Minecraft · Java Edition · free to play
My rebuild of SweMine, the Minecraft RPG server I played every day after school. Two nations at war, and a world that gets meaner the further out you go.
You swear an oath, pick a class and head out of the capital to hunt. Monsters drop experience, gold and gear, and you push further out as you get stronger. Past Tallen, the other nation is out there doing the same thing to you.
01 Tallen · the capital
Everyone starts in the capital, a walled city inside Tallen, and the very first thing you do there is swear your oath.
Your oath decides who can kill you. From the moment you swear, your name shows in your nation's colour to everyone on the server, and so does theirs. There's no third side. You can switch later: the other nation's envoy will take a new oath once a day, but it costs every loyalty point you've earned. Changing sides should hurt, so it does.
Swear with your friends. Outside Oathbreak you can't fight beside the other colour or heal them.
02 Tallen · Dreamen · Kaldren · Eslant
Everything you kill drops experience, gold and sometimes a gear crate. What you earned floats up over the monster and goes straight into your bag, so nobody can snatch your loot. Hunt near your clanmates and every kill pays all of you.
Gates lead from zone to zone, and each one needs a level: walk into a zone you're too low for and you're sent straight back out. Every zone has a world boss, and every boss kill is announced to the whole server.
Lv 1 – 20
Truce
The fields around the capital. Nobody can attack you here, so this is where you learn the game, with Sergeant Halvar handing out your first quests.
World boss Farmstead Ogre · Lv 20
back 10 minutes after he falls
Lv 20 – 40
Nation War
Dark forest and overgrown ruins, stuck at dusk, with a sunken shrine and its warden somewhere inside. The first zone where the other nation can kill you.
World boss Shrine Warden · Lv 40
back 15 minutes after it falls
Lv 40 – 60
Nation War
A frozen valley of ice ruins under snow that never stops falling. Every time Winter rises, the whole server hears about it.
World boss Winter · Lv 60
back 15 minutes after he falls
Lv 60 +
Nation War
Volcanic highlands under a permanent night. The only hunting ground where Legendary gear drops from ordinary monsters, and the Caldera Lord always drops a piece.
World boss Caldera Lord · Lv 79
back 30 minutes after he falls
The four zone bosses don't just chase and hit any more. Every attack draws its shape on the ground first, so a hit you take is a hit you could have seen.
Most of them change phase with a roar as they get hurt. Stand still for a few seconds and a ring grows under your boots. Hang back out of reach and a bolt finds you. Drag the fight out for five minutes or more and the boss flies into a rage.
No skill or phase makes a boss invulnerable and none heals it, so it's still a race for the last hit, and the last hit takes the kill and all the loot.
Tallen · Lv 20
Crate Toss. Rings land under several fighters at once, the farthest first. Leave the ring.
Dreamen · Lv 40
Coil. Holds one fighter where they stand until the others hurt the boss enough to break it.
Kaldren · Lv 60
Blizzard Fall. In his last phase a huge circle comes down, with his wolves around it. Run far, and early.
Eslant · Lv 79
Eruption. Rings of fire land under several fighters at once. Whoever stands in one burns.
Where it stands: the ground shapes, sounds, phases and rage are all in. The Shrine Warden has its new serpent model, with a wind-up pose for every move. The Ogre, Winter and the Caldera Lord are still waiting for theirs, so for now they play their old swings.
A world boss's last hit can drop a dungeon key. It opens a dungeon for your clan, with you and your first four clanmates inside.
Where it stands: one placeholder dungeon is running while the real ones get built. Today the key drops from the Shrine Warden; Winter and the Caldera Lord follow as their dungeons are built.
Outside Tallen, every hunting ground is at war, all the time. Red kills blue, blue kills red, wherever you happen to be standing, and you can read a colour off a name before they're in range.
Killing the other nation earns loyalty points, and dying to them costs you the same, though you never drop below zero. Killing the same person again within ten minutes is worth nothing at all, so camping one player doesn't pay here. Every war zone has a camp for each nation, and the camps are truce ground.
Dying never takes your stuff. You wake up at your nation's camp with everything you carried and lose a little experience: 3% of your level if a monster got you, 1% if a player did, nothing at all below level 10. You never lose a level.
There's no level cap, but there is a wall. After 80 every level costs about 1.4 times the one before, and from 90 your experience only counts for four tenths. I'd rather tell you that here than have you find out at 89.
03 the trainer · Master Halden
You pick a class when you first join, and you can switch at the trainer whenever you like, for free. Every class keeps its own level, so the warrior you leave at 30 is still 30 when you come back for him.
