GuidesOnly show guides for your app
GuidesGuidesDefine a region with a WorldEdit selection, then lock it down — no griefing at spawn, no PvP in safe zones — with WorldGuard flags, step by step.
WorldGuard lets you draw a box around an area and control what happens inside it: no block-breaking at spawn, no PvP in the safe zone, no explosions in the shop district. It's how you protect the parts of your world that matter. It works hand in hand with WorldEdit — you use a WorldEdit selection to mark out each region — so install both.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| You need | A plugin-capable server, plus WorldEdit installed (WorldGuard depends on it) |
| Plan | Any |
| Time | ~20 minutes |
| Install | both from the Plugins page |
⚠️ Heads up: WorldGuard requires WorldEdit to be installed too — it uses WorldEdit's selections to define regions. Install WorldEdit first, or WorldGuard won't enable. Read WorldEdit basics if selections are new to you.
A region is a named, protected box. You give it flags — rules like "no building" or "no PvP" — and WorldGuard enforces them for anyone inside. Members and owners you add to a region are exempt from its build restriction, so staff can still work there.
Protecting spawn is the classic first job. Stand at spawn and select a generous box around it:
//wand
Left-click one corner, right-click the opposite corner. Make the box tall — from bedrock to sky — so nobody digs under or builds over your protection. //expand helps:
//expand 20 up
//expand 20 down
Turn that selection into a named region:
/rg define spawn
(/rg is short for /region.) You now have a region called spawn covering your selection. Check it any time with:
/rg info spawn
/rg list
By default a fresh region already blocks non-members from building. Lock the rest down with flags — these are the stable, everyday ones:
/rg flag spawn pvp deny
/rg flag spawn mob-spawning deny
/rg flag spawn creeper-explosion deny
/rg flag spawn greeting Welcome to spawn!
/rg flag spawn farewell Leaving spawn
| Flag | What it controls |
|---|---|
build allow/deny |
Placing and breaking blocks |
pvp deny |
Player-versus-player combat |
mob-spawning deny |
Whether hostile mobs spawn inside |
creeper-explosion deny |
Explosion damage to terrain |
greeting / farewell |
A message shown on entering/leaving |
To let specific people build in a protected region, add them:
/rg addmember spawn Steve
/rg addowner spawn YOUR_NAME
There's a special built-in region, __global__, that covers the entire world with no selection needed. Use it for server-wide rules:
/rg flag __global__ creeper-explosion deny
That stops creeper terrain damage everywhere at once — a popular server-wide setting. Region flags on a smaller region override the global one where they overlap.
🎯 Good to know: When two regions overlap, WorldGuard uses priority to decide which wins. Give the more specific region a higher priority so its rules take precedence:
/rg setpriority arena 10. For simple setups (one spawn region inside the default world) you won't need to think about it.
/rg redefine spawn # reselect with WorldEdit, then resize the existing region
/rg removemember spawn Steve
/rg remove spawn # delete the region entirely
Region data is saved per-world at /plugins/WorldGuard/worlds/<world>/regions.yml, but you manage it with the commands above — hand-editing that file is rarely needed and easy to corrupt.
WorldGuard's global behaviour lives in /plugins/WorldGuard/config.yml (and per-world files). Most defaults are sensible; the settings beginners occasionally flip are toggles like blocking TNT or fire spread world-wide — but the same effects are usually cleaner as __global__ flags, which is the approach above. Leave config.yml alone until you have a specific reason.
Join as a non-op player, stand in spawn, and try to break a block — it should be denied, and you should see your greeting message when you walk in. If op'd, you bypass protection, so test with a normal account.
/rg define says "select a region first" — you haven't made a WorldEdit selection; run //wand and click two corners./rg info afterwards.