Paper 1.21.4 plugin that tweaks a bunch of game balance stuff to make the server economy and combat less broken. Handles gold nerfs, axe damage, mending removal, strength pot scaling, armor durability, and a few other things.
Built for a private PvP server. Use/modify freely.
Mesa gold nerf Removes all gold ore above y=64 on chunk generation. In badlands biomes, also removes 80% of underground gold ore — brings it down to roughly 2× normal instead of the vanilla 10×. Stops players from flooding the economy by just living in a mesa.
Axe damage nerf Axes in 1.9+ hit way too hard compared to swords. This scales them back:
- Normal hit: ~58% of base damage
- Crit hit: ~92% of base damage
Leaves axes slightly weaker than swords on normal hits, roughly equal on crits.
Strength pot scaling Instead of the vanilla flat +3 damage per level, Strength now multiplies total damage:
- Strength I: ×1.20
- Strength II: ×1.40
Feels less punishing in a no-cooldown environment.
Mending removed Mending doesn't exist — stripped from fishing loot, villager trades, loot chests, and enchanting tables. Gear should break eventually.
Sweeping Edge and Lunge removed Both enchantments are blocked from being obtained through any normal means.
Curse enchantments blocked Binding Curse and Vanishing Curse are silently stripped from any item that would get them — anvils, loot, trades.
Villager/Piglin spawner block Can't place villager or zombified piglin spawner eggs, and those spawner types can't spawn naturally. Prevents villager trading exploits and piglin gold farms.
Invisibility potions disabled Invis pots can't be drunk or splash-thrown by regular players. Admins in creative can still use them.
End Crystal crafting disabled The recipe is blocked — can't craft them.
Respawn Anchor explodes in overworld Placing a respawn anchor in the overworld blows it up. Discourages grief attempts.
Dolphin's Grace and Hero of the Village disabled Both status effects are cancelled when applied. Hero of the Village in particular gives massive trade discounts which breaks the economy.
Villager trade price doubling All villager trades have their ingredient costs doubled. Suppresses natural discounts (no hero of the village, no zombie cure discounts).
Sharpness armor durability Sharpness enchants deal extra durability damage to the defender's armor:
- Sharpness 1–3: +1 extra durability per hit on all armor
- Sharpness 4+: +2 extra durability per hit on diamond/netherite
Makes high-sharpness swords actually wear down gear over time.
Requires Java 21+ and Maven. Also needs AdminPlugin on the compile classpath (soft dep at runtime).
mvn clean package
Jar ends up in target/BalancePlugin-1.21.4.jar.
- AdminPlugin (soft) — used to check if a player is an admin in creative mode (bypasses some restrictions)
- Axe crit detection uses fall distance + velocity check, same logic as vanilla
- Gold removal runs at chunk generation time — won't affect already-generated chunks
- Mending stripping on fishing only triggers when the fish item is actually caught (not on the cast)
- The villager trade doubling uses a PersistentDataContainer flag so it only runs once per trade, not every time the inventory opens