Please note: I am not actively maintaining this project. However, it is open-source, so feel free to fork the repository on GitHub and keep releasing for the newer versions of Bukkit. I designed it to not be fragile, so this should be easy :)

DropProtect

Don't want your players losing their entire inventory on death? DropProtect protects your equipment and hotbar slots, while allowing the inner inventory to drop as normal. You may configure it to reduce the number of protected hotbar slots or add additional protected inner inventory slots to suit your server.

Personally, I find the default of 9 (all armor + 9 hotbar slots) to be the sweet spot between losing it all and having no penalty on death. Still penalize them for dying, but don't make them rage if they get a lag spike and fall into lava with their enchanted diamond set.

Download

DropProtect v0.4 (JAR file) for Bukkit 1.7.2+

Example (with the default setting of 9 protected slots)

Inventory before and after death. The purple highlight (in this image only) indicates protected slots:

Inventory before and after death

And here's what we've left behind:

Drops

Source Code

DropProtect is open-source. You can view the source code on GitHub!

Simple Drop-in Installation

Place the DropProtect.jar file into your /server/plugins folder. Start the server.

Run /dropprotect to make sure it's installed correctly.

Commands

/dropprotect will display which slots are protected. It looks like:

/dropprotect command

Configuration

After running the server once with DropProtect installed, the config file /server/plugins/DropProtect/config.yml will be created.

You may change the protected-slots setting to your liking. There are some examples inside the file. You can run /reload or restart the server to apply the config change.

Permissions

As of v0.4, you can assign a different number of protected slots based on permissions that a player has.

This is what your /server/plugins/DropProtect/config.yml file can look like:

protected-slots: 3 # default if no permissions match
permissions:
- dropprotect.diamond: 8
- dropprotect.platinum: 7
- dropprotect.gold: 6
- dropprotect.silver: 5
- dropprotect.bronze: 4

Put them in the highest-first order since it matches from the top. Once it finds a match, that's the value it uses.

Also, those dropprotect.xxx names are just an example. You can call it whatever you like, and the dropprotect prefix is optional. You will need a system in place to assign these permissions to your players, but this is outside the scope of the plugin.

Fan Videos

German: DropProtect Installation and Example (YouTube)

Compatibility with other plugins

DropProtect accesses the player's inventory on death and respawn events. If your server has other plugins that do the same, make sure to use DropProtect v0.3 as it has been fully redesigned to be as compatible as possible with other plugins.

Verified to be compatible with:

MobArena v0.95.5
xAuth (must have hide-inventory OFF or xAuth will wipe the player's inventory)

Issues and Bug Reports

You can open a new issue on GitHub.