GriefPrevention: Let Players Claim Their Own Land
GriefPrevention lets players protect their own builds without you having to step in as an admin. You hit two opposite corners with a golden shovel and everything in between is yours; one claim block equals one block of ground surface, so 16 by 16 costs 256 claim blocks. Players start with an allowance and earn more for every hour of playtime, and with four trust levels (accesstrust, containertrust, trust and permissiontrust) the owner decides who may build, who may open the chests and who may only use the door.
That model scales with your player count: you are not drawing a region around every single build, and you are not trawling through logs first thing in the morning. Most disputes simply stop happening.
How do you claim land with the golden shovel?
GriefPrevention uses two ordinary items as tools: a golden shovel to claim and a stick to inspect. Players do not have to install anything, because a plugin runs entirely server-side.
- Take a golden shovel and hit the block in the first corner of the area you want to protect.
- Walk to the opposite corner and hit the block there. The rectangle in between is your claim.
- If you are short on claim blocks nothing happens, and the plugin tells you exactly how many you are missing.
- To expand later, hit a corner of your existing claim with the shovel and then hit the new corner.
A stick shows you who owns a claim before you start digging somewhere. /claimslist shows every claim a player owns, and /abandonclaim releases the claim you are standing in, after which those blocks return to your balance. New players automatically get a claim around their first chest: precisely the group that gets griefed most often.
What are claim blocks and how do you earn them?
Claim blocks are a currency you earn through playtime, and they only cover surface area. Height does not count: a tower running from deep underground up to build height costs the same as a flat field with the same footprint. Because you get everything back when you abandon a claim, experimenting costs nothing.
| Claim size | Claim blocks | What that is enough for |
|---|---|---|
| 10 x 10 | 100 | Starter hut with a chest and a furnace |
| 16 x 16 | 256 | House with a small garden and a few animals |
| 32 x 32 | 1,024 | Base with a farm and storage |
| 50 x 50 | 2,500 | Shared base for two or three players |
| 100 x 100 | 10,000 | Group base, village or an entire island |
Besides playtime you can hand out blocks with /adjustclaimblocks, for instance when someone wins a build competition. Using an economy plugin with Vault as the bridge you can even sell them, but tread carefully: the moment claim blocks go on sale, the richest player buys up the best spots.
Which trust levels does GriefPrevention have?
The four trust commands run from few rights to many, and each level includes everything the level below it allows.
| Command | What the other player may do | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
/accesstrust | Use doors, trapdoors, buttons, levers and beds; take or place nothing | Visitors and neighbours who need to pass through |
/containertrust | Chests, furnaces, brewing stands, hoppers and animals as well | Trading partners and anyone allowed to harvest your farm |
/trust | Building and breaking inside the claim as well | Regular co-builders |
/permissiontrust | May grant trust to other players on your behalf | Co-owner of a large base |
Use /untrust player to roll a level back, and /untrust all to remove everyone at once. Type public instead of a name and it applies server-wide: /accesstrust public on a trading post lets everyone in without leaving your chests open.
The rule of thumb on a survival server: hand out accesstrust by default, not trust. Arguments are rarely about a broken block and almost always about an emptied chest. With accesstrust friends can still shelter indoors, and you save the higher levels for the people who genuinely build alongside you.
When should you use a subclaim?
A subclaim is a claim inside your own claim, with its own trust list. You switch the golden shovel into subdivision mode (sneak and click in the air) and then hit two corners again. It costs no extra claim blocks, because the ground is already yours.
Two situations where that makes all the difference. A town claim in which every resident gets their own plot: you manage the wall and the infrastructure, and each resident has trust on their own patch. And a vault inside a group base: your co-builders have trust across the whole base, but the subclaim around the storage room lists nobody but you. A subclaim inherits the permissions of the claim around it by default, so restrict it explicitly before that separation actually means anything.
GriefPrevention or WorldGuard: what is the difference?
WorldGuard is an admin tool. You select an area with WorldEdit, turn it into a region and set flags on it: pvp off, explosions off, no mob spawns, only a certain rank allowed inside. Ideal for spawn, warps or a pvp arena, but it scales badly once hundreds of players want their house protected.
