Changelog
Patch notes for the Minecraft server plugin.
WerePires 1.5 · previously VampireSMP 1.0.6
The short version. Everything that matters, nothing that doesn't.
The big three
- Werewolves are in. A third faction alongside vampires and humans, with their own stages, their own hunger, and their own weakness to silver.
- Death isn't the end. Die permanently and you can stay on as a ghost, haunting the living. There is also a ritual to bring ghosts back.
- Vampires can take thralls. Humans who drink vampire blood become bound to that vampire, with everything that implies.
Also new
- 16 new abilities — 7 for vampires, 9 for humans.
- Humans get roles — Vampire Hunter, Tracker and Medic, handed out at the start to people who opted in.
- Beacons are a three way war now. Werewolves can claim them too.
- Your skin changes automatically as you turn and as you rank up.
- A setup wizard when you first join, which is also where you set what roleplay you are and aren't up for.
The server now needs a client mod to join. Without it you get disconnected a few seconds after connecting. See Getting started.
Want the detail? The Player tab covers how everything actually works. The Admin tab has commands, config and the bug fixes.
How the new systems actually work, and what changed about the old ones.
Werewolves
A third faction with three stages of its own.
Two ways to be turned
By biting. A werewolf sneaks and holds onto you for 15 seconds. You are warned at 10 seconds and it completes at 15. If either of you moves more than 3.5 blocks apart, or the werewolf stops sneaking, it fails. Only one wolf can bite you at a time.
When a werewolf lands what would be a killing blow with bare hands, you do not die. You are left at half a heart, turned into a Stage 1 werewolf, and given regeneration. A werewolf punching you to death does not kill you. It recruits you.
Hunger
Your hunger is shown on your experience bar. It drains from full to empty in about 20 minutes, and eating meat fills it, roughly ten pieces from empty. Fill it to be promoted a stage; let it empty and you drop one. After any stage change you get 15 minutes before it starts draining again.
Only meat counts: beef, pork, chicken, mutton, rabbit, salmon, cod, tropical fish and rotten flesh, raw or cooked.
Claws, packs and silver
- Bare fists hit harder as you rank up. No bonus at Stage 1, then ×1.5 at Stage 2 and ×2.5 at Stage 3, with a sweeping strike and a growl from Stage 2.
- Pack bonus. Werewolves within 20 blocks of each other are buffed automatically. Hunt together and you are stronger.
- Silver weakness. Iron weapons deal ×1.75 damage to a werewolf.
- Feral Charge (Stage 2+) launches you forward, 12 second cooldown.
Use
/pow wability.
Beacons: a three way war
Werewolves have their own beacon state, Primal, and claim beacons just as humans claim Holy and vampires claim Desecrated. The majority bonus now compares all three factions, and whichever side leads is rewarded based on how far ahead of second place it is.
Standing within 3 blocks of a beacon as an enemy of whoever is claiming it stops the claim outright, and every faction counts the other two as enemies. A vanished vampire does not block anyone, since breaking cover is the cost of interfering.
The barrier
The wall around the playable area was rebuilt.
- Spectators and ghosts pass straight through instead of being shoved around by it.
- Riding a horse or boat into it dismounts you rather than rubber-banding you and your mount.
- You cannot mount up within 2 blocks of the barrier.
- Staff can raise and lower it, and can let specific people out or keep specific people in.
The escape conditions are unchanged: cured vampires can always leave, vampires can leave once every beacon is desecrated and no survival humans remain, and humans can leave once every beacon is holy and no survival vampires remain.
New vampire powers
Seven added, on top of Bat, Lunge, Vanish, Storm Call, Shadow Travel and Vampire Vision.
| Power | Stage | What it does | Cooldown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bloodscent | 1 | Wounded humans within 40 blocks are marked with red motes only you can see. | 30s |
| Mist Form | 2 | Surge up to 8 blocks forward through walls, briefly untouchable on landing. | 30s |
| Sanguine Bite | 2 | Bite the human in front of you. Deals 2 hearts, heals you 3, slakes your thirst. | 20s |
| Call the Swarm | 2 | A swarm of bats blinds and harries every human within 10 blocks. | 60s |
| Hypnotic Gaze | 3 | Cloud a human's mind with slowness and blindness. Garlic breaks your hold. | 45s |
| Crimson Veil | 3 | A blood mist that mends vampires and weakens humans. | 120s |
| Sire's Command | 3 | Your bonded thralls gain strength and swiftness. | 90s |
The older powers changed too:
- Vanish now tells you how many attacks you have left before it breaks, and cannot be used in bat form.
