GriefPrevention: Let Every Player Protect Their Base with a Golden Shovel

What it does and when to choose it

Each player claims rectangles of land. Inside their own, only they build, plus whoever they allow. The protection covers the whole column, from a little below where you mark it up to the sky, so nobody gets in by digging underneath or coming from above.

No commands needed: you claim with the golden shovel and look with a stick. That's why it fits open servers or ones with lots of people, where you can't teach everyone.

If what you want is to protect the server's own areas (spawn, shops, an arena), WorldGuard does that better. Many servers run both. And for a towns server with mayors and taxes, Towny already protects land by itself: you don't need GriefPrevention on top.

Installing it

1. Make a backup

   If your server has backups, “Backups” → create one before adding plugins.

2. Find it in “Mods & plugins”

   Type GriefPrevention and press “Install”. It's also in “The basics for a community”, together with LuckPerms, EssentialsX and a log to undo griefing: “Install the missing ones” puts in all four at once. It doesn't need any other plugin. It's a plugin: it runs on Paper (what we deliver), not on Fabric or Forge.

3. Restart

   Press “Restart”. On startup it creates the plugins/GriefPreventionData folder, with its config.yml.

4. Test it

   Join the game with a stick in your hand and right-click the ground: it tells you whether that spot belongs to someone. If it doesn't answer, check the “Console”.

How a player claims land

The smallest claim is 5 wide and 100 blocks of area (10 × 10, for example). A shortcut: the first chest a new player places, if they don't have any land yet, protects a 9 × 9 square around it by itself. So even someone who doesn't read the rules has their chest safe.

With a stick in your hand, right-clicking anywhere shows the borders of anyone's claims and who they belong to.

1. Get a golden shovel

   Two gold ingots and two sticks. While you hold it, the chat tells you how many claim blocks you have left.

2. Mark one corner

   Right-click with the shovel on one corner of the land you want.

3. Mark the opposite corner

   Right-click the opposite corner. The border is drawn with coloured blocks (only you see them) and the land is yours.

4. Make it bigger if it's too small

   With the shovel, right-click a corner of the border and then wherever you want to move it. You can also stand inside and type /extendclaim 10 to push the side you're facing out by 10 blocks.

Letting your friends in

Inside your land, /trust Name gives that player permission for everything: building, breaking, opening chests. It's what you use with base mates.

There are smaller permissions: /containertrust Name lets them open chests, use the bed and touch crops and animals, but not build; /accesstrust Name, only use beds, buttons and levers. /managetrust Name lets them give permissions to others.

/trustlist says who has what in the claim you're standing in and /untrust Name takes it away. If you type /trust outside a claim, it applies to all of yours.

For a shared house with a room for each person: /subdivideclaims, and with the shovel you mark pieces inside your land with their own permissions. /basicclaims puts the shovel back to normal.

Claim blocks

Each block of ground you claim uses one claim block: a 20 × 20 claim is 400. Out of the box, every player starts with 100 and earns 100 for each hour played, up to 80 000. So someone who's been around for a while can protect more, and a newcomer can't grab half the map on day one.

/claimslist tells you how many you have, how many you've spent and where your claims are. /abandonclaim, standing inside, deletes that claim and gives you its blocks back.

They're changed in plugins/GriefPreventionData/config.yml: InitialBlocks (the starting ones) and BlocksAccruedPerHour (the hourly ones), under GriefPrevention → Claims. If players complain they don't have enough for their house, raise the starting ones to 500 or 1000.

As a prize for an event or a rank, /adjustbonusclaimblocks Name 1000 gives a player 1000 extra blocks (with a negative number, it takes them away).

GriefPrevention:
  Claims:
    InitialBlocks: 500
    BlocksAccruedPerHour: 100

What you need to know as an admin

Protecting spawn without spending blocks: /adminclaims and mark it with the shovel. That claim belongs to the server and never expires. /basicclaims goes back to normal mode.

Getting into someone else's claim (to fix something or investigate): /ignoreclaims lets you build in all of them; type it again to turn it off. /deleteclaim deletes the claim you're standing in even if it isn't yours, and /deleteallclaims Name all of a player's claims.

Claims expire: the automatic ones from the first chest are deleted if the player doesn't come back within 7 days, and all the claims of anyone who hasn't joined for 60 days. That way the map doesn't fill up with land from people who left. It's changed under Claims → Expiration in config.yml.

In the Nether and the End you can't claim out of the box: GriefPrevention only allows it in the overworld. To look after portals and the End, WorldGuard.

If someone gets stuck inside another player's claim, /trapped moves them to a free spot nearby (it has a long cooldown so it can't be used as a teleport).

The admin commands belong to operators by default; to give them to moderators without making them op, the permissions griefprevention.ignoreclaims, griefprevention.deleteclaims… with LuckPerms. The player ones (griefprevention.claims) everybody already has.

What it doesn't do (and what to pair it with)

It doesn't protect anything outside claims: if someone builds without claiming, others can break it. Put it in the rules and on a sign at spawn that the first thing to do is grab a golden shovel.

It doesn't log who broke what. To find out and undo it, CoreProtect: GriefPrevention prevents most of it and CoreProtect fixes the rest.

It isn't an anticheat. For hacks, anticheat and anti-xray. The other defences, in protecting the server from griefers.

If you don't have a server yet, at NapNodes you can create a free Minecraft one, no card needed, with Paper and “Mods & plugins”, and install GriefPrevention in a couple of clicks.

Frequently asked questions