Andy's Soulbound Graves

Overview

Andy's Soulbound Graves turns a protected death into a complete physical burial scene. Die with a usable Soulbound Rune in your off-hand and the add-on secures your dropped inventory inside a buried, prone skeleton, builds a lantern-topped gravesite, and hands you a native Recovery Compass bound to that one grave when you respawn.

There is no remote inventory menu and no magic chest at the surface. Follow the compass, dig through the coarse dirt, expose your remains, and use the correctly bound compass to reclaim your possessions. Every successful grave spends one use from the rune, then stores that updated rune with the rest of your gear so it comes back too.

Vanilla-friendly by design

• Physical 1×3 gravesites assembled in the world.
• A native Recovery Compass item with a per-grave binding.
• Familiar Crafting Table progression using vanilla materials.
• A meaningful off-hand tradeoff against shields, maps, totems, and other utility items.
• Experience follows vanilla death behavior.
• No cheats, commands, experimental gameplay toggles, or required dependencies.
• Standard graphics and Vibrant Visuals/PBR support.

Quick start

1. Find an Amethyst Shard to unlock the Soulbound Rune I recipe.
2. Craft a Soulbound Rune at a Crafting Table.
3. Move the rune into the off-hand / shield slot — holding it in the main hand or carrying it in the inventory does not protect a death.
4. Die in a supported location while the rune still has a use remaining.
5. Respawn and receive the Soulbound Recovery Compass for that grave.
6. Hold the compass to read direction, distance, vertical guidance, dimension status, and any Soulbinding time remaining.
7. Return to the marker, dig through the coarse dirt, and expose the prone skeleton.
8. Hold the compass bound to those remains and interact with the skeleton, clearing inventory space if prompted.

How protected death works

The protection is deliberate rather than automatic:

1. A valid Soulbound Rune must be positively detected in the off-hand immediately before death.
2. The death must not be in the void, and lava requires Tier IV.
3. The add-on correlates the player's dropped item entities with that death.
4. The complete inventory is staged inside the grave-remains storage and verified.
5. Only after storage succeeds are the loose drops removed and the physical grave committed.
6. One rune charge is spent only for that successfully committed grave.
7. The updated rune is stored in the skeleton's off-hand storage and returns with the rest of the possessions.

If a safe grave transaction can't be completed, the rune isn't intentionally consumed — the add-on favors recoverability over silently deleting possessions. Multiple unrecovered graves can coexist; a later death gets its own grave identity and compass rather than replacing an older record.

The physical gravesite

Every successful grave uses a recognizable 1×3 layout: a stepped tombstone at the head, a cyan Soul Lantern above the marker, coarse dirt covering the burial line, a protected foot sign naming the player and death day, dimension-appropriate flowers or fungi where the environment permits, and a prone skeleton beneath the surface with its skull nearest the tombstone.

The tombstone is the public marker; the skeleton is the functional storage. Looking directly at a tombstone from within about six blocks shows the grave owner, death day, and recovery state, so other players can identify a grave without gaining access to it.

Each grave deterministically receives one of 24 tombstone combinations — stone, deepslate, or diorite, paired with one of eight inscription palettes. The small runes glow faintly while RIP stays dark and non-emissive, reading as lettering carved into the stone.

Soulbound Rune progression

Rune	Color	Uses	Timed Soulbinding window	Environmental protection
Soulbound Rune I	Magenta	3	20 minutes	Normal terrain and supported submerged graves
Soulbound Rune II	Emerald green	6	40 minutes	Normal terrain and supported submerged graves
Soulbound Rune III	Diamond cyan	9	60 minutes	Normal terrain and supported submerged graves
Soulbound Rune IV	Purple	Unlimited	Unlimited	Adds solid-vault protection for lava deaths

The listed time windows apply only when an operator enables Timed Soulbinding, which is off by default — protected graves stay recoverable indefinitely at every tier unless the world owner chooses otherwise.