Keys 1 to 4 are your abilities, and every class has a passive that fires on its own. Every spell is a real model flying through the world with its own sound. Making combat feel great matters more to me than piling on more things to do.
Level 70 Hellforged set · Hell Breaker
Sword · left click. Holds the line, with the most health and the thickest armour on the server.
Level 70 Nightveil set · Deep Scar
Dagger · left click. The fastest hands and the highest crit chance of any class.
Level 70 Stormstrider set · Bow of the Caldera
Bow · right click. One arrow per click, from range. You never buy arrows.
Level 70 Voidweave set · Meteor Staff
Staff · right click. The hardest hitter with the deepest mana pool, and made of paper.
Level 70 Saint set · Last Rites
Rod or sceptre · left click. Heals and buffs your own nation around you (your clan during Oathbreak). The class people thank in chat.
Clicking faster does nothing: the swing timer is the swing timer. Every level makes you a little quicker, on your feet and with your swing, and every class has four armour sets, at levels 10, 30, 50 and 70. The ones above are the level 70 sets: Legendary gear from Eslant, the King and the Abyss. Armour gives health and defence (boots add a sliver of speed), so the mana here is only the small pool your level gives you. Earrings carry the rest, and scrolls at the anvil make them bigger.
04 back in the capital · the Anvil Master
Armour and weapons come in four grades: Low, Mid, High and Legendary. No shop sells a sword or a chestplate, so apart from the weapon you start with, every piece you wear came off something that died.
I'm keeping SweMine's upgrade system, because quite frankly it works. Scrolls come in the same four grades and only lift gear of their own grade. Each step up to +6 adds 10% of what the piece dropped with, then the steps grow, up to 250% at +10, so most of the power sits in the last four steps and a +10 is worth three and a half times the piece you started with.
Up to +3, a failure only costs you the scroll. From +4 the item is destroyed and everyone nearby sees it happen; from +7, the whole server does. I'll be honest, it's a real risk, and that's the point. It's super fun to watch other people's upgrades fail or land, and that rule isn't getting softened.
From +7 a worn piece sparkles on your body, with a new sparkle for every level up to +10, so people can see what you're carrying from across the capital.
| Upgrade | Chance | If it fails | Items that get this far |
|---|---|---|---|
| +1 | 100% | Can't fail | every item |
| +2 | 90% | Scroll lost, item kept | every item |
| +3 | 80% | Scroll lost, item kept | every item |
| +4 | 65% | Item destroyedSeen by everyone nearby | about 2 in 3 |
| +5 | 50% | Item destroyedSeen by everyone nearby | about 1 in 3 |
| +6 | 40% | Item destroyedSeen by everyone nearby | about 1 in 8 |
| +7 | 15% | Item destroyedThe whole server sees | about 1 in 51 |
| +8 | 10% | Item destroyedThe whole server sees | about 1 in 510 |
| +9 | 7.5% | Item destroyedThe whole server sees | about 1 in 6,800 |
| +10 | 5% | Item destroyedThe whole server sees | about 1 in 137,000 |
Up to +3 a miss only costs the scroll, so you can try again. The last column counts from +3 and assumes you go for every step; you can stop at any level and keep what you have. Red rows lose the item on a miss. Gold rows are the ones the whole server hears about: a piece that gets to +10 is a rare sight.
Monsters don't drop gear pieces any more, they drop Gear Crates. Right-click one for a weapon or armour piece for the class you're on, at the crate's tier.
A crate belongs to no class until you open it, so you can trade it, sell it at the auction house or keep it for an alt, and a Warrior can sell one to a Mage. Players kept telling me some pieces just never dropped, and the maths agreed: the last piece of a set could take over a hundred kills, and one drop in ten was wasted on a class you weren't playing.
Armour gives health and defence, with a sliver of speed on the boots. Mana, crit and a bit more attack come from jewellery: you wear two rings, two earrings and a necklace, in four tiers at levels 10, 30, 50 and 70, and they take scrolls at the anvil like armour.
05 the Arena · 11:00 and 20:00 CET
Twice a day, four beasts of the desert rise out of the sand, one after another, and everyone in the Arena fights them together. The more of you there are, the more health they bring.
It starts on its own at 11:00 and 20:00 CET every day, except 20:00 on Mondays and Fridays, when Oathbreak runs. The Arena Keeper in the capital sends you in during the fifteen minutes before a start, and once it begins, nobody else gets in. Most of what the bosses do can be dodged if you watch the sand. The rest can't: when the horn sounds, heal up and hold on.
Dying in the Arena costs you nothing, and you get straight back into the fight. You only lose that boss's case. When it's over, the whole server hears how it went.
I
Charges down a lane through the thickest of the crowd, lays egg sacs on players and beats her wings over the whole Arena.
