Keep Rules

By
Rainy228

Choose what survives death: hotbar, armor, off hand, item tags, a share of your XP, optional durability toll.

Keep Rules

Full keep-inventory is too easy, losing everything is too harsh. Keep Rules lets a server or modpack decide exactly what survives a death, with config switches, item tags and a data map. It is not a grave mod: no blocks, no corpses, nothing ticking.

Features

Slot rules: keep the hotbar, the armor and/or the off hand.
Item tags: #keep_rules:always_keep for items that always survive (compasses, maps, quest items), #keep_rules:never_keep for items that never do. Curse of Vanishing still wins.
Back where it was: kept items return to their original slot after respawning (or any free slot, or at your feet if the inventory is full).
Experience: keep a percentage of your XP; the dropped orbs shrink by the same share, so nothing is duplicated.
Durability toll: kept tools and armor can lose a share of their durability, per item via a data map. Never breaks an item.
Safe: logging out on the death screen, deaths in the Nether or the End, /kill, full inventories: no losses, no dupes.
Plays nice: runs before grave mods, so graves only get what you lose. Does nothing while keep_inventory is on.
Server side: no mixins, no ticking, no network payloads. Clients don't need it.

Config

serverconfig/keep_rules-server.toml (or Mods → Keep Rules → Config):

Option	Default	Range
`keep_hotbar`	`false`
`keep_armor`	`false`
`keep_offhand`	`false`
`xp_keep_percent`	`0`	0 – 100
`durability_penalty_percent`	`0`	0 – 100
`death_message`	`true`

Tags and data maps

#keep_rules:always_keep (item tag)
#keep_rules:never_keep (item tag, beats always_keep)
keep_rules:durability_penalty (item data map): { "values": { "minecraft:elytra": { "percent": 25 }, "#minecraft:swords": 5 } }

Compatibility

Minecraft 26.1.2, NeoForge 26.1.2.107+, Java 25.
Grave mods: Keep Rules takes its items first, the grave gets the rest (not tested with a specific grave mod yet).
Curios slots: only via the always_keep tag for now; proper support is planned.