A survival anticheat has to catch more than combat cheats: gathering and automation cheats — Nuker, FastBreak, FastPlace, XCarry, AutoFish, AutoEat, AntiAFK — are the ones that hit the economy and the leaderboards. X-Ray and griefing are out of an anticheat's reach: X-Ray is handled by the server's anti-xray, griefers by claims and block logs.
What breaks a survival economy
On survival, the value of everything — resources, money, a spot on the leaderboard — rests on the fact that it's gathered by hand. Gathering cheats remove that limit:
- Nuker breaks everything around at once, FastBreak breaks faster than the tool allows. A mine an honest player spends an evening on is cleared in minutes.
- FastPlace places blocks too often — builds and farms grow faster than anyone else's.
- XCarry carries items in the crafting slots — extra inventory space on every trip.
- AutoClicker clicks for the player — say, for hours at a mob farm.
The result is always the same: resources lose value, the market collapses, and honest players stop bothering — the top spot belongs to whoever switched a cheat on.
Automation: AutoFish, AutoEat and AntiAFK
Survival has a special problem: cheats that play for the player. AutoFish fishes by itself — casts and reels in with nobody there, all night if needed. AutoEat eats by itself, so the character never starves during long AFK sessions. AntiAFK fakes a player at the keyboard — dodging the AFK kick and collecting playtime rewards.
Hardly anyone checks these: in our comparison none of the five popular anticheats — GrimAC, Vulcan, Polar, Intave or Matrix — has AutoFish, AutoEat or AntiAFK checks. DGuard has a check for each. You only need to decide what's actually banned on your server: if AFK farms are allowed, say so in your rules — the rules generator helps.
| Cheat | DGuard | GrimAC | Vulcan | Polar | Intave | Matrix |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nukerbreaks everything around at once | partly: FastBreak limits the pace; the dedicated MultiBreak is experimental | partly: not named — only a generic block-interaction check | partly: not named — only the break time of a single block | partly: not named — only the generic block-breaking checks | ||
| FastBreakbreaks faster than possible | partly: not named — only a generic block-interaction check | |||||
| FastPlaceplaces blocks too often | partly: only several blocks in a tick, via an experimental check | partly: not named — only a right-click CPS limit | partly: only with timing checks on — off by default | |||
| XCarrycarries items in crafting slots | partly: not named — only a generic inventory check | |||||
| AutoClickerclicks for the player | ||||||
| AutoFishfishes by itself | ||||||
| AutoEateats by itself | ||||||
| AntiAFKfakes a player at the keyboard |
X-Ray: what an anticheat can't see
X-Ray is the best-known survival cheat, and no plugin anticheat can see it: it only changes what the client draws, so the server never gets a single odd packet from it. That's why X-Ray isn't in our comparison — it's handled by server settings, not checks.
The fix is to never send the client ores the player can't see. Paper has a built-in anti-xray for that, off by default; how to enable it and which mode to pick is in How to stop X-Ray. Players who already mined with X-Ray give themselves away in the numbers: CoreProtect shows who mined how many diamonds and how much ancient debris.
Griefers
The other thing an anticheat doesn't solve is griefing. You can wreck someone's house or rob a chest without any cheats. That's what claims (WorldGuard, GriefPrevention), block logs with rollback (CoreProtect) and backups are for — all covered in Grief protection.
The anticheat covers the cheats that make griefing faster: Fly and Phase to get into a sealed base from above or through a wall, GhostHand to open chests through walls, Nuker to flatten a build in seconds.
Gentle strictness for casual players
Survival has plenty of casual players who live on one world for weeks. A false ban costs a lot here: someone spent a month on a house and leaves after one unfair ban. So survival suits a gentle setup: ban for obvious gathering cheats and flight, kick or just flag for moderators on anything debatable.
In DGuard you set a ban or a kick for each cheat feature, with evidence weights and thresholds in the config. A single trigger never bans: each one is evidence with a weight (VL × the rule's weight), evidence halves every day, and a ban comes only when the player reaches 400 points across three separate episodes. Allowed mods and binds are written into the code and give no evidence.
DGuard runs on Paper and Leaf, protection is the same on every plan, and up to 30 players online it's free with no time limit — a small SMP with friends won't pay anything.
After the ban: resources, economy and leaderboards
Banning the cheater is half the job. What he gathered is still in the world: in chests, on the market, with other players. Check what he got done:
- 1
Open the ban report
Every DGuard ban comes with a report breaking down the evidence: which rules fired and in which episodes. If the punishment log is enabled in the panel, your moderators see it too.
- 2
See what he mined
In CoreProtect:
/co lookup u:Name t:3d a:-blocklists the blocks the player broke in 3 days;/co lookup u:Name t:3d a:containershows what he put into and took out of chests. - 3
Roll back his changes
/co rollback u:Name t:3d r:#global #previewshows what will change, and the same command without#previewrolls back the player's changes across the whole world. Withoutr:, a rollback only covers a 10-block radius around you. - 4
Confiscate the rest and fix the leaderboards
Resources that went to the market or to other players have to be taken back by hand — set that rule in advance. If you run resource or money leaderboards, remove the banned player from them.
FAQ
Does a survival server need an anticheat?
Yes. Gathering and automation cheats — Nuker, FastBreak, AutoFish, AntiAFK — wreck the economy and the leaderboards even on a server without PvP. Without checks you only see them through the damage they do.
Which anticheat catches AutoFish and AntiAFK?
In our comparison, none of the five popular anticheats — GrimAC, Vulcan, Polar, Intave and Matrix — checks AutoFish, AutoEat or AntiAFK. DGuard has a check for each of them.
How do I catch X-Ray on a survival server?
A plugin anticheat can't see X-Ray. Enable Paper's anti-xray so clients never receive hidden ores, and find players who already mined with X-Ray through their diamond and ancient debris numbers in CoreProtect.
How do I take back what a cheater mined?
With CoreProtect: /co lookup u:Name t:3d a:-block shows what he mined, and /co rollback u:Name t:3d r:#global rolls back the player's changes across the world. Resources that ended up with other players have to be taken back by hand.
Will the anticheat ban new players?
DGuard never bans on a single trigger: it takes 400 evidence points across three separate episodes, and evidence halves every day. You set the strictness yourself — down to a kick or a flag for moderators instead of a ban.