Emerald Mall
 Emerald Mall
| |
 View of the Emerald Mall from outside | |
| About | |
|---|---|
| Founder |  Ren
|
| Contributors | Ren,  Nofleet
|
| Category | Commercial |
| Underground? | No |
| Fortified? | No |
| Public access? | Yes |
| Public build? | No |
| Size north to south | 250m |
| Size west to east | 250m |
| Transport | |
| Road link? | Yes |
| Nexus link? | Yes |
| Rail link? | Yes |
| Boat link? | Yes |
| Portal? | Yes |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | X=2687 Y=70 Z=19953 |
| Dimension | Overworld |
| Map Link | |
What is the Emerald Mall?
The Emerald Mall is a public shop that allows anyone to both BUY and SELL almost any item in the game, in exchange for diamonds. This allows for everyone to help stock the shop, making the shop much more sustainable and reliable than other shops across the server. This is a shop designed to stand the test of time.
The Emerald Mall build began construction on 3rd September 2021 and is completed on the 3rd January 2022, when the Nexus destination was added.
What does the Emerald Mall sell?
Looking for a list of all the items we sell? Just look at the Freedonian_Bazaar#Emerald_Mall page, where you will find items for sale and their prices. (not always current, but we try)
What do the floors look like?
- Emerald Mall Floors
How do I visit the Emerald Mall?
Nexus
The Emerald Mall benefits from quick access through Lime Nexus 1, which is recommended as the quickest travel method for any new player searching for the mall.
Nether Link
Primary: There is a tunnel connection to the Nether South Ice Highway, if you make a turning at x:0 y:120 z:2500, you will find the Main Emerald Mall Nether Portal at x:350 y:120 z:2500. This road was constructed by Nofleet and finished on 12th December 2021.
Secondary: You can also travel to the Emerald Mall by taking the Nether South Highway and making a turning at Y:52 X:2500. The secondary nether nether portal is at x:352 y:78 z:2500.
Ice Road
You can also take one of the ice roads surrounding the mall. You can join the main Ice Road at Dragon River Peak City by travelling to the Ice Path. You can choose to travel in a boat on the ice for a fast travel experience!
Anyone is welcome to extend the roads further, but they MUST follow the design of the bridge.
Rail
There is a Railway link to Dragon River Peak City. You can join the railway at x:900 z:16950 (map view).
Boat
The boat route starts at X:2370 Z:19970 (map).
The locations connected to the Emerald Boat Route are:
- A: Isle of Fallhaven
- B: Arch-Warwick
- C: Garidan
The Emerald Mall Boat Route began construction on the the 21st November 2021. 
Erttum helped map out the best route along the frozen rivers and helped dig through one of the mountains. Ren then worked tirelessly through the extreme lag over the following days, placing a few hundred glowstone blocks each day, to melt the ice along the river. The build was completed on the 1st December 2021. Ren felt the amount of glowstone used was silly and that you'd be able to see the boat route from space!
The Emerald Boat Route began its first extension on the 26th December 2021, which was completed in the early hours of the 27th December. The route was planned by Ren, with help from 
Anna_28. The Emerald Boat route is designed to help improve connectivity in the region and help the Emerald Mall obtain an elusive Nexus. The Emerald Boat Route connects to the Syrus Boat Route branch, which previously ended 5,000 blocks away from the Emerald Mall in Dragon River Peak City. The buoy design chosen was: Emerald Block / White Wool, which Ren felt was fitting as it leads to the Emerald Mall and is designed to be a symbol of prosperity the mall aims to create for everyone on the server. Lilly pads were used to place the buoys through the ocean, which was a super time saver, so any aspiring ocean boat route planners - take note! The map link to the start of the Emerald Boat Route in Dragon River Peak City can be found here. The original plans for the Boat Route can be found here.
Why was the Emerald Mall created?
