Getting started

Keep inventory on death

Stop players from losing items when they die

Edition: Java Edition
Version: Java Edition 1.20.5 - 1.21.4
Difficulty: Beginner
Prep time: 1 minutes
Copied: 3 times
Permission: Requires cheats to be enabled or operator permission

When to use it

Use this in a shared world where death should not cost players their equipment. This is a world rule, not a per-player selection, and it does not recover items dropped before the rule was enabled.

Before running

Agree on the rule with players first, especially when losing equipment is part of the challenge. An operator only needs to enable it once; a repeating command block is unnecessary.

Follow in order

All commands

Enable the rule

/gamerule keepInventory true

Turns on the keepInventory rule for the whole world

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Check the value

/gamerule keepInventory

With no value on the end, this reads the current setting without changing it

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What to customize

Change true to false to restore normal inventory-loss rules. Do not append @p or @a: keepInventory does not take a player selector.

Verify the result

Read the current value with /gamerule keepInventory without changing it. Test death behavior in a world copy using disposable items rather than valuable equipment.

When results differ

If items are still lost, confirm the command ran on the actual server and was not denied for permissions. Then check plugins or map logic that may restore another rule value.