- Storm Call warns you 60 seconds before the storm runs out, so you are not caught in daylight.
- Bat form lasts 3 minutes at Stage 3, up from 2.
- Shadow Travel can be set to require full health.
New tome abilities
Nine added for humans, several of them direct answers to the new vampire powers.
| Tome | What it does | Cooldown |
|---|---|---|
| Consecrate Ground | Humans nearby are mended, vampires seared and weakened. | 2 min |
| Blessed Blade | Your strikes against vampires hit 50% harder and leave them weakened. | 90s |
| Daybreak | A shaft of daylight. Vampires caught in it burn as if in the sun. | 2 min |
| Sanctuary | A warding light that shields you and nearby humans. | 2 min |
| Cleansing Smoke | Garlic smoke. Vampires are flung back and weakened, humans shielded. | 90s |
| Hunter's Mark | Brand a vampire up to 24 blocks away. They glow for everyone to see. | 90s |
| Last Vigil | A desperate stand: resistance, regeneration and absorption. | 2 min |
| Fire Breath | A cone of flame 8 blocks long that ignites everything in front of you. | 10 min |
| Blue Fire Breath | The soul-flame version: longer, tighter, hotter. | 15 min |
Holy Word also changed: a paralysed vampire can no longer climb onto a horse or into a boat to escape it.
Thralls and blood bonds
A vampire can bottle their own blood, and a human who drinks it becomes that vampire's thrall. The bond deepens with each dose: 1 bottle reaches Stage 1, 3 reaches Stage 2, 6 reaches Stage 3. A vampire can hold up to 3 thralls, and a thrall can be bound to two masters at once.
Orders do not always work. The chance depends on the bond: 50% at Stage 1, 80% at Stage 2, guaranteed at Stage 3. Masters can command, root, punish and track their thralls.
Being a thrall costs you:
- Withdrawal. An hour after your last dose a countdown starts, then recurring poison until you are fed again.
- Separation anxiety (Stage 2+) if you stray more than 150 blocks from your master.
- Holy water weakens the bond, two bottles' worth per splash.
- At Stage 3 you get a choice: swear yourself to vampirism, or don't.
You choose what you are open to during setup: open to being a thrall, open to owning one,
open to both, please don't, or you can try but may not succeed. Anyone can check with
/thrall preferences list before dragging you into a plot you did not want.
Blood bottles
Three kinds of blood now, and who you are decides what happens when you drink one. All of them are drunk rather than thrown.
| Blood | Vampire | Thrall | Anyone else |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vampire blood | Drinkable, with the bonding effects | Deepens the bond | Recoils |
| Thrall blood | Quenches thirst, thinly | Regeneration and saturation | Refuses |
| Plain blood | Quenches thirst properly | — | Refuses |
Human roles
Humans are no longer identical. Three roles are handed out at random to players who opted in. Hunter and Tracker are mutually exclusive, and any role is lost the moment you become a vampire.
| Role | What you get | Timings |
|---|---|---|
| Vampire Hunter | /findvampires makes nearby vampires glow. The glow is visible to everyone, not just you, so the hunt is loud. | 10s scan, 5 min cooldown |
| Tracker | Right-click to lock your compass onto a target and follow them. | 4 min window, 5 min cooldown |
| Medic | The support role. | — |
Ghosts and haunting
Dying permanently no longer means logging off. You choose between being a normal spectator or haunting the lands: flying, invisible, passing through walls, still part of the story.
- You cannot break or place blocks, use items, or pick things up.
- You can open doors, levers, buttons and chests, enough to rattle a room, but not move anything in or out.
/ghost show <player>reveals you to one person only./ghost haunt <player>routes your voice chat to that person alone.
The Rite of Return
A ritual that drags a ghost back into the living world. Four books teach it, and reading them is how you learn the conditions: it needs vampire blood, it must happen at night, it requires a desecrated beacon, and the fourth book reveals the price.
The reviver holds a vial of vampire blood, stands at a desecrated beacon with the ghost within 25 blocks, and performs it after dark. What comes back is up to staff: a vampire, a human, a thrall, or a ghoul.
A soul that came back wrong. Permanently 7 hearts instead of 10, unable to use tome abilities at all, and bound to the vampire whose blood paid for the ritual.
