PermanentArrow

A lightweight Folia-compatible Minecraft plugin that makes arrows named "permanent" never disappear after being shot — they stay in the world until someone picks them up.

How It Works

Name an arrow item "permanent" in an anvil (or via /give).
Shoot it with a bow or crossbow.
The arrow sticks wherever it lands and never despawns.
Any player can pick it up and gets a reusable "permanent" arrow back.

The arrow's display name is checked case-insensitively, so "Permanent", "PERMANENT", etc. all work.

Supported Arrow Types

Regular arrows
Tipped arrows (all potion variants — Poison, Healing, Harming, etc.)
Spectral arrows

Requirements

Server: Paper / Folia (or any Folia fork)
API version: 26.1.2 (Minecraft 1.21.4)
Java: 21+

The plugin supports Folia and uses no scheduler tasks — purely event-driven, safe on Folia's regionized threading model.

Installation

Download the JAR from Releases.
Drop it into your server's plugins/ folder.
Restart the server

Usage

In-game (anvil)

Place an arrow in the first slot of an anvil.
Rename it to permanent (or any casing variation).
Take the renamed arrow and shoot it.

Building from Source

gradle build

The JAR is output to build/libs/PermanentArrow-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar.

Technical Details

The plugin registers two event handlers:

Event	Purpose
`ProjectileLaunchEvent`	Detects when a player shoots an arrow whose item stack is named `"permanent"` and tags the arrow entity with a Persistent Data Container (PDC) key.
`ProjectileHitEvent`	For tagged arrows: makes them persistent across chunk loads, sets their lifetime to `Integer.MAX_VALUE` (never age-despawns), enables pickup for all players, and ensures the item stack retains the display name.

No configuration file — the behaviour is intentionally zero-config. Name an arrow "permanent" and it works.

License

MIT

Permanent Arrow