Drain Buckets & Sponges

A drain bucket (mode: DRAIN_AREA) removes liquid instead of placing it. Give it a SPONGE icon and it's a sponge. It works one of two ways:

• Click to drain (default): right-click and every block of the bucket's liquid-type within drain-radius is removed. The bucket stays in your hand and takes one use.
• Place as a block (place-block: true): right-click puts the bucket down as a real block, like a vanilla sponge, and drains around it. Mine it to pick it back up.

Drain radius

drain-radius is how far the drained cube reaches on each side, from 1 to 16 (default 3):

A value above 16 is lowered to 16, with a warning in the console when the plugin loads. Only blocks of the bucket's own liquid-type are removed: a lava sponge leaves water alone. Blocks nearest the centre go first.

Click to drain

Right-click a block in or next to the liquid, or aim at a liquid surface and right-click: the drain is centred on the block you clicked, or the liquid source you're looking at. Nothing drained means no use is taken.

Example: Lava Sponge (click to drain)

Clears lava in a 5-block radius and lasts 16 uses.

buckets:
  lava_sponge:
    display-name: "Hot Lava Sponge"
    lore:
      - "Right-click lava to soak it up"
    liquid-type: LAVA
    mode: DRAIN_AREA
    drain-radius: 5
    usage-limit: 16
    permission: "infinitebuckets.use.lavasponge"
    glowing: true
    place-sound: ITEM_BUCKET_FILL_LAVA
    icon: SPONGE

Place as a block

With place-block: true, right-click puts the bucket's icon down as a block (a sponge if the icon isn't a full block) and drains around it.

• Where it goes: against the face you click, or straight into a liquid source you're looking at. It won't go inside a player or mob, or into a block that isn't replaceable.
• Uses: each placement takes one use. Mine the block and you get the bucket back with the uses it has left, so a 16-use sponge comes back with 15.
• Last use: a bucket placed on its last use breaks into a plain block, and the player is told it's used up.
• Pistons and explosions: a pushed or blown-up placed bucket still drops as the bucket. This is stored on the block, so it survives restarts.
• Water sponges stay dry: the drain runs before the block goes down, so a placed water sponge doesn't turn into a wet sponge.

Example: Placeable Lava Sponge

buckets:
  hot_sponge:
    display-name: "HOT LAVA SPONGE"
    lore:
      - "Place it in lava to soak it up"
    liquid-type: LAVA
    mode: DRAIN_AREA
    place-block: true
    drain-radius: 5
    usage-limit: 16
    permission: "infinitebuckets.use.hotsponge"
    glowing: true
    place-sound: ITEM_BUCKET_FILL_LAVA
    icon: SPONGE

Example: Placeable Water Sponge

The largest drain there is: a 33x33x33 cube of water per placement, 8 placements per sponge.

buckets:
  super_sponge:
    display-name: "SUPER SPONGE"
    lore:
      - "Place it to drain a 33x33 area of water"
    liquid-type: WATER
    mode: DRAIN_AREA
    place-block: true
    drain-radius: 16
    usage-limit: 8
    permission: "infinitebuckets.use.supersponge"
    glowing: true
    place-sound: ITEM_BUCKET_FILL
    icon: SPONGE

Protection

Placing a block checks your protection plugin's place permission. Each drained block checks break, so a drain next to a claim stops at the claim's edge instead of failing outright. With CoreProtect installed, the placed block and every drained block are logged under the player. See Protection Plugins and CoreProtect.

Limiting how much one use drains

The radius alone decides the size. To cap the number of blocks one use can remove, set performance.drain-block-limit in config.yml; see the Performance Guide.