What is the difference between owned and reserved? I am guessing that owned means it is on someones Lot connected to a beacon or campfire. I was out exploring and found a cave with no beacon or campfire and i started mining the area for the Coal. I then noticed that is said reserved. I was surprised because I was still allowing me to mine.
So really was wondering how you reserve something and why would it allow someone else to mine it.
I think reserved is above or below a owned plot. I think it is a limitation with the current beacon system.
Yes, reserved means that at least on plot in that vertical is owned by player. You can’t put campfire on those, but you can mine them.
As said, plots above/below a claimed (owned) plot are reserved. Reserved plots cannot be claimed by anyone else, but are not protected from other players/regeneration.
that makes a lot of sense thanks for the info.
Are there any plans to change this logic? I feel like a jerk building an underground City and taking away the above ground land from people.
That is why we have multiple planets and large spaces. When you take land above you kind of remove it for those below… so it’s all good. 
Just use what you take is the way I see it…
This creates lots of open space on every planet and prevents people from building so dense that nobody can farm anything.
Every planet has 4000x4000 area (16 000 000 plots of surface). There are about 2000 accounts playing per week atm (according to Steam DB). That means you get 8 000 plots of horizontal space on every planet (all 12) for yourself. Moral of the story: it won’t be a problem any decade soon!
my guess is that there will be a beacon option to either allow prohibit people from building above/below you. it has been discussed.
I would be fine letting people build above/below most of my stuff but there is one place where I would not want that.
Blocks not plots.
Yeah 
My only thought about that is that if you allow below/above, you might find yourself incased with no way out.
4608x4608, not 4000x4000
Technicalities!
4608x4608 blocks of surface (in other words 576 x 576 or 331 776 plots of surface). With the same 2000 accounts that is 165 plots of surface space on every planet for yourself. Moral of the story: it still won’t be a problem in this decade!
Personally, I’m not sure we should be using the steam user count of a pre-release alpha game as a representative figure of what things will be like post launch. That being said, the way that planets are entirely self-contained and impart the ability to just ‘add more’ if required should allow for the ability to keep enough available space.
My only real frustration with the current system is that it locks us out of having multi-level cities (unless every single person was responsible for each level of the city above and below their ‘intended’ plots, but I believe it’s hard enough enforcing a building theme as it is, let alone a multi-level theme).
Out of curiosity, will we be able to transfer ownership of a beacon (so instead of breaking our beacon and the new person quickly plotting it out, it simply transfers to a new person)? Because if ‘that’ is a thing, and if the plot reservation scheme could be limited to ‘anyone with a plot in the current column’ then with a little planning, that could circumvent the issues surrounding that entirely.
Well, this was not a discussion about at launch. I was merely trying to tell you that you really don’t have to worry about it now.
If you did mean at launch: There will be many more planets with more tiers creating exclusivity along with private planets - in the general sense space will not be an issue. You’re also gated in terms of how much space you get - plots are awarded for leveling and thereafter for every 500k XP. Furthermore guilds will exist and also have plots - the picture will overall look vastly different from now.
Heck, in the past 2 weeks they essentially tripled the baseline plots allowed per account by giving us multiple characters.
I’m definitely interested in seeing how plots evolve over the coming patches.
Have not seen this being discussed before - but I like the idea. It could facilitate land grabs and trade in property in general. Leasing could be nice for themed cities too.
Guilds should take care of this in the future.
@lucadeltodecso, what do devs think about to include distance of vertical reservation switcher [0–32] into beacon’s parameters in the same way as possibility to warp into it? I sure it will be relevant for complex cities after wipe.
For example of it is necessary: if I built a deep road as it is in Thedas on altitude 8–15, nobody will allowed to pave a surface road to cross first one above. It’s a rare case but not an impossible 