Winter-Is-Coming

Requires Vystorm Core (free) – the shared base of all Vystorm plugins (English/German 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, players in winter worlds get vanilla client-rendered snowfall and snowy colours. 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 makes players immune.
• 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

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.

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

• Paper or Purpur 26.2, Java 25
• Vystorm Core (free), 0.33.0 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).