Troubleshooting

Nothing happens when players die

Work through these in order:

Is the plugin loaded?

Does it show up green in /pl? If it isn't there, the jar is in the wrong place or the server hasn't been restarted.

Is keepInventory on?

This is by far the most common cause. The plugin only acts on deaths where the inventory is already kept — if the death drops the player's items, it does nothing at all.

/gamerule keepInventory true

The gamerule is per-world, so check the world you actually died in.

Is anything configured?

Every mode ships as NONE, which means "leave this alone". A fresh install is deliberately a no-op. Run /bki info — sections showing VANILLA are switched off.

Is main.enabled true?

/bki info says so outright if it isn't.

Does the player have a bypass?

betterkeepinventory.bypass skips everything. Operators are not granted it by default, but check your permissions plugin for wildcard nodes like betterkeepinventory.*, which would.

Turn on debug

Set main.debug: true and reload. Every death then logs which slots were handled, the damage that was rolled, and why an item was skipped.

Known issues

1.3 is unmaintained, so these are documented rather than fixed. Each one is resolved in a later release.

use_enchantments is inverted

Unbreaking is only taken into account when use_enchantments is set to false. If you want enchanted gear to take reduced damage, set it to false.

dont_break: false destroys whole stacks

When an item runs out of durability, 1.3 clears the entire inventory slot rather than removing one item, so a stack is lost in full. Use dont_break: true unless you want that.

Items can become unstackable

With mode: "SIMPLE", damage is applied without first checking whether the item has any durability to lose. Items that can't be damaged still get damage data written to them, which makes them refuse to stack with ordinary copies.

mode: "PERCENTAGE" is not affected, because a percentage of zero durability is always zero. This was fixed in 1.6.2.

Creative-mode players are still punished

Deaths in creative mode are logged as ignored but processed anyway.

hunger.extra_removed_on_death does nothing

The option ships in the default config but is never read.

potions.duration_penalty is missing from the config

The plugin reads it and /bki info reports it, but it isn't in the default file. Add it under potions: yourself if you want a flat duration penalty.

Everything applies everywhere

1.3 has no per-world, per-region or damage-type control. Any world with keepInventory on gets the same treatment. Per-world overrides were added in 1.4 and expanded in 1.6.

Still having issues?

Feel free to join the Discord for help! Just #create-a-ticket and i'll help you out!

Do keep in mind that 1.3 is only supported for servers that genuinely cannot run anything newer.