How to keep your items when dying in Minecraft

Surviving in a Minecraft world isn't always easy, and meeting an untimely demise can be annoying when you lose all of your experience, items, and gear on the trade-in.

Dying in Survival Mode can be a setback, even if it isn't as heartbreaking as dying in Hardcore Mode. Lost experience levels are simple enough to get back if players have created a mob farm, but losing your enchanted Netherite pickaxe or a well sought-after Name Tag can be a real bummer.

Fortunately, there is a command available that will at least let Minecraft players hang on to their valuables when they die.

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Minecraft: Using the keep inventory command

With the keep inventory command, players can preserve their gear and items when they die (Image via Mojang)

With a simple command entered into a player's chat console, their Minecraft items can be kept safe upon death even if their experience is lost to the void. However, players will want to ensure that they have cheats enabled in their world before entering the command.

In a single-player world, players can open the world to LAN in their pause menu and enable cheats if they haven't been enabled already. For multiplayer situations such as a server or Minecraft Realm, players will need to ensure that an operator or administrator has given them the appropriate privileges to carry out chat commands.

Once cheats are enabled, all Minecraft players need to do is open their chat window and type "/gamerule keepInventory true" without quotations. Doing so should update