How It Works
An admin starts a Blood Moon. Three players are chosen — one Leader and two Subordinates. Together they are Team Blood Moon, and their goal is to end the server by converting everyone else.
Gains the real Blood Shard, 20 hearts, and grows stronger with every kill.
Throw a player's head onto a Rebirth pedestal to begin a 15-minute ritual to turn them.
Blood members deal more damage with each kill; the Leader also gains permanent passives.
Anyone killed by the Blood Moon is bound as a Minion — they respawn in survival on the Blood team. Admins can toggle this off so kills stay ordinary PvP.
The world falls when no survivor is left standing — but the moment the Leader is slain, the Blood Moon ends and everyone is restored.
Roles & Buffs
[L] Leader
- Holds the real Blood Shard
- +10% damage per kill (up to +100%)
- One permanent passive per kill
- Emits the heaviest blood-mist
[S] Subordinate
- Keeps their own shard
- +5% damage per kill (up to +50%)
- No passive ladder
- Two of them per event
Minion
- Turned by a kill or a sacrifice
- On Team Blood Moon
- No buffs at all
- Bright-red name, no tag
Blood members share a team identity: bright-red nametags, red names in chat, and a [L] / [S] tag before the Leader and Subordinates. Red blood-mist trails every member, heaviest on the Leader.
The stronger-per-kill effect is applied by the event itself — an escalating outgoing-damage multiplier (and, for the Leader, a stacking ladder of positive potion effects). Max health is set with an attribute modifier and cleanly removed when the event ends.
The Blood Sacrifice
Sacrifices take place on The Rebirth Ritual's pedestals — the same altars an admin builds with /pedestal set. A Blood member drops a player's head onto a pedestal; that head's owner becomes the target.
Drop "V1rtopia's head" on a pedestal → a "V1rtopia Blood Sacrifice" begins.
The head floats above the altar, slowly spinning with a red glow, its HP floating overhead and a countdown boss bar everyone can see.
Any non-Blood player (including the target) can attack the head-entity. Destroy it before the timer and the sacrifice FAILS.
If the head survives the full 15 minutes, a beam erupts into the sky, the world hears “{player} has joined the Blood Moon!”, and the target becomes a Minion.
Blood members defend the sacrifice — they can't damage the head-entity themselves, so it becomes a tug-of-war: survivors race to the altar, the Blood Moon holds the line. Several sacrifices can run on different pedestals at once.
Pure spectacle. Dark-red particles pulse from the head all ritual long. Success fires a beam skyward into an explosion with a screen title; a failed ritual ends the pulse with a “sacrifice has failed!” title. Tune the float height, spin speed, glow, beam and pulse in config.
Winning & Losing
The Blood Moon wins
When no surviving player is left in play — everyone has been turned into a Minion, whether by a sacrifice or by being cut down in combat — the world falls. The Leader claims the prize: a fully configurable set of console commands (items, effects, broadcasts — your call).
The world endures
The instant the Leader is defeated, Team Blood Moon loses. The event ends and everyone is restored — by default converted members lose the Blood identity and are mortal again. (Wrongly turned someone? /bloodmoon set <player> Normalreleases them mid-event.)
While a Blood Moon runs, SMP lives are paused for everyone — no death costs a life or triggers penalties. The event runs its own death rules and cleanly restores the server when it ends. A Blood member who was offline when the event ended is scrubbed the next time they log in, so bonus hearts, passives and the red nametag never follow anyone into a later session.
Commands
shardsbloodmoon.admin· default: OPAll Blood Moon commands are admin-only. There are no player-facing commands — survivors and Blood members act in-world.
| Command | Description | Permission |
|---|---|---|
/bloodmoon start | Begin an event, picking the Blood team at random from online players (needs event.min-online). | shardsbloodmoon.admin |
/bloodmoon start <leader> <sub...> | Stage an explicit Blood team — first name is the Leader, the rest are Subordinates (all must be online). | shardsbloodmoon.admin |
/bloodmoon stop | End the event immediately with no winner and no prize, fully reverting everyone. | shardsbloodmoon.admin |
/bloodmoon info | Show the active event: roles, kill counts, survivors left, active sacrifices, the ritual speed and whether kill-conversion is on. | shardsbloodmoon.admin |
/bloodmoon ritual speed <n> | Set the sacrifice time multiplier live (e.g. 60 → a 15-min ritual finishes in ~15s). Great for content/testing. | shardsbloodmoon.admin |
/bloodmoon conversion <true|false> | Toggle live whether Blood kills convert their victim into a Minion. false = kills are ordinary PvP deaths (no conversion). With no argument, reports the current state. Sacrifices always convert regardless. Resets to the config default when an event ends. | shardsbloodmoon.admin |
/bloodmoon set <player> <role> | Reassign a player mid-event: Leader, Subordinate, Minion, or Normal (release them back to a survivor — the 'undo an unfair kill' lever). | shardsbloodmoon.admin |
/bloodmoon reload | Reload config.yml and messages.yml. | shardsbloodmoon.admin |
Configuration
config.yml holds every gameplay number; all text lives in messages.yml (MiniMessage). Reload both with /bloodmoon reload.
