How to Keep Inventory On in Minecraft

Last modified on Dec 4, 2023 in General

By Nathan Young

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Overview

While playing Minecraft, it’s almost guaranteed that you and others alike will die at some point. This is a natural part of the game, as there’s dangerous terrain and many enemies in the world. Upon death, the player will drop all their gear and items on the ground. This will despawn after around five minutes, unless configured otherwise. In some cases, all the loot gets deleted and no one can ever pick it up again. Whether you died in the End dimension and can’t easily reach it or simply die too many times in the Overworld, you may want to always keep your items. This is achieved by using gamerule commands, only possible with cheats or operator permissions. Setting this up is quickly done on servers and singleplayer worlds, but may be confusing at first. Due to this, we’ve created this Apex Hosting tutorial to show you how to keep inventory on in mInecraft.

Benefits of Keeping Inventories

There are countless benefits to keeping inventory on, with the major one being that you don’t lose any items. This is obvious, but what isn’t are the other positives to this gamerule. For example, players can kill themselves in-game when their hunger gets low to reset it. Another unique feature of this rule is the ability to keep all your experience points, meaning you can always have enough orbs to enchant items. These are just a couple examples of keep inventory benefits in Minecraft.

Keep Inventory Setup

Whether you’re using Minecraft Java or Bedrock, this gamerule is available. However, the process can change depending on if you’re using a server or singleplayer world. Keep in mind that cheats or operator privileges are required to toggle keep inventory. Due to this, we’ve separated both editions in the subsections below with their respective steps for multiplayer and singleplayer. Choose and follow along with the one you’re wanting so you can never lose items or exp again.

Java Edition

Millions of players use Java, as it’s the most popular edition of Minecraft in the world. Using this simplifies the entire process for enabling the keep inventory gamerule. However, it gets somewhat complicated if you’re trying to do this in an existing singleplayer world. For instance, you can open it to LAN in the settings and enable cheats or use NBTEditor to manually set up keep inventory. The first one is the easiest option but doesn’t remain activated forever. In any case, review the instructions below to do this for singleplayer or multiplayer.

1. Open Minecraft and navigate towards your desired World from the main menu.
   
2. Make sure cheats are enabled before proceeding with this setup.
3. While in-game, open the chat and run /gamerule keepInventory true
   
4. If successful, you’ll see a return message confirming the changes.

1. Head towards your Apex server panel and become an operator if you aren’t already one.
   
2. Afterward, join with your Minecraft account and open the in-game chat.
3. Enter the /gamerule keepInventory true command to enable this feature.
   
4. Upon doing this, you’ll see a return message confirming it worked.
   Optional: Run the /save-all command to ensure it doesn’t revert.

Bedrock Edition

On the other hand, Bedrock players can almost instantly enable this gamerule for singleplayer worlds. This is done by simply toggling the option in the settings, while multiplayer requires a different process. Fortunately, our easy-to-use panel makes this process easier for you to do. Choose your desired section below to toggle keep inventory in Minecraft.

1. Launch Minecraft and enter your world, then open the Settings menu.
2. In the Game category, scroll down and enable the Activate Cheats option.
   
3. Afterward, do the same for the Keep Inventory rule in the same area.
   
4. If successful, you won’t lose any items upon dying in-game.

1. Navigate towards your Apex server panel, then click Config Files at the top left corner.
   
2. Select Bedrock Server Settings and set Allow Cheats to Enabled on this page.
   
3. Continue to click Save at the bottom, then Restart Now when prompted.
4. Afterward, become a server operator and join with your Minecraft account.
5. While in-game, open the chat and run the /gamerule keepinventory true command.
   
6. Upon doing this, you’ll see a return message confirming the changes.

Common Issues

Remember, when you’re trying to use gamerule commands, you must have cheats enabled or have operator permissions. This depends on if you’re using it in singleplayer or multiplayer, but nonetheless applies the same. For instance, you have to run op [username] in the Console of your server panel to grant your account these privileges. If you’re on Bedrock, make sure to set Allow Cheats to Enabled in the Server Settings area. Afterward, restart the server and see if that helps resolve the situation. As for Java singleplayer worlds, make sure to enable cheats when creating it. Otherwise, open the existing map to LAN or use NBTEditor to accomplish this task. Bedrock worlds have it easier, as all you need to do is toggle these features in the Settings menu. Essentially, anyone encountering an issue with command access should double check if cheats or operator permissions are enabled before trying again.

After successfully enabling the keep inventory gamerule in Minecraft and you still lose items, try running /save-all if you’re on Java. This typically helps record the changes you made, as it does edit the map data on your computer or server. If you need to recover your lost loot, then consider restoring from a backup via our panel feature. In cases where this occurred on singleplayer, there isn’t much you can do besides manually adding them back into the game with cheats. As for Bedrock players, there’s a /save command to try out. However, you may want to confirm if the gamerule is enabled in the Settings menu before playing around with other methods. If this happens on your Bedrock server, then consider pressing Stop on the panel and Start to see if that helps. Alternatively, you can contact our Support Team to see if they can resolve this situation.

Conclusion

Whether you’re focusing on keeping your items or experience points, using this gamerule comes in handy. Players that easily die or find themselves in a sticky situation may want to enable keep inventory on their world. It can be quickly toggled on / off, meaning it can be on permanently or temporarily. The process for doing it is straightforward and easily done for both singleplayer and multiplayer across both Minecraft editions. With this said, we hope this tutorial provided you with all the information needed to set this up.

Useful Links

How to Enable Cheats in Minecraft
Becoming a Minecraft Server Operator
How to Install and Use NBTEditor
Minecraft Gamerule Command List