Other things you will notice
- The cure traces your bloodline. It no longer stops at your direct sire; it walks up the chain as far as staff have configured. A sire in spectator mode breaks the chain.
- Vampires can no longer gain Strength from any source.
- You cannot feed on a player who is not in survival mode, and a feed in progress is cancelled if they leave it.
- Turning switches off automatically after a new vampire is made, so turns cannot chain instantly through a group.
- Permanent death is announced anonymously, with no name attached.
- You can permakill yourself with
/pow permakill, behind a confirmation. - Vampires respawn at the crypt. Humans keep their bed only if it is in the world currently running.
- Silver arrows. A silver (iron) ingot on top, a stick in the middle, an arrow at the bottom, vertically, gives 2. They are spectral arrows without the glow, so you can shoot without lighting your target up for the whole server.
- Real vault blocks around the map hold tome and cure books, opened with Trial Keys, once per player.
- Your skin changes as you rise and fall through the vampire stages, and
is restored when you are cured. Register your own with
/skin register.
Everything, including the things players never see. Assumes you have read the Player tab.
Before you update
With require-compatibility-mod: true (the default), anyone who joins without
it is kicked about five seconds after joining. It is what makes ghost
noclip and the skin system work. Staff with vampiresmp.modgate.bypass
(ops by default) are never checked. Turn it off if your players aren't ready.
1.0.6 stored live game state inside config.yml and re-saved it constantly
during a session, which strips every comment out of the file. State now
lives in a separate state.yml and migrates itself on first startup. Your
config.yml is only written when you deliberately change a setting.
Server version. Built against Paper 1.21.10, declaring 1.21.5 as the minimum. Several menus use Paper's native dialog windows, so an older Paper will not run it.
The plugin is renamed to WerePires. Anything referencing the old
VampireSMP name needs checking: permission plugins, soft-depends, scripts. Data and config
folders are still plugins/VampireSMP/.
Config compatibility. Every 1.0.6 setting still exists, spelled the same. The file grew from 75 settings to 461, all new ones defaulted, so an old config keeps working.
Starting a game: /pow admin init
Rebuilt from a single chest menu into a full wizard. It opens with a warning listing what init destroys (player tags and inventories, all beacons neutralised, session reset, everyone teleported, new vampires assigned), then walks through vampire assignment mode, vampire count or min/max, a paged player picker, role counts, session mode, half length, series break, build phase, break schedule, break duration, break looping, what happens after the break, starter kits, and a final confirm. Nothing applies until you confirm.
New commands
The barrier
/pow admin barrier lower | Drop the barrier for everyone. |
/pow admin barrier raise | Put it back up. |
/pow admin barrier status | Check whether it is up or down. |
/pow admin barrier exempt <player> | That player can always leave, even when it is up. |
/pow admin barrier unexempt <player> | That player is always kept inside, even when it is down. |
/pow admin barrier normal <player> | Back to standard rules. |
Werewolves, worlds, vaults and the rest
/pow admin werewolf <player> <human|1|2|3|clearcap|clearban> | Set stage, remove a stage cap, lift a promotion ban. |
/pow admin config | In-game config editor, plus get, set, list, reload. |
/pow admin reloadconfig | Reload the plugin's config. |
/pow admin bloodmoon start|stop|status | Force a blood moon on or off. |
/pow admin permakill <player> | Force a permanent death. |
/pow admin sire <player> [clear|<player>] | Check, clear or set a sire. |
/pow admin give_revival_book <player> <1-4> | Hand out revival books. |
/pow admin addtomevault · removetomevault · listtomevault | Manage tome vaults. |
/pow admin addominouscurevault · remove… · list… | Manage ominous cure vaults. |
/pow admin loadworld <name> · listworlds | Hot-swap and list map templates. |
/pow admin beacon validate|fix|repair|refresh|debug|cleanup|stats | Diagnose and repair beacon displays. |
Roles, kits and sessions
/rolecfg · enable|disable <role> · cooldown <minutes> | Configure roles. |
/rolestart <role|all> | Roll one role, or fill every enabled role. |
/role clearlist|removeplayer|cooldownreset | Manage role pools and cooldowns. |
/vampire select <amount> · list · clearlist · removeplayer | Manage the starting vampire pool. |
/gameadmin add|remove|list|clear | Maintain the game admin list. |
/gamestart [timer|cancel|sessionend|resumesession] | Session setup and phase management. |
/kitstart · /kitstop · /kitall · /starterkit · /starterkitgive | Starter kit control. |
/foodkitgive · /foodkitadd · /foodkitremove | Food kit control. |
/thrall admin cooldownreset|reset|setowner|bondset | Thrall administration. |
/thrall checkconfig | Print live thrall settings in game. |
/ghost setfree <player> | Release a player from ghost state. |
World templates
Named map templates live in plugins/VampireSMP/worlds/, each carrying its own
config overrides, beacon layout and session defaults. /pow admin loadworld
swaps the live map without a restart: players are moved to a holding area, the world is
replaced, everyone is returned to the new spawn, and that world's settings are applied. An
_EXAMPLE folder is generated on first run.