Ren believed the economy of MCO was wildly inefficient and difficult to navigate. He was frustrated with the largest mall on the server at the time, the Diamond Mall. He was annoyed with the layout because he felt was confusing to understand for new players. He believed the shops also lacked standardisation, so some shops were very badly designed. He was shocked that 80% of shops at the Diamond Mall were consistently out of stock, which created a bad experience for players. Ren's first shop inside the Diamond Mall allowed players to both BUY and SELL items when he opened, which prevented the shop from going out of stock, as long as the price Ren set was a fair price. The design to both BUY and SELL any item was the bedrock of the Emerald Mall design. The Diamond Mall was also very difficult for the average player to be given a shop at, as you had to ask an Admin and not just any Admin, you needed to ask the correct Admin, which isn't specified anywhere. Not only this, but you also needed to pay 10 Diamond Blocks and have over 100 hours. This is to say, it was tricky for sellers to be able to establish a shop. If a new player wants to find a specific item to buy then good luck, as there is no easy way to find which shop will sell the item you are looking for, so you need to visit EVERY floor and memorise which floor stocks which items... who designed this! Ren felt this entire system needed to be re-engineered from the ground up, and so began building in pursuit of making his vision a reality.
How was the Emerald Mall designed?
Despite Ren's criticisms with the mechanics behind the Diamond Mall, the Emerald Mall's outer design was inspired by the Diamond Mall's outer design, as a way of paying respects to its history and success.
Pros
The Emerald Mall was designed with User Experience in mind from the beginning. The aim was to build a mall that was intuitive to use and easy for the player. This allows us to provide value and benefit to as many players as possible to help support players in their objectives.
- The Nexus location puts the user directly in front of the Emerald Mall Lifts, with a sign explaining how to use the [Lift] signs.
- The Floors are categorised by item type to make it super easy to find which floor sells which item you are looking for.
- The Lift system uses item frames to show an item to represent the floor, so the Redstone floor uses Redstone dust. This means you don't need to read the signs, making it easier for players to understand.
- All shops have an item frame, so you can quickly browse what items are for sale, without requiring the player to read signs.
- In many cases the stalls are built from the material they are selling, so for example the Ice shop is built from Ice.
- The shops allow EVERYONE to sell, so there is no need for every player to create their own shop. This means any player, new or old can immediately begin benefiting from the shop system without needing to ask an Admin.
- Build with sustainability in mind, as there will always be items in stock on one side of the shop, so should stand the test of time and be a useful asset to the players of the server for the next 1, 3, 5 or even 10 years.
- Prices for items will reach fair market value, which brings down the price of items for everyone, as there is more competition. Lower prices allow more players to stretch their diamonds further! This is achieved by Ren listening to the market and adjusts prices over time (If all diamonds run out, then Ren will need to make the price cheaper, so items begin selling, while also raising the sell amount. If no sales happen, then Ren will need to raise the price for the item, to incentive people to sell their items).
- The Emerald Mall was designed with a huge radius surrounding it, to prevent others from building within render distance. The aim of this is to ensure players who visit the mall do not experience any increase in fps lag over time, as large structures cannot be added.
Cons
- Ren currently makes a profit from every transaction, as he argues that this is designed to help increase the amount of liquidity for people to buy and sell over time. Ren is not wealthy enough to donate this liquidity himself. Ren also argues this profit helps offset losses from price fluctuations, as Ren is taking on the risk of price moving against him, especially in the first few months of the Emerald Mall, before prices stabilise. Ren will remove profit from most stalls once a good amount of liquidity is achieved, as his intentions are to build infrastructure to facilitate more efficient trade and improve player experience.
- Some argue that because Ren owns all the shops that this means this is not a mall, but Ren disagrees. He feels this Mall is more inclusive and helpful, as it allows the community to run the shop.
- Since Ren is the sole custodian of the shops, it creates a single point of failure, as if he stops playing then the shops will eventually fill up. However, Ren has a plan to mitigate this risk by changing all BUY and SELL to the same amount if he ever leaves the server, which would allow the shops to run forever.
- The shop does not support the marketplace selling of items with custom NBT data such as custom maps, enchantments, player heads, unique event or collector items.
- Prices are not dynamic, so don't change automatically with fluctuations in supply and demand. Any prices changes must be made manually. This may result in no trade happening for long periods of time for items whose demand or supply alters dramatically as time progresses.
- Supply of an item is limited to one double chest per shop, which makes the mall most useful in small to medium-sized builds, however, may not have the quantities required for mega builds. There are some items such as dirt, grass, sand, and obsidian that have multiple shops to help provide more stock to try and accommodate those buyers who need vast quantities of these common blocks.
Who donated to the Emerald Mall?
