Trolling

Griefing is very frowned upon in Minecraft. It wrecks construction, ruins many hours of work, and makes levels untidy. At best, griefing annoys other players, at worst it can destroy an entire server.

This page is to help players combat griefers, not to give you ideas!

Random Destruction
This is when a griefer destroys random blocks, putting holes in walls and other structures, making them look broken and messy. The way to combat this is to just repair the damage and have an admin kick the offender, then repair the damage by hand. If there is no admin to kick, then just wait for the griefer to get bored.

Random Construction
This is when a griefer creates random blocks on constructions, making them look messy. The way to combat this is to just remove the extra blocks and have an admin kick the offender. If there is no admin to kick, again, just wait for the griefer to get bored. This type of griefing doesn't seem as bad as the first, but it can be just as annoying. Often griefers both destroy and create blocks in their quest to annoy others.

Water Flood
This occurs when a griefer destroys blocks causing water to spill across the level and into/over any contructions players have made. This normally can only happen when the construction is underground, or the ground level is below the level of the ocean. There have also been instances of hackers making water blocks in the middle of the sky, causing it to flood the entire level. If the damage is minimal, or the area small, a player can fill the area with another type of block, such as leaves, then dig them out again, leaving the area dry, or use the sponge block. Any water nearby will reflood the empty area again however. Another danger that water also causes is the huge number of chunk updates that occur when water spreads rapidly can cause buffers to fill and players to lose connection to the server.

Lava Flood
Similar to a Water Flood, a lava floods the area with lava instead of water. Lava is far slower than water, so most of the time, if it's caught the lava can be stopped with a few well placed blocks. Lava floods are also rarer because lava is mainly found underground, at depths far below the common areas of water. However, well-planned lava floods can be catastrophic, because sponge blocks do not absorb lava, so the area must be cleaned out by hand by displacing the lava with blocks and erasing them, drying off the area.

Offensive Constructions
Some griefers often grief others by writing rude words or drawing phallic symbols everywhere. It's often generally harmless fun, but if a player finds it offensive they can destroy the offending problem. This is far less of a problem that the others, although some constructions high up in the sky may take some creative thinking to remove.

Combatting Griefers
The best way to combat griefers is to kick and ban them, often with a permanent ip ban. Until there is a more robust system, however, players and admins just need to be vigilant. When a griefer is found, an admin can verify what they are doing by teleporting to them. After that a /kick or /ban command will remove the griefer from the server.

If an admin is not on the server, or is handling a heavy load of griefers, a good strategy for players is to ignore the griefer. As hard as it is to ignore somebody who is ruining your hard work, Griefers thrive on the annoyance of others. Oftentimes simply ignoring a griefer will cause them to get bored and leave.

Griefer swarms
While one griefer can be bad, on rare occasions they may attack in groups. Sometimes members get to the point of blaming others in the group to avoid being caught. They can also attack rapidly, typically abusing votebans to clear out the server. A typical sign is about four people(four is a common voteban threshold) people joining at once, but that can be coincidence.

The swarm also provides the problem of being harder to ban.