CombatLogX: How to Stop Combat Logging on Your Server

Picture it: you chase someone across half the map in a PvP fight, you land the final hit, and they vanish. Disconnected. No drops, no kill, nothing to show for the sprint. That's combat logging, and CombatLogX is the plugin built to make sure it stops working.

What CombatLogX does

CombatLogX is a Spigot plugin (it runs on Paper and Folia too) built around one stubborn rule: if you're in a fight, you don't get to quit your way out of it. The moment a player attacks or takes a hit, the plugin "tags" them as in combat for a set window. Log out while that tag is active and you get punished, which usually means your character dies right there and drops everything, exactly as if you'd lost the duel honestly.

It's written in Java, open source under the GPL-3.0 license, and sitting at around 154 stars on GitHub. The maintainer, SirBlobman, has kept it ticking over for years and supports Minecraft versions up to 26.1.2. That track record matters more than any star count when you're handing a plugin control over your server's combat rules.

So that's the skeleton. The thing that keeps admins loyal to it, though, is the expansion system, and I'll get there.

Why server owners run it

Combat logging is the kind of problem that quietly poisons a PvP server. One player figures out they can alt-F4 the second their health bar gets scary, and within a week everyone's doing it. Fights stop meaning anything. Why risk your diamond gear when you can just yank the ethernet cable?

Factions servers are the obvious home for this. Real talk, so are survival worlds with open PvP, hardcore-style setups, and anything where loot is on the line. If your players can lose items on death, someone will try to dodge that death by disconnecting.

And it's not only about punishment. A fair anti-logging setup makes combat feel honest, which is half the reason people show up to a PvP server in the first place. Fair fights keep players around. Cheap escapes drive them off.

It's a small plugin solving a genuinely annoying social problem. That's my favorite kind of mod.

Getting it onto your server

Heads up before you start: CombatLogX needs Java 25, a server running Spigot, Paper, or Folia (anywhere from 1.19.4 to 26.1.2), and a companion library called BlueSlimeCore, version 2.9.9 or newer. Miss the BlueSlimeCore part and the plugin simply won't load, which trips up a lot of first-timers.

You can grab the latest build from the SpigotMC resource page, or from the maintainer's Jenkins server if you want beta builds. The current release is v11.4.0.0.1156. Once you've got the zip, the rough flow looks like this:

# 1. Stop the server first
stop

# 2. Drop these into /plugins/
# CombatLogX.jar
# BlueSlimeCore.jar

# 3. Put the expansion jars into
# /plugins/CombatLogX/expansions/

# 4. Start the server back up, then reload configs in-game
/clx reload

The zip ships with the main jar, the core dependency, and a bundle of expansion jars you copy into that expansions folder. Edit the config and language files to taste, run /clx reload, and you're live. No full restart needed for most config tweaks, which is honestly handy when you're dialing in tag durations.

Quick tangent while we're on the subject of standing up a server: if you're testing this on a fresh box and want a clean address to hand to friends, our free Minecraft DNS tool gives you a tidy domain instead of making everyone memorize an IP. Back to the plugin.

Expansions, where it gets interesting

Here's the part that separates CombatLogX from a basic anti-logout script. Most of its features aren't baked into the core jar. They're expansions, little modules you drop into the expansions folder, each one its own jar file. Want a feature? Add the jar. Don't want it? Delete the jar. That's the whole model.

The maintainer keeps the full list in the documentation, but the categories cover what you'd expect a PvP-focused admin to want: stopping players from running certain commands while tagged, blocking teleports out of a fight, keeping combatants out of safe zones, on-screen timers so players can see how long they're stuck, and protection windows for brand-new players so they don't get farmed the second they spawn.

You control the knobs in the config too: how long the combat tag lasts, what counts as combat, who's exempt. Set it too short and players slip away; too long and people gripe about being stuck. Somewhere around fifteen to thirty seconds tends to feel right, though that depends entirely on your server's pace.

The modular approach has a real upside. Your core plugin stays light, and you only run code for features you actually use. A small skyblock server and a sprawling factions network can both run CombatLogX without one of them lugging around dead weight.

One nice touch: each expansion folder ships with its own README, so you're not flying blind when you switch something on.

Where people get stuck

The Java 25 requirement is the big one. A surprising number of budget hosts and older setups still run earlier Java, and CombatLogX flatly won't start without 25. Check your host's panel for a Java version selector before you blame the plugin.

Forgetting BlueSlimeCore is the second classic mistake. It's a separate jar, it's required, and the plugin won't run on its own. Upload both, every time.

Then there's the expansions folder. Some people drop in the main jar, restart, and wonder why none of the cool features showed up. Those features live in the separate expansion jars you've to copy across by hand. The base plugin handles the tagging and the logout punishment; everything else is opt-in.

A small Folia note: it's supported, but Folia works very differently under the hood, so test your expansion set on a staging world before pushing to live. Actually, that's solid advice for any server software, not just Folia.

While I'm handing out unrelated tips (combat plugins put me in a server-admin headspace): if your survival crowd keeps arguing about whether their nether portals line up, the nether portal calculator settles it in about ten seconds. Nothing to do with CombatLogX. Just useful.

Alternatives and my honest take

CombatLogX isn't the only anti-combat-log option out there. CombatTagPlus is a long-running, lightweight pick that plenty of older servers still swear by, and there are various smaller "combat tag" plugins floating around SpigotMC if you want something dead simple. The trade-off is usually flexibility: the simpler ones do one thing, while CombatLogX hands you the whole expansion buffet.

Would I run it? On a PvP server, yeah, without much hesitation. It's actively maintained, the modular design is genuinely smart, and the price (free, GPL-3.0) is hard to argue with. The Java 25 requirement is the only thing I'd verify first, because it's a real gotcha on cheaper hosts.

If your server has no PvP and no item loss on death, you can skip this one. For anyone running fights worth winning, it's an easy recommendation.