EternalDeathDrops – Backup & Eternal Death Drops

EternalDeathDrops is a lightweight, performance‑optimized plugin that combines two essential features for server administrators:

Automated world backups – create scheduled backups of your worlds with custom categories and retention policies.
Eternal death drops – items dropped on death never despawn (or have a configurable lifetime), ensuring no loot is lost.

✨ Features

Flexible backup system
- Built‑in categories: startup, hourly, manual
- Fully customizable categories with independent intervals, folder names, and max backup count
- Configurable world list – backup only the worlds you specify
- Smart save‑wait algorithm (monitors .mca and .dat files) with adjustable stability checks and timeouts
- Asynchronous ZIP compression with adjustable level (0–9)
- Automatic cleanup of old backups
Eternal death drops
- Items dropped by players are marked as "eternal" – they will never despawn (or will despawn after a customizable time in ticks)
- Persistent metadata across server restarts – items keep their lifetime counter
- Full support for item pickups – metadata is removed when picked up, and the item returns to normal behaviour
- Fully customizable and includes many features!
Performance first
- All heavy operations (backup creation, old backup deletion) run asynchronously
- ChunkLoadEvent only processes items in the loaded chunk, not the whole world
- Minimal impact on MSPT – tested with 150 simultaneous player deaths with full inventories – MSPT increased by only ~14% (from ~7.X ms to 8.0 ms) during normal chunk loading, and up to 30 ms when loading chunks with thousands of items (which would drop client FPS from 120 to below 1).
Full configurability
- All features can be enabled/disabled via config.yml
- Set your own world folders, lifetime ticks, backup intervals, retention limits, and compression level

📖 Commands

Command	Description	Permission
`/backup`	Creates a manual backup of all worlds	`eternaldeathdrops.backup`
`/cleareternaldrops`	Removes all eternal death drop items from the server	`eternaldeathdrops.clear`
`/eternaldeathdrops reload`	Reloads the plugin configuration from disk	`eternaldeathdrops.reload`

All commands require op by default.

🔐 Permissions

eternaldeathdrops.backup – allows using /backup
eternaldeathdrops.clear – allows using /cleareternaldrops
eternaldeathdrops.reload – allows using /eternaldeathdrops reload

⚡ Performance

Tested on paper 1.21.11 with 6000 stacks of items in one chunk and mspt increased by 10-20%(from ~9-10 mspt to ~10-12 mspt).
Tested with default config.
Backups can be produced in up to 3 seconds of waiting from /backup to .zip file in backup directory.

🔧 Compatibility

Plugin was coded on just bukkit api so it compatible with Bukkit, Paper, Purpur, Spigot and other server-cores that have bukkit api in them(do not compatible with folia).
Plugin uses only 1.14+ bukkit api so it can be used in various servers.

⚙️ Configuration

The plugin generates a default config.yml on first run. Key settings:

# Enable/disable plugin features
features:
  backup: true          # Enable automated backups. Default: true
  eternal-items: true   # Enable eternal death drops. Default: true

# World folders to backup (list of folder names in server root)
# If not specified or empty, default worlds will be used: world, world_nether, world_the_end
worlds:
  - "world"
  - "world_nether"
  - "world_the_end"

# Lifetime of eternal items in ticks (0 = forever, 20 ticks = 1 second)
eternal-lifetime-ticks: 0

# Time beetween checks for expired items and time beetween ticking timers(default = 20 ticks = 1 second)
# The higher this value the more performance, but it can cause smaller accuracy of lifetime timers
time-between-checks: 20

# This option controls do timers of item's lifetime tick in only
# loaded chunks(default = true)
do-items-only-tick-in-loaded-chunks: true

# This option controls can other players pickup your death's items( default = true)
can-other-players-pickup-death-drops: true

# This option controls can mobs pickup playrs death's items(default = true)
can-other-mobs-pickup-death-drops: true

# These options controls how items spread after death(default values are equal to vanilla)
death-item-spread:
  x: 0.5          # Random offset on X axis (total range = ±x/2). Default: 0.5
  y: 0.2          # Vertical offset added to the drop position. Default: 0.2
  z: 0.5          # Random offset on Z axis (total range = ±z/2). Default: 0.5

do-items-glow: false # If true, items will glow white when dropped. Default: false

# Maximum number of backups to keep for each category (set to 0 to disable the category)
max-backups:
  startup: 3
  hourly: 3
  manual: 3

# Interval for hourly backup in ticks (0 = disabled, 20 ticks = 1 second)
hourly-interval: 72000   # 1 hour

# Timeout for waiting for save completion in ticks.
# If set to 0 or negative, the default (600 ticks = 30 seconds) will be used.
# Increase this value if you see frequent timeout warnings.
save-timeout-ticks: 600

# Number of consecutive checks (every 200ms) that must show no changes
# to consider save completed. Default 10 = 2 seconds of stability.
stability-checks: 10

# Delay after stability is achieved, in ticks (20 ticks = 1 second).
# This extra wait ensures all data is flushed. Default 20 = 1 second.
post-stability-delay: 20

# ZIP compression level (0 = no compression, 9 = maximum, default 6)
compression-level: 6

# Custom backup categories (all disabled by default)
# You can create as many of those as you need
custom-categories:
  custom1:
    enabled: false
    interval: 36000      # 30 minutes
    folder-name: "custom1_backups"
    max_backups: 3
  custom2:
    enabled: false
    interval: 144000     # 2 hours
    folder-name: "custom2_backups"
    max_backups: 3

# Options below are WIP and do not affect anything yet
# These options control how glowing effect will be applied to items
item-glowing:
  enabled: false
  color:
    static: true # If true, the color will be the same for all items
    color: "000000" # Only for static color. Default: "000000"
    based-on-the-dimensions: false # If true, the color will be based on the dimension player died in or items in. Default: false
    based-on-the-player-dim: true # If true, the color will be based on the player death location's dimension. Default: true
    bosed-on-the-items-dim: false # If true, the color will be based on the item location's dimension. Default: false
    dimensions: # Controls the color for dimensions. Default values: "- overworld: LIME"\n- "nether: RED"\n- "end: BLACK". Handle only minecraft's teams colors
      - "overworld: LIME"
      - "nether: RED"
      - "end: PURPLE"
    based-on-the-owner: false # If true color will be based on the owner of the item. Default: false
#  only-to-owner: false # If true, the glowing effect will only be visible to the owner of the item. Default: false

Eternal death drops

Compatibility

Minecraft: Java Edition

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