Quick answer: Run a Paper server, drop the LifeStealZ plugin in your plugins folder, and set four config values: starting hearts, maximum hearts, hearts per kill, and hearts lost on death. The plugin handles heart items, revival beacons, and elimination at zero hearts. The technical setup takes fifteen minutes. What actually decides whether your server survives the first week is the ruleset, so this guide spends as much time on that as on the install.
Scroll through r/MinecraftServer on any given day and half the server ads are Lifesteal SMPs. The format took over for a simple reason: every fight has stakes. Kill someone and you take a heart from their health bar. Die too often and you are out. No economy plugin creates tension like watching your own max health shrink.
The Setup
1. Start with Paper. Lifesteal runs on plugins, so you want Paper (or Purpur) rather than vanilla or Fabric. On our panel you pick Paper from the dropdown and you are done. Self-hosting works too, this guide applies either way.
2. Install LifeStealZ. It is the most used lifesteal plugin right now, free, and actively maintained. Download the jar from Modrinth, put it in /plugins, restart the server. There are alternatives (SimpleLifesteal is a lighter option, and datapack versions exist for pluginless servers), but LifeStealZ covers hearts, heart items, revival, and elimination in one plugin, which is why it became the default.
3. Open plugins/LifeStealZ/config.yml and decide the numbers that define your server:
| Setting | Common value | What it controls |
|---|---|---|
| Starting hearts | 10 | Health every new player begins with |
| Max hearts | 20 to 30 | The ceiling. Above 30 fights against stacked players stop being winnable |
| Hearts per kill | 1 | How much a kill transfers. 2 makes snowballing brutal |
| Hearts lost on death | 1 | Usually mirrors hearts per kill |
One heart per kill is the classic tempo. Two per kill sounds exciting and turns into one dominant team owning the server by day three. If your community is small, start conservative.
4. Heart items and withdrawal. LifeStealZ lets players craft hearts from fragments and withdraw a heart from their own health into an item. That single mechanic creates the entire lifesteal economy: hearts become currency, payments, and war chests. Leave it on.
5. Revival. At zero hearts a player is eliminated, either banned or moved to spectator depending on your config. The revival beacon is the counterweight: an expensive craftable item that brings an eliminated player back. Make it cost real effort. If revival is cheap, elimination means nothing and the tension disappears.
The Rules That Keep It Alive
The plugin is the easy part. These decisions matter more:
- Pick elimination handling up front. Ban on zero hearts is the hardcore route. Spectator until revived keeps friend groups together. Announce which one you run before the first fight, not after.
- Set a world border. 5000 blocks is plenty for 10 to 20 players. Lifesteal dies when everyone hides 30 thousand blocks out and nobody ever meets.
- Deal with combat logging. Someone will pull the ethernet cable mid-fight in week one, guaranteed. A combat log plugin that kills the quitter or keeps their body in the world for 30 seconds fixes it before it becomes a Discord war.
- Run an anti-cheat. A lifesteal server is a PvP server, and PvP servers attract kill aura. Even a basic anti-cheat plus a clear ban policy saves you from the slow bleed of players quietly leaving because someone obviously cheats.
- Keep keepInventory off. Losing gear plus losing a heart is the whole game. Softening it removes the reason people log in.
Most lifesteal servers also run proximity voice chat, and honestly it fits the format perfectly: hearing someone panic while you chase them is half the appeal. We wrote about the most common Simple Voice Chat problem in this guide if you set that up.
How Much Server Do You Need
Lifesteal packs are light. Paper plus LifeStealZ plus a handful of utility plugins runs comfortably on 4GB for a group of 10, and 5 to 6GB gives you headroom for 20 players and the plugin list that accumulates over time (voice chat, anti-cheat, combat log, Discord bridge). On our Minecraft plans that is the Gold or Lapis tier. You do not need Premium hardware for a lifesteal SMP unless your player count gets serious.
FAQ
Can I run lifesteal without plugins? Yes, with a lifesteal datapack on a vanilla server. You lose the heart economy, revival beacons, and elimination handling, which are the parts that make the format work long term. For a weekend with friends a datapack is fine.
Does lifesteal work with Bedrock players through Geyser? The heart mechanics are fully server side, so crossplay via Geyser works. Bedrock players see and lose hearts like everyone else. Details on the crossplay setup are in our Geyser guide.
What happens to a banned player's base? Whatever your rules say. Most servers leave it raidable, which gives kills a second reward layer. Decide before launch and write it down.
What Minecraft version should I use? Latest Paper build unless you have a reason not to. LifeStealZ tracks current versions closely.