Quality-of-Life Plugins Small Paper SMPs Tend to Keep Installed
The plugins small Paper SMPs tend to keep installed - GriefPrevention, HuskHomes or EssentialsX, LuckPerms with EssentialsX Chat, TAB, CoreProtect, Chunky, BlueMap and head drops - what each one does and how it changes the feel of the server.
ChunkPod Team · · 9 min read
Quality-of-Life Plugins Small Paper SMPs Tend to Keep Installed
Most small Paper SMPs end up with a similar short list of plugins. They don't add new content or change the core game. They fix the small annoyances that show up once a group of friends has been playing together for a few weeks: someone's base gets raided, someone dies far from home and can't find their stuff, or nobody can tell who's an admin in chat.
This roundup covers the plugins that keep showing up on those servers, what each one does, and how it changes the feel of the server. They're all Paper plugins, but check each one's Modrinth, Hangar or SpigotMC page for the Minecraft version you run before installing it.
Land claims: GriefPrevention
GriefPrevention is the classic claims plugin, and it's still the default pick for a lot of small survival servers.
Players mark out land with a golden shovel. Inside a claim, other players can't break blocks, place blocks or open chests unless the owner lets them in. Owners hand out access with commands like /trust, /containertrust and /accesstrust, so you can let a friend build with you while only letting someone else use your doors and buttons.
Players earn claim blocks as they play, so the amount of land they can protect grows with time spent on the server. New players also get a small automatic claim around the first chest they place, which covers the most common early-game theft without them needing to learn anything first.
What it changes
GriefPrevention changes the trust model of the server. Without it, an SMP runs on everyone behaving, and one bad night can wipe out weeks of building. With it, players stop worrying about leaving their base unattended, and you spend a lot less time as an admin sorting out who took what.
The tradeoff is that claims make some things harder. Wars, raids and "anything goes" servers don't fit well with it. If your group plays anarchy-style or likes PvP base raiding, you'll want to skip claims entirely.
Homes, warps and teleports: HuskHomes or EssentialsX
Teleport commands are probably the single most common plugin feature on SMPs. There are two main ways small servers get them.
HuskHomes
HuskHomes is built around teleporting and nothing else. It gives players /sethome and /home, server-wide warps, /tpa requests, /back to return to where you were, and /rtp for random teleports into the wild. Players can also make a home public so others can visit it.
It works on a single server, and it can also sync homes and teleports across several servers behind a proxy if your SMP grows into a small network later. For a group that only wants teleports and nothing extra, it's a clean choice.
EssentialsX
EssentialsX is the big all-rounder. The core plugin covers homes, /tpa, /back, /msg, nicknames, kits and a long list of admin commands. Extra modules add things like spawn handling (EssentialsX Spawn) and chat formatting (EssentialsX Chat, covered below).
Many small servers use EssentialsX because it covers so much in one install. The downside is the same as the upside: it adds a lot of commands, and you may end up turning off features you never wanted.
What teleports change
This is the plugin category that changes the feel of an SMP the most, and it's worth thinking about before you install anything.
With unlimited homes and /tpa, the world shrinks. Players visit each other's bases constantly, travel stops being a part of the game, and nether highways or rail systems lose their purpose. Some groups love that, because it means more time building and less time walking.
Other groups find it makes the world feel smaller and less like survival. A common middle ground is to limit players to one or two homes, keep /tpa but leave out /rtp, or only allow warps to shared places like spawn and a market. Both HuskHomes and EssentialsX let you set home limits through permissions.
Chat formatting: EssentialsX Chat and LuckPerms
On a fresh Paper server, chat is just <name> message. That's fine for five friends, but once you have ranks or staff, people want to see who's who.
The usual setup on small servers is LuckPerms for permissions plus a chat plugin that reads prefixes from it. LuckPerms handles groups like default, member and admin, and each group can have a prefix and suffix. EssentialsX Chat then shows those prefixes in front of names, with colors, through Vault.
