Top 5 must-have plugins for Minecraft server (2021)

Minecraft servers come in all shapes and sizes and can be modified to be unique via the use of server-side plugins.

Like the servers themselves, there are tens of thousands of unique Minecraft plugins to be downloaded. Each plugin does something slightly different due to the fact that no two plugins are coded identically.

With this in mind, it might sound overwhelming to choose the correct plugins to install. In this guide, 5 of the best and most useful Minecraft plugins for servers will be highlighted and explained.

Note: This article is subjective and reflects the opinion of its writer.

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5 of the most useful and helpful Minecraft server plugins to install

5) EssentialsX

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Essentials is perhaps the most popular Minecraft plugin of all time and is installed on a huge percentage of new Minecraft servers to this day. The plugin was first made in 2011 and is still maintained to this day in the form of "EssentialsX".

This plugin comes with a plethora of critical features that make life easier for server admins. Most notably, this includes the ability to set warps, teleportation to other players, an in-game economy, welcome messages, and much more.

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4) WorldGuard

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From heavily modified Minecraft Pixelmon servers to pure vanilla servers, almost every Minecraft server uses WorldGuard or some alternative in some shape or form.

The premise of this plugin is simple: it sets out to protect regions of the server world from player-induced griefing. This allows server admins to create spawn points and other regions of protected land on which only trusted members can edit upon. Furthermore, this plugin can also be used to toggle PvP in certain regions, which is highly useful in configuring a safe spawn area.

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3) WorldEdit

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Although not quite as popular as its similarly named counterpart, WorldEdit is a highly useful tool, especially for those who enjoy Minecraft Building servers.

With this plugin, it becomes possible to make massive edits to the world without much effort at all. Through the power of WorldEdit, thousands or even millions of blocks can be seamlessly converted, pasted, copied, and edited with ease.

Ultimately this makes building in Minecraft much easier, and no server that offers creative building is complete without it.

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2) LagAssist

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For servers with a lot of entities being dropped, an anti-lag plugin such as LagAssist may be vital.

Although this plugin will not benefit a few specific types of servers, on others, it is quite critical. An example of this is on Minecraft raiding servers, in which the nature of the gameplay means TNT cannons are constantly being fired, and massive amounts of entities are consistently being dropped. This, of course, can create huge server lag if the correct precautions are not taken.

With plugins like LagAssist, dropped entities will be cleared after a certain period of time or will be automatically cleared if there are simply too many for the server to keep up with.

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1) CoreProtect

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Core Protect is a Minecraft plugin that helps server admins identify bad actors. With the power of this plugin, server staff members will be able to check detailed logs of every single block on the server and get a report that highlights any changes made.

This helps to easily catch those who have griefed parts of the server, so they can then be banned. Furthermore, this plugin has been highly optimized throughout the years, and despite logging so much data, it does not cause much (if any) server-side lag.