Common Questions

General

Why don’t any commands work?

If no commands work, it may because WorldEdit failed to start:

  • Make sure that you are running Bukkit/Forge/Sponge/etc. A vanilla minecraft server will not load plugins/mods!

    • You can run a command such as version (Bukkit), sponge version (Sponge) or forge help (Forge) to ensure your server is running proper software. In single-player, the Main Menu should have a “Mods” button (and WorldEdit should be in the list!).

  • Make sure that you have the proper version of WorldEdit for your version of Minecraft.

If those solutions do not help you, you will need to look through your startup log:

  • If you use a game server host, use its log viewer.

  • You can also open up “latest.log” in the logs folder of your server directory. (On older versions of Minecraft, the log file was “server.log” in the root directory.)

If you are unable to discover the problem from reading the server log, you can ask for help or submit a bug report.

How old is WorldEdit?

WorldEdit began in September 2010 for the “hMod” modding platform by sk89q. Later on, WorldEdit was ported to Bukkit, and eventually to Forge and other platforms.

Who works on WorldEdit?

WorldEdit has been developed by many people, and large portions of WorldEdit include contributed code. The list of top contributors can be found on GitHub.

World-Editing

Commands all return “0 blocks changed” even though they should be changing.

If you’ve previously set a global mask with //gmask <mask>, you’ll have to clear it again with //gmask so it no longer masks your edits.

My server crashes when I do large edits (1 million blocks or more)!

Note

If your client is disconnected / timed out, these instructions will not fix that. At this time, WorldEdit does not attempt to keep clients connected while processing edits. These instructions only allow for the server to actually complete the edit.

The two most likely causes for this are either the watchdog crashing your server, or it running out of memory.

Ensure that you allocate approximately 1 gigabyte (for the general server) + 2 gigabytes for every ten million blocks you are editing. For example, if you’re editing around 50 million blocks, divide 50 / 10 to get 5, then add 1 + 2 * 5 to get 11 gigabytes. To allocate this amount to your server, specify -Xmx11G. See these example instructions for Bukkit/Spigot/Paper. They also apply in a similar way to Forge/Fabric.

To fix the watchdog crashing the server, try increasing the watchdog timeout for your server. For Spigot/Paper, this is timeout-time in the spigot.yml file. For Forge/Fabric, it is max-tick-time in the server.properties file. This should not be needed in most cases, however, as WorldEdit already ticks the watchdog automatically.

My client crashes when I do large edits (1 million blocks or more) in single-player!

You can use the same instructions as the server case above, but you don’t need to worry about the watchdog. Single-player does not use a watchdog.

How do I remove a tool/brush from the item I’m holding?

Use the /tool none or /brush none command while holding the item. These are both currently the same command, so it doesn’t matter which one you pick.

Why isn’t sign text/chest contents/entities/etc working?

On all versions of WorldEdit, you need to have the worldedit.setnbt permission (which can be granted through OP) in order to set block entities.

On Bukkit servers, WorldEdit has to use some version-specific adapters to get full access to many functions due to how Bukkit works. It uses these adapters for block entities (blocks that use additional data including signs, containers, etc.), entities, and some other functionality. What this generally means is that every new release of Minecraft will require you to update WorldEdit. Usually, WorldEdit will be updated quickly, and you can find new releases or experimental builds via the links on the main page.

When I select, WorldEdit also selects (-1, -1, -1)!

This is due to a conflict with the Enchantable mod by MrCrayFish, described here.

You can either remove the mod, or use the long range wand tool.