Hardcore Mode

Hardcore mode makes mcMMO levels something you can lose. It has two independent features, both off by default, both configured in config.yml under Hardcore::

• Death Stat Loss: you lose skill levels when you die.
• Vampirism: when you kill another player, you steal some of their levels.

You can enable either, both, or neither, and you turn them on per skill, not globally.

Death Stat Loss

When a player dies (any death, not just PvP), every skill that has stat loss enabled loses a percentage of its level.

Hardcore:
    Death_Stat_Loss:
        Penalty_Percentage: 75.0   # how much of each skill is lost
        Level_Threshold: 0          # skills at/below this level are safe
        Enabled:
            Mining: false
            Swords: false
            # ... one toggle per skill, all false by default

The exact formula

For each enabled skill above the threshold:

statsLost  = (skillLevel − Level_Threshold) × (Penalty_Percentage ÷ 100)
levelsLost = floor(statsLost)
xpLost     = floor(currentXpIntoLevel × (statsLost − levelsLost))

The whole-number part is levels removed; the leftover fraction eats into your current XP bar. For example, with Mining 100, threshold 0, and a 75% penalty:

statsLost  = (100 − 0) × 0.75 = 75.0
levelsLost = 75      → Mining drops 100 → 25
xpLost     = 0       (no fractional part)

Skills at or below Level_Threshold, or at level 0, are skipped entirely.

Vampirism

Vampirism fires only on a player-vs-player kill: the killer steals levels from the victim instead of the victim just losing them to the void. Same per-skill Enabled toggles, separate percentage.

Hardcore:
    Vampirism:
        Leech_Percentage: 5.0
        Level_Threshold: 0
        Enabled:
            Mining: false
            # ... per skill, all false by default

How much is stolen

For each enabled skill, vampirism only fires if the victim is skilled enough relative to the killer. Specifically, the victim's level must be at least half the killer's level in that skill:

victimSkillLevel ≥ killerSkillLevel ÷ 2      (otherwise that skill is skipped)

statsStolen  = victimSkillLevel × (Leech_Percentage ÷ 100)
levelsStolen = floor(statsStolen)

So a high-level killer farming low-level victims gets nothing. The half-level gate stops level-stealing from being trivially abusable. Both players get a notification telling them how many levels changed hands.

Per-skill toggles

Both features list every non-child skill under Enabled: (Acrobatics, Alchemy, Archery, Axes, Excavation, Fishing, Herbalism, Mining, Repair, Swords, Taming, Unarmed, Woodcutting, Tridents, Crossbows, Maces, Spears). Child skills (Smelting and Salvage) aren't listed because they have no levels of their own.

Set only the skills you want at risk to true. A common setup is to enable combat skills for PvP servers but leave gathering skills safe.

Region control with WorldGuard

If WorldGuard is installed, hardcore penalties respect two region flags. The death must happen in a region where the main mcmmo flag is allow, and then the mcmmo-hardcore flag is checked:

• Death Stat Loss only happens if the dying player is in a region where mcmmo-hardcore is allow.
• Vampirism requires both killer and victim to be in mcmmo-hardcore allow regions.

deny either flag in safe zones (spawn, arenas) to exempt them. With no WorldGuard, the penalties apply everywhere except blacklisted worlds.

Exemptions

• Bypass permission: the dying player having mcmmo.bypass.hardcoremode skips the whole penalty: no stat loss, and they can't be vampirized. Grant it to staff or VIP ranks. See Permissions.
• World blacklist: deaths in a blacklisted world never trigger hardcore penalties.