So, you’ve just joined CityRP and found yourself stranded in an airport with zero clue what to do.
That’s completely normal—nobody does at first. Naturally, your instinct will be to talk to every NPC in sight while aggressively spamming the SPACE BAR without reading a single word.
Once that’s done, you’ll probably spend the next twenty minutes wandering in circles because — having skipped all the quest text — you missed the crucial detail about clicking the signs behind the NPC to teleport to the university and get a job. (Don't worry, I did the exact same thing.)
Welcome to CityRP!
Here’s what you actually need to know before diving deeper into the chaos:
- Crime doesn't pay (if you don't know the right people): Avoid killing or robbing anyone outside the Mines. The math just doesn't work: murder nets you a $300 fine plus a cozy jail cell, while the maximum payout for a robbery is a pitiful $200.
- Public transit is your best friend: Public transportation is 100% free. Use it to go everywhere, and don't waste your precious starting cash on a car.
- Hold off on real estate: Take your time and plan your strategy before rushing into renting a home, apartment, or shop space.
- Starving? Just respawn: Don't waste money buying food early on. Simply jump off the nearest tall building. You’ll respawn with 4 free food bars every time.
- Vote every day: Do the /vote daily, grab your keys, and sell them to the co-op shop for $80 each. Opening crates isn't worth it unless you enjoy collecting glorified junk prizes.
Preparing your character
What do you want to achieve in CityRP? Do you want to live an honest life? Make a fortune as fast as possible? Become a criminal mastermind, a government employee, or an independent contractor?
My personal opinion? It genuinely doesn't matter, because you’re going to end up in the exact same boat as the rest of us anyway.
First, you’ll get a job at the university and grind for a bit. You’ll proudly set up your very own shop, which will sit completely ignored and sell absolutely nothing because the server's economy is tiny and aggressively deflating. To salvage your finances, you’ll secure a government job just so you can jump around spawn every 20 minutes to collect your $15–$25 passive salary.
Once that government check is locked in, you’ll pick up two trades like farming custom crops, fishing, chopping trees, or mining ores — just to have something to do so you don't lose your mind while hopping around spawn. Deep down, you know these items won't sell
(you already have four chest-shops overflowing with them at home), but you’ll still run around the Azalea Isles frantically searching for a player shop that isn't full and actually has enough company balance left to buy your hard-earned materials.
This will be your primary gameplay loop for a while:
- Log in.
- Grind raw materials.
- Run around Azalea praying for a place to dump-sell them.
When you inevitably fail to find a single shop buying, you’ll slide into the DMs of a veteran player, begging them to take your stock. They will hit you with a reply like:
"I'll buy your items for $0.01 a stack." because they have 0 use for any more items.
You’ll feel completely robbed, but you’ll sell it anyway because you literally have no other way to make money besides the daily /vote. And that is the exact moment you abandon your honest career and start robbing or suing people, which, at the time of writing this guide, are unironically the two most lucrative jobs on the server.
Now that we’ve properly calibrated your expectations, let’s move on to the rest of the guide. 
# GETTING A JOB
In CityRP, you can hold 1 trade and 2 professions. To actually land a job, you’ll need to make a pilgrimage to the University Center.
Here is how to get there without getting lost:
- Run the /spawn command, turn around, and walk toward the Courthouse to find the bus stop. The Courthouse is the massive, wood-colored building shown below.
- Hop inside the bus, click the sign, and select RESIDENTIAL LINE -> UNIVERSITY CENTER.
- As soon as you arrive, you’ll spot an entrance to your left. Follow the path into the main university building.
- On the left wall, right across from the Help Desk NPC, walk through the doorway.
- You’ll see a colorful wall covered in signs for various careers. Click the sign of the job or profession you want, and you'll be teleported straight to the exam/selection room.
Note: Read the requirements carefully before jumping in—some jobs require a written exam, some hand you the role instantly with no test, and others require you to submit an application on Discord or
the server forums.
- Available Trades: Brewer, Chef, Farmer, Fisherman, Forester, Industrialist, Miner.
- Available Professions: Artist, Carpenter, Constructor, Doctor, Gunsmith, Hunter, Journalist, Lawyer.
- (Full breakdown available at: https://cityrp.wiki.gg/wiki/Category:Jobs_&_Professions#Jobs)
So, which one should you choose? Honestly? It doesn't matter in the slightest. Just pick whatever sounds fun and brings you joy because, let’s be real, you’re going to spend 90% of your playtime jumping around spawn or doing something completely unrelated anyway.