Crafting the runes

Soulbound Rune I is a shaped recipe that unlocks when the player first obtains an Amethyst Shard:

Crying Obsidian	Amethyst Shard	Obsidian
Amethyst Shard	Diamond	Amethyst Shard
Obsidian	Amethyst Shard	Crying Obsidian

Each upgrade places the previous rune in the center of a Crafting Table and surrounds it with eight of a single material — Emeralds for Tier II, Diamonds for Tier III, and Netherite Ingots for Tier IV. Every upgrade recipe unlocks once the preceding rune tier is obtained.

Recharging a rune

Runes I–III regain one use at a time: carry at least one fully formed Amethyst Cluster, hold the partially depleted rune in your main hand, then crouch and interact with a normal, chipped, or damaged Anvil. One cluster is consumed and one use restored.

A full rune refuses the exchange so the cluster isn't wasted. Tier IV never depletes and can't be recharged. The ingredient is an Amethyst Cluster — not a shard, block, or bud — so obtaining the item normally requires Silk Touch.

Recovery Compass

After respawning from a protected death, the owner receives one ordinary Minecraft Recovery Compass renamed and bound to the new grave, its lore identifying the owner, death day, dimension, grave identity, and private binding data.

Hold it in the selected hotbar slot for action-bar guidance: horizontal direction and distance, whether the target is above or below, whether the grave is in another dimension, remaining Soulbinding time when timers are active, an infinity marker for untimed graves, and green/amber/red urgency as a timed grave nears expiry.

Each compass opens only its matching grave. With multiple active graves, keep the compasses separate and read their lore before traveling.

Exhuming and recovering possessions

Follow the bound compass to the marker and dig through the coarse dirt to expose the skeleton — the tombstone, sign, and bound grave components stay protected. Put the matching Soulbound Recovery Compass in your main hand and interact with the exposed skeleton; if inventory space is insufficient for every stored stack, clear space and try again.

Recovery is atomic: the compass is consumed and the grave marked recovered only after the stored inventory is safely restored. The rune — already reduced by one use for this grave — returns with everything else. Experience is not stored in the skeleton, so vanilla experience-drop behavior still applies.

Timed Soulbinding and expired graves

Timed Soulbinding is optional and disabled by default. When enabled, a grave freezes its window from the rune tier used at death, and later settings changes never shorten an existing grave's window. The timer can count owner online only (the default) or whenever the world runs.

The owner is warned near five minutes and one minute remaining. Expiry never destroys the stored inventory or removes the physical grave — the remains simply enter an expired state and compass recovery pauses. To reactivate them, hold a Wither Rose and interact with the expired skeleton; one rose is consumed and the remains become recoverable, after which the matching compass restores the inventory.

World settings

An operator can crouch and use any Soulbound Rune in the main hand to open Soulbound Graves — World Settings, controlling Timed Soulbinding (default off), timer mode (default owner-online-only), post-recovery grave behavior (default memorial), and timed memorial duration from 5 to 1,440 minutes (default 60).

The form also stores owner-recovery and coordinate-visibility preferences. In this release, grave recovery remains owner-bound and navigation comes from the Recovery Compass; operators should keep those safe defaults. Existing graves keep the timer window captured when they were created.

Grave management and protection

• Other players cannot recover someone else's inventory with a stolen compass.
• Bound grave blocks and remains resist ordinary griefing.
• The automatic foot sign cannot be edited while the grave stands.
• The owner or an operator can crouch-interact with the tombstone for its management menu; View Information shows owner, day, dimension, location, grave identity, and whether possessions remain bound.
• A grave holding possessions cannot be removed through the menu.
• An emptied, unlocked skeleton can be struck to reduce it to five Bones.

Post-recovery behavior follows the world setting: Memorial leaves the grave standing (default), Remove dismantles it immediately after verified recovery, Permanent retains it until intentionally managed, and Timed Memorial keeps it for the configured duration before clearing it.