New config sections
75 settings became 461, and none of the old ones were renamed or removed.
The full list of new sections
| Section | Controls |
|---|---|
require-compatibility-mod | Whether players without the client mod are kicked. |
ghost | Per-ghost view and simulation distance (lag control). |
messages | The anonymous permadeath broadcast, worded per side. |
vampire-indicator | New-vampire alert: duration, radius, tracker, minimum stage. |
vampire-skins | Automatic per-stage skin swapping. |
abilities.vampire.* | 7 new powers plus per-stage tuning for the old ones. |
abilities.tome.* | 9 new tomes plus full tuning for the original 15. |
cure | Distance, sire-line depth, cured-sire rule, daytime requirement. |
revival | Rite of Return: outcome, range, night requirement, book spawns, ghoul health. |
tome-chest-items | Which tomes, which enchantments, how many, plus extra items. |
vaults | Tome and ominous cure vault locations. |
iron-weakness | Repel distance and strength, weakness radius, level, duration. |
werewolf | The whole faction: combat, biting, pack bonus, hunger, abilities. |
thrall | Bonds, stages, obedience odds, withdrawal, anxiety, holy water, profiles. |
blood-draw | Who may collect animal blood. |
starterkit | Every kit component, per-character items, timing, broadcasts. |
beacons.capture-radius | How close you must stand to capture a beacon. |
combat.* | Final Stand health cap, death score cap, per-death penalty. |
oakhurst.name | What the map is called in all player-facing text. |
passive-mob-spawning.mob-weights | Weighted animal spawn table. |
allow-self-permakill | Whether players may end themselves. |
Tuning that used to be hardcoded
- Every tome has two switches: enabled or not, and in the loot pool or
not. Stop the Bleeding ships working but unfindable, handed out with
/pow admin givetome. - Tomes can hook events, which is what makes on-hit abilities like Blessed Blade possible at all.
- All 15 original tomes now expose radius, durations, effect levels, damage and channel times.
- Vampire abilities take per-stage values for cooldown, duration, power and attack limits.
- An unknown tome name in the loot list now warns you by name at startup instead of silently producing empty chests.
Bugs fixed from 1.0.6
Player-facing fixes
- Any renamed book counted as a tome. Books were identified by title, so an anvil could hand you any ability in the game. They now carry a hidden identity tag, and the fourth cure book is stamped properly too.
- Tome books could be destroyed in crafting. A recipe containing one now produces no result.
- Feeding used the wrong hand. The plugin checked both hands and preferred the main one, so off-hand clicks consumed the wrong item and holding items in both hands fired it twice.
- The turning toggle was forgotten on restart, so a vampire who had deliberately switched it off could return and turn the next human they killed.
- Stored armour could come back wrong. It was serialised with a generic object serialiser that does not round-trip Minecraft items; it now uses Paper's own.
- The immersion chat warning fired outside sessions, during downtime and build phases.
- Dead players were shoved by the world barrier, which exempted creative but not spectator.
- Holy Word showed the wrong message, telling a paralysed vampire they were being cured.
Admin-facing fixes
- config.yml comments were being wiped repeatedly during play. See the warning at the top.
- A command was hardcoded to a world named
worldand failed on any server whose main world is named otherwise. - Permadeath data errors failed silently. A missing, locked or corrupt file now logs a clear warning naming the file.
- Ghosts stayed stuck after a reset, rather than returning to survival.
- Blood moons now survive a map swap instead of assuming the starting world is still loaded.
Compiled by decompiling the shipped 1.0.6 jar and comparing it against the current source, class by class and setting by setting. 70 classes added, none removed. 386 config settings added, none removed or renamed.