II
Swims under the sand, bursts up under the biggest knot of players, slams its tail and drags everyone into its quicksand.
III
Leaps onto a player's spot, sweeps its gaze across the sand and hands out riddles: rings that burst on whoever carries them. Take yours away from the others.
IV
Drops obelisks, sends blades of sand down lanes (stand in a gap), slams a giant hand, and calls a storm there's no hiding from.
The bosses drop no experience and no gold. Each one gives a case to everyone who helped bring it down: the Scarab, Leviathan, Sphinx and Djinn Case. A case takes its grade from your level on the day you earn it, it's bound to you, and the Arena Keeper opens it for you: one case, one prize.
The rarest prizes are framed in gold, and the whole server hears when one drops. Cases are earned, never sold.
06 Dustos · Monday and Friday, 20:00 CET
A clan is a tag by your name, a shared bank, and a reason to log in on an evening you weren't planning to.
Every kill pays each clanmate standing within 48 blocks of it: 97% each with two of you, easing down to 70% each once ten of you crowd round the same mob. You can found a clan from level 10 for 5,000 gold, and it holds up to twenty players. A clan is also what gets you into the daily dungeons, which are still a prototype.
Back on SweMine, every clan on the server piled into one arena for the clan war, sometimes hundreds of players at a time. It was massive, and it's coming back. Twice a week the gates of Dustos open and the oath is suspended for an hour: clan against clan, all fighting for the last hit on a King who gets tougher the more players are online.
He doesn't just stand there, either. The King fights back in three phases, with slams and sweeps you can see coming, shards falling from above and his royal guards at his side.
The clan that lands it takes the crown. A tenth of the gold everyone earns in the zones piles up in the crown's holdings, along with a cut of every auction-house sale, and the crown holds the only key to the Abyss. It's back on the line at every Oathbreak, and if the King outlasts the hour, the crown lies vacant.
07 Dustos · behind the Warden's door
Hold the crown and your clan gets the key. Behind the door is a run of dark floors, one under the other, and the monsters on them never stop coming.
Clear enough of a floor and the Warden takes you deeper. The loot gets better the deeper you go: the first five floors drop Mid grade, the next five High, and from the eleventh floor down it's Legendary only.
Every fifth floor holds a boss instead of a pack, and it closes out its grade. The boss on floor 5 drops Mid, the one on floor 10 drops High, and from floor 15 on, every boss drops Legendary.
Walk out, or die, and you start again from the top. It's supposed to be punishing. That's what makes the depths worth it.
I'm rebuilding its floors right now, so the Abyss stays shut until the new ones are done. It's coming, and I'll say so on the Discord the day it opens.
October 2026 built lately
A few things from this week that you'd notice in the first five minutes. All of it works in the build I'm testing now, and I've said where something is still on the list.
Interface
Every menu, panel and portrait is redrawn at up to four times the old resolution, each screen in its own material: stone, wood, parchment. The anvil is a forge hearth now.
Monsters
Every monster carries its name, level and a health bar, and the one you hit last keeps its bar at any distance. Bosses get the big bar at the top of the screen too.
Monsters
No more cheesing. Stand on a pillar and the mob gives up, heals and walks home, and bosses can't be shoved into holes any more.
Classes
The Archer's Quick Shot and the Mage's Fireball cost no mana now, because running dry on your basic attack felt bad. The abilities on keys 1 to 4 keep their costs.
Still on the list
Mobs that turn on whoever hurts them most, and packs that pull together.
2011 – 2019 where this comes from
When I was a kid, I played a Minecraft server called SweMine every single day after school. It shut down years ago, and nothing has come close since. So I'm building it again.
It was simple, and that's exactly what made it so fun. Two nations, a handful of classes, monsters that dropped gear, an anvil that could destroy it, and a clan war where the whole server fought over a King in a sand arena. Every system fed straight back into the next one, and it kept me logging in day after day.
Oathtale keeps that loop and brings it up to date: every class gets its own armour and its own spells, the monsters are custom models, and it's in English and open to everyone this time. No plots, no jobs, no minigames, and you can't place a block. On paper, that sounds thin. It wasn't.
Pets, damage-number fonts, level-up and kill effects, skill colours, profile frames, a star by your name, and boosts that one person buys for everyone online.
I can't stand pay-to-win, so here's the line: nothing in the store makes you stronger than the player standing next to you. No hats either, ever: the helmet someone earned is how you size them up before a fight. The store opens after launch, and if it ever stops covering the bills, I'll say so right here rather than quietly start selling power.
Never for sale
08 how to join
Closed beta: Join Discord for access
I can't wait to see you out there 🙂