# GETTING AN APARTMENT OR SHOP PLACE
Pro-tip: If you plan on running a business, skip renting an apartment entirely. Just rent a shop space and live in it.
Dump your barrels, chests, furnaces, anvils, and enchanting tables directly inside your storefront. Everything you need for daily gameplay fits in your shop—and since your character doesn't actually need to sleep, paying double rent for a "home" is a total waste of money.
Embrace the shop-hobo lifestyle. If you aren't opening a store and just want a roof over your head, rent from the government instead. They offer surprisingly large apartments for A$50/month in plots b110–b111 (a giant apartment complex).
How to find and rent an apartment:
- Type /gps b111 in chat and walk to the building.
- Step inside the elevator area onto the two white iron blocks on the floor.
* Jump while standing on the blocks to go up a floor.
* Shift (Sneak) while standing on the blocks to go down a floor.
- Hunt around for an apartment with a GREEN sign at the door; this means it's available.
- Type /rlt rent to secure the property. If you ever want to leave, type /rlt unrent to move out and get refunded for your remaining rental time.
Note: If your new place was previously inhabited and the old owner left behind locked chests or barrels, type /ticket to call an Admin or Helper to come delete them for you.
# START MAKING MONEY
You’ve probably already lost interest in reading this guide thanks to your Gen Z attention span. I get it. You just want to start making ACTUAL money so you can buy a plot of land or a cool car. So, how do you do it?
The standard first step is copy-pasting this exact command in-game:
Code:
/g How do I make money on this server?
...and then watching the answers roll in. As a veteran player, I
can already tell you what they’re going to say:
"Just get a job or profession and grind products to sell to shops!" or: "
Ask around on Discord to see if anyone is hiring."
Both of these answers are practically useless. Just empty advice older players regurgitate to newbies. If you push a little deeper and ask which shops are actually buying, or which corporations hire more than two players in-game, you’ll be met with dead silence. The truth? Nobody actually knows where to sell things or which corporations are actively hiring.
At best, they’ll rattle off the standard list of plots and companies
- b054 (Horticulture)
- b007
- b011
- Co-Op
- b081
- b003
- AmethystCo
- WholeFoods
- EmeraldHUB
- UserMart
You’ll listen, travel to all these places, and immediately notice the exact same problem: their chest-shops are either completely full, or their corporate bank balance is sitting at a crisp $0.
(Pro-tip: You can save yourself a walk by checking a company’s balance beforehand in the #commands Discord channel using /info <firmName>.)
So, if the economy is broken and nobody's buying, how do you actually make money then?
In no particular order:
1. Camping in the Mines (Pickpocketing & Mugging)
Type /warps and teleport straight to Mine Level 1. Your new job description? Camp in the dark and rob players as they pass by. Because the Mines are a lawless, PvP free-for-all, law enforcement won't touch you, and you won't get charged with murder.
- Mugging: Once you kill a player, you have a tight 5-second window to type /rob. A successful mugging steals between 1% and 2% of the victim's balance (Min: $1, Max: $100).
- Pickpocketing: Shift + Right-Click behind an unsuspecting player to open the pickpocketing menu. Choose your risk level: Green (Low risk/reward), Yellow (Medium risk/reward), or Red (High risk/reward). A successful attempt steals 0.5% to 3% of their balance (Min: $1, Max: $200).
- Cooldowns: Standard base cooldown is 2 minutes for you and 30 minutes for the victim (adjusts slightly depending on your outcome). Read the full crime mechanics on the CityRP Pickpocketing Wiki.
You can pickpocket people by shift + right-clicking behind them and choosing the red (high risk, high rewards), yellow (medium risk, medium rewards) or green (low risk, low rewards) panels. A successful attempt steals between 0.5% and 3% of the victim's balance, with a minimum of $1 and a maximum of $200. The base cooldown is 2 minutes for the thief and 30 minutes for the victim, with longer or shorter cooldowns depending on the outcome. Read more at:
https://cityrp.wiki.gg/wiki/Crime_&_Police#Pickpocketing
2. Bank Robberies (The Bait)
The bank vault can be hit
once every 5 hours. Breaching the vault triggers a server-wide police alert, starts a 60-second robbery window, and completely disables your ability to teleport until the robbery ends. The vault contains 22 gold blocks, paying out a
random $20–$80 per block for a total take of $440–$1,760. My advice? Don't bother. As an actual Money-Making Method (MMM), bank robberies are terrible. The 5-hour cooldown paired with the inevitable massive fines and jail time means you'll usually lose more money than you make. Leave this one for bored end-game players.
