Setup: Lifesteal SMP

Everyone starts with 10 hearts. Kill a player to take one; die and you lose one. Nobody holds more than 20. Run out and you wait in the Ghost Hall for a day, unless a friend revives you sooner. Nothing about hearts can be bought.

Player commands

Money, /sell, homes, warps, teleport requests, a starter kit and random teleport come from EssentialsX (see Built on popular plugins).

How hearts move

• A kill: the victim loses 1, the killer gains 1. A fall, lava or mob death within 10 seconds of a player's hit counts as that player's kill.
• Other deaths cost 1 heart, dropped where you died. It is yours for 3 minutes, then anyone's.
• A killer at the most hearts gets it as an item on the ground.

Fair play rules

• Teammates cannot hurt each other.
• Players on the same internet connection never steal from each other; staff are told.
• Bully guard: no heart when the killer has 10 or more hearts than the victim.
• Same victim: once every 30 minutes, 3 times a day.
• Pace: a killer gains at most one heart every 2 minutes; sooner, it drops on the ground.
• Standing still: a player who has not moved for a minute gives no heart.
• New players are protected for an hour. A fight tags both for 30 seconds; leaving counts as dying.

Heart items and crafting

• Heart items and Revive Beacons carry a serial number. A used or old-season one crumbles, so copies get nobody anything.
• They cannot be sold. There is no auction house; players trade by hand or with /heartpay.
• Heart: 1 nether star, 2 diamond blocks, 2 netherite ingots, 1 totem. Only below 10 hearts, once a day, 5 times a season.
• Revive Beacon: 1 beacon, 4 diamond blocks, 2 netherite ingots, 1 totem.
• Craft one at a time, clicking the result with nothing on your cursor.

Out of hearts

One mode for everyone, set in the settings:

• Ghost (default): the Ghost Hall, a safe place. Ghosts cannot fight, build or pick up, and chat only with ghosts and staff. They return after 24 hours with 3 hearts, or sooner by finishing the Spirit Trial (/ghost trial, open after 2 hours, 10 minutes to finish).
• Timed ban: cannot join for 24 hours, then returns with 3 hearts.
• Out until revived: cannot join until revived or the season ends. Your AI asks before choosing it.

A Revive Beacon brings back one player: right-click, pick them, hold still 10 seconds. They return at the beacon with 3 hearts, even if offline. Twice a season per player.

Their items go into a grave chest only they can open for 30 minutes. Hardcore drops half the stacks for the killer instead. In spawn and no-build regions items drop normally.

The Ghost Hall is made on the first start. To move it, stand there and run /lifesteal setspot ghost-hall. For the Spirit Trial, build a course and set trial-start and trial-finish the same way. Without a course, ghosts wait.

Events and seasons

• Conquest (12:00 and 18:00) and the Saturday 19:00 dragon fight are neutral: no hearts change anywhere while they run. In the dragon fight everyone fights with at most 10 hearts.
• King of the hill (three times a day) and airdrops (every 30 minutes) use normal rules. Set their places with /shevents set-location <event> <radius>.
• Event prizes are crate keys, never hearts.
• Duels: set the arena with /lifesteal setspot arena-1 and arena-2. Leaving the arena loses.
• A no-PvP area: a WorldGuard region with pvp set to deny (//wand, select, /rg define warzone, /rg flag warzone pvp deny). Falls and mobs there still cost hearts.
• Seasons end only when you end one (/shevents season end) or set a length (we suggest 10 weeks). A backup is saved, the top 10 enter the hall of fame, everyone restarts at 10 hearts, and old Heart items and beacons stop working.
• World border: 1,500 blocks from spawn, growing 250 a week to 4,000. You can turn it off.

Built on popular plugins

Our code holds the rules: hearts, fair play, teams, events, seasons and crates. The rest are free plugins we download, check and pin to an exact version:

• New players start with $500 and the starter kit (iron tools, food, saplings), again an hour later.
• /sell hand pays 70 percent of the Economy SMP's prices. No shop menu.
• There is no /spawn. Stand at your spawn and run /setwarp spawn; players use /warp spawn. None of these work in a fight.
• Player commands work out of the box. Staff commands stay with operators until you give them to a LuckPerms group.

Settings

A preset sets the main values; you can change single ones after. Change them as Setup settings describes.

You can also set: starting and most hearts (most up to 40; AI asks above 25), hearts per kill, the fair play numbers, crafting limits and recipes, withdraw and bank limits, Ghost Hall time, Spirit Trial delay, timed ban length (AI asks), revives per season, totems, crystals, anchors, heart counts above heads, duels, neutral events, the Heart Altar, the border, starting money (AI asks above $5,000) and teleport delay.

Fixed for everyone: hearts are never sold, kills on one connection never steal, every player has the same time out, and nothing about hearts is sold for real money.

Your AI asks before choosing a preset. It changes this setup only through its settings, never by editing files, and a backup comes first. Old-style 1.8 combat is not part of this setup.

Staff tools

/lifesteal needs sh.lifesteal.admin (operators have it).

Every heart change is written to plugins/sh-lifesteal/heart-ledger.jsonl, by player ID only. Staff heart changes also go in the audit log. Nobody is banned automatically.

Add-on makers can read and change hearts, add fair play rules and listen for steals and revives. See Add-ons for setups.