot be claimed, and there is no End. Anything you build in the Nether is exposed forever, so build there like you expect to lose it.

Four rules catch people out. Only the Region owner can claim — trusted members cannot buy chunks for the Region, whatever the denial message seems to imply. There is a buffer around every other owner's Region — one chunk around an independent Region, three chunks around a Region that belongs to a nation — so ground that looks wild next to a neighbour can still refuse; the refusal names their Region, and that is why. New claims must touch your existing Region: a far-away chunk is treated as an attempt to found a second Region, and with one Region per player it is refused ("You can't create any more regions"). And there are two 100-chunk ceilings: a personal one counted across every Region you own, and a per-Region one — with one Region per player they both stop you at the same number (both raised to 100 on 24 August, from the 50 set on 17–19 August).

You never need the golden hoe. It marks corners for claiming big areas at once, /lands selection puts you in that mode with no item at all, and auto claiming can run while you walk your border (it stops itself after 2 minutes). /land [your region name] claim where you stand always does the job.

What it costs

Claim costs increase with Region size. This makes large continuous territories more expensive than protecting only the chunks used for buildings, farms, routes, and strategic borders.

• First chunk: $250.
• Every chunk after that costs 7% more than the last one, compounding, with no ceiling (raised from 2.5% on 24 August).
• Unclaiming refunds 25% of what that chunk cost.

Upkeep column is the base rate at level 1. Higher levels pay a percentage on top, see the ladder below.

For example, a nine chunk Region covering a base, farm, and dock costs approximately $2,995 before upkeep. A 100 chunk Region costs more than $3,000,000 all told and has base upkeep of $1,300 per week — the limit is real, but the rising price per chunk means very few players will ever reach it. Chunks that do not need protection can remain unclaimed without increasing either cost.

Ten chunks cost approximately $3,450 to purchase and $130 per week at the level 1 upkeep rate. The purchase cost is therefore the larger initial expense, while upkeep removes unused claims over time when a Region is no longer funded.

Region bank

Each Region has a balance separate from the owner's /bal. It begins at $0 and is not funded automatically. Region level requirements, war declarations, upkeep, and war robbery use the Region bank rather than the owner's personal balance.

Upkeep

You do not own claimed land outright. You keep paying for it. Every Region pays $13 per claimed chunk per 7 day cycle, collected Fridays at 23:00 server time. A 3 chunk Region pays $39 a week, a 10 chunk Region pays $130.

Payment comes out of the region bank first. If the bank is short, the game tries the owner's personal balance. If that is short too, your newest chunks are unclaimed, most recently claimed first, and that repeats every cycle until the Region can pay or has no chunks left.

• New Regions get 2 days before their first collection.
• While you are short, the server warns you every hour. That reminder means chunks are about to be unclaimed.
• The bank has no maximum and pays no interest. The War page explains why you should still not hoard in it.

The upkeep rate requires an active Region to maintain income and removes the newest claims from Regions that can no longer fund their full territory.

Member taxes

Upkeep is what your Region owes the server. Member tax is what your members owe you — a per-chunk rate you set yourself in /lands menu → Your Regions → your region → Taxes, anywhere from $0 up to a server ceiling of $999. It is charged to each trusted member's personal wallet on the same clock as upkeep, Fridays at 23:00, and it is paid into your Region bank. Members are billed only for the areas they are actually trusted in, a temporarily trusted player never pays at all, and you can flag a whole role tax-free. Since 24 August a member who cannot pay is no longer removed from your Region — the server warns them every two hours and otherwise leaves them alone. Who stays trusted is the owner's decision, not ours.

The level ladder

Your Region levels up on its own when it meets the requirements — and levels back down if it stops meeting them. The bank figure is a reserve the Region must keep holding, not a one-off payment, and Friday upkeep and war robbery drain the same bank. Each level raises your chunk and member caps, and raises your upkeep rate.

Every level above Settlement requires trusted members as well as money in the Region bank. A level 3 Town is required to found a nation. See Relations and nations.

Limits

Naming a region

The underscore rule is not cosmetic. Every region command takes the name as a single argument, so write Iron_Bay, never Iron Bay. See the invite trap on the Camps page.

Three commands worth knowing early