Hearts and health

Hearts are the core of zLifeSteal. Your heart count is your max health. More hearts means a longer health bar. Zero hearts means you are out.

The core loop

Kill a player: you gain a heart, they lose one.
Die: you lose a heart. Whoever killed you gains it.
Hit zero hearts: you are eliminated. See Elimination.

By default a kill moves one heart from the victim to the killer. You can change how many hearts are lost per death in the config.

Starting, max, and minimum

Setting	Default	Meaning
Starting hearts	10	What a player has on first join
Max hearts	40	The hardest cap a player can reach
Hearts lost per death	1	How many hearts move on a death
Hearts on revive	10	What a revived player comes back with

One heart equals two health points, so 10 hearts is a normal 20 health bar and 40 hearts is an 80 health bar.

These are set under core in config.yml. See Configuration for the full list.

How hearts are displayed

You can show hearts in two formats:

Decimal: 10.0, 9.5, 9.0. This is the default.
Out of 20: 20, 19, 18. This matches the vanilla health number style.

Switch with display.hearts-out-of-20 in the config.

Where hearts come from

Kills, as described above.
Heart items that players consume by right-clicking.
Crafting, if you enable the heart recipe.
Admins using /ls give, /ls add, or /ls set.

When a player dies you can have a physical heart item drop on the ground. This is on by default and also fires on non-player deaths like fall damage or /suicide if you leave that option on. There is also a chance to drop the player's head. See Configuration for death and drop-physical-heart.

Golden hearts

When a killer takes a player's last heart, the killer can receive a golden heart item. A golden heart is worth more than a normal heart when consumed (2 hearts by default). This is on by default and can be turned off with golden-heart-item.enabled.

Turning hearts into items

Players can pull hearts out of their health bar and hold them as items with /ls withdraw. This lets players trade or store hearts. You cannot withdraw your very last heart. See Withdraw.