ESP Shield

ESP Shield

Anti-ESP / Anti-X-Ray for Spawners & Containers

Stop X-ray and ESP cheat clients from finding your spawners, chests, and more!

ESP Shield hides your server's rare, high-value blocks (spawners, containers, vaults) from cheat clients by rewriting the block data sent to each player. To a hacker's ESP/X-ray overlay a buried chest just looks like ordinary stone (or deepslate deep down). The moment a legit player actually looks at it or walks up to it, it reveals instantly and seamlessly - so normal play feels completely untouched.

Unlike heavy “hide everything” solutions, ESP Shield is laser-focused on the blocks that actually matter, so it stays light even on busy servers.


Features

Per-player packet-level hiding - spawners and containers are disguised as a fake block (default STONE, DEEPSLATE deep underground) in the chunk data each player receives. Cheat clients see nothing to highlight.

Line-of-sight reveal - a hidden block turns real the instant a player has a clear line of sight to it, via lightweight raycasting.

Point-blank reveal - walk right up to a buried chest and it appears even through walls, so you never mine into something you can't see.

Instant reveal on interaction - reveals the moment a player clicks, starts breaking, or is near a hidden block. The first break of a still-hidden block is safely cancelled so you never destroy an invisible chest.

Sticky reveal + hysteresis - once revealed, a block stays revealed until you leave the area, eliminating flicker and inventory stutter while you move around a base.

NBT scrubbing - optionally strips block-entity NBT from chunk packets too, so raw-packet scrapers find no breadcrumbs.

Fully live-reloadable - edit the config or the hidden-block list and apply it with a single command, no restart.

Depth-aware disguise - uses deepslate below a configurable Y so hidden blocks blend in instead of looking like out-of-place stone.

World & Y filtering - hide only below a Y level, and only in the worlds you choose (whitelist / blacklist / all).

P erformance-first - per-tick raycast budget, per-player scan throttling, whole-section skips, and automatic pruning of out-of-view chunks keep it cheap even with 20-30 players exploring at once.

Staff bypass - give trusted staff a permission to skip hiding entirely.

Note: ESP Shield is built for rare high-value blocks. It intentionally does not hide ores - there are far too many of them. Use Paper's built-in engine-mode anti-xray for ores and let ESP Shield guard your spawners and loot.


Compatibility

Version: Paper 26.1.2 (built & tested), 1.21+ (api-version: 1.21)


Required dependency

PacketEvents - standalone plugin, developed & tested against 2.13.0


Installation

1. Install the standalone PacketEvents plugin (2.13.x recommended).

2. Drop ESPShield-x.x.x.jar into your plugins/ folder.

3. Start the server once to generate plugins/ESPShield/config.yml.

4. Adjust the config to taste and run /es reload.


Commands

Base command: /espshield (alias /es) - permission espshield.admin

/es info - Show current status and settings.

/ es reload - Reload config live (distances/behaviour apply instantly; block-list and fake-block apply to newly sent chunks).

/es reveal - Force-reveal nearby hidden blocks for yourself.

/es reset - Reset visibility state.

/es hide add <MATERIAL> - Add a block type to the hidden list (persists).

/es hide remove <MATERIAL> - Remove a block type from the hidden list.

/es hide list - List currently hidden block types.


Permissions

espshield.admin (default: op) - Use /es commands.

espshield.bypass (default: op) - Player is fully exempt: no hiding, no raycasts (for staff).


Key config options

hide.spawners / hide.containers: the block lists (spawners, all chest/shulker/furnace types, hoppers, vaults, decorated pots, etc.).

fake-block / depth-fake: what hidden blocks look like (stone up top, deepslate deep down).

max-hide-y: only hide at or below this Y (above-ground is never hidden; also a big perf win).

worlds: all / whitelist / blacklist.

max-reveal-distance: line-of-sight reveal range.

proximity-reveal-distance: through-walls point-blank reveal range (keep small).

unhide-distance: sticky-reveal hysteresis distance.

sticky-reveal, reveal-on-move, reveal-on-interact, reveal-on-damage, cancel-break-of-hidden: reveal behaviour toggles.

check-period-ticks, max-checks-per-tick: performance tuning (scan rate and raycast budget).

strip-chunk-tile-entities: scrub block-entity NBT from chunk packets.

bypass-permission, debug: staff exemption and verbose logging.

A fully commented config.yml ships alongside this description for reference.


I use this on my own smp: luketv.net | It works great for me!

Message me on Discord with any questions or issues @lukeplaystv


ESP Shield 1.0 by Luke19TV. Requires PacketEvents. Built for Paper 26.1.2 (1.21+) on Java 25.