One fix, found while testing against Paper 26.3.

An ampersand that is not a colour code keeps its ampersand

Colour codes are written with &, and every & in a message was turned into the section sign the client renders colours with, whether or not a colour code followed it. An ampersand written as a word therefore ate itself and left behind a character the client cannot resolve.

The built-in help showed it: /vdt mspt was described as "Show MSPT, TPS § variance". The same happened to any & you wrote in your own messages.yml or in announce-format.

Nothing ever reported this, because there is nothing to report. A stray section sign is not an error at runtime, it simply renders as a stray character.

Only & directly followed by a real code is translated now, which is what Bukkit itself does. One limit is unchanged and cannot be removed: a code letter is a code letter, so &d is light purple whether or not you meant to write "R&D".

Paper 26.3

Tested against build 5 under Java 25. Clean start, no deprecation warnings, every command behaving correctly, and the distance engine climbing 10 to 12 across three worlds in three confirmations, exactly as the defaults intend.

Upgrading

No config changes and no new keys. Replace the jar and restart.