event:
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
min-online | 4 | Random /bloodmoon start refuses unless at least this many players are online. |
subordinate-count | 2 | Subordinates picked alongside the single Leader (total Blood team = 1 + this). |
kill-converts | true | When a Blood member kills a normal player, convert the victim into a Minion? false = kills stay ordinary PvP deaths. Toggle live with /bloodmoon conversion; resets to this default when an event ends. |
leader:
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
max-hearts | 20 | Leader max health on start (20 = 40 HP), via an attribute modifier. |
grant-blood-shard | true | Give the Leader the real core Blood Shard on start (core /shard). |
blood-shard-name | blood | The /shard name granted to the Leader (and cleared on revert). |
damage-per-kill | 0.10 | Outgoing-damage bonus per kill (+10%), additive. |
max-damage-bonus | 1.0 | Cap on the kill damage bonus (+100%). |
passive-ladder | (list) | One permanent positive effect per kill, walking this list (speed, strength, regeneration, resistance). |
subordinate:
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
max-hearts | 15 | Subordinate max health on start (15 = 30 HP). |
damage-per-kill | 0.05 | Subordinates scale damage too, but at half the Leader's rate — and gain NO passive ladder. |
max-damage-bonus | 0.5 | Cap on the subordinate kill damage bonus (+50%). |
sacrifice:
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
duration-seconds | 900 | How long a sacrifice must survive to succeed (15 min). |
entity-health | 60.0 | HP pool of the head-entity that defenders chip down to fail the sacrifice. |
detect-radius | 1.6 | How close a dropped head must rest to a pedestal top to count. |
settle-delay-ticks | 15 | Debounce after a head drop before sweeping pedestals. |
concurrent | true | Allow several sacrifices on different pedestals at once. |
boss-bar-color | RED | Colour of each sacrifice's countdown boss bar. |
float-height | 2.0 | Blocks the head floats above the pedestal top. |
health-text-offset | 3.0 | Blocks the floating HP text sits above the head. |
rotate-degrees-per-tick | 4.0 | How fast the head spins (per visual tick). |
default-ritual-speed | 1.0 | Starting time multiplier; override live with /bloodmoon ritual speed. |
glow | true | Red glow outline on the head-entity. |
visuals:
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
pulse-interval-ticks | 5 | Visual ticks between the dark-red pulse bursts from the head. |
pulse-particle-count | 16 | Dark-red dust points per pulse ring. |
beam-height | 30.0 | Height (blocks) of the bright-red success beam before it bursts in the sky. |
cosmetics:
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
particles-enabled | true | Toggle the red blood-mist around Blood members. |
tick-interval | 10 | Ticks between particle emissions. |
member-particle-count | 8 | Red dust particles per emission around each member. |
leader-multiplier | 3 | The Leader emits this multiple of the member count. |
particle-size | 1.2 | Particle scale. |
end: / prize:
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
revert-blood-members | true | On win OR loss, clear converted members' buffs/teams/nametags. false = keep the Blood identity as a trophy. |
remove-leader-shard | true | Strip the Leader's Blood Shard on revert. |
prize.broadcast | (text) | Server-wide message on a Blood win; <leader> is substituted. |
prize.commands | (list) | Console commands run on a Blood win; <leader> is substituted (the configurable reward). |
Integration
Blood Moon hard-depends on ShardsSMPv2 and integrates only through its public EventPolicy SPI — it never touches the core's internals. While active it force-allows Blood-vs-survivor combat (overriding /trust), protects Blood teammates from each other, and exempts every death from the lives system.
It soft-depends on The Rebirth Ritual for its altars, reading them through a small read-only PedestalLocator service so pedestals are defined in one place. If Rebirth isn't installed, the event still runs — there are just no pedestals to sacrifice on.
The Leader's Blood Shard is the real core Mythic shard, granted through the core's own /shard command and removed on revert.
Testing (temporary)
Internal — delete this section after validation. Goal: prove the team is picked, a sacrifice converts (and can be failed) with its visuals, kills turn survivors into Minions, and both win and loss paths fully revert the server.
Quick run
- Make sure a Rebirth pedestal exists: look at a block and run
/pedestal set. - Start it:
/bloodmoon start(random) or/bloodmoon start Leader Sub1 Sub2. - Speed the ritual up for testing:
/bloodmoon ritual speed 60(15 min ⇒ ~15 s). No config edit/reload needed. - Confirm the Leader gets the Blood Shard + red nametag, and the start broadcast fires.
- As a Blood member, drop a survivor's player head on the pedestal — confirm the head floats, spins, glows red, shows HP overhead, and pulses; the countdown boss bar appears.
- Fail path: have a non-Blood player destroy the head-entity before the timer → confirm the pulse stops and the "sacrifice has failed!" title shows.
- Success path: let it run out → confirm the beam + sky explosion, the "joined the Blood Moon!" title, and the target becomes a red, tag-less Minion.
- Have a Blood member kill a survivor → confirm the victim respawns in survival as a Minion (red name) and the killer's kill count rises.
- Conversion toggle:
/bloodmoon conversion false, then have a Blood member kill a survivor → confirm the victim stays normal (no Minion conversion) while the killer's kills still rise;/bloodmoon conversion truerestores conversion. (Sacrifices should still convert either way.) - Offline revert: turn a player into a Minion, have them log off, then
/bloodmoon stop. Start a fresh event and have them log back in → confirm they have NO bonus hearts, passives or red nametag left over. - Wrong target?
/bloodmoon set <player> Normalshould release them back to a survivor; try/bloodmoon set <player> Leadertoo (old Leader is demoted). - Check
/bloodmoon infofor roles/kills/survivors/speed. - Loss: kill the Leader → confirm the event ends and buffs/nametags clear. Win: turn everyone → confirm the prize commands run.
/bloodmoon stopmid-event should revert everyone with no prize.
Watch the revert closely — no lingering max-health, potion passives, scoreboard teams, or leftover head-entities/HP displays after the event ends. That clean restore is the whole contract for an event plugin.