Winter Is Coming

Latest feature update - 1.14.0
Durable community winter missions and configurable shared rewards

• Added community winter missions. /winter missions shows the whole server's progress toward seasonal snowball, hot-meal and Advent-calendar goals. Real accepted snowball hits, consumed stews and newly opened Advent doors contribute in enabled winter worlds. Cancelled events, Creative/Spectator play and administrator date overrides do not contribute.
• A mission reward storage failure during claim now halts further rewards and world edits safely.
• Added all seven languages, persistent progress, permission checks and focused regression tests. Existing Spigot/CraftBukkit and Paper paths remain supported.
• See FEATURE_VALIDATION.md for the tested build and native server flows.

Available in all seven bundled languages. Targeted feature and restart checks passed on official Spigot 26.3 and CraftBukkit 26.3. See the latest update notes for installation instructions and validation details.

Winter Is Coming 1.13.1

A Java plugin for Spigot, CraftBukkit, Paper and Purpur. Requires Vystorm Core 0.51.0+. No datapack installation, resource pack, client mod or ProtocolLib is required.

Validation: targeted connected-player checks on Spigot/CraftBukkit 26.3 cover startup, localized commands and the calendar command in the inactive season; this is not exhaustive active-season acceptance. 104 automated tests and 4 compatibility checks pass. Paper 1.20.6 API compilation is checked. Version 1.13.1 points its update checker to this new Spigot resource.

Current features beyond the original Hangar overview: a 24-door Advent calendar with configurable rewards and catch-up; stored warmth and hand warmers; snowball scores, leaderboard and clickable duel invitations. Commands include
/winter calendar,
/winter warmth,
/winter snowball,
/winter duel <player> and
/winter surrender. Calendar and snowball permissions are
winter.calendar and
winter.snowball, enabled for players by default.

✅ Ready out of the box – everything is preconfigured. Sensible defaults for every setting: drop the jar (plus Vystorm Core) into
plugins/, restart, play. Changing anything is optional – in-game config editor or config.yml.

1 update every month. ⭐ Enjoying the plugin? We'd love a review – your feedback helps us make the plugins even better.

Requires Vystorm Core (free) – the shared base of all Vystorm plugins (English, German, Simplified Chinese, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian and Russian language files, in-game config editor, update check). Just drop one extra jar into
plugins/, no setup.

Your world gets a real winter, and it leaves again in spring. Snow builds up gradually between calendar dates you choose, shores freeze outward, players see native snowfall and feel the cold, and a February thaw restores everything the plugin placed. Advent, Christmas and New Year gifts included.

Features

Snow

• Gradual snow. Snow accumulates over the season, including on tree canopies. Plugin-owned snow can stack beyond one block; default maximum depth is 12 layers (1.5 blocks), configurable 1–64.
• Natural-looking drifts. Smooth patches of different snow depth, tapering at protected areas and excluded biomes.
• Native snowfall. Through Vystorm Core, supported runtimes show vanilla client-rendered snowfall and snowy colours; unsupported runtimes use the configured snow-particle fallback. No resource pack, ProtocolLib or client mod needed. Saved biomes and server spawning rules are never changed.

Frost and cold

• Coastal frost. Surface water freezes outward from natural shores within a configurable ocean/inland distance budget.
• Cold and warmth. Players outside in a winter world slowly get cold: the vanilla frost overlay creeps in, they walk a little slower and their breath becomes visible. Nights, snowfall and swimming are colder.
• Warming up. Fire, lava, magma blocks and lit campfires and furnaces nearby warm players quickly; under a roof or underground they recover slowly. Hot soups and stews take away half the cold at once. Each leather armour piece blocks 25 % of the cold; full leather protects against ambient seasonal cold (not vanilla powder-snow damage).
• No damage by default. The cold is capped at a light overlay; cold.damage: true lets it reach vanilla freeze damage. /winter status shows your current cold level.

Thaw and holidays

• Spring thaw. From February, plugin-owned snow and ice are gradually removed and the original blocks restored. Short grass and ferns that were temporarily covered come back too.
• Holiday gifts. Advent gifts once per Advent week, Christmas gifts once per year, New Year gifts once per New Year. Full inventories keep gifts in a reward pouch; players list and collect them with /winter claims and /winter claim.
• New Year countdown. A real-time countdown and harmless particle fireworks at loaded world spawns.

Safe for your world

• A durable write-ahead journal records the original block data before every edit.
• Only loaded chunks are processed, with bounded budgets; no chunks are force-loaded.
• Original natural snow and ice are never adopted. Player block placements take precedence.
• Vystorm Core regions are protected by default (a region's winter: true flag opts it in). Other protection plugins can cancel the proposed BlockFormEvents.
• Nether and End are excluded. Artificial snow and ice give no drops.

Commands & permissions

• Command — What it does
• /winter status — Season state, next milestone, your cold level
• /winter claim, /winter claims — Collect or list your pending holiday gifts
• /winter preview YYYY-MM-DD — Read-only preview of a date
• /winter setdate YYYY-MM-DD — Move the world gradually to that date (until resume; cannot mint gifts)
• /winter resume — Return to the real calendar
• /winter thaw — Thaw now (continues across restarts until resume)
• /winter reload — Reload configuration
• Permission — Default — For
• winter.claim — everyone — Listing and collecting gifts
• winter.admin — OP — Preview, setdate, resume, thaw, reload

Configuration

Defaults: start November 15, peak December 24, thaw February 1, end March 1, timezone Europe/Vienna. Set the
worlds allowlist and dates, then
/winter reload.

Code (Text):

snow:

  max-layers: 12            # total column depth, 8 = one block

  cover-leaves: true

  drift-strength: 0.45      # 0 = uniform depth, up to 1

  cover-small-plants: true  # temporarily cover short grass and ferns

weather:

  packet-snow: true         # native snowfall view through Core

cold:

  enabled: true

  max-frost: 0.4

  damage: false

  warm-radius: 4

  warm-food: 0.5            # share of the cold a hot meal removes, 0 = off

Good to know

• Keep blocks.jsonl, state.json, rewards/winter/ and player data together in your backups. Never delete the journal to reset a season.
• Removing the jar does not remove existing snow and ice: run /winter thaw and load the affected chunks first.

Requirements

• Spigot/CraftBukkit 26.3 or supported Paper/Purpur releases; Java 25 for Minecraft 26.x
• Vystorm Core (free), 0.51.0 or newer
• Optional: SpawnDirector (seasonal mob weights), WorldDirector (winter and holiday events)

More from Vystorm

Vystorm Core, Vystorm Rails, VystormPortals, CustomTrees, XPVaultEconomy, BlockIntegrations, Vystorm Veins, Vystorm Insomnia, Vystorm Gallery, Vystorm Paddock, Vystorm Snapshot, Vystorm Boards and Vystorm Estates, all free.

Free and open source (MIT).