Settings Reference

These are the server settings we changed away from stock Shadowbane, with the values running on the live shard as of 24 August 2026. Anything not listed here is at its stock value. A few rows show a live value identical to stock; they are here because they are the ones players most often assume we changed. The numbers below are the live shard's — the development shard can differ, though as of this date the two configurations match on every gameplay setting and differ only in addresses and passwords.

A dash in a Stock column means we have no stock value on file for that setting.

Rates and pacing

Setting	Live value	Stock	What it does
MB_NORMAL_EXP_RATE	1.0	1.0	Experience per kill outside the hotzone
MB_NORMAL_GOLD_RATE	1.0	1.0	Gold per kill outside the hotzone
MB_NORMAL_DROP_RATE	1.0	1.0	Item drop chance outside the hotzone
MB_HOTZONE_EXP_RATE	2.0	2.0	Experience multiplier inside the hotzone
MB_HOTZONE_GOLD_RATE	2.0	2.0	Multiplier on the gold amount in the hotzone, not on the chance
MB_HOTZONE_DROP_RATE	2.0	2.0	Drop-chance multiplier inside the hotzone
MB_HOTZONE_DURATION	2	—	Hours the hotzone stays in one zone before moving
MB_HOTZONE_MIN_LEVEL	10	—	Lowest zone level that can be picked as the hotzone
MB_RESPAWN_RATE	0.25	1.0	Monster respawn timers as a fraction of their database value, so four times faster
MB_PRODUCTION_RATE	0.5	—	Forge and vendor crafting timers, at half length

Respawn timers never drop below three seconds, however low the rate goes.

Cities and building

Setting	Live value	Stock	What it does
MB_BUILD_COST_RATE	0.05	1.0	Gold cost of deeds, contracts, walls and rank-ups, at 5% of stock
MB_BUILD_RESOURCE_RATE	0.05	1.0	Stone, lumber, galvor and wormwood costs, at 5% of stock
MB_RANKTIME_RATE	0.01	1.0	Construction and rank-up times, at 1% of stock
MB_HIRELING_RANKTIME_RATE	0.01	1.0	Hireling rank-up times, at 1% of stock
MB_GUILD_MAX_CITIES	3	1	Trees of Life one guild may have planted at once
MB_MINE_ALWAYS_OPEN	true	false	Every mine opens every hour instead of in the nation's chosen window
MB_WORLD_MAINTENANCE	false	—	Turns all upkeep charging off: no building or hireling maintenance is ever taken
MB_MAINT_RATE	0.05	1.0	Scales the upkeep figures the asset window displays to 5% of stock; with the switch above off, none of it is charged from anyone

Nothing scales to nothing: one gold and one resource are the floor on any cost, and build timers stop at ten seconds.

Trainers and vendors

Setting	Live value	Stock	What it does
MB_TRAINER_MIN_RANK	7	1	Floor under every trainer's rank, so any trainer teaches its skills to 215%
MB_TRAINER_SELL_PERCENT	-0.5	1	Price adjustment on every NPC: training costs a quarter of stock, ordinary vendor goods half

Only skill and power training take the full discount — deeds, hireling contracts and stock vendor goods stop at half of stock price, and selling to an NPC is unchanged. Intelligence still limits how many times you can train a skill, so 215% is not reachable on everything.

Sim adventurers

None of these exist in stock Shadowbane, so there is no stock column.

