Wiki / Contract scrolls

Contract scrolls

A contract board (a lectern near spawn, with a floating label on Java that explains the walk, the pay, the beam, the penalty and how many scrolls are left today) hands out sealed scrolls. Every scroll has another player's name on it. You carry it to them and get paid for the trip. They open it, find a task inside, sign it, do the task, collect the reward — and a new sealed scroll for someone else lands in their hand. One contract becomes the next courier's job, so the scrolls keep moving around the server as long as people finish them.

Nobody has to play. Declining a contract costs nothing and no scroll ever takes anything from you. The one thing the board minds is a courier who takes a sealed scroll and throws it away — that closes the board to them for a while (see strikes).

On this page

• Quick start
• The four faces of a scroll
• Carrying a scroll — who it is addressed to, the trip, handing over, lost and dropped scrolls, strikes and standing
• Courier pay
• Receiving a contract — how tasks are counted, handing in
• Seal colours and what decides them
• Every contract
• Rewards in detail
• Timers and limits at a glance
• Questions
• Commands

Quick start

1. Right-click the board. A sealed scroll appears in your hand. Hover it: who it is for, the meeting spot, your pay, time left.
2. Walk, ride, sail, glide or take a portal there. Your compass points at the spot and a bar above your hotbar shows distance and direction. Teleport commands are refused while you carry it.
3. Within 16 blocks of the spot, right-click the player. You are paid. They get the open scroll.
4. Nobody there? Right-click the ground instead. You are still paid; they collect it later with /contracts collect.
5. Got a contract yourself? Right-click to sign, do the task, right-click when it says Done!. Reward, then the next sealed scroll to carry.
6. Stuck? /contracts help.

The four faces of a scroll

A scroll is one item that changes as it moves. Its name, icon and hover text tell you what state it is in and what a right-click will do.

Scrolls do not stack, cannot be put in item frames or pushed by hoppers, and go to your death chest like everything else if you die. The icons come from the server resource pack; if a scroll looks like plain paper, rejoin once.

Carrying a scroll

Picking one up

• Right-click the board with an empty hand or anything that is not a scroll.
• One sealed scroll at a time. If you already carry one, the board tells you where to take it first.
• The board hands out 15 fresh scrolls a day server-wide. Scrolls that are declined, expire unsigned or get dropped return to that pool. Scrolls that come from finishing a contract do not count against it. When it is empty the board says "No scrolls left on the board today" — the pool refills at midnight UK time.
• The meeting spot is where the addressee is standing at the moment you pick up, written as x, z — any height counts, so a cave and the ground above it are the same spot. It never moves, even if they do. If they are standing inside a claim, the spot is the nearest unclaimed chunk instead, so you are not sent into a base with no entrance. They are told a courier is coming and by when.
• Within about 6 chunks of the spot, you and the recipient see a tall pulsing column of end-rod particles. Nobody else does.
• Coordinates go to the two of you only, never to public chat.

Who the scroll is addressed to

The board chooses the addressee when you pick up. Someone can be chosen only if they:

• have been online for at least 20 minutes this session (counted from their login, so a restart resets it);
• are not you;
• are in Survival or Adventure, not Creative or Spectator (a short staff allowlist is exempt from the mode rule), and not vanished staff;
• have not already received two deliveries from you today.

Among everyone who qualifies, the board prefers, in order: players in your world within 1,500 blocks, then anyone else in your world, then players in other dimensions. It does not pick the furthest player. Inside each of those groups it picks whoever has accepted the fewest deliveries today — a scroll already on its way to them counts — and only then people you have never delivered to. Ties are broken at random. So five people at the board share the scrolls instead of one name coming up every time, and you still meet new people before you meet the same ones again.

The tier of the contract inside is rolled for the addressee's playtime, not yours — see seal colours. The task stays hidden until the scroll is opened.

