Compassionate Hardcore

Important

Do not use this mod in a Hardcore world.

Compassionate Hardcore is designed for a regular Survival world set to Hard difficulty. It replaces permanent world loss with a demanding exile-and-recovery system while allowing you to continue playing in the same world.

A Second Chance Without Removing the Consequences

Minecraft Hardcore creates tension because every mistake can be final. However, losing a world containing months or years of progress can discourage players from continuing.

Compassionate Hardcore offers a middle ground. Death remains a serious setback, but it does not permanently lock you out of your world. Instead, you are exiled far from where you died and forced to begin again with whatever you can rebuild.

Your old base and everything you created still exist—but finding your way back is entirely up to your preparation, patience, and survival skills.

How It Works

When a player dies, the mod records the actual death location and searches for a survivable destination far away in the Overworld. After a protected one-second preparation period, the player is teleported to the selected exile location and a 30-minute penalty period begins.

Dying again while the penalty is active returns the player to the same exile location. Once the 30-minute period expires, the next death selects a completely new destination based on that new death location.

Penalty locations, remaining penalty time, world settings, and the selected difficulty profile are preserved after restarting the world or server.

Exile Difficulty Profiles

The exile distance is measured from the player’s actual death location, not from the world origin. Destinations are selected in a random direction using true radial distance.

Three profiles are available:

• Merciful: 50,000–100,000 blocks from the death location
• Standard: 100,000–500,000 blocks from the death location
• Brutal: 500,000–1,000,000 blocks from the death location

After Compassionate Hardcore is enabled, the authorized player receives clickable profile choices in chat. The selected profile is saved separately for that world and can be changed later by an authorized operator.

Destination Safety

Before teleporting the player, Compassionate Hardcore checks the destination for solid, dry footing and enough empty space to stand. It avoids spawning the player inside blocks or directly in water or lava. Generated destinations are also checked against the world border.

During the one-second preparation period, the player is placed in a protected state and cannot move or interact with the world.

Per-World Activation

Compassionate Hardcore does not activate automatically. When an unconfigured world is opened, the singleplayer world owner or an authorized operator receives clickable options to enable the mod or keep it disabled. Normal players do not see this setup prompt and cannot change the world setting.

The following commands are available:

• /chm enable — Enables Compassionate Hardcore in the current world.
• /chm disable — Disables Compassionate Hardcore in the current world.
• /chm status — Shows whether the mod is enabled and displays the selected difficulty profile.
• /chm profile <merciful|standard|brutal> — Changes the exile difficulty profile.

The enable, disable, and profile commands can only be used by the singleplayer world owner, authorized operators, or the server console. The status command is available to all players because it does not modify any settings.

When the mod is disabled, no death penalties or activation warnings are applied.

Death and Item Loss

Compassionate Hardcore uses Minecraft’s normal death rules. Item loss follows the world’s keepInventory gamerule.

For the intended experience, use a Survival world set to Hard difficulty with keepInventory disabled. This makes preparation, emergency supplies, recovery routes, Elytra, rockets, and backup equipment meaningful parts of the experience.

Server-Side Support

Compassionate Hardcore is fully server-side. Players joining a CHM-enabled server do not need to install the mod.

Death handling, teleportation, protection, saved locations, difficulty profiles, and warning messages are all managed by the server. Installing the mod on the client is only useful if you want to view its information and release notes through Mod Menu.

Why Use Compassionate Hardcore?

This mod is intended for players who enjoy Hardcore-style tension but do not want to permanently lose their world. It turns death into a meaningful and lasting setback built around exploration, survival, preparation, and the challenge of returning home.

Death still matters. Your equipment may be gone, your home may be hundreds of thousands of blocks away, and your journey may need to begin from nothing.

Can you find your way back home?

Compatibility

Compassionate Hardcore should work alongside most Fabric mods. It does not add custom blocks, items, dimensions, or mandatory client resources, giving it a relatively small compatibility footprint.

Mods that heavily replace player death, respawning, teleportation, world borders, or chunk generation may affect its behavior.