ShadowAuction

Most auction plugins work like a store. A player lists a sword, another player buys it, and the two of them never meet. It works, and it is about as exciting as a spreadsheet. Meanwhile the thing your server actually lacks is a reason for forty people to be in the same place at nine o'clock on a Friday.

ShadowAuction is that reason. At the hour you set, the doors open. The people who make it in are teleported into a room and hidden from one another. Then the lots come out, one at a time, and the room bids on them while a clock runs down.

What your players will actually do with it

• Drop everything at nine because the good lot only comes out once
• Bid against someone they cannot see — the room is anonymous until the hammer falls
• Blow a month of savings on the one item they have been hunting for
• Sit through the cheap lots waiting for the one at the end of the night
• Argue in chat about who the head on the last rung belonged to
• Show up to the VIP room they just bought a rank for

Nothing here is a listing. There is no "buy it now", no browsing, no coming back later. It happens or it doesn't.

The bidding is the event, not a text box
This is the part that makes or breaks a live auction. Asking a player to type a number into chat kills the room dead — everyone goes quiet, everyone does arithmetic, and the moment is gone.

Nobody types anything here. A ladder of prices is already laid across the menu, and clicking a slot is the bid.

• The steps start small and grow, so a fight at 100k moves in thousands and a fight at 4 million doesn't
• Jump ahead as many rungs as you like — raising hard is one click, and everyone sees you do it
• Every rung that was taken keeps the head of whoever took it, so the grid is the history of the round
• Rungs that got jumped over are marked as passed, because they were
• The clock counts down in the stack itself: ten seconds left is ten clocks, then nine, then eight
• Every bid puts the full time back, so a real fight stretches and a dead lot ends fast
• Run out of rungs and the ladder simply continues — there is no ceiling on a bidding war

Features

The room

• Stand where you want the stage, the arrival point and the exit, and run three commands — no coordinates to type
• Guests are hidden from each other the moment the doors shut, so a packed room never blocks the view
• Wander too far from the stage and you are out of the auction, not watching it from a hill
• The lot floats and turns inside a glass case you can swap for any block
• Right-click the case to reopen the bidding menu, for anyone who closed it by accident

Rooms by rank

• Run as many rooms as you like, each with its own guest list, its own guest limit and its own entry fee
• Each room keeps its own hours — the public one every two hours, the VIP one at nine on the dot
• Lots can be tied to a room, so the good stuff only ever appears where you want it
• Players who don't name a room land in the best one they have permission for
• Optionally require an empty inventory to walk in

The lots

• Build them in game — create, price, weight and delete without opening a file
• A lot hands over real items, runs console commands, or both
• Weight decides how often one shows up; set it to zero to bench a lot without deleting it
• Order the night by hype, so it builds to the piece everyone came for
• The display can be the reward itself, any item you are carrying, or one you describe

Rules that keep it an event

• Set a minimum balance to get in, so the room is people who can actually bid
• Optional re-entry cooldown — everyone who attended, or only whoever won something
• Cancel the auction automatically if too few people turn up
• Stop the top bidder from bidding against themselves
• If the winner cannot pay when the hammer falls, the next real bid takes it — or the round runs again, your call

Nobody loses what they won

• Prizes wait in a claim menu instead of being forced into a full inventory
• They survive a restart, a crash and a logout

Every single word is translatable

• English and Brazilian Portuguese included
• Chat, menus, item names and the hologram over the stage — all of it, not just the chat
• A half-finished translation falls back to English instead of showing your players raw keys
• Your language files are never overwritten by a plugin update

Updates that don't cost you an evening

• New settings appear in your config on their own, with the explanation next to them
• Your values are never touched, and a setting a new version stopped using is reported, not deleted

Commands

Command
/shadowauction join [room]	Walk into the auction
/shadowauction leave	Step back out
/shadowauction claim	Collect what you won
/shadowauction editor	Build and edit lots in game
/shadowauction setstage <room>	Put the stage where you are standing
/shadowauction setspawn <room>	Set where guests arrive
/shadowauction setexit <room>	Set where they are sent afterwards
/shadowauction rooms	What is configured, and what is missing
/shadowauction lots	Every lot and what it hands over
/shadowauction start [room]	Open one now, without waiting
/shadowauction stop	End it
/shadowauction skip	Hurry the current stage along
/shadowauction award <player> <lot>	Give someone a prize to claim
/shadowauction resetcooldown <player>	Let someone back in early
/shadowauction reload	Re-read config and language files

Aliases: /shadowauctions, /sauction.


Requirements
Java 21 or newer, Paper 1.21 or any version up to 26.x, and Vault with an economy plugin behind it:

• Works: Paper, Purpur, Pufferfish, Leaf, and other Paper forks
• Does not work: Spigot, CraftBukkit
• Economy: EssentialsX, CMI, or anything else that registers with Vault

One jar covers the whole range — there is no separate build per Minecraft version. Folia is not supported.