Halloween Plugin v3.4.0 - CHANGELOG

Release Date: September 2026
Type: Feature Release
Previous Version: v3.3.0

The biggest update since 3.0.0: an admin toolkit (season scheduler, manual triggers, witching hour, Discord webhook), statistics with leaderboards and PlaceholderAPI support, boss bars & titles, a WorldGuard region flag, flexible rewards (command: / money: / candy:) and a candy economy with a configurable Pumpkin Trader. Optional integrations (Vault, PlaceholderAPI, WorldGuard) are soft-dependencies - nothing is required.

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✨ New

Season scheduler (season)

season: { enabled: false, start: "10-01", end: "11-05", countdown_days: 7, timezone: "" }

Turns Halloween on when the season starts and off when it ends (checked every minute). Only boundary crossings are applied, so /halloween on|off still works manually in between. Players joining shortly before the start see a countdown (seasonCountdown). The season end announces the leaderboard (see statistics).

/halloween trigger <event> [player|@a] (permission halloween.trigger)

Fire any scare event or boss on demand: pumpkin, slenderman, fire, lightning, darkness, herobrine, zombieboss, skeletonboss, batwitch. Works regardless of the global state and ignores cooldowns, but respects world protection (nothing spawns in a blacklisted world or a WorldGuard region with halloween-events = deny).

/halloween debug eligible [player]

Prints every condition that decides whether a player receives events, boss bars and titles (global state, /halloween disable, world blacklist, vanish, spectator, WorldGuard) - the first thing to run when someone asks "why don't I see anything?". (The scare effects were moved out of the timer tasks into EventEffects, removing six copies of the same code.)

Witching hour (witching_hour)

A daily window (server clock or in-game time) in which events fire more often (interval_multiplier), with start/end announcements and random ambient horror sounds. Timers are restarted when the window opens so the multiplier applies immediately.

Discord webhook (discord)

Boss spawn/defeat, grave start/complete, season start/end and the season-end leaderboard posted to a Discord channel. Texts are discord* categories in messages.yml (colours stripped), sending is asynchronous and rate-limited.

Statistics (statistics, stats.yml)

Per-player counters: scares, pumpkins_received, halloween_mob_kills, bosses_spawned, bosses_defeated, graves_started, graves_completed, grave_mvp, cakes, candy_earned, pumpkin_time.

• /halloween stats (own, only statistics.player_visible stats; permission halloween.stats, default true)
• /halloween stats <player> and every stat: halloween.stats.admin (or halloween.use)
• /halloween top <stat> [count] (public unless statistics.top_public: false)
• PlaceholderAPI expansion halloween: %halloween_<stat>%, %halloween_top_<stat>_<n>_name|value%, %halloween_season_active%, %halloween_witching_hour%
• Season end: top N players (season_end_top, season_end_stat) broadcast + Discord.
• Saved every 5 minutes (snapshot, async write) and on shutdown.

Boss bars & titles (visuals)

Health bars for the Pumpkin Monster and the Halloween Boss (players within visuals.boss_bar.radius), a grave wave bar (Wave 2/3 · 5 mobs left · 1:30, countdown = wave timeout) and titles for boss spawn, wave start and grave completion (title* categories, Title|Subtitle). Bukkit API only - works on Spigot too.

WorldGuard region flag halloween-events (worldguard)

When WorldGuard is installed the plugin registers the flag (allow by default). /rg flag <region> halloween-events deny stops scare events, buffs, rewards, bosses, graves and Pumpkin Traders inside the region.

Rewards: command:, money:, candy:

Every rewards: list (bosses, graves) accepts, next to material::

• - command: "give %player% cake 1" - console command, run for every participant
• - money: 100 - Vault economy (grave: split by kill share); skipped with a warning without Vault
• - candy: 5 - Halloween Candy (min/max optional) chance: now works for every entry (before 3.4.0 the boss lists ignored it - ZOMBIE_HEAD chance: 0.3 dropped every time). Unknown materials are reported in the console instead of being silently skipped.

Halloween Candy & configurable Pumpkin Trader (candy, pumpkin_villager.trades)

A tagged item (default: COOKIE named "Halloween Candy", not edible) drops from grave mobs, random pumpkin mobs, bat witches and boss/grave chests (candy.drops). The Pumpkin Trader's trades are configurable (cost/result/max_uses; item: CANDY = the candy item) - defaults keep the classic 1 emerald ↔ 64 pumpkins and add candy trades. /halloween candy give <player> <amount> for admins. pumpkin_villager.daily_limit (never implemented) is replaced by per-trade max_uses.

Grave: glowing reward chest, overall completion

• The reward chest gets a glowing outline (visible through terrain) until it is opened - or for grave.chest_glow.minutes (default 15). Toggle with grave.chest_glow.enabled.
• Completion is now measured over all waves (mobs killed / mobs spawned). Before, only the last wave counted, so a grave with a timed-out wave 2 still reported "100%" and paid full rewards. A grave finished below 100 % now says so (graveFinalCompletion) and scales the chest accordingly.

/halloween reset cooldowns [player]

Clears boss and grave cooldowns for one player or everyone (handy for testing and events).

🔧 Changed / fixed

• Grave: the "30 seconds remaining" warning of a wave that was cleared early no longer fires during the next wave (it is cancelled together with the wave timeout and checks the wave number).
• Pumpkin Traders created by older versions get the configured trades automatically (on startup and when opened), keeping max_uses progress when the offers already match.
• grave.pumpkin_drops_per_mob was never read (1 pumpkin at 10 % was hardcoded); it is now honoured together with the new grave.pumpkin_drop_chance. The shipped default is 1 (unchanged behaviour); configs that set 3 now get 3.
• data.yml is written from a snapshot (the previous async save iterated live maps - race condition).
• Boss and grave cooldowns are persisted immediately (they were only saved on the next unrelated save).
• /halloween on starts tasks only for eligible players (was: everyone online).
• Soft-dependencies declared: softdepend: [Vault, PlaceholderAPI, WorldGuard]; new permissions halloween.stats, halloween.stats.admin, halloween.trigger.

Upgrade

Drop-in for v3.0.5+. New top-level sections (worldguard, season, witching_hour, discord, statistics, visuals, candy) are appended to your config, pumpkin_villager.trades is inserted into the existing section, 45 new message categories are appended to messages.yml. Everything new is optional; defaults keep current behaviour.

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Minecraft 26.3: compiled against the 26.3 API and tested on Paper 26.3 alpha builds – expected to work, marked supported once Paper 26.3 is stable. Full docs: https://softici.gitlab.io/halloween/