FAQ
Common problems and the settings that usually cause them.
Check the console line from startup that starts with Holograms:. If it names the no-op backend, nothing usable was found.
The most common cause is leaving provider on auto without DecentHolograms or FancyHolograms installed. auto does not pick the built in backends. Set it explicitly:
pinata:
hologram:
provider: native-displaySee Holograms.
It should not. While a hologram is active the piñata's own name tag is hidden. If you are seeing both, one of them is probably from another plugin adding a name tag of its own.
Work through these in order.
- Type the reward command into the console yourself. If it fails there, it is not the plugin.
- Check the command does not need a player as the sender. Everything the plugin runs is sent as console.
- Check your
chancevalues. If the pool hasmin-rewardsormax-rewards,chanceis a weight rather than a percentage, so a low number does not mean "rarely", it means "less often than the others". - Check the key is
commands, with an s, and that it is a list.
See Rewards.
Any of these work, and none of them bring the shipped example rewards back:
# empty the command list, keep the entry
rewards:
death:
'1':
chance: 50.0
commands: []# or empty the whole pool
rewards:
death: {}You can also just delete the death: block entirely. The plugin treats a missing pool as "nothing to give".
One thing to watch: commands: [] leaves the entry in the pool. That does not matter for a pool rolled on plain percentages, but if you later add min-rewards or max-rewards, an empty entry can still be drawn and will use up one of the prizes, handing the player nothing. In a pool with those keys, delete the entry rather than emptying it.
You almost certainly have min-rewards or max-rewards set with one entry on a much larger chance than the rest. In that mode the numbers are weights competing against each other, so 100 against 1 is a hundred to one, not "always" and "sometimes".
Either even the weights out, or remove both keys to go back to independent percentages.
Set a leash distance:
pinata:
movement:
teleport-back-interval: 30Despite the name that is a distance in blocks, not a timer. Go further than 30 blocks from the spawn point and it is pulled straight back.
You can also slow it down with movement.speed or a longer movement.interval.
The total is hits-multiplier times the number of players online, worked out when it spawns. With 40 players online and the default multiplier of 3, that is 120 hits.
Drop hits-multiplier for a big server. Raising hit-chance to 100.0 also helps, since no swings are wasted.
Raise hit-cooldown. That is the per player wait between hits that count, and it is the main thing stopping one person with a fast weapon finishing it alone.
Check three things:
- You used
&, not§. - The value is wrapped in quotes in the YAML file.
- For a named palette code, it is a letter followed by a digit like
&t7. Codes that are not in the list are left as text on purpose.
They did not. If you were on a version that used messages.yml, the plugin moved it to lang/en_US.yml on the first start and left the old file as messages.yml.old. Your wording is in the new file.
Check that language in config.yml matches the file you are editing.
The key is missing from your language file and from the English fallback. That usually means the key was renamed or removed in an update. Check the Languages page for the current list.
If you are using your own translation, the plugin never rewrites it, so new messages have to be copied across from lang/en_US.yml by hand.
Check the Minecraft version first. The plugin needs 1.19.4 or newer, because it uses display entities that older versions do not have.
If FancyHolograms is involved, check your Java version. FancyHolograms needs Java 21. On Java 17 the plugin deliberately refuses to load that backend and falls back to another, which is normal and not an error.
You are on a version before the one where fireworks.effects started being read. Update, and your list works.
No to both. Right clicking it is blocked, and no source of damage can hurt it. A player's swing is counted rather than applied, and anything else (an arrow, a mob, fire, lava, a fall) is ignored. The only way a party ends is the hit total running out, or /pp stop.
Worth knowing: arrows do not count as hits either. They are simply ignored, so the piñata has to be fought in melee.
They are skipped when rewards are handed out, including the last hit pool. Nothing is saved for them to collect later.
Yes. pinata.limit sets the cap, and -1 means no cap. Each one keeps its own hit count and hologram.
Still stuck
Join the Discord. Bring your config.yml and the console output from startup, since the startup lines say which hologram backend was picked and flag any setting the plugin could not understand.