Run a hardcore Minecraft server: one life, hard difficulty and fresh seasons

What hardcore changes on a server

Hardcore is survival with two changes: the world plays on hard and cannot be moved off it, and a player who dies does not come back. On a server that second part is handled per player. The world keeps running, the others keep playing, and the player who died turns into a spectator.

That last column matters. A server owner can bend the rules of a hardcore world whenever they choose to, so the one life is only as strict as the people holding operator rights.

The hardcore setting only counts for a new world

On our panel the switch is Hardcore in the Gameplay group of the Settings tab, and it writes hardcore=true to server.properties. The catch is timing. The server reads that line when it creates a world and stores the result inside the world, in level.dat. After that, the world decides whether it is hardcore, and the line in server.properties is ignored.

• Hardcore on, existing world: nothing changes. Players who die respawn as usual.
• Hardcore off, existing hardcore world: nothing changes either. The world stays hardcore.
• Hardcore on, then a new world: the new world is hardcore from its first tick.

1. 1

   Switch Hardcore on

   Open the Settings tab, turn on Hardcore in the Gameplay group and save. The panel reminds you that some settings wait for a restart; this one waits for a new world.

2. 2

   Check Force gamemode on join

   Leave it off, and set Default gamemode to survival. The section on deaths below explains why this switch quietly undoes hardcore.

3. 3

   Create the world

   Use the Reset the world card on the World tab, described at the end of this guide. The server generates a new world with the hardcore flag set.

Check that the world really is hardcore

The quickest test from the Console tab uses the locked difficulty. Try to set easy, then ask for the current value:

difficulty easy
difficulty

A hardcore world answers the first line with a message that the difficulty was set to Easy, and the second with The difficulty is Hard. A normal world really switches to easy, so set it back with difficulty hard or whatever you had. If the first line says the difficulty did not change because it is already Easy, the world is not hardcore either, since a hardcore world is never on easy.

Why the difficulty will not move

At every start the server applies the Difficulty value from the Settings tab. In a hardcore world it turns any value into hard before storing it, and the difficulty command goes through the same step. That explains two things that confuse people:

• The Settings tab can say peaceful while monsters hunt players at night. The field shows the line in the file, not what the world uses.
• `difficulty easy` reports success and the world stays on hard. The message repeats what you asked for rather than what happened.

So there is no gentle hardcore. For a milder challenge, run normal survival on hard and use the game rules further down, or give players a few lives with a plugin.

What happens when a player dies

The player sees a Game Over screen with two buttons, Spectate World and Title Screen. Spectating makes the server respawn them where a normal respawn would put them, at their bed, a charged respawn anchor or world spawn, and then switch them to spectator mode. From then on they can fly through the world and watch, but cannot touch anything.

• Their items stay behind. With keep_inventory off, which is the default, inventory and experience drop where they died.
• Nothing is banned or deleted. The player stays on the server as a spectator, and their account can join again later.
• The spectator state is saved with the player, so logging out and back in keeps them a spectator.

Bringing a player back

Sometimes a death should not count: a lag spike, a bug, a friend who joined the evening before and fell into a ravine. An operator can undo it. Decide in advance when you will do this, write it down where players can read it, and stick to it, or every death turns into a debate.

1. 1

   Find a safe spot

   A spectator can be anywhere, including inside a mountain. Pick coordinates on solid ground, near their bed or near where their items lie.

2. 2

   Move them there

   In the Console tab, teleport the player to those coordinates first.

3. 3

   Switch them to survival

   Then run gamemode survival with their name. Doing it in that order means they never land inside a block.

tp Kai 212 71 -340
gamemode survival Kai

In chat the same commands take a slash and operator level 2 or higher. Every operator can also use them on themselves, which is why a hardcore server keeps its operator list short. If the player's items dropped when they died, the revived player has to walk back for them.

Game rules that suit hardcore

Hardcore does not lock game rules on a server. The Game rules card on the World tab reads them from the running server, and one console command sets any rule the card does not show. These are the ones worth a thought before the first night:

gamerule spectators_generate_chunks false
gamerule players_sleeping_percentage 50

The first of those two is not on the card, so it goes through the console. The game rules guide explains the rest of the card and the renamed rules since 1.21.11.

Several lives instead of one

Many groups prefer three or five lives over one. There are two ways to run that, and they need opposite settings.

By hand, with hardcore on

Keep the world hardcore, so every death ends in spectator mode, and let the scoreboard count the deaths. The list slot shows each player's count next to their name when someone holds the key for the player list:

scoreboard objectives add deaths deathCount
scoreboard objectives setdisplay list deaths

When a player dies with lives to spare, an operator brings them back with the teleport and gamemode steps above. It costs a moment of attention per death, and it works on Paper, Fabric and vanilla alike.

With Limited Lives, with hardcore off

Limited Lives handles the counting and the penalty itself. It runs on Paper, Purpur and Spigot, has builds for 26.1 and 26.2, and can be found in the Plugin catalog on the Plugins tab. Run it on a normal survival world with Difficulty set to hard, because in a hardcore world the first death already ends in spectator mode before the plugin gets a say.

/lives shows your own count and /lives get Kai someone else's, while set, add and remove change a count by hand. The config also has ways to earn lives, such as taking one from a player you kill or crafting an item. The Force gamemode catch applies here as well: leave that switch off, or players out of lives rejoin in survival.

Starting a new season

Once most players are spectators, the season is over. The Reset the world card on the World tab starts the next one without touching a file.

1. 1

   Confirm Hardcore is still on

   A reset leaves server.properties alone apart from the seed, so the switch keeps its value. Check it anyway, because the new world copies it once.

2. 2

   Pick a seed, or leave it empty

   Type one under Seed for the new world (optional), or leave the field empty for a random world. The seed guide helps you choose.

3. 3

   Press Reset world

   Enter your two-step code and confirm. The card runs through Stop the server, Take a full backup, Remove the old world and Start and generate a fresh world, and shows each step as it finishes.

4. 4

   Set up the season

   Game rules and the scoreboard live in the old world and go with it, so set your rules on the Game rules card again and add the deaths objective anew.

Before you open the gates, consider generating the land around spawn in advance. The first evening of a season is when everyone runs off in a different direction at once.