Have you ever made a land claim request? Maybe it’s a claim that’s in the way of something you’re building, or maybe it’s just an old eyesore that you want removed. Chances are, if you play on the server long enough, you’ll come across a claim owned by someone else that you have a reason to want.

Our current land claim guidelines aren’t perfectly clear, and leave some unanswered questions. What’s the difference between claims you need to wait two months for, and others you can just put a ticket in and have removed? How long does a player need to be offline before you can request their claim? Can you request any claim on the map, even if you have nothing near it? We wanted to clear up the confusion and standardize the guidelines before Idarun is released.

The Updated Land Claim Request Guidelines

1. Valid Reasons for Requesting a Claim

• a. For any claim that you are requesting, you must have a valid reason for making the request. Some examples of this are:
  
  - i. You own land within 250 blocks of the border of the claim you are requesting.
  
  - ii. You have a connection to the claim, whether it be through helping to build something on the claim, being a member of the claim, or having items stored on the claims.
  
  - iii. The space is within 500 blocks of the border of the spawn region, and you have a plan to improve the land on which the claim sits.
  
• b. This means that requesting an old claim halfway across the map is not allowed without a valid reason. For these claims, you may request the claim from the owner on your own, but an official land claim request cannot be placed on them.
  

2. Standard Land Claim Request Guidelines

• a. Assuming you have a valid reason, you may request a claim once the owner has been offline for at least one month.
  
• b. You must attempt to contact the owner on Discord and ingame, and display proof of this in your land claim request.
  
  - i. If the claim owner is not on Discord, you must attempt to contact them through the forums. If the claim owner is not on Discord or the forums, you may just contact them ingame.
  
  - ii. You do not need to make multiple claim requests for similar claims that are very close.
  
• c. The land claim request should be placed in the land claim request forum thread.
  
• d. Provided you have met these requirements, you must wait two months. If the owner does not deny the request within this time, the claim(s) are transferred to you.
  

3. Expedited Land Claim Request Guidelines

• a. If you have a valid reason for requesting a claim, there are circumstances where you do need to put in a formal land claim request, and will be granted the claim immediately. These circumstances are when one or more of the following is true:
  
  - i. The claim is within 500 blocks of the border of the spawn region, is not fully developed, has not seen significant development in the past six months, the owner has not been online for at least one month, and you have a plan to improve the land.
  
  - ii. The claim is nearly completely undeveloped and the owner has been offline for more than one month.
  
  - iii. The claim has only seen minor development (such as a house and a small farm) and the owner has been offline for at least six months.
  
  - iv. You have a claim nearby that is significantly larger and more developed than the claim you are requesting, and the owner has been offline for at least one year.
  
  - v. The claim owner has been offline for at least two years.
  
• b. If you believe that your request is one of these circumstances, make a ticket at the claim you would like transferred. If staff find that the request qualifies, then the claim will be immediately granted to you. If it does not qualify, the ticket will be closed, and you will be required to go through the standard land claim process.
  
• c. If the owner has been offline for more than one year, and the claim has seen at most only minor development, you may have the claim simply removed and wiped instead of transferred.
  

4. Town Land Claim Requests

• a. All town owners should divide their town claims up through subdivisions. Subdivisions allow for the town members to be able to build solely in their own plots, while the owner is able to build everywhere. This also makes evicting and reassigning plots simple and easy. However, some towns may start with a large amount of small claims owned by different people clustered together, and only later does a large town claim its own. In this case, you may convert all small individually-owned claims that are part of the town without permission from the individual claim owners to do so under the following circumstances:
  
  - i. The claims you are converting are small, and essentially function as subdivisions already.
  
  - ii. Your town has a larger number of developed subdivisions owned by different players than the total number of claims that are being converted.
  
  - iii. The claims are clearly part of the town, and not a small claim that just happens to be nearby. For those types of claims, you need to follow the other (standard or expedited) claim request guidelines.
  
  - iv. You are the clear town owner. If this is in dispute, it is up to the discretion of staff to determine who is the town owner. We will primarily look at the age of the oldest claims and builds, but if this is not conclusive we will look at other evidence on a case-by-case basis.
  
• b. If the claims have been developed, and the owner has been online in the last six months, you must replace the converted claim with a subdivision and trust the original claim owner on the subdivision.
  
• c. This process can only occur once per town.
  

Disclaimer: Staff reserve the right to deny any claim request

Some important updates:

• These guidelines apply to land claim requests. They do not apply to illegal claims being removed, such as safety claims or claims that are too close to one another. Those claims can be removed immediately after simply creating a ticket.
  
• You still have to post the standard requests on a forum thread. This will be a new thread that will be created on the day of launch. However, the places you need to contact the original claim owners have changed somewhat. Now, by default, you need to contact the owners on Discord and ingame. You only need to contact them through the forums if the claim owner is not on Discord. If they are not on Discord or the forums, then it is fine to only contact them ingame. Proof of this contact needs to be displayed in any land claim requests.
  
• You cannot request a random claim that is not near spawn that you have no connection to. Just because “it looks nice” does not mean that you can request it. You can always contact the owner, but beyond that, you need a reason to obtain a claim.
  
• If you are offline for an extended period, and a request is placed on one of your claims, you need to respond if you want to deny it.The minimum time for a claim owner to be offline before you can request their claim is one month, but that does not mean you can invalidate the request by simply logging in. If you want to deny a land claim request, you need to tell BOTH THE PLAYER MAKING THE REQUEST AND STAFF that you are denying the claim.
  
• As for claims near spawn, it is now easier to request them! Claims that are largely unfinished with offline owners will be expedited immediately, provided you have a plan to improve the claim. This essentially means that you can’t simply hoard a bunch of land near spawn, do nothing with it, go offline, and deny anyone requesting the claim. If you own land near spawn you need to do something with it.

Let us know if you have any questions!