[Bukkit guide] Anti-grief In this guide I talk about what to do against griefers Table of contents - Griefers WHYYY?? - Ways to protect - Plugins - Endings Griefers WHYYY?? Minecraft. Sandbox. Problems. Many people enjoy playing with friends, not only Minecraft, take a look at MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online roleplaying games) such as WoW or RuneScape, or PvP/FpS such as CoD or LoL. The biggest problem with that games are people using offensive language, spamming or cheating (wich results in a ban very quickly). The problem with Minecraft is it is a sandbox game. This means you can change everything of it. Ofcourse, we're talking about ingame stuff now, not about modding etc. Minecraft is designed to be fully "changeable", wich makes it the perfect target for griefers. Griefers are people who want to harm your server, destorying things, annoying people, insulting them. Most of the time, griefers are little children who have too many spare time, however, there are some real griefing teams, and hacking clients. That is why protecting your server is very important. Ways to protect There are several ways to protect your server, combining all or several of them will make it very hard for people to grief. - The whitelist is a very useful, build-in tool for all vanilla/bukkit servers. Enabling it means only people who are on it, will be able to join your server. You can add people using an ingame command /whitelist add <name> or manually add them in the white-list.txt file in your server folder. You enable it as an option in the server.properties file. Using this method, you only allow people on your server wich you really trust. - By default, your newly installed server is in online mode. This means only people who bought Minecraft can access it. People with a hacking client without authentication won't be able to join your server. If you turn it off, this means people can join your server, grief, get banned and log in with another name, griefing again. The only way to block those people is by banning there IP, but if they have a dynamic IP adress or using a proxy, they will be back soon. Also people can log in with other users name (also if they have registered at Minecraft.net!!). This means that a griefer can log in on an admin account, without having to know the password. Look at the plugin section, because there is a solution for this. - Having some people in an OP team will help you keeping an eye on your server. Don't make everyone OP who is a friend in real life, or guys who say they've been OP on other servers. Also do not make your OP team too big. 2-3 OPs should be enough for a good amount of people. Do not make someone an OP before you really know you can trust him/her. Talk with the person on Skype, Teamspeak, ventrillo,.. Speaking with someone is much better than chatting. - By default, you have the ban, banip and kick commands. Using /whois <name> you'll be able to know the IP adress of a user, being able to ban him and all connections from that IP adress. - Using plugins will give you a lot more possibilities, that's why there is a seperate section for it. - Make backups! You'll find some plugins who are able to make backups so that, IF something goes wrong, you can always restore a backup world. Plugins As I already said, plugins give a lot of features and ways to protect your server. There are a lot more anti-grief plugins than I list here, feel free to suggest more in this topic. WorldGuard This plugins give you the possibility to protect regions, giving it flags etc. It will help you to protect f.e. spawn area's, towns, buildings,.. I cannot give you a whole guide in a guide about this plugin, so I'll keep it short and provide all the links needed to more information. Be sure to install WorldEdit too, because it won't work without. WorldGuard also uses a blacklist per world, allowing you to deny certain things to happen. You can say people cannot place tnt, cannot open doors, cannot jump into minecarts, cannot break certain blocks,.. And you can also link a permission to it. This means you can deny certain groups to build, place/break blocks, use items, drop items,.. in a certain world. This is a very useful feature! Full guide: http://wiki.sk89q.com/wiki/WorldGuard Useful commands: /region define <name> - defining a region (f.e. "spawn) /region flag - you can assign a lot of flag to a region: allow people/groups to build, allow people/groups to leave it, allow fire spread,.. A detailed list of all flag available can be found here: http://wiki.sk89q.com/wiki/WorldGuard/Regions/Flags /region addowner <name> - adds an owner to a region, giving him permission to build, and add/remove members /region addmember <name> - adds a member to your region, allowing him to build and ignore some flags (such as exit) A list of alll commands can be found here: http://wiki.sk89q.com/wiki/WorldGuard/Commands Download: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/se...st-area-protect-blacklist-1185.790/(worldedit: http://wiki.sk89q.com/wiki/WorldEdit) WorldEdit WorldEdit allows you to uses brushes and tools to form your world. This can be very usefull to drain lava griefing for example. Full guide: http://wiki.sk89q.com/wiki/WorldEdit Useful commands: //wand //br s //drain a lot more Download: http://wiki.sk89q.com/wiki/WorldEdit/Installation/Single_player Factions Factions is a plugin with many features, such as PvP, but you can also allow players to claim area's for themselve. The claiming land feature is fully configurable in the config file, and makes it possible for players to protect there own land, without having an admin to define a region. Full guide: http://massivecraft.com/plugins/factions Useful commands: /f h <page> - give you a list of all commands with their explanation Download: https://github.com/MassiveCraft/Factions/downloads Permissions Permission is a must if you want to use plugins. I already wrote a guide about this, so I'll be happy to reffer to that one: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/bukkit-guide-permissions.50305/ HawkEye This is a anti-cheat and anti-grief plugin, very good but very recource intensive (read: it will slow down your server). Also you'll need a MySQL server, check out a guide here: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/bukkit-guide-mysql.50500/ Full guide: http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/hawkeye/pages/installation-and-configuration/configuration/ Download: http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/hawkeye/ Anti X-ray Many people try to use X-ray texture packs, these packs change to opacity of many blocks, making players being able to search for recources above ground. There are some plugins to prevent this, I prefer orebfuscation. Full guide: https://github.com/lishd/Orebfuscator/wiki/FAQ Download: