Reef Crystals

**Reef Crystals** are Seacraft's primary currency. Reef Crystals are stored as scoreboard values and are moderated through the use of a Reef Crystals data pack.

## Usage

Reef Crystals can be exchanged through the use of various triggers, specified below. One must first specify a "pay target" (whether a player or council), then they can specify the amount of Reef Crystals using the `pay_amount` trigger. Exchanges must therefore be made on good faith as there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that a good/service is received after payment, or whether payment is received after a good/service is provided.

### Triggers

 `/trigger pay_council add <id>` | Set a council as the pay target, where `<id>` is a valid council ID, as follows:
1 - Ocean Isles Council
2 - Mainland Plaza City Council
3 - Crater Council
4 - Council of Berk
5 - Castle Council
6 - Moose Forest Council
 `/trigger withdraw_council_funds add <amount>` | Withdraw Reef Crystals from council balance, specified by `<amount>`.

## History

### Initial introduction

Reef Crystals were originally introduced in an update in the range Seacraft 2.2.3 - 2.2.9, on the 1st of November, 2014. They initially saw little use as it was impossible for ordinary players to exchange Reef Crystals, since they were saved to a scoreboard. The intention was for players to send requests to make shops at a store called *Business Makers*, located at Mainland Plaza. zac5 would then take these requests and implement the appropriate command blocks.

However, the server would soon be victim to a series of memory crashes in mid-November, and so the scoreboard system was considered to unstable to continue the use of Reef Crystals. They were planned to be reintroduced at a later time.

### First re-release

Reef Crystals were reintroduced with Seacraft 2.3. *Business Makers* was discontinued in favour for *Business Co.*, which combined *Business Makers* with *Seacraft Advertising Co.*

Reef Crystals would see some use with the introduction of the Shopping Centre and the resulting Shopping Centre Boom, but again, limitations in the ability to actually exchange Reef Crystals made it difficult for most players.

zac5 also introduced the *Sell Shop*, which provided a way for players in survival to obtain Reef Crystals by collecting an selling various resources. He would eventually set up one of these stores in each L.G.A., usually in a given council's primary residential area.

### Seacraft 3.0

Reef Crystals were discontinued with the release of Seacraft 3.0, since ZacNVR thought the existing system was flawed, and that goods would no longer have any real value since they could be duplicated infinitely by creative-mode players.

At the time, a new currency system was a possible future plan, but this was unconfirmed and no details had been figured out.

### Second re-release

ZacNVR began a poll on the 18th of January, 2023 on the Seacraft Discord server asking whether or not currency should return. Players unanimously voted for the return of Reef Crystals, so ZacNVR soon began work on a data pack to support the currency.

Unlike the old system, ZacNVR wanted the new Reef Crystals to be able to be exchanged by any player.

ZacNVR wanted to preserve Reef Crystals across username changes, and thought it should be done with an update to the Player ID data pack, which became Server Utilities. After the release of this pack, the development of Reef Crystals stalled, as ZacNVR had other priorities to attend to.

ZacNVR wouldn't return to development of the pack until June 2023. He first uploaded a version for testing on the 20th of June, with the intention of resetting all the temporary Reef Crystals when the pack was ready. He released another three test versions before releasing the final version of the pack on the 4th of July.