The Emerald Mall was a wildly expensive venture, with the [Shop] sign creation costing 5 diamonds per sign in tax. This meant that to complete a floor, it could cost as high as 40 Diamond Blocks. Ren decided to do an investment round, to find any players interested in making a generous donation of 64 Diamond Blocks in return for 1 copy of Ren's head. On 2nd November 2021, Ren began to reach out to his contacts across the server to see if he could raise the funds to help fund the signs and provide starting liquidity for the hundreds of chests. Interest was high and many players pledged a donation toward the Emerald Mall. Without these generous donations, the Emerald Mall may never have been created. Each player that donated was given an exclusive honorary plaque on one of the floors, in recognition of their support. Those players were:
Dye Floor: 
SanityBGon
Black Market Floor: 
Filip0706
Fancy Blocks Floor: 
snthy
Redstone Floor: 
Selimbits
Stone Floor: 
swissm4n
Brewing Floor: 
GunCat2
Wood Floor: 
Hornacious
Mob Drops: Nofleet
Item / Decoration Floor: 
AdoreKitten
Flower Floor: Anna_28
Crops & Farmable Floor: 
Txkeykeeper
Natural Floor: 
hjk321
Wool & Clay Floor: 
KingServal
Tools & Armor: 
Aquitted
Map Art Floor: 
Xanpi3000
Who built the Emerald Mall?
The Emerald Mall was constructed by Ren & Nofleet.
Most of the terraforming and groundwork was done by AdoreKitten, 
abamacus Ren, Nofleet with some assistance from GunCat2, 
JCobbler2012 & 
RainBd.
The Railway was constructed by Nofleet, 
Okibdoki, 
Cosmic_potato_04, 
Leo_Belgicus, Txkeykeeper, AdoreKitten, 
Stevits1, JCobbler2012 and Ren
Materials
The sea lanterns & glass were bought from Hornacious's shop.
The wool was purchased from swissm4n, 
thesprazzzler and SanityBGon's shop.
Who runs the Emerald Mall?
The Emerald Mall is currently owned and operated by its founder Ren.
End Portal
The End Portal was found at the location on the 25th August 2021, several hours after the World Expansion happened. Ren was the first to open a new End Portal in the expansion. Ren decided to transform the portal room into an End Themed build! Progress was swift and the build was completed on the 31st August 2021. The black wool used was generously donated by 
Jmancino2. The portal is public and you can access the portal by traveling to the Emerald Mall and using the End Portal lift in the Emerald Mall lobby.
Pictures
This section aims to capture any pictures people have taken at the Emerald Mall! Anyone is free to add pictures here :)
- Pictures and History from the Emerald Mall
photo taken when the mall was still being built
.jpeg)
History Timeline
- 2021-September: Emerald Mall Construction Begins.
- 2022-January: Emerald Mall Nexus is added by < Anna_28> marking the official opening of the Emerald Mall.
- 2022-March: Ren adds colored concrete and colored terracotta to the Emerald Mall.
- 2022-March: abamacus creates the plots around the Emerald Mall and they begin to be assigned to towns, cities or players.
- 2022-April: abamacus creates a fourth ring around the Emerald Mall for future player-ran commercial shops, and dubs it Shulker Mall.
- 2022-December: Ren asks for help in replacing the 10,000 wool blocks with snow, to fix the Emerald Mall Railway.
- 2023-January: The Emerald Mall Railway fix is complete. Players who helped with this include Okibdoki, Cosmic_potato_04, Leo_Belgicus, Txkeykeeper, AdoreKitten, Stevits1, JCobbler2012 and Ren
- 2023-Febuary: Ren begins Emerald Mall V2 , which involves lowering all floors by 1 block to accommodate a [ShopContent] sign under every shop. AdoreKitten,
Magnap and abamacus were influential in this decision. The changes should help the economy function more efficiently by giving market participants better access to information. Prior to this change, only Ren could see the liquidity available in each shop. 
Luigifan100 & AdoreKitten helped with this upgrade and all the upgrade finished in February.
Comments
Anyone is welcome to add a comment here :)
< Txkeykeeper> A Complete Revolution for the MCO economy.
<
AviationPro> Future of MCO 31/12/21.
<
DosMiniDoc> coolio, mate absolute unit of a shop 23/12/21
<
Energheat> Very Very Nice Shop ;D 04/11/2021
<
Flamehaze97>Emerald Mall was very helpful with my projects and I loved the abundance and availability of certain materials 8/30/2022