Setup: Lifesteal SMP

A survival world where hearts are the stakes. Everyone starts with 10 hearts. Kill a player to take one of theirs; die and you lose one. Nobody can hold more than 20. Run out and you wait in the Ghost Hall for a day, unless a friend brings you back sooner with a Revive Beacon.

What players do

The rest of what players use comes from popular free plugins this setup installs for you (see Built on popular plugins): money, /sell, homes, warps, teleport requests, a starter kit and random teleport from EssentialsX, plus crates with earned keys, daily rewards and spawn protection from our own plugins: see Premade setups.

How hearts move

• A kill: the victim loses 1 heart and the killer gains it.
• Pushed to death: a fall, lava or monster death within 10 seconds of a player's hit counts as that player's kill.
• Other deaths (falling, lava, monsters) cost 1 heart. It drops where you died, and only you can pick it up for 3 minutes; then anyone can.
• A killer already at the most hearts gets the heart as an item on the ground instead.
• Out of hearts: see below.

Fair play rules

These stop heart farming, the main way people cheat in Lifesteal:

• Teammates never steal from each other (they cannot hurt each other at all).
• Players on the same internet connection never steal from each other, so nobody farms their own second account. Staff get a note when it happens.
• Bully guard: a kill steals nothing when the killer has 10 or more hearts than the victim.
• Same victim: one killer can take a heart from the same player once every 30 minutes, and 3 times a day at most.
• Time between hearts: a killer gains at most one heart every 2 minutes; a kill sooner drops the heart on the ground.
• Standing still: a player who has not moved for a minute gives no heart.
• New players are protected from other players for their first hour, and a fight tags both players for 30 seconds: leaving during a fight counts as dying. See Spawn protection, combat and safety.

Heart items and crafting

• Heart items and Revive Beacons each have a hidden serial number. One that was used before, or one from an earlier season, does nothing and crumbles, so copying items through lag or item frames gets nobody anything. Staff get a note when someone tries.
• Hearts and beacons cannot be sold: they have no price in /sell, and there is no auction house. Players hand them over in person or with /heartpay.
• Heart recipe: 1 nether star, 2 diamond blocks, 2 netherite ingots and 1 totem of undying, anywhere in a crafting table. Only while you have fewer than 10 hearts (a comeback rule), once a day and 5 times a season.
• Revive Beacon recipe: 1 beacon, 4 diamond blocks, 2 netherite ingots and 1 totem of undying.
• Craft them one at a time by clicking the result once with nothing on your cursor.

Out of hearts

You pick one mode on the settings page. It is the same for every player: ranks or payments never change it.

• Ghost (the default): the player goes to the Ghost Hall, a small safe place. Ghosts cannot fight, build or pick things up, and their chat goes only to other ghosts and staff. They come back after 24 hours with 3 hearts. After 2 hours in the hall they can take the Spirit Trial (/ghost trial): reach the finish within 10 minutes to come back early.
• Timed ban: the player cannot join for 24 hours, then comes back with 3 hearts.
• Out until revived (hard ban): the player cannot join until someone revives them or the season ends. This is the harshest choice, so your AI asks you before switching to it, and also before it picks the Hardcore preset, which uses it.

A Revive Beacon brings back one player who is out: right-click it, pick the player (by name, with pages when many are out), and hold still for 10 seconds (moving or getting hurt stops it, and you keep the beacon). They come back at the beacon with 3 hearts, even if they were offline. Each player can be revived twice a season.

Their items go into a grave chest where they died. Only they can open it for 30 minutes; then anyone can. In the Hardcore preset, half of the item stacks drop for the killer instead. In the spawn area and in regions where players cannot build, no chest is placed and the items drop as usual.

The Ghost Hall is made for you the first time the server starts. To use your own place, stand there and run /lifesteal setspot ghost-hall. To set up the Spirit Trial, build a short course and run /lifesteal setspot trial-start at the start and /lifesteal setspot trial-finish at the end. Without a course, ghosts simply wait. If your Ghost Hall is in your main world, ghosts stay within 24 blocks of it (or on the trial course), so they cannot wander off and look at bases.

