Item Durability Loss on Death

Turn item durability into a configurable death penalty while keeping Minecraft's normal item-damage system.

Item Durability Loss on Death moves durability loss from ordinary item use to player death.

By default, using tools, weapons, and armor does not consume durability. When a player dies, equipped armor, the offhand item, and hotbar items lose a configurable amount of durability instead.

Affected slots, durability loss, break behavior, exclusions, ordinary wear, and player notifications are all controlled through the server configuration.

Features

Moves item durability loss from ordinary use to player death.
Configurable durability loss for each affected item.
Independent control over armor, offhand, and hotbar slots.
Optional ordinary durability loss during normal gameplay.
Configurable item-breaking behavior.
Item and namespace filters for exclusions or targeted behavior.
Full compatibility with Unbreaking and compatible modded durability bonuses.
Compact death summary with detailed item information on hover.
Server-side installation on dedicated servers.
No dependencies beyond Forge.

Why this mod?

Item durability normally acts as a gradual maintenance cost. Tools, weapons, and armor wear down through ordinary use, encouraging regular repairs or replacement.

This mod offers a different balance model: equipment remains reliable during normal gameplay, but death carries a lasting material cost.

The result works particularly well for servers and modpacks that use keepInventory or other systems that reduce item loss on death. Players keep their equipment, but repeated deaths still consume resources through repairs and eventual replacement.

Ordinary durability loss can remain enabled, allowing the death penalty to supplement vanilla wear instead of replacing it entirely.

Default behavior

With the default configuration:

Ordinary item use does not consume durability.
Equipped armor is affected on death.
The offhand item is affected on death.
Items in the hotbar are affected on death.
Other inventory slots are not affected.
Eligible items receive durability damage through Minecraft's standard item-damage system.
The player receives one compact chat notification summarizing the result.

Only damageable items are processed. Items without durability are ignored.

All of this behavior can be adjusted or disabled through the server configuration.

Durability loss on death

When a player dies, the mod checks each enabled equipment or inventory slot and applies the configured durability loss to eligible items.

Durability damage applied on death is routed through Minecraft and Forge's standard item-damage path. This allows mechanics such as Unbreaking and compatible modded durability-reduction bonuses to participate automatically.

The final durability loss can therefore differ between otherwise identical items depending on their enchantments and modifiers.

Server owners can configure:

The amount of durability damage applied on death
Which equipment and inventory slots are affected
Whether items are allowed to break
Whether ordinary durability loss remains enabled
Which items or namespaces are included or excluded
Whether players receive a notification
How much information the notification displays

Item-breaking behavior

By default, durability damage can reduce an item to zero durability and break it normally.

Item breaking can be disabled in the configuration. When breaking is disabled, affected items stop at their minimum remaining durability instead of being destroyed.

This allows death to create a meaningful repair cost without permanently deleting equipment.

Item filters

The server configuration can limit which items are affected.

Filters can be used to:

Exclude specific items
Exclude all items from selected namespaces
Restrict the mechanic to selected items or namespaces
Protect unusual or progression-critical equipment
Apply different balancing rules to a modpack's item pool

Filters use item registry IDs, making them suitable for both vanilla and modded equipment.

Player notifications

After durability loss is processed, the player can receive one compact chat message summarizing the result.

Detailed information is available by hovering over the message, including the affected items and the durability loss applied to each one. This avoids filling the chat with a separate message for every equipment or hotbar slot.

Notifications can be disabled through the server configuration.

Ordinary durability loss

Ordinary durability loss is disabled by default.

When this option is disabled, supported item damage caused by normal use is prevented. Tools, weapons, and armor instead lose durability primarily through the configured death penalty.

Server owners can re-enable ordinary wear to use both systems together.

The mod relies on Minecraft and Forge's standard item-damage events. Compatibility is not guaranteed for mods that bypass normal item damage and directly edit an item's stored damage value.

Configuration

All gameplay settings are controlled by the server configuration.

Available options cover:

Global enable state
Durability loss on death
Ordinary durability loss
Affected armor slots
Offhand processing
Hotbar processing
Item-breaking behavior
Item and namespace filters
Player notifications
Detailed hover information

The configuration file is generated automatically after the first launch.

For dedicated servers, restart the server after manually editing the configuration.

For modpacks, a prepared configuration can be placed in the appropriate default configuration directory so that it is applied to newly created worlds.

Compatibility

Item Durability Loss on Death uses Minecraft and Forge's standard durability systems wherever possible.

This allows the mod to work automatically with:

Vanilla damageable items
Modded items that use standard durability
Unbreaking
Compatible durability-reduction enchantments
Compatible durability-related attribute or event modifiers
keepInventory
Grave and corpse mods that preserve the original item stacks

Compatibility is not guaranteed for mods that bypass normal item damage and directly edit an item's damage value.

Mods that replace player death handling, copy inventory contents, or reconstruct item stacks after the death event may require compatibility testing.

Installation and requirements

Supported platform:

Minecraft 1.20.1 — Forge

Install the mod file in the server's mods folder.

The mod is server-authoritative. On dedicated servers, it can be installed server-side only. Players do not need the mod on their clients to join, receive durability changes, or view the detailed chat notification.

For singleplayer, install the mod in the player's Minecraft instance because the integrated server runs inside that instance.

No dependencies beyond Forge are required.

Modpacks

You may include the unmodified mod in public or private modpacks without asking for permission.

Item Durability Loss on Death is distributed under the Apache License 2.0.

ITM's Item Durability Loss on Death