Protect your builds with GriefPrevention

On a survival server with players you do not know, someone will eventually break into a chest or blow up a house. GriefPrevention stops that without an admin watching every build: each player claims their own land with a golden shovel, and nobody else can build, break or open containers there unless the owner trusts them. This guide installs it on Paper or Purpur, shows how a player makes a claim and covers the few settings worth changing.

Checked against GriefPrevention 16.18.7 on Paper 26.3, October 2026. GriefPrevention is a plugin for Paper, Purpur and Spigot. It does not run on Vanilla, Fabric, Forge or NeoForge, and Modrinth does not list Folia for it.

Install GriefPrevention

1. Open Plugins under Content in the left rail.
2. Above the search box, make sure the Modrinth chip is selected, search for GriefPrevention and click Install.
3. Open the Console tab and click Restart. Plugins load only at startup.
4. Type plugins in the Console. The list should include GriefPrevention.

The first start creates a plugins/GriefPreventionData folder. Its config.yml holds the settings and messages.yml holds every message players see.

How a player makes a claim

Claims are made in the game, not from the Console. The default tool is the golden shovel.

1. Hold a golden shovel and right-click the ground at one corner of the area. The chat answers "Claim corner set! Use the shovel again at the opposite corner to claim a rectangle of land. To cancel, put your shovel away."
2. Right-click the opposite corner. The chat answers "Claim created! Use /trust to share it with friends."
3. Right-click the claimed ground with a stick to see its borders.

A new player who has no claim and places a chest gets a claim around it automatically, 9 by 9 blocks by default. A claim must be at least 5 blocks wide and 100 blocks in area. It reaches 5 blocks below the lower of the two shovel clicks, and it sinks lower as the owner digs.

Players start with 100 claim blocks, earn 100 for each hour they actually play, and stop accruing at 80000. Players who stand idle do not earn them. /claimslist shows a player's total.

Settings worth changing

Open plugins/GriefPreventionData/config.yml in the File Manager, edit it, click Save, then type gpreload in the Console. That reloads the settings but not the plugin itself, and the Console prints "Configuration updated. If you have updated your Grief Prevention JAR, you still need to /reload or reboot your server." The defaults suit most servers. The keys people change are:

• GriefPrevention.Claims.InitialBlocks, BlocksAccruedPerHour and MaxAccruedBlocks set the claim block budget.
• GriefPrevention.Claims.AutomaticNewPlayerClaimsRadius sets the chest claim radius. A negative number turns chest claims off.
• GriefPrevention.Claims.Mode.<world> sets what claims do in a world: Survival, Creative, SurvivalRequiringClaims or Disabled. GriefPrevention's configuration page warns that when you set a world to Disabled, most of its features turn off there, and any claims already in that world stop protecting the blocks inside.

To give moderators more power, grant permissions with LuckPerms, as in Set up LuckPerms on your Minecraft server. griefprevention.deleteclaims lets someone delete or resize other players' claims. griefprevention.ignoreclaims lets them build inside any claim with /ignoreclaims, and GriefPrevention does not log what they do in that mode, so give it only to people you trust completely.

Common problems

• "You don't have permission to claim land." means the player lacks the griefprevention.createclaims permission, which everyone has by default.
• "Land claims are disabled in this world." means that world's mode is Disabled.
• Claim commands such as /trust and /abandonclaim only run in the game, not from the Console.

Other claim plugins

GriefDefender is a separate claims plugin, and it is not in the Plugins tab: we found no listing for it on Modrinth, CurseForge or Hangar. Its wiki says it needs LuckPerms 5 and tells you to download the jar from its SpigotMC page, then upload it to the plugins folder in the File Manager. It also asks for Spawn protection (blocks) to be 0. Check that page for the Minecraft versions it supports before you install it.

GriefPrevention keeps people out of claims, but its administrator's guide says it keeps no history of block changes, so it cannot roll them back. For that, add Set up CoreProtect on Minecraft, and mark off areas you control with Set up WorldGuard on your Minecraft server.