For a few days, we had been noticing suspicious money gains among some players. On Wednesday evening, during a random check, an admin found the cause: an exploit (abusing a bug) involving a tool, the Construction Wand.
How the Construction Wand works
The Construction Wand comes in several tiers and accepts two upgrades. Depending on its tier, it instantly places blocks over a larger or smaller area.
One of its upgrades, Core Destruction, does the opposite: it instantly breaks every block in the area. That’s where the problem starts.
The link with jobs
Placing blocks with the Construction Wand earns no XP or money, even as a Builder. With Core Destruction, however, a Miner earned as much money and XP as if they had broken every block by hand.
- Blocks per area
- 1,024
- Earned per area
- $5,000+
- Money removed
- $460,000
With the upgrade maxed out, a single destroyed area brought in more than $5,000.
What we did
To keep the Construction Wand worthwhile, we banned only the Core Destruction upgrade. The tool itself can still be used normally.
To undo the imbalance caused by the exploit, we removed the levels and money the players involved had earned with the upgraded tool: more than $460,000 in total.