The trip

• Compass and direction bar. Your compass points at the meeting spot. Every two seconds the bar above your hotbar updates: ➜ 340 blocks north-east · Mia · 1 h 20 min. If the spot is in another dimension it says Go to the Nether first until you are there.
• Time to deliver: 2 hours, plus 1 hour for every 2,000 blocks of trip. A 4,500-block trip gets 4 hours. Expired scrolls vanish from your inventory and go back to the board; nothing else happens.
• Refused while carrying: /tpa, /tpahere, /tpaccept, /tp, /home, /warp, /spawn, /back, /rtp, /market, /plot tp, /inspect, /vault, /team vault, /enderchest and their Essentials aliases. This applies to anyone holding the sealed scroll, not only the courier. While you are delivering it, the sealed scroll has to stay in your inventory. You can drop it and pick it back up. Nobody else can, and it cannot be put in a chest, bundle, ender chest or team vault. Any command or plugin teleport that would move you more than 64 blocks is cancelled too, with a message. That includes accepting someone else's request, since /tpaccept is on the list.
• Always allowed: walking, sprinting, boats, horses, minecarts, nether and end portals, ender pearls, chorus fruit, gliding. Nether roof travel is fine.
• Arrival. Within 16 blocks of the spot the bar switches to You're here! Right-click Mia (or Mia isn't here. Right-click the ground to leave it), with a chime and a short title the first time you arrive.

Handing over

• Both you and the receiver must be within 16 blocks horizontally of the meeting spot, at any height. The receiver must not be in Creative or Spectator.
• Right-click them. You are paid at once (levels and Chronicle XP, see courier pay), the scroll opens and moves to their inventory (it drops at their feet if they are full), and you both hear a sound. Your compass resets.
• They aren't there. Right-click the ground at the spot to leave the scroll. You are paid in full — the same as a hand-over. The receiver is told where it is and has 24 hours to stand within 16 blocks of the spot and run /contracts collect. If they never do, the scroll returns to the board.
• They logged off for good. Once a sealed scroll is 30 minutes old, any qualifying player standing at the meeting spot may receive it, not only the addressee. A delivery never dies because one person went to bed. Until then, right-clicking someone else says who the scroll is for.
• You cannot hand a scroll to yourself.

Lost and dropped scrolls

• A sealed scroll that is out of your inventory for 10 minutes — in a chest, on the ground, in a death chest — goes back to the board, unpaid. The 10 minutes only tick while you are online. Doing this on purpose counts as throwing the scroll away.
• A sealed scroll that burns, melts in lava, dies on a cactus, is blown up or despawns on the ground goes back to the board the moment it is destroyed. That also counts as throwing it away.
• If you die, the scroll is in your death chest with everything else. Fetch it inside the 10 minutes and carry on. A scroll lost because you died — you fell in lava with it, or never got back to the chest — is not held against you.
• The delivery timer keeps running whether you are online or not. Running out of time while still carrying the scroll is not a strike either; you just lose the pay.
• A scroll that was handed in, declined or expired turns into Old Scroll the next time someone right-clicks it. Copies are worthless: the first hand-in of a scroll wins.

Strikes and standing

When you take a sealed scroll, the person written on it is told a courier is coming. If you then bin the scroll, they waited for nothing and one of the day's scrolls was tied up for ten minutes. So the board keeps count.

• What counts. Only sealed scrolls you picked up or were handed to carry. Leaving one out of your inventory for the 10 minutes, or letting it get destroyed or despawn, is one strike. Open contracts you receive are yours to decline freely; declining is never a strike.
• What does not count. Dying with the scroll, however it ends up lost afterwards. The scroll running out of time while you still carry it. Handing over, leaving it at the meeting spot, or anyone else picking it up after 30 minutes.
• What a strike does. The board refuses you a new sealed scroll for a while: 3 hours for the first strike, then 6, 12, 24 and 48 hours for each one after (48 repeats). If you strike again while already locked out, the new time is added to the end. Everything else still works: scrolls that arrive when you finish a contract, signing and handing in contracts, /contracts collect.
• Forgiveness. Every 7 days without a new strike removes one. Three strikes and good behaviour means a clean slate in three weeks.
• Standing. /contracts shows your standing — Trusted (no strikes), Good (1), Shaky (2), Unreliable (3 or more) — how many strikes you have, how long the board is closed if it is, and what the next strike would cost. It is private: nothing is announced and there is no list.
• Got a strike you think is wrong? Ask staff. Every strike is logged with the scroll and the time, and staff can clear it.