3. Spices and Contraband (Drug Dealing)
You can deal server-specific illegal substances like Ice Spice (gives Speed, Haste, and Night Vision for ~5 minutes) or Pluto Stick (gives Jump Boost II, Regeneration, and Slow Falling for ~5 minutes).
The catch? They’re virtually useless. You can get identical stat buffs from standard custom food without suffering any drug downsides. I’ve never seen a single player actually consume them, so don't expect to build a thriving narcotics empire as there is practically no market. If you're curious anyway, you can read the full mechanics on the
https://cityrp.wiki.gg/wiki/Crime_&_Police#Spices_and_Contraband
4. Selling Vote Keys (The Guaranteed Daily Paycheck)
Type /vote daily to collect your 6 free vote keys. Then, march directly over to plot b001 and sell every single key to the Co-Op shop for $80 each ($480 guaranteed cash per day). Do NOT open the loot crates.
The rewards are almost exclusively trash.
The absolute best cash drop you can get is $100 which pays out less than just selling two keys outright. While crates can also drop Cosmetic Coins (CC) to spend in the /nightmarket (which resets every 3 days), the nightmarket rotation is usually full of useless cosmetic clutter anyway.
Take the guaranteed shop cash and run.
5. Government Grants (The One-Time Handout)
You can apply for New Player ($2,000) or New Corporation ($5,000) grants on the server forums. Just remember: these are one-time payments, not a recurring income stream.
A word of warning: Avoid the "First Home" grant like the plague. Plot prices will easily eat up 100% (or more) of the grant money, and you'll then be legally mandated to construct a proper house on the
plot entirely out of your own pocket. As established earlier: stay homeless, rent a cheap government apartment, or embrace the shop-hobo life.
If you still want the free cash, apply on the <link>CityRP Forum Grants Section</link>.
6. Government Tenders (The Oligarchy)
Don't count on completing government tenders as a new player.
The tender market is heavily monopolized by a cartel of three or four veteran players who will ruthlessly outbid you into absolute poverty. They will undercut your bids from a respectable $10,000 all the way down to a pathetic $100. At that rate, you are quite literally wasting real-world electricity running Minecraft for pennies, and you’d genuinely be better off robbing people in the mines or mining Bitcoin.
7. Selling "Mentorship" to Newbies (The Information Broker)
Why bother grinding raw materials or risking a jail sentence when you can sell advice? You can literally copy-paste this entire guide into a document and sell it to clueless new players for $250–$500 in-game cash as "exclusive server mentorship."
To quote Jay-Z on his 4:44 album: "I'm trying to give you a million dollars' worth of game for $9.99."
You are essentially doing the exact same thing. Just message new players when they spawn in, asking if they’d like an experienced mentor to teach them the ropes for a modest fee of $300. I’ve personally made r
oughly $4,600 over the last few weeks using this strategy, which is vastly more money than I’ve ever made
actually playing the game as intended.
And don't worry about taking their starting cash: they'll make it all back in no time using these exact money-making methods or by applying for new player grants.
8. Becoming a Lawyer and Suing People (The Forum-PVP Meta)
This is easily the second-best money-making method on the server. The absolute best part? You don't even have to actually play Minecraft. The strategy is ridiculously simple:
bait people in general chat into saying something silly about you, and then sue them into absolute poverty for damages.
The Setup:
Convince an unsuspecting player in global chat to make a joke about you. As long as they forget to put /jk at the end of their message, the court will treat it as a deadly serious offense.
Example: You ask a newbie to type, "Player [Name] is actually a horse playing Minecraft."
You then immediately file a civil lawsuit claiming this statement was xenophobic, negated your human identity, and caused you such profound emotional distress that you nearly ALT-F4'd in real life.
Demand $10,000 to $25,000 in damages. You won't get the full amount, but you are almost guaranteed to win a settlement.
Outsourcing Your Legal Career to AI:
The Department of Justice (DoJ) prides itself on not using AI, which explains why their rulings rarely make sense, though half of them secretly use it anyway. You should do the exact same thing:
- Grab the official Civil Lawsuit template from the forums.
- Feed it into Gemini, ChatGPT, or Claude along with the relevant server legal acts.
- Have the AI generate the initial filing.