LuckPerms isn't only for chat. It's the permissions plugin most other plugins on this list expect you to use, so it's also how you control who gets how many homes, claim blocks or admin commands.
What it changes
Formatted chat makes it obvious who to ask for help, and it gives regular players a small sense of progress if you use ranks for time played. It also helps a lot when screenshots get shared outside the server.
If you're writing prefixes with colors, gradients or hex codes, the syntax differs between plugins. Some use & codes, and newer ones use MiniMessage tags. ChunkPod's free Color Code Translator converts between & codes, § codes, hex colors and MiniMessage, which saves some guessing.
Tab list and name tags: TAB
TAB, by NEZNAMY, controls the player list you see when you hold the Tab key. It can add a header and footer, show prefixes from LuckPerms, sort players by group and change the name tags above players' heads. It can also show a sidebar scoreboard.
It's a small thing, but a tidy tab list with staff at the top and a server name in the header makes a friends' server feel like a place rather than a default world.
Grief logging and rollbacks: CoreProtect
Even with claims, things go wrong. Someone builds just outside a claim, a creeper hits an unclaimed farm, or a trusted player turns out not to be trustworthy. CoreProtect logs block changes, container transactions and more, so you can see exactly what happened.
Admins can use /co inspect and click a block to see who placed or broke it and when, and /co rollback to undo changes from a specific player or time range.
What it changes
CoreProtect mostly changes life for admins. Arguments about who broke what turn into a quick lookup, and griefing becomes something you can undo instead of something players have to rebuild by hand. Players rarely see it, but they notice when stolen items come back.
It does store a lot of data over time, so most admins set it to purge old logs after a while.
Pre-generating the world: Chunky
Chunky generates chunks ahead of time. You give it a center and a radius, and it builds the world out to that size while the server is running.
On a small server, the moment that hurts performance the most is often a player flying with elytra into new terrain. Generating new chunks is expensive, and it can drop TPS for everyone. Pre-generating with Chunky moves that cost to a time when nobody is playing. Its companion plugin, ChunkyBorder, adds a world border so players don't wander past the generated area.
What it changes
Exploration feels smoother, and lag spikes from new terrain mostly go away. The cost is disk space, since a pre-generated world is larger on disk, and a bit of planning about how big you want your world to be.
A live map: BlueMap
BlueMap renders your world as a 3D map you can open in a web browser. Players can see the world from above, find each other's bases and look at builds without logging in.
For an SMP, a web map turns into a shared record of the server. People check it to plan travel routes, show the server to friends and look back at how spawn has changed over a season. It needs a port open for the web server and some disk space for the rendered tiles, so it's worth checking before you add it to a tight setup.
Player head drops
Head drops are a small feature that a lot of SMPs end up adding for fun. When a player dies, usually in PvP, they drop their own head with their skin on it. Players keep them as trophies, put them on display or trade them.
There isn't one dominant plugin for this. Modrinth lists several small plugins that do it, such as PlayerHeadDrop and PlayersHeadDrop, and there are datapacks that do the same thing without a plugin at all. Check that whichever one you pick lists your server's Minecraft version before you add it, since small single-feature plugins are the ones most likely to stop getting updates.
What it changes
Head drops give PvP a little weight without making it punishing. On a mostly peaceful SMP, they also turn into a kind of server history, like a wall of heads from a tournament or a memorable fight.
Keeping the plugin list short
Each plugin here is light on its own, but they all add commands, config files and things to update when a new Minecraft version comes out. Small servers usually do best with a short list chosen on purpose:
- Pick one teleport plugin, not two. HuskHomes and EssentialsX overlap, and running both causes command conflicts.
- Decide how much teleporting fits your group before you install anything, since it's harder to take away later.
- Add claims and logging early. CoreProtect can't show anything that happened before it was installed.
- Prefer plugins that publish builds for the current version on Modrinth, Hangar or SpigotMC, and check their update history.
If you'd rather not run the server yourself, ChunkPod is in early access. You can join the waitlist at chunkpod.com to get notified when hosting opens.