Courier pay

Pay is fixed when the scroll is sealed, from the straight-line distance between you (at the board, or wherever you just finished a contract) and the addressee at that moment. It is written on the scroll, so you know what the trip is worth before you set off.

Chronicle XP is the community XP on the scoreboard. Levels are vanilla experience levels. Three things reduce pay:

• Same person twice in a day: the second delivery to the same player pays half; a third pays nothing (and the board will not address a scroll from you to them any more that day).
• 10 paid deliveries a day. After that you can still carry and deliver — the scroll still reaches its owner and still counts on your record — it just pays nothing until tomorrow.
• Dropped or expired scrolls pay nothing.

Leaving a scroll at the spot pays exactly the same as handing it over. There is no bonus for finding the person.

Receiving a contract

1. A courier hands you a scroll, or you /contracts collect one left for you. It arrives open. Hover it: the task, the exact reward, who carried it, and how long you have to decide.
2. Sign by right-clicking it. Your task timer starts now (see seal colours for how long). Decline by right-clicking the board with it: it goes back into the pool for someone else and nothing is held against you. An open scroll you neither sign nor decline disappears after 24 hours.
3. You can hold 3 signed contracts at once. A fourth open scroll waits until you finish or decline one.
4. Only the person named on it can sign or hand in a contract. Someone else holding it is told whose it is.
5. Do the task. The scroll's name counts up (Contract: Bone Collector (7/15)) and a progress bar shows above your hotbar as you go. When the count is reached the scroll says Done! and chimes.

How tasks are counted

Progress is recorded on the scroll, not in your pockets: a signed scroll keeps counting even if it is in a chest or your death chest. If you hold two signed contracts of the same kind (say two kill contracts that both want skeletons), a kill counts on both. Nothing counts while you are in Creative or Spectator, or vanished.

Handing in

• Right-click the finished scroll anywhere, or right-click the board with it. Both do the same thing.
• You get the contract's item reward plus the tier's base pay (levels and Chronicle XP — table below). Items go into your inventory, or drop at your feet if it is full.
• Easy and Medium play the level-up sound. Hard and Weekly show a title, and every other player online sees a one-line announcement with your name and the contract.
• A new sealed scroll for someone else is put in your hand straight away (it skips the board's daily pool). If nobody qualifies to receive right now, the board keeps it instead and you are told so.
• Each day with at least one completion adds to your streak; seven in a row pays 8 shulker shells on top of the seventh reward. A missed day resets the count to zero and nothing else. Two completions on one day still count as one day.

Seal colours and what decides them

The wax on a sealed scroll tells the courier and the receiver how hard the task inside is, and therefore how well it pays. The task itself is hidden until it is opened.

What decides the colour

The tier is rolled when the courier picks up, against the receiver's total playtime on the server (the same playtime that drives ranks). New players get easy tasks they can actually finish; veterans get the fortress sweeps and warden hunts.

Two more things shape which contract you get:

• No repeats for 7 days. A contract you completed is not offered to you again for a week. First Steps is a one-off: once, ever.
• Empty tiers fold down. If every contract of a tier is on your no-repeat list, that tier's odds are added to the next easier tier that still has something for you. You never get a blank.

Every contract

39 contracts are live. The reward listed is on top of the tier's base pay above. "Book" means an AdvancedEnchantments book of that enchant, given at level I with a 100% success rate; if the custom book cannot be made you get the bracketed fallback instead.

