Item Restrict: Full Item Control for Minecraft Servers

Item Restrict: Control Items on Your Minecraft Server

Every server administrator knows the sinking feeling. One careless click, and a player wielding a banned hopper or an explosive staff wipes out weeks of another player's hard work. Modded Minecraft is a playground of possibilities, but those same possibilities can turn into griefing tools in the wrong hands. The solution needs to be as flexible as the game itself, and that is exactly where this add-on steps in.

Why Server Control Needs a New Approach

Generic permission plugins often fall short when dealing with the sheer variety of items in modded environments. They might block a command or two, but they rarely handle the nuance of a specific item being used in a specific way. This add-on, crafted by the team at CraftersLand, was born from real server management pain. It was designed not just to ban an item outright, but to give you surgical control over every single interaction a player can have with it. The core philosophy is simple: you define the rules, and the plugin enforces them. It was originally built for the era of Minecraft versions 1.6.4 and 1.7.10, a time when numeric item IDs were the standard language of the game. On those legacy builds, it operates with flawless precision, a testament to its solid foundational code.

Granular Restrictions for Every Action

This is not a one-size-fits-all ban hammer. The plugin offers a comprehensive toolkit that lets you tailor restrictions to the exact action you want to prevent. Consider the difference between stopping a player from crafting a TNT cannon and stopping them from placing a single block of TNT. This add-on lets you make that distinction with ease. Here is a breakdown of the control you gain:

• Ownership Control: This is the ultimate safety net. If a banned item enters a player's inventory through any means, it is immediately confiscated. No loopholes, no exceptions.
• Usage Restrictions: Block the right-click interaction with a specific item or block, preventing it from being used entirely.
• Crafting Bans: You can either restrict the recipe to admins only or remove it from the game completely for regular players.
• Smelting Locks: Prevent players from obtaining a banned ingot by removing the smelting recipe that produces it.
• Placement and Breaking: Separate toggles allow you to ban the placement of a block while still allowing its destruction, or vice versa.
• Brewing Prohibitions: Stop the creation of specific potions that might be overpowered or cause server lag.
• Armor Restrictions: Forbid players from equipping specific armor pieces, perfect for gating powerful gear behind progression systems.
• Inventory Actions: You can control item acquisition from the creative menu, picking items up from the ground, and even dropping them.
• World Scanner: This is a powerful feature that actively scans loaded chunks and removes already-placed banned blocks, cleaning up past mistakes.

This level of detail is critical on modpacks with dozens of mods, where a single item can destabilize the economy or trigger a client crash. The world scanning process runs in a separate thread, ensuring that your server's tick rate remains unaffected while it cleans house.

Getting Started and Initial Setup

The installation process is refreshingly straightforward. To begin, you will want to download Item Restrict: Control Items on Your Minecraft Server and place the ItemRestrict.jar file into your server's plugins folder. Start the server once to generate the necessary configuration files, then stop it to begin editing. Your primary workspace will be two YAML files: config.yml and RestrictedItems.yml. The first file handles global settings, such as the EnableOnAllWorlds: true option. This is crucial for modded servers, as it ensures your restrictions apply across all dimensions, including those added by mods, preventing players from simply hopping to another world to bypass a ban. In the second file, you define the item IDs, their data values, and the type of restriction you wish to apply. For each entry, you can also set a custom reason that will be displayed to the player. All messages and the plugin prefix are fully customizable, supporting color codes for clear communication. When a player tries to pick up a banned item, a particle effect appears, and a sound cue plays on interaction, giving immediate feedback that their action is not permitted.

Permissions and Commands for Fine-Tuned Access

The permission system is designed with flexibility in mind. The base permission, ItemRestrict.bypass, allows a player to bypass all restrictions. The ItemRestrict.admin permission grants access to the config reload command. For more nuanced exceptions, you can use a structured permission like ItemRestrict.bypass.57.*.craft to allow crafting of all variants of item ID 57, or ItemRestrict.bypass.57.10.own to allow ownership of a specific subtype. This granularity is a godsend for servers with role-playing classes or donor perks. For administrators, the main commands are /itemrestrict reload to apply changes without a server restart and /itemrestrict help for a list of all available commands. After editing RestrictedItems.yml, a simple reload brings all new rules into effect immediately.

Practical Use on Modded Servers

Since this plugin was developed within the CraftersLand community for their own modded projects, it is battle-tested for real-world scenarios. For example, if your server uses a tech mod and you want to prevent players from wearing high-tier power armor until they reach a certain level, you simply add the armor's ID with the wear restriction. To remove nuclear reactors that have already been placed in a newbie town, you enable the world scanner with the world type. Testing these configurations often requires quickly switching between clients with different mod sets. A reliable launcher can be a huge time-saver here, allowing you to assemble test builds on the fly without manual file management. This speeds up the debugging process considerably, letting you focus on perfecting the server experience.

Important Limitations and Version Notes

It is important to understand the boundaries of this tool. After Minecraft 1.9, many items, particularly potions, were assigned the same ID and data values, making it impossible to distinguish between them without NBT data. Since this plugin operates on numeric identifiers, it cannot function on versions 1.13 and above, where numeric IDs were completely removed. The author has been transparent that updates for newer versions are not planned, but the source code is open for community contributions. There is also a known bug on Spigot 1.12 with recipe removal, so it is recommended to use the CraftingBan function as a temporary workaround on that version.

Final Verdict: A Reliable Guardian for Classic Modpacks

If your modded server thrives on the classic versions of Minecraft, specifically 1.6.4 through 1.7.10, and with some caveats on 1.12, this add-on is an indispensable asset. It requires no dependencies, can be configured in minutes, and covers nearly every possible interaction with a banned item. The ability to scan the world in the background, the flexible permission nodes, and the detailed player feedback make server administration transparent and comfortable. For those looking to protect their classic modpack from griefing tools, understanding how to install this plugin is the first step toward a more secure and enjoyable server. It is a specialized, yet incredibly effective, guardian of order.