GriefPrevention turns that around: the player draws their own area and you only get involved when there is a dispute. The two do not clash, and the combination is the default on plenty of survival servers: WorldGuard for the areas you manage, GriefPrevention for everything players build themselves. Just do not govern the same thing twice. If WorldGuard already bans building across an entire area, a claim inside it does nothing at all and the player has no idea why their shovel has no effect. Our overview of the plugins that most servers run explains how the other core plugins fit into this picture.
Which settings do most owners change?
The configuration lives in plugins/GriefPrevention/config.yml, which you edit in the Pterodactyl panel. Four values decide how your claim economy feels; the rest you can leave alone.
| Setting | What it does | Value we recommend |
|---|---|---|
| Starting blocks | What a player receives on their first login | 256 to 400: a house of 16 x 16 up to 20 x 20 |
| Blocks per hour | How fast the balance grows while playing | Around 100: an evening of play buys visible space |
| Maximum | Ceiling on the balance a player can build up | A few tens of thousands, matched to your world border |
| Minimum claim size | Stops 2 x 2 mini-claims | Keep it low, do not disable it, or the map fragments |
Tune those values to your server: with ten friends the starting balance can be generous, while on a public server a tighter balance keeps the map tidy.
What do you do with abandoned claims?
For that, GriefPrevention has expiry periods at three levels: one for the automatic chest claim of players who logged in once, one for claims that have barely been built in, and one for every claim owned by players who have been away too long. Set the first one short, seven days or so; for genuine builds, 60 to 90 days of inactivity is a reasonable line.
When a claim expires, only the protection disappears: the build stays standing and the ground opens up. You can also let the plugin restore the terrain to nature, but think that one through twice. Someone who returns after months to find their base gone will not come back a third time. Put your expiry policy in the server rules.
When is GriefPrevention the wrong choice?
GriefPrevention is a Bukkit plugin and runs on Paper, Purpur and Spigot. On a modpack server it simply does not work: All the Mods 10 runs on NeoForge with Minecraft 1.21.1, and a mod loader does not load plugins. Big packs bring their own claim system along as a mod, where you click chunks on a map instead. If you run a modpack rather than a plugin server, that is the version you use. On an anarchy server claiming has no place at all, and for a creative plot world a plot plugin works better.
On top of that, GriefPrevention protects but logs nothing. Anyone who handed out trust themselves and then gets robbed is left empty-handed. So run CoreProtect alongside it: it records every block placed and broken and every chest transaction, and it can roll an entire area back. Claims prevent the bulk of the damage, and logs sort out the rest.
Performance is nothing to worry about: claims barely cost any TPS, the ticks per second that show how smoothly your server is running. If you want to dig into that, read how to improve your Minecraft server's performance. On every Paper package from Minecraft hosting at MC-Node you install the plugin straight from the panel.
Frequently asked questions
How many claim blocks do you need for an average house? One claim block equals one block of ground surface, so 16 by 16 costs 256 blocks and 32 by 32 costs 1,024. Height does not count. Claim a little more generously than tight against your walls, because expanding is only possible as long as the neighbours have not taken that space.
Can you run GriefPrevention and WorldGuard at the same time? Yes, and on many survival servers that is the standard setup. You use WorldGuard for the areas you define yourself, such as spawn, warps and a pvp arena. You use GriefPrevention for everything players build themselves. Just do not govern building in the same area twice, or the golden shovel will look broken.
Does GriefPrevention work on a modpack such as All the Mods 10? No. ATM10 runs on NeoForge with Minecraft 1.21.1, and a mod loader does not load Bukkit plugins. Packs of that size have their own claim system on board. GriefPrevention is built for Paper, Purpur and Spigot.
What happens to the claim of a player who quits? Nothing, unless you set the expiry periods. If you do, the protection lapses after the period you chose: seven days for empty chest claims, for example, and 60 to 90 days for genuine builds. The build stays standing, only the ground opens up.
Does GriefPrevention protect against a friend who empties your chest? Not if you gave them containertrust or trust, because then they are officially allowed to. That is why accesstrust should be your default. For the times it still goes wrong, you want CoreProtect running: it shows you who took what out of which chest.