Vending machine

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Can only the owner/administrator of the server create a vending machine?

[entuland]

No, the Vending Machine can be crafted by anyone by default - the limitation is in the administration of the trades: only the owner and the administrators can create and edit the catalogs.

In addition to that, a catalog of trades can be set as "reserved", such reserved catalogs can only be selected in a vending machine by an administrator (or the owner).

The normal usage of the vending machines would be that the owner / admins create one or more catalogs, then normal players can craft the vending machines and select which catalogs they want to use among the non-restricted ones.

Any player can interact with any vending machine, even if they are on a claim and have been set to show a restricted catalog.

The point of such restricted catalogs is that owners may want a specific catalog to be only accessible via a specific vending machine placed, say, near the spawn of the world or in any other area as they please.

You can check the unlock sequence for the Vending Machine from the Reference, which is accessible from the ESC menu in any world.

As a last thing, the owners can alter the world overrides to prevent any craft from showing up in the crafting list, so in the end: yes, in a specific world it may be that only the owners / admins can obtain / craft the vending machines, but that's not the default, as above it requires setting the vending machine as non-craftable from the world overrides.

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Only the owner of the world can create a catalog for using a vending machine?

[entuland]

Correct, only the owner and the admins can create / edit trading catalogs, but once a catalog is created anyone can access a vending machine with that catalog.