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Troubleshooting

This page covers the most common problems you may encounter with DynaTrade, what causes them, and how to resolve them safely.

Economy unavailable after startup

Symptoms: - /buy and /sell return a message saying the economy is unavailable - /dt status shows Economy: Unavailable - The market GUI opens, but buy and sell buttons are disabled

Cause: DynaTrade could not find a Vault-compatible economy provider when it started.

Resolution: 1. Confirm Vault is installed and enabled (/plugins). 2. Confirm you have an economy provider installed (e.g. EssentialsX). 3. Check the server console for economy registration messages on startup. 4. Restart the server after installing the missing plugin.

DynaTrade does not require a restart after Vault and the economy provider are present together — but a restart is the safest way to ensure the integration initializes correctly.

Prices are not changing

Symptoms: - Players buy and sell items but prices stay the same - /price always shows the same value

Cause: Most likely one of these: - The market cycle has not run yet - The scheduler is stopped - The trade volume is small relative to the configured vref - The item is still behaving within expected batch-based movement limits

Resolution: 1. Run /dt status — check that the scheduler is running and note the next cycle time. 2. If the scheduler is stopped, run /dt reload to rebuild the runtime. 3. If the scheduler is running, wait for the next cycle or force one with /dt cycle. 4. If prices still do not change after a cycle, run /dt item <item> and check the price floor and ceiling. The item may already be at its limit. 5. If prices are moving but imperceptibly, consider lowering vref or increasing sigma for the affected category or item.

Remember that DynaTrade is cycle-based. Small bursts do not always produce dramatic movement, especially on BALANCED or STABLE.

Prices move too aggressively

Symptoms: - A few trades cause very large price swings - Common items become unaffordable or near-worthless quickly

Cause: sigma is too high or vref is too low for the affected items or category.

Resolution: 1. Identify the affected items or category. 2. In items.yml, lower sigma and raise vref for the affected items — or apply the same change at category level in config.yml under economy.overrides.category-behavior. 3. Optionally lower max-var-percent to cap price movement per cycle. 4. Run /dt reload and monitor over several cycles.

market-state.yml is invalid

Symptoms: Console shows:

[DynaTrade] [startup] blocking startup because market-state.yml is invalid.

The economy is not running because the plugin enters fail-safe startup blocking.

Cause: market-state.yml is structurally broken, has been manually edited incorrectly, or was truncated during a crash at an unusual time.

Resolution (recovery path):

Option A — Delete and reset (data loss): 1. Stop the server. 2. Delete or rename plugins/DynaTrade/market-state.yml. 3. Start the server. 4. DynaTrade will start with base prices from items.yml and persist a fresh market state on its next save cycle.

Option B — Full reset without data loss of other files: 1. Start the server without DynaTrade (remove the jar temporarily). 2. Inspect or restore market-state.yml from a backup. 3. Reinstall the jar and restart.

Option C — Use /dt reset (if the runtime partially started): 1. If DynaTrade is partially functional, run /dt reset and confirm the token. 2. This clears all dynamic state and rebuilds from base prices.

DynaTrade intentionally does not silently reset the economy on an invalid state file. This protects you from losing market history due to an accidental edit.

Recovery files were quarantined

Symptoms: Console shows on startup:

[DynaTrade] [pending] pending signal payload is missing 'signals'; quarantining payload.

Cause: An auxiliary recovery file was malformed — most likely from a hard crash during a write or an accidental manual edit.

What this means: DynaTrade skipped the unreadable file and continued from the last confirmed clean market-state.yml. Some pending trade signals may have been lost, but the core market state is intact.

Resolution: This is expected defensive behavior. No action is required unless you observe a significant unexpected price state after startup. If you do, compare current prices with the expected state and use /dt reset if a fresh start is preferable.

Pending signals accumulating but not processing

Symptoms: /dt status shows a growing pending signal count across multiple cycles with no change.

Cause: - The scheduler stopped between cycles - A cycle failed silently - The market state could not be saved after a cycle ran

Resolution: 1. Check the console around the last expected cycle time for errors. 2. Run /dt status and confirm the scheduler is running. 3. If the scheduler is stopped, run /dt reload. 4. Force a cycle with /dt cycle and watch the console for errors during the cycle. 5. If saving fails (e.g. disk space issues), resolve the underlying I/O problem and reload.

Heavy trading feels delayed during bursts

Symptoms: - Players report that trades still succeed, but confirmations feel slower during very heavy bursts - The server remains healthy, but there is a visible backlog effect under load

Cause: This is usually the bounded apply stage doing its job. In 0.7.1, durable trades can be applied through a controlled main-thread drain instead of all at once.

Resolution: 1. Check your current apply: settings in config.yml. 2. Confirm you are still using the validated defaults:

apply:
  max-per-tick: 8
  drain-deadline-ms: 15
  1. Do not change these blindly in production.
  2. If you run your own benchmark and want to experiment, change one value at a time and observe both throughput and server tick stability.

Important: Higher max-per-tick can improve throughput on some hardware, but it can also reintroduce main-thread pressure during bursts.

/dt reload does not apply new items

Symptoms: You added an item to items.yml, ran /dt reload, but /price <NEW_ITEM> shows an error.

Cause: Most likely one of: - The item key is not a valid Minecraft material name - The item key is lowercase - The YAML structure is malformed (indentation error)

Resolution: 1. Confirm the item key uses uppercase Minecraft material names (e.g. AMETHYST_SHARD, not amethyst_shard). 2. Check items.yml YAML indentation — all items must be under the items: key at exactly one level of indentation. 3. Look for a parse error in the console after /dt reload. 4. Test the YAML in a YAML validator if you are unsure about the structure.

Economy resets to base prices unexpectedly

Symptoms: After a restart, all prices appear to be back to their base values from items.yml.

Cause: Most likely market-state.yml was missing, empty, or unreadable at startup, and DynaTrade could not recover the previous state.

Resolution: 1. Check the startup console for messages about market-state.yml. 2. If DynaTrade logged a warn or severe about market state, the file was the problem. 3. Consider scheduling regular backups of plugins/DynaTrade/market-state.yml.

Note: A missing market-state.yml at first startup is expected — DynaTrade creates it after the first cycle.

Players see different prices in chat vs. GUI

Symptoms: /price DIAMOND shows a different value than what the market GUI displays.

Cause: This should not happen — the GUI and commands use the same trade backend and quote service. If you observe a mismatch: - The GUI may still be showing a cached screen from before a recent cycle. - Check if the player had the GUI open across a cycle boundary.

Resolution: Ask the player to close and reopen /market. The GUI refreshes its price data when opened.

Sounds playing too frequently or not at all

Resolution: Adjust the sounds section in config.yml.

To disable sounds entirely:

sounds:
  enabled: false

To reduce sound frequency:

sounds:
  ui-cooldown-ms: 300

To disable cycle update sounds only:

sounds:
  cycle-update-enabled: false

Run /dt reload after changes.

General diagnostic checklist

When something seems wrong with the economy:

  1. /dt status — is the economy running? Is the scheduler alive?
  2. Check the console for [WARN] or [SEVERE] messages from DynaTrade.
  3. /dt item <item> — is the item at its floor or ceiling?
  4. Check items.yml — are sigma, vref, and price factors set reasonably?
  5. Check config.yml — is the template correct? Are spreads configured as expected?
  6. Force a cycle with /dt cycle and check the console cycle summary.
  7. If nothing resolves the issue, run /dt reload to rebuild the runtime.
  8. As a last resort, use /dt reset to start the economy from clean base prices.