Grey — Easy

Green — Medium

Purple — Hard

Gold — Weekly

The End is not open yet, so End Watcher wants Overworld endermen and the shulker contracts wait for the portal. Sculk and the Warden are in ancient cities.

Rewards in detail

• Base pay is always paid on completion, in addition to the contract's own reward: grey 3 levels / 10 Chronicle XP, green 6 / 20, purple 10 / 40, gold 20 / 100.
• Enchant books are the same custom books you see in /enchants: Simple (Smelting, Experience, Aquatic, Glowing, Decapitation, Ember) on grey seals, Unique (Telepathy, Haste) on green, Ultimate (Trench) on purple and gold, Legendary (Lava Walker) on gold. They arrive as a book at level I, 100% success, 0% destroy — put them on at an anvil. If the book cannot be made, you get the fallback in brackets instead and the message says so.
• Vanilla enchanted books (Looting III on Witch Hunt) are ordinary books.
• Beacons and totems only appear on purple and gold seals, so the Wither fight and raids keep their value.
• Courier pay is separate from all of this and is earned by whoever carried the scroll, not by whoever completes it.
• Streak: 8 shulker shells on every seventh consecutive day with a completion.
• There is no money, no crate and no rank involved. Scroll items themselves have no value and cannot be traded for anything.

Timers and limits at a glance

Questions

The person I'm delivering to keeps moving. Do I chase them? No. The meeting spot is fixed when you pick up and printed on the scroll. Go there. They have to come back to it (or you leave the scroll there for them).

I got to the spot and they are not online. Right-click the ground. You are paid in full; they have 24 hours to collect it. If you would rather hand it to someone, wait until the scroll is 30 minutes old and anyone at the spot can take it.

I don't want this task. Right-click the board with the open scroll. Costs nothing. You will not be offered a contract you decline any less often, but you also won't see one you completed for 7 days.

Someone gave me a scroll with another name on it. Only that person can sign it. Hand it back or wait: an unsigned scroll expires after 24 hours and returns to the board.

Can I lose anything? No items, no levels. Expired and dropped scrolls just disappear. The one cost is a strike if you throw a sealed scroll away: the board is closed to you for 3 hours the first time, longer each time after.

I took a scroll and the trip is too far. What now? Far trips pay the most, and the timer grows with the distance (2 hours plus an hour per 2,000 blocks), so most are doable. If you really cannot make it, keep the scroll in your inventory and it expires on its own without a strike; the person waiting is told the courier did not make it. Dropping, stashing or burning it is a strike.

The board says it won't give me a scroll for 2 hours. You have a strike. Wait it out; it does not extend unless you throw another scroll away. /contracts shows the time left and your standing.

Does the signed scroll have to be in my hand while I do the task? No. It counts from a chest, your ender chest or your death chest. You need it in hand only to hand in.

Can two people do one contract together? Kills and blocks count for whoever lands them, so no — but each of you can hold your own scroll for the same task and both progress.

Why do I only get grey seals? Under 2 hours of playtime every seal is grey; green starts at 2 hours, purple at 24, gold at 100. It is the receiver's playtime that matters, so a veteran carrying to a newcomer will carry a grey seal.

Bedrock? Everything works — the scroll, hover text, compass, direction bar, sounds. Only the floating label above the board is Java-only.

Does it count kills from a spawner farm? Half. Two spawner mobs tick the counter once. Natural mobs count fully.

I finished but didn't get the item. Check the completion message in chat — it lists exactly what was given and drops items at your feet if your inventory was full. If it named a book you don't have, tell staff with the time; the log shows every reward.

Commands

Staff: /architectcontracts status, seed <n> (add scrolls to today's board pool), give <player> <contract>, complete <player>, pardon <player> (clear strikes and the board lock), board set, reload.

Newbie-blog version: architectmc.club/blog/contracts.