How to Make a Lifesteal Server

Lifesteal is a survival game mode built on one rule: when you kill another player you take one of their hearts, and when they kill you they take one of yours. It turns every fight into a loan against your own health. That is simple to say and surprisingly easy to get wrong, because small choices about the rules decide whether the server stays fun after the first week.

Decide the rules before you pick a tool

Write these down first, because every implementation asks you to choose them.

• Starting hearts. Players normally begin with the ten hearts the game gives them. Changing it changes how fast fights escalate.
• Heart cap. Without a maximum, a few strong players end up with enormous health and nobody else can fight them. Decide a cap, or accept that the strongest become unbeatable.
• Elimination. The original game mode removes a player who loses all their hearts. Decide whether that means a ban, a spectator mode, a timed wait or a way back in.
• Revival. If elimination is permanent, say what a player can do about it. A revive item makes elimination a setback instead of the end, and you can make it expensive.
• Fighting rules. Decide whether players can kill each other anywhere, whether new players are protected for a while and what counts as unfair, such as camping a spawn.

Three ways to run it

The Lifesteal projects MCRank lists work in different ways, and the one you choose follows from your server software.

• A data pack, such as LifeSteal FR, works on servers that load data packs and does not change the server software. Its page describes it as configurable and as aiming to reproduce the behaviours of the original game mode.
• A server-side Fabric mod, such as LifeSteal Server-side, runs only on the server, so players join with an ordinary client. It needs a Fabric server and has a wiki.
• A mod for Fabric, Forge or NeoForge, such as the Lifesteal mod listed here, adds the mechanic through a mod loader. Read its licence, which restricts some commercial uses.

If you want to run Paper and its plugins, check carefully before you rely on any of these, because a mod does not run on Paper. Use each project's page for supported versions and options, and test on a copy of your world.

Set the server up for it

A Lifesteal world is a PvP world, and that changes what you protect. Decide whether to use claims or regions at all, and where players are safe, such as spawn. Consider a short protection period for new players so that the first thing that happens to them is not an elimination.

Close the exploits that break the economy

Hearts are the currency of this game mode, which makes duplication attacks especially damaging. If a player can duplicate the item that gives or restores a heart, the economy is over. Keep your server software current, make sure the exploit toggles in Paper's unsupported-settings are still at their defaults if you use Paper, and consider a dedicated anti-dupe tool on Fabric. Our guide to stopping duplication explains the settings.

Keep a log of heart changes, who killed whom and where, so that you can check a report of a bug or an unfair kill.

Explain it to players

Most people who join have only seen Lifesteal in videos. Put the rules where they cannot miss them, in the welcome message and on your website: how hearts move, what the cap is, what happens at zero and how to come back. Players accept harsh rules they were told about and resent ones they discover.

Test with a small group first

Run a week with a few trusted players, and ask them to try to break it: kill-farming with alts, logging out to avoid a fight, trading hearts for items, sharing accounts. Fix what they find, then open the server.

Keep it balanced

Review the numbers after the first month. Look at the distribution of hearts: if a handful of players hold most of them, tighten the cap or add ways to lose hearts that are not PvP. A game mode like this stays healthy only if new players can still compete.