http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/orebfuscator/ Anti cheat Anti cheat plugins will search for player who send wrong information to the server (if they walk to fast they will travel too many blocks per second for example). The plugin I use for it is called NoCheat, but there are others. Download: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/se...n-of-various-flaws-bugs-in-mc-cb-1-1-r3.4523/ LWC LWC is a very usefull plugin to protect chests, doors, containers,.. The only problem with it is you'll need some commands to protect things. This means that you have to give permission to your players, or protecting things yourself. That means a lot of work sometimes, because the basic commands are pretty long. However, it is a very good way to protect a player's belongings. Full guide: http://wiki.griefcraft.com/wiki/LWC Useful commands: /lwc admin - gives a list of admin commands /cprivate - protects a chest/container/door /lwc admin forceowner <name> - gives a protection to someone else. Download: http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/lwc/ Lockette Lockette is a plugin similar to LWC, it has less features and it uses signs. This plugin allows players to protect their own chests and doors, wich is also a lot easier for admins/OPs. Full guide: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/se...est-and-door-lock-no-databases-588-1597.4336/ Download: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/se...est-and-door-lock-no-databases-588-1597.4336/ MCBans MCBans is a very usefull plugin, wich will only work if your server is in online mode. You can basically lookup player data, and get a list of servers where that person is banned and why. You also get some enhanced /ban and /kick commands. Full guide: http://wiki.mcbans.com/ Useful commands: /ban - bans! /unban - unbans a player /lookup <name> - you get all info of a player, if it is banned on other servers and why. /tempban - temorary bans a player, very usefull. Download: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/ad...-complete-kick-ban-global-ban-system-1337.94/ (follow the guide) Endings That's it, I tried to give some basic plugins for new bukkit users, and maybe some expierienced server hosters can also find some helpfull tips in this topic. If you know any other useful plugins, be sure to post it here, and be sure to give feedback/your opinion. I'll tell you quickly what my setup is: - player authentication plugin, I do have my server in online mode, but if someone his minecraft password gets hacked, things are still safe - WorldGuard, this is one of the best plugins in my opinion, I made a spawn area, where guests spawned. They couldn't leave it, couldn't build nor break anything (using the blacklist and permissions). If I promoted someone to player, they could wander around and build in non-protected zones. - you could always ask a worldguard region protection for your town/building - lockette to protect containers - backups every 10 minutes - MCBans - anti cheat This is ofcourse only my setup, and it took some time to get a balanced system, and it works pretty fine =) I hope this all helped, Zipron
Nice tutorial! I add some useful info: Residence is good area protection plugin. Ore to client obfuscation does not work on 1.1 anymore , you must move to Orebfuscator. Most of griefers using dynamic ips, if you run a non-whitelisted server you should use RangeBans to protect against dyn ips. To undo griefer destructions and lavaflows you can use WorldEdit. Limiting /plugins and /version commands will help you fight agaisnt people who searching bugs in plugins and use them.
yw =) Don't think WE can undo griefing, you can use hawkeye though =) zip EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.
A great tutorial! Altough I already knew the most of it.. I have still 1 question: What plugin can I use like; if a player builds a block of dirt, it will be automatticly protected, so only HE can destroy it again.. He makes a furnace, only HE can put coal in or out.. <-- also with a chest of course so evreryting he builds will be automatticly protected for HIM.. this counts for ALL players, so they DONT have to use commands, but evrything will still be protected.. SO MY QUESTION IS: Do you know wich plugin i can use for this??? Greetz, Jesse
Hmm, I'm not sure if such a plugin exists, and if it would, it would be highly imperformant: you should keep track of each X, Y and Z coordinate of each block a player ever places, and delete the record if he destroys the block. With a database solution, this would require insane amounts of database calls, with a flatfile solution, well.. that would be as slow as a database as soon as you have some data (flatfile processes its data serial, so from top-to-bottom, imagine the plugin would have to look on line 102132 before it found a matching record). You understand without any doubt that that would be ridiculous when talking about performance. A way that this could be achieved (I made a plugin only for chest protection using this method btw) is to modify the block's meta-deta (so that the owner of a block is stored in that block, not the other way around), but I don't know if that is possible. I kind of stopped writing plugins, got bored of it Maybe a nice question to ask @ the plugin section of the forums here But again: maybe there is a plugin that does this, it's not difficult at all to code it, the issue is the huge amount of data you'd have to keep. Maybe a nice alternative is to use factions, you can configure it so you only use it for regions (claims/chunk) and ignore the pvp aspect. regards, zipron
Well you are right.. but i see this kind of plugin on lots of servers, the only problem is that other players can build blocks on your blocks, so you CANT delet them.. thats te only problem with what i want but i think ill use just only LWC.. Its also jus fun if you do need to get stronger bricks on your server and traps ect... But still thx for the reaction! O, an btw.. You are way too smart for me XD, Im not that smart with plugins as you are, and I just finded out how to start up a port forwarde bukkit server.. so im searching for plugins, forget about it that i can make one Greetz, Jesse E.
Add the plugin GriefPrevention http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/grief-prevention/. Best anti-grief plugin EVER I have it on my server if you want to see it working ip in signature
Nice guide, but can you add my plugin? HawkEye is outdated and my plugin is up to date and fast. It also doesn't require a MySQL server and is not so resource intensive because it is multi-threaded.
Hello there. Do you know if there is a plugin which forbids grieving only when the player who build the protected area is offline? In other word, grieving would be allowed when the builder is online (and so can defend his building himself). Thank you!