Dimensions and dangerous deaths

• Overworld — ordinary flowers and an oak sign dress a canonical grave when space permits.
• Nether — native fungi or mushrooms replace flowers, and a nonflammable crimson sign replaces oak.
• End — the recognizable marker remains, but flowers are omitted.
• Underwater — the add-on finds a suitable floor, builds the grave there, seals a dry burial chamber for the remains, and omits flowers that can't survive submerged placement.
• Lava — only Soulbound Rune IV protects a lava death, building dimension-appropriate solid ground around the grave before carving the burial chamber so the skeleton isn't left floating and lava can't flood the remains. Tiers I–III follow vanilla item-loss behavior in lava.
• Void — void deaths are not protected. The void removes item entities before a dependable grave can be committed, so the add-on follows vanilla loss rather than promising an unreliable grave.

Installation

1. Download the latest release from CurseForge and open the .mcaddon with Minecraft Bedrock.
2. Wait for both packs to import, then create or edit the target world.
3. Activate Andy's Soulbound Graves [BP] under Behavior Packs, and confirm Andy's Soulbound Graves [RP] is active under Resource Packs.
4. Enter the world, find an Amethyst Shard to unlock the first recipe, and craft Soulbound Rune I.

Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch — consoles generally cannot import local .mcaddon files directly. Import and activate on Windows or mobile, upload the prepared world to a Realm, then join that Realm from the console.

On servers and Realms, install and activate both packs on the world before uploading or starting it; joining players must accept the Resource Pack so rune, tombstone, remains, item, and PBR visuals appear correctly. Test the first protected death in a backed-up staging copy before deploying to an established shared world.

Back up an important world before installing or updating an add-on. CurseForge is the authoritative source for supported versions and files.

Compatibility & limitations

• Standard graphics and Vibrant Visuals/PBR.
• Keyboard/mouse, controller, and touch interaction through standard Bedrock use controls.
• Single-player, multiplayer, Realms, and compatible Bedrock dedicated servers.
• Overworld, Nether, End, and supported submerged locations.
• No cheats, commands, experiments, or required dependencies.
• Up to 64 active grave records per owner.

Third-party inventory, death, keep-inventory, grave, equipment, or custom-dimension add-ons can alter the same death pipeline. Compatibility with those systems is not promised — test pack combinations in a backed-up world.

Troubleshooting

• The recipe is not visible — obtain an Amethyst Shard to unlock Rune I, or the previous tier to unlock its upgrade. Use a Crafting Table and the exact shaped arrangement.
• The rune did not protect my death — it must be in the off-hand/shield slot before death; main-hand or ordinary inventory placement doesn't qualify. Check its lore for remaining uses, remember void deaths are never protected, and that lava requires Tier IV.
• Items still appeared on the ground — a few drop entities may exist briefly while the death transaction is correlated, but a successful grave secures and removes the captured drops. Don't leave the world during the death/respawn transition.
• The grave exists but I did not receive a compass — make inventory room and respawn or rejoin; undelivered grave compasses are retried rather than abandoning the grave.
• The compass does not show guidance — hold it in the selected hotbar slot and confirm it's the exact compass issued for that grave. A compass in another dimension reports the mismatch rather than a local bearing.
• The skeleton will not return my possessions — dig far enough to interact directly with the exposed remains, hold the matching bound compass, and clear enough space for every stored stack. If the Soulbinding expired, interact once with a Wither Rose first.
• A menu will not open or seems to reopen — crouch before interacting. Operators open world settings by crouch-using a rune in the main hand; owners and operators open grave management by crouch-interacting with the tombstone.

Credits & license

Created by Andy The Maker. Copyright © Andy — All Rights Reserved. Players are welcome to use Andy's Soulbound Graves in personal worlds, multiplayer worlds, Realms, and servers, and content creators are welcome to use, review, stream, and showcase the add-on in videos, livestreams, screenshots, articles, and social posts, including monetized content. No one may modify, reverse engineer, extract, repackage, re-upload, sell, mirror, or redistribute the add-on or any of its files without prior written permission — link viewers and players to the official CurseForge release.

The promotional artwork is original AI-assisted concept artwork directed for this project; it is not an in-game screenshot.

Minecraft is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Microsoft or Mojang Studios.