Minecraft server wipe: resetting the world for a new season

In short: announce the date in advance, stop the server, make a full backup and set the world folders aside — world, world_nether and world_the_end on Paper 1.21.x, just world from 26.1. Players' inventories, statistics and advancements go with the world. Reset plugin progress data — economy, homes, claims — separately, and keep permissions, bans, the whitelist and donor perks. Pre-generate the new world before opening and greet the launch with an anticheat that's already set up.

When and why to wipe#

• An inflated economy. Veterans sit on piles of resources and money, shop prices mean nothing, and newcomers have nothing to strive for.
• A seasonal game mode. On anarchy and competitive survival servers, seasons are part of the genre: the map, leaderboards and clans start over.
• A new game version. An update is a convenient moment to start a season on a fresh map. Updating itself is covered in updating the Minecraft version.
• The fallout of a dupe or cheating. If the damage can no longer be undone selectively — with CoreProtect and item removal — a wipe is the last resort. Closing dupes is covered in exploits and dupes.

A wipe is a strong measure: some players leave along with their progress. A predictable season schedule announced in advance goes down better than a sudden reset.

Where things live: 1.21.x and 26.x#

That gives a simple method: set the whole world folder aside — player data, statistics and advancements go with it, while bans and OPs in the root stay put. If the level-name folder doesn't exist, the server generates a new world on startup. level-seed in server.properties sets the seed; empty means random.

# the server is stopped and a full backup is done
cd /opt/minecraft
mkdir -p seasons/season-1

# Paper 1.21.x: each dimension has its own folder
mv world world_nether world_the_end seasons/season-1/

# Paper 26.1 and newer: every dimension and the players live inside world
# mv world seasons/season-1/

Plugin data: what to reset, what to keep#

/eco reset ** in EssentialsX sets the starting balance for every player the plugin knows, offline ones included; * only covers players online. Old CoreProtect logs only confuse things in a new world: same coordinates, different builds. From the console /co purge removes data older than 24 hours, in game — older than 30 days. How a server economy is put together is in economy and Vault.

The wipe step by step#

1. 1

   Announce the date

   In Discord, in the server chat and in the MOTD: what resets, what stays, when the launch is. Changing the server-list description is covered in MOTD and icon.

2. 2

   Stop the server and back up

   stop, then a full archive of the server folder and the database dumps.

3. 3

   Set the worlds aside

   Move the world folders into a season archive folder, as in the example above.

4. 4

   Reset plugin data

   Per the table: economy, regions, logs, shops. Leave permissions, bans and donor perks alone.

5. 5

   Set up the new world

   A new level-seed, or empty for a random one; game rules — see gamerules; the border — see world border.

6. 6

   Start with the whitelist on

   /whitelist on: the server generates the new world, and you can pre-generate it calmly and check spawn, kits, shops and the anticheat.

7. 7

   Open

   /whitelist off at the announced time.

Launch day: the load#

In the first hours every player runs off from spawn in a different direction, and the server generates chunks on the fly — one of the heaviest things it does. Set a world border and pre-generate everything inside it before opening, following world pre-generation. Watch TPS and MSPT (see TPS and MSPT) and keep the spark profiler at hand.

A loud announcement attracts more than players: be ready for bots at opening too — see bots and DDoS. How much memory the peak needs is in how much RAM a server needs.

A new season brings a new wave of cheaters#

A fresh map is a race: the first diamonds, the first base, the top spot. That's exactly where cheaters show up: Speed and Fly to reach resources first, Nuker and FastBreak to out-farm everyone, KillAura to take what others have. An anticheat installed after the first complaint is too late: the season's leaderboards and economy are already spoiled.

Install DGuard — the best anticheat for a modern Minecraft server — before opening: a key from the panel, the latest PacketEvents release, DGuard.jar in plugins/ and a restart; /dguard license shows the plan, the license state and the PacketEvents version. DGuard gathers evidence on every front at once — combat, movement, packets, inventory, building, world — doesn't rush to a verdict, and you set the strictness. The plan depends on online players, so estimate the launch peak in advance — see pricing; DGuard is free up to 30 players online. A plugin anticheat can't see X-Ray — Paper's anti-xray handles that, see X-Ray protection.

FAQ#