Events, duels and seasons

• Conquest (12:00 and 18:00) and the weekly dragon fight (Saturday 19:00) are neutral: while one runs, no hearts change anywhere on the server, not only in the event's area. During the dragon fight everyone fights with at most 10 hearts; nothing is taken away, and full hearts come back when it ends. To make only the event's area safe instead, take the event off the neutral events list and give the area a WorldGuard region with the pvp flag set to deny: nobody can hurt anybody there, so nothing is stolen.
• King of the hill (three times a day) and airdrops (every 30 minutes) use the normal rules. Events that need a place start once you stand there and run /shevents set-location <event> <radius>. See Events, leaderboards and seasons.
• Event prizes are crate keys. Hearts are never a prize.
• Duels: set the arena with /lifesteal setspot arena-1 and arena-2. One duel at a time. A duelist who leaves the arena (walking away or teleporting) loses the duel.
• A place where nobody can be hurt: make a WorldGuard region there and set its pvp flag to deny (for example your warzone between events): //wand, select the corners, /rg define warzone, then /rg flag warzone pvp deny. Deaths there from falling or monsters still cost a heart.
• Seasons have no end date until you pick one: set the season length on the events settings (we suggest 10 weeks), or end a season yourself with /shevents season end. When one ends, a backup is saved first; then the top 10 go into the hall of fame and everyone starts again with 10 hearts. Old Heart items and beacons stop working. Seasons only end on the schedule you set or when you end one.
• World border: starts at 1,500 blocks from spawn and grows 250 blocks a week, up to 4,000. Turn it off on the settings page if you want to set your own.
• The Most hearts list is /hearts top.

Built on popular plugins

Lifesteal keeps its own code for the parts that hold the rules: hearts and the fair play rules, teams, the daily events and seasons, and crates with earned keys. Everything else is a popular free plugin that we download for you, check for problems and pin to an exact version before it is installed (they are never changed or bundled):

Things that are different from the other setups:

• New players start with $500 and get the starter kit (iron tools, food and saplings) when they first join; anyone can ask for it again an hour later with /kit starter. The kit has no netherite, totems, enchanted golden apples, elytra or hearts.
• Selling: /sell hand pays a fixed price, 70 percent of the Economy SMP's table. Hearts and Revive Beacons have no price and cannot be sold. There is no auction house or shop menu in this version. Players trade by hand.
• Spawn: there is no /spawn. Stand where you want it and run /setwarp spawn; players then use /warp spawn. Players cannot use any of these (or /home, /tpa, /tpr) during a fight.
• Player commands: players can use the commands in the table without any setup, because the setup turns those permissions on for everyone. Staff commands (/give, /eco, /gamemode and the rest) stay for operators until you give them to a LuckPerms group.
• Fixed spots: the Hall's protection is our spawn protection (the 100 block square around the world spawn); use WorldGuard for any other protected area.

Settings page

Picking a preset sets the values in the table below to that preset's; you can change single values afterwards. "Your AI" says whether your AI can change it (under your Allow, Ask and Block choices).

New player protection, the combat tag and leaving during a fight are on the safety settings. Team size and friendly fire are on the teams settings. Season length and what a season end resets are on the events settings. Old-style (1.8) combat is not part of this setup.

Your AI can change these for you, for example "make it a lifesteal server with 5 hearts". For "make it harder" (the Hardcore preset) it asks you first, because Hardcore keeps players who run out of hearts out until someone revives them. A backup is taken before each change. Your AI changes this setup's lifesteal, events and crates settings only through this page, never by editing their files, so its questions to you always come first.

Staff tools

/lifesteal needs the sh.lifesteal.admin permission (server operators have it).

Every heart change is written to plugins/sh-lifesteal/heart-ledger.jsonl (who, why, before, after, when), by player id only. Every staff command that changes hearts or places (set, give, take, revive, undo, setspot, clearspot) is also written to the audit log with who ran it. Nothing is ever banned automatically: notes go to your staff, who decide. The Grim anti-cheat only alerts staff (with the grim.alerts permission) and keeps a log; it never kicks or bans, and sends nothing off your server.

Free or paid

TBD, and the price in credits.

Good to know

• Like all premade setups, this one only runs on our network. Your worlds and your own files always come with you if you leave.
• Nothing about hearts can be bought: no hearts, revives, protection or shorter bans for real money, and crates never contain hearts. That keeps it fair and inside Mojang's rules.
• Add-on makers can read and change hearts, add their own fair play rules, run their own Spirit Trial and listen for steals, eliminations and revives: see Add-ons for setups.