- Whenever the defense replies, paste their response into the AI to generate a crushing legal rebuttal.
You will never have to prove in court that you aren't a horse. Between collecting settlement checks and drawing a passive lawyer salary, you'll print money while spending less than an hour a week actually logged into the game. Welcome to your new life as a forum PvP lawyer.
9. Scamming & Money Laundering (The Judgment-Proof Off-Grid Strategy)
This one is fairly self-explanatory, but executing it properly requires one crucial asset: a dirty, incredibly friendly player-bank owner willing to manage your illicit cash. In real life, you'd call HSBC, but in here, you'd have to make some contacts. If you plan to commit severe financial crimes, a corrupt banker is the single most valuable asset on the server.
Here is how you build your off-grid empire:
- The Money Wash: Go wild. Rob players, mug miners, hit the Azalea bank, and scam everyone in sight. Take your dirty earnings and transfer them directly to your banker's account, masking the transaction as a totally legitimate "ore sale."
- Embrace Eternal Debt: Let your official player account sit in a deep, perpetual negative balance forever.
- The Proxy Shopper: Whenever you need a new gun, ammo, or gear, message your banker. They’ll buy the items using your hidden stash and drop them off directly to you (or leave them in a secret supply chest if you're offline).
- Why it's absolute GOLD: As you scam more people, you’ll naturally be sued by players and fined by police left and right. But because your official account balance is negative and you own zero properties, zero vehicles, and zero registered items, the courts literally cannot take anything from you.
You become completely judgment-proof. The Department of Justice can't squeeze blood from a stone or in this case, seize assets from a player who is technically broke on paper.
10. Mass Bank Fraud (The Ultimate Exit Strategy)
Why take out one loan when you can take out five simultaneously? This is the absolute apex of financial crime on CityRP.
The Blueprint:
- The Loan Blitz: Apply for $10,000 to $25,000+ loans from multiple player-run banks at the exact same time, before any of them realize you're double-dipping.
- The Asset Wash: Immediately convert all that borrowed cash into valuable ores, high-end equipment, or property holdings. Stash the physical items safely inside an Ender Chest, or hand them off to your corrupt banker friend (from Method #10) for safekeeping.
- The Default: Simply never pay back a single cent.
- The Lawsuit Storm: Every bank you scammed will inevitably file massive lawsuits against you to reclaim their money. But as established earlier: you own nothing on paper, your official account is sitting in deep debt, and you are entirely judgment-proof.
The courts can't touch items locked in an Ender Chest or assets held under someone else's name. You just pocketed an easy $100,000+, which is more than enough to buy multiple prime plots of real estate through your banker proxy (
who can then rent them back to you for a tiny fee).
Won't this ruin your server credit score forever? Who cares! When you're sitting on $100k+ in laundered assets, you’ll never need to apply for credit again in your life, you'll just live off the savings account interest that your friendly banker gives you.
# FOOD & HUNGER
Buying food should be your absolute LAST resort after exhausting every single loophole listed below. There are virtually no debuffs or penalties for starving; you just lose the ability to sprint. Once your hunger hits zero, you’ll take damage and die, but we are never going to let it get that far.
So, what do you do when your hunger drops below 4 bars? You suicide. Dying costs exactly $0, and you respawn with 4 fresh bars of food, just enough to sprint around for a bit.
You might be thinking: "
Isn't this questionable, immoral, and completely immersion-breaking?"
To which I ask: "
Do you want to make money on this server or not?" If the answer is yes, you spend as little cash as humanly possible.
Alternative Free-Food Strategies
If you refuse to repeatedly jump off a cliff, here are the only other acceptable ways to manage your hunger:
- Beg for cash in global chat: Ask for small amounts like $50 or $100 under the guise of being a starving new player. Multiple kind players will send you cash, netting you $500–$1,000 in seconds. Keep the cash, suicide anyway, and enjoy your free 4 food bars.
- Beg directly for food: Ask global chat if anyone has spare food. A veteran player will almost certainly dump their surplus inventory on you for free.
- Go hunting: Use /warps to visit the Regenerative Wilds and slaughter cows, pigs, and chickens. Animals constantly respawn, giving you infinite free meat but PETA might have something to say.
- Raid the Horticulture chests (b054): Head over to plot b054. Generous players frequently leave excess food and raw crops in the chests there. Steal it, cook it, and eat for free.
