Ascendra
Your items are safe. Rise again.
Ascendra is a secure, lossless, platform-supported grave system for Paper/Spigot Minecraft servers. When a player dies, Ascendra captures their inventory and XP into a grave block placed at — or safely near — the death location. Players can later open the grave to recover everything they were carrying.
Ascendra is built to prevent item loss, even in situations that normally destroy items: deaths in the void, in lava, in fire, or over large bodies of liquid. Instead of watching their gear despawn, players get a protected grave they can return to.
Ascendra is currently in development. Configuration keys and behaviour described here target version 0.3.0.
Why Ascendra
- Lossless by design — inventory, armour, offhand, and XP are all captured.
- Safe in unsafe places — void, lava, and liquid deaths are handled with temporary platforms.
- Fair and configurable — protection timers, expiry, per-player limits, and XP handling are all tunable.
- Lightweight integrations — optional floating holograms and claim-aware placement, both as soft dependencies.
- Anti-duplication — graves lock while open and active state is tracked to stop item duplication.
Feature Summary
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Full item capture | Saves inventory, armour, and offhand. Normal drops are suppressed when a grave is created. |
| XP storage | Store all XP, a percentage, or none. |
| Safe placement | Finds a safe nearby block, avoiding lava, fire, cactus, powder snow, and more. |
| Void & liquid safety | Builds a temporary platform when a player dies over void, water, or lava. |
| Grave protection | Owner-only access for a configurable duration, with optional killer access. |
| Expiration | Graves can expire after a set lifetime and either drop or delete their contents. |
| Per-player limits | Cap how many active graves a player may have, optionally removing the oldest. |
| Recovery compass | Hands out a managed compass that points to the grave via lodestone metadata. |
| Holograms | Optional floating labels (owner, time remaining, status) via DecentHolograms. |
| Grave & history GUIs | Browse active graves and review past grave outcomes. |
| Explosion protection | Grave blocks survive explosions. |
| GriefDefender support | Optionally block grave creation inside claims. |
Requirements
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Server software | Paper or Spigot |
| API version | 1.20 |
| Built against | Paper API 1.20.4-R0.1-SNAPSHOT |
| Java | 17 or newer |
Optional Soft Dependencies
Ascendra works fully without these — they only enable extra functionality when present.
| Plugin | Version | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| DecentHolograms | 2.8.9+ | Floating hologram labels above graves. Disabled automatically if not installed. |
| GriefDefender | — | Claim-aware placement (accessed via reflection). Can prevent graves inside claims. |
Where to Next
- Installation — requirements, install steps, and quick start.
- Commands — every command, alias, and what it does.
- Permissions — the full permission node list.
- Configuration — annotated
config.ymlreference. - Grave Behaviour — placement, protection, expiry, and limits.
- Recovery Compass — how the managed compass works.
- Holograms — floating labels and placeholders.
- Integrations — DecentHolograms and GriefDefender.
- Storage & Database — SQLite storage and inventory modes.
- Admin & Maintenance — admin commands and upkeep.
- Troubleshooting & FAQ — common questions and fixes.