Smurf Detection

Table of contents

  1. How detection works
  2. Enabling smurf detection
  3. Smurf review GUI
  4. History limits
  5. Exemptions
  6. Tuning guidance
  7. Config reference

Smurf detection flags players who repeatedly kill the same victim to farm hearts. When a threshold is crossed, online staff with lifesteal.alert receive a live chat notification and the event is recorded in a review GUI accessible via /lifesteal smurf.

How detection works

  1. Every PvP kill is logged with a timestamp.
  2. The plugin counts how many times Player A has killed Player B within the rolling time-window-minutes.
  3. If that count reaches same-victim-threshold, an alert fires and is written to the history.
  4. Further kills within the same window between the same pair do not generate duplicate alerts.

Enabling smurf detection

In smurf.yml:

enabled: true
same-victim-threshold: 3    # kills before alert fires
time-window-minutes: 15     # rolling window length
notify-permission: lifesteal.alert

Assign lifesteal.alert to moderators (or include it via lifesteal.mod) to receive live notifications.

Smurf review GUI

Run /lifesteal smurf (requires lifesteal.smurf.manage) to open a paginated list of recorded alerts. Each entry shows:

  • Suspect and victim names
  • Kill count at alert time
  • Timestamp

Clicking an entry opens a detail view with the full kill history between the pair, up to kill-history-limit entries. Use this to distinguish organised duels (mutual kills) from one-sided farming (all kills one direction).

History limits 

history-limit: 50       # max alert entries in the GUI
kill-history-limit: 120 # max raw kill logs per player for detail view

Keep kill-history-limit higher than history-limit so detail views always have full context.

Exemptions

Add trusted players to skip detection entirely:

exempted-players:
  - "TrustedPlayer"
  - "a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890"  # UUID preferred

Useful for duel-arena regulars, automated test accounts, or event participants.

Tuning guidance

Server type Recommended settings
General SMP threshold: 3, window: 15 (defaults)
Active duel servers Raise threshold to 5–10, window to 30–60
Tight competitive seasons Lower window to 10, keep threshold at 3

Config reference