Setting	Live value	What it does
MB_SIM_POPULATION	200	How many sims have a body in the world at once; 0 turns the feature off
MB_SIM_ROSTER_SIZE	600	How many persistent sim identities exist in the database
MB_SIM_LEVEL_BAND	20-65	The level range sims occupy
MB_SIM_REROLL_LEVEL_BAND	20-20	The level a freshly minted or rerolled identity starts at
MB_SIM_LEVEL_CAP	65	The highest level any sim can reach
MB_SIM_MAX_LEVEL_SLOTS	12	How many ordinary sims may sit at the cap; the next to reach it retires instead
MB_SIM_ELDER_COUNT	4	Permanent named veterans held at the cap on top of those slots
MB_SIM_XP_RATE	0.85	Master speed dial on how fast sims level; tuned to about five levels a day
MB_SIM_KILLS_PER_MIN	1.2	Assumed kill cadence, used only to roll loot for sims nobody is watching; levels come from real kills
MB_SIM_ACTIVE_RANGE	600	How close a player must be, in units, before a sim fights instead of idling
MB_SIM_PARTY_CHANCE	25	Percent chance an idle sim looks for a farming party; healers seek one three times as often
MB_SIM_LOOT_ENABLED	true	Master switch for sims picking up loot
MB_SIM_BAG_SIZE	8	Most items a sim can carry; at the cap the least valuable is junked
MB_SIM_GOLD_CAP	25000	Most gold a sim can be carrying, so a veteran corpse is not a jackpot
MB_SIM_LOOT_PLAYER_GUARD	150	A sim never claims a kill with a player this close, in units
MB_SIM_OFFLINE_LOOT_RATE	0.25	Multiplier on the loot an unobserved sim is credited with
MB_SIM_GEAR_DROP_CHANCE	35	Percent chance each equipped piece drops when a player kills the sim
MB_SIM_GEAR_REFRESH	reload	How a sim's gear change is shown to clients

A sim's shift and addiction are not settings — they are rolled per identity and stored on the roster row. See when they are online.

Camp clustering is deliberately not configurable: the 175-unit cluster radius, the three-member minimum and the 6,000-unit travel budget are fixed in code.

Mercenary contracts

Mercenaries have no rate settings. A contract's drop chance lives in the loot tables — a 1% slot on the nine regional treasure tables, 2% on their hotzone twins — and a contract's rank comes from the level of the monster that dropped it. The one mercenary setting is an environment switch that is not present in the configuration file, so it runs at its default.

Setting	Live value	What it does
MB_MERC_CLIENT_MASQUERADE	not set, so on	Sends merc contracts to the client disguised as the stock Sage contract, which is what makes them visible in your bag

Named spawns and world events

Setting	Live value	What it does
MB_NAMED_LOTTERY_ENABLED	true	Master switch for the named-monster lottery
MB_NAMED_ANNOUNCE	true	Announces a named monster to the whole server when it appears
MB_NAMED_CHANCE_SCALE	1.0	Global multiplier on every camp's named-spawn chance
MB_WORLDEVENT_ENABLED	true	Master switch for world events
MB_WORLDEVENT_INTERVAL_MINUTES	180	Minutes between events
MB_WORLDEVENT_WARN_SECONDS	120	Seconds of warning broadcast before an event starts
MB_WORLDEVENT_DURATION_MINUTES	45	How long an event runs before it clears itself up
MB_WORLDEVENT_MAX_MOBS	40	Hard cap on event monsters alive at once

Server and account

Setting	Live value	What it does
MB_AI_AGGRO_RANGE	1.0	Multiplier on monster aggro range; 1.0 is stock, so the range is the stock 60 units
MB_AI_CAST_FREQUENCY	1.0	Multiplier on the delay between monster spell casts; 1.0 is stock
MB_USE_RUINS	false	Ruin-zone spawn behaviour is switched off
MB_LOGIN_AUTOREG	TRUE	Accounts are created on first login; there is no separate registration step
MB_LOGIN_FNAME_REGEX	^[A-Za-z]+$	Character first names must be letters only, with no digits, spaces or punctuation
MB_WORLD_KEYCLONE_MAX	4	More than four machines on one account trips the audit and disables it, without warning
MB_WORLD_ACCESS_LVL	ACTIVE	The shard is open to ordinary accounts
MB_WORLD_NAME	MagicBox	Internal world name; the shard itself is branded Shadowbane Plus
MB_WORLD_GREETING	Welcome to Shadowbane Plus	The greeting shown when you log in
MB_MAJOR_VER / MB_MINOR_VER	1.2.26.0 / 5.26.0	The client version the shard accepts

What the numbers mean in play

This page is the raw list. What these settings actually do to your evening is explained on the topic pages: rates and progression for experience, gold, drops, hotzones and trainers; cities and building for costs, timers and the three-city limit; sim adventurers for the AI population; and mercenary contracts for hireable companions.