- Lowball desperate chefs: Check the prices at the WholeFoods plot, then ask in global chat if any player chefs are online. Offer to buy their food for significantly less than WholeFoods retail price. Chefs have almost nowhere else to sell their stock, so they will happily accept your insulting lowball offer.
- Buy from WholeFoods (Absolute Last Resort): If you are truly desperate, buy directly from WholeFoods. Just remember: cash sitting in an EmeraldBank savings account generates interest; cash spent on bread generates nothing.
"But what about the food buffs?"
Complete waste of money. Most custom food buffs only last 60 to 120 seconds — meaning the buff literally expires in the time it takes you to walk from /spawn to Horticulture. Worse yet, you lose all active buffs when you die. Why spend hard-earned cash on a 90-second stat boost just to get randomly killed in the mines five seconds later?
# VEHICLES & TRANSPORTAION
Don't. Just... don't.
Unless your TAB-menu ping is sitting at a crisp 5ms, buying a vehicle is a fast track to losing your sanity.
Why owning a car in CityRP is a terrible idea:
- Drunk Simulator Physics: Vehicles are coded off Minecraft minecart mechanics. Attempting to drive in a straight line actually results in continuous zig-zagging that forces you to correct your steering every few seconds like a drunk driver.
- Invisible Barrier Syndrome: The roads are tight, and the hundreds of poles lining the streets have absurd hitboxes. You will crash into invisible walls and barriers constantly.
- Gas Prices: Almost every motorized vehicle requires gasoline once the tank runs dry. Do you have gas money? Can you afford fuel in this economy? Absolutely not. Why waste hard-earned cash feeding a zig-zag machine?
The Only Exception:
If you insist on owning wheels to get around faster, buy a Bicycle. It’s cheap, and it requires zero gasoline because the engine is your own legs.
- Type /vg shop to open the vehicle shop.
- Type /vg to open your garage menu and spawn or despawn your rides in the world.
The Real Solution: Use Free Public Transit
Use the bus lines instead. They are 100% free and can take you practically anywhere you need to go without driving you into bankruptcy or a light pole. Simply step inside the bus, click the sign on the wall to open the destination menu, and select where you want to go. If you ever get confused or lost, just ask an older player in chat for directions.
# STARTING A BUSINESS
If you’ve decided to ignore all my previous advice and start a legitimate business anyway, spatial planning and location are everything.
Before dropping a single dollar on rent, ask yourself:
- How big is the space? Moving 100,000 items back and forth in shulker boxes because your first shop was too small is a special kind of agony.
- How far is it from spawn? If your shop is more than a short stroll from spawn, your foot traffic will drop to a solid 0%. Players are lazy and will not walk to a shop if they don't already know the prices.
(Note: You can also rent empty plots directly from land owners to build your own custom storefront, but weigh the construction costs carefully before committing.)
Golden Rules of Corporate Ownership
- NEVER let players sell items to you: Set your shops so players can ONLY BUY from you. If you make the mistake of enabling player-sells, desperate hoarders will drain your entire corporate bank balance in five seconds by dump-selling their useless junk into your inventory.
- Avoid trademark infringement: Make sure your corporate name isn't identical or suspiciously similar to an existing company. Remember: forum-pvp lawyers are actively praying for you to make a mistake so they can sue you into bankruptcy.
- Don't build an IKEA maze: Keep your layout clean and easy to navigate. If players can't find what they need in five seconds, they will leave. (Look at the Co-Op shop — awkwardly split across two plots and two separate buildings — as a prime example of what not to do.)
- Spam the Dashboard search: Sell as many unique item types as possible. The more variety you stock, the more frequently your company shows up in the Dashboard's find search feature. Even if you run a dedicated mining corporation, sell a few stacks of wood and food on the side just to hijack search results.
- Evade the corporate tax (The $6,000 Cap): Corporate balances over $6,000 are subject to tax. Never keep more than $6,000 sitting in your firm's balance and immediately transfer any excess cash directly to your banker friend from Method #10.
Essential Business Commands
- /c create <firm name> — Formally register your corporation.
- /c createchestshop <firm name> — Create a new chest/barrel shop for your company.
- /c editchestshop — Modify prices and settings on an existing shop.
Should You IPO (Go Public)?
Absolutely not.
Going public forces you to file mountains of administrative paperwork, submit constant financial reports, and worst of all—interact directly with the Azalea Government. Why sell shares of your company to random players for pocket change when you can make ten times as much money following the criminal exploits in this guide? Keep your company private and keep all the profits for yourself.
<CONTINUE BELOW>
