NewbieShield

Keep new players safe until they throw the first punch.

NewbieShield shields new players from PvP and raids for their first hours, and it drops the moment they attack, so fresh players stay on your server longer.

The players most likely to quit are the ones who only just arrived. One flattened first hut and they are gone for good. NewbieShield stands in front of them. For their first hours nobody can hurt them and nobody can raid their base, and the second they throw a punch of their own the shield comes off. Every shield is saved to a database, so it survives a restart and covers a base even while its owner is offline.

Supported Features

• A shield on arrival: for the first hours after a player's first ever join, no other player can hurt them, so a fresh spawn cannot be farmed.
• The clock starts once: the timer runs from that first join and does not restart on the next login, so nobody stretches their shield by staying away.
• Their base too: switch on structure cover and a shielded player's build cannot be raided either, not just their body.
• Covered while offline: I keep each shield's tribe id, so a new player's base stays safe even when nobody in the tribe is online. That is when raids happen, after all.
• It drops on the first punch: the shield ends the moment a new player hits another player or an enemy base, so it can never be a free pass to fight.
• Nothing daft trips it: tribe mate hits and PvE damage are ignored. Only a real enemy player on another team is ever blocked.
• Cheap on a busy server: the damage checks bail out almost instantly when nobody is shielded, so a heavy PvP night stays smooth.
• They can check it: one command tells a player how much shield time is left and exactly how it ends.
• Safe through a restart: shields live in SQLite with no setup, or in MySQL to share them across a cluster, so a crash keeps every timer honest.
• Discord log: switch it on for a tidy embed when a shield starts and when it runs out.
• Talks in your language: set the language in the config and the shield's messages come from a plain text file you can edit, so new players are told what is going on in words they understand.

Console & RCON Commands

Command	What It Does	Where
NewbieShield.Reload	Read config.json again with no restart.	Both
NewbieShield.Remove <eos>	Clear the shield for one player by their EOS id.	Both

Player Commands

Players get one command. Its name lives in config.json, so rename it or switch it off.

Command	What It Does
/protection	Show how much shield time is left, and how it ends.

Permissions

No permission plugin needed. The staff commands run from the console and over RCON, which are trusted already, so there is nothing to install and no node to hand out. Permissions makes no difference to how the shield behaves.

Config

To see every configuration option, visit our docs. To edit your config files the easy way, open our configuration editor.

Requirements

• AsaApi v2.01 or newer
• A Windows server running ArkAscendedServer through the AsaApi loader
• MySQL (optional, works without it, since SQLite is built in and needs no setup)
• A Discord webhook (optional, works without it)

Installation

1. Unzip the download.
2. Drop the NewbieShield folder into ArkApi/Plugins/. Keep the folder name as it is, since AsaApi only loads a plugin when the folder and the DLL share a name.
3. Open NewbieShield/config.json and pick your hours and your database. The Discord settings sit in discord.json right beside it.
4. Launch the server through AsaApiLoader.exe.
5. Look for the loaded line in ArkApi.log, then have a new player type /protection to see their timer.

Support & Help

Something not working the way you expected? Come and find me on Discord and we will sort it out together: https://discord.gg/8GGaEzWk9p

Frequently Asked Questions

What does NewbieShield do?

NewbieShield gives every new player a safe start on a PvP server. For their first hours nobody can damage them, and with structure cover on nobody can raid their base either. The shield ends on its own when the time runs out, or straight away if they attack somebody.

How do I install NewbieShield?

Unzip the download and drop the NewbieShield folder into ArkApi/Plugins/, keeping the folder name so it matches the DLL. Set your hours in config.json, then restart the server through the AsaApi loader and look for the loaded line in ArkApi.log.

What happens when a shielded player starts a fight?

The shield drops right there. The first hit a new player lands on another player or an enemy base ends their protection for good. Nobody gets free kills from behind it, so your veterans have nothing to grumble about.

Can somebody stretch the shield by logging off?

No. The clock starts at their first ever join and keeps running whether they are online or not. Once the hours have passed the shield is gone, however much of that time they spent logged out.

Is a new player's base safe while they are offline?

Yes, and that is the part that matters, because offline is when most raids land. NewbieShield stores each shield's tribe id in its database, so with structure cover on the base stays protected even when nobody in the tribe is on.

Do I need ArkShop, Permissions or MySQL?

None of them. There is no economy here, so a shop never comes into it, Permissions changes nothing, and SQLite is the built in storage with no setup at all. MySQL is only there if you want a whole cluster sharing one set of shields.

Was any AI content used in the making of this?

The source code itself was fully created by myself. I do use ChatGPT occasionally to generate product images, and I do use ChatGPT to generate the website descriptions. I do this because I don't speak native English perfectly. I am natively from Sweden, so I use GPT to help translate and write product descriptions. I also will sometimes use GPT to write better English logs. Majority of my Free plugins are open source, so you can review the code yourself and freely fork and edit it to your liking.