Winter Is Coming | Seasonal Snow, Coastal Frost & Holidays

Winter Is Coming
A winter that arrives gradually, stays through Christmas and melts away when you choose.


Real Minecraft comparison captures
Normally generated Minecraft 26.2 world, vanilla textures, identical camera. Dates are accelerated. The test observes a protected 96x96 area; distant terrain stays green. Snow drifts, canopy stacks and covered small plants are enabled. Every block state in the observed area was restored after thaw.





Seasonal snow and coastal frost

• Real calendar dates and a configurable timezone. Defaults: November 15 start, December 24 peak, February 1 thaw, March 1 end.
• Gradual snow on ground and tree canopies. Snow stacks beyond one block: 1–64 total layers, with 12 layers as the new-install default. Stacks melt from the top and restore the plugin's original block states.
• Surface-water freezing and gradual restoration of the plugin's own snow and ice.
• A separate ocean frost budget measured from the shore. New ice never becomes a new shoreline, so frost cannot spread indefinitely.
• Configurable weather, world allowlist, excluded biomes, snow height and processing limits.
• Only loaded chunks are processed. A write-ahead journal records changes before they are applied, with one background write in flight.
• Core regions are protected by default. Player changes and original natural snow/ice are preserved; artificial snow and ice cannot be harvested for drops.

Native snowfall through Core packets (1.2.0)
Vanilla client-rendered snow in warm biomes, with no client mod, resource pack or ProtocolLib. Biome exclusions, reconnect, reload and restoration were checked with a real Minecraft 26.2 client on Paper and Purpur. The ZIP includes the required Core 0.33.0 dependency.
See the real rain/snow comparison pictures and 1.2.0 update notes.

More winter detail
Smooth configurable snow drifts, softer protected-border transitions, and temporary covering of short grass and ferns with restoration on thaw. Flowers, crops and tall plants stay untouched.

Advent, Christmas and New Year
Advent weeks are calculated each year. Players can use /winter claim for a configurable gift once per Advent week, Christmas period and New Year. Gifts use Vystorm Core's durable reward pouch, including full-inventory handling and interrupted-delivery recovery. Christmas dates and individual celebrations are configurable. New Year has a timezone-aware countdown and harmless particle fireworks at loaded world spawn points. Missed midnight celebrations are not replayed after startup.

Core and optional directors
Vystorm Core supplies regions, localization, scheduling, world-event integration and the reward pouch. With SpawnDirector installed, winter adjusts skeleton, spider and creeper weights through Core while the director retains its normal limits and protection. WorldDirector can observe the seasonal events. Both directors are optional. No custom boss or quest pack is included.

Requirements and installation
Java 25, Paper or Purpur 26.2, and Vystorm Core 0.33.0 or newer. No client mod required. Plain Spigot and Folia are not supported.

The ZIP contains WinterIsComing-1.2.0.jar, the Core 0.33.0 dependency, licenses and installation notes. Put the Winter JAR and Core JAR into plugins/. Keep a newer existing Core and never install a second Core JAR. Start once, configure the worlds and dates in plugins/WinterIsComing/config.yml, then use /winter reload. Start with a test world and consistent world/plugin backups.

Updating from 1.0.x
Existing configurations keep their previous snow depth. Set snow.max-layers to 12 and snow.cover-leaves to true, then use /winter reload. Keep your existing journals and world backups.

Commands
Administration requires winter.admin (operators by default). Gifts require winter.claim (enabled by default). Preview is read-only; setdate changes the world and persists until resume. Manual dates never create calendar gifts.

Please read before installing
With weather.packet-snow enabled (default), Vystorm Core sends client-only snowy-biome packets for native snowfall. Stored server biomes and spawning rules remain unchanged. Vanilla snowy-biome colours can alter grass, foliage, water and sky; newly loaded chunks can briefly show their original appearance. The view applies per player throughout controlled worlds, with biome exclusions; Core regions protect terrain edits, not cosmetic weather. Set weather.packet-snow to false to disable it; optional particles remain the fallback. Frost searches respect unloaded chunks and their configured budget. Shore detection requires supported natural materials, but a hand-built island made from identical materials cannot be distinguished perfectly.

Keep blocks.jsonl, state.json, rewards/winter/ and player/world data in consistent backups. Do not delete the journal to reset the plugin. Run /winter thaw and load affected areas before removing the plugin. Positions cleared by players are permanently relinquished. External editors silently replacing blocks with identical data cannot be detected; exclude those regions first. The tracked-position cap stops new expansion while restoration remains available.

Testing and license
The release is covered by automated calendar, frost-budget, journal and recovery tests plus isolated Paper/Purpur 26.2 acceptance checks covering accumulation, offshore limits, protection, restart, thaw and Core gift persistence. See VALIDATION.md in the ZIP for the exact checks and limitations. English and German messages. Free, MIT licensed, no activation key.

Winter Is Coming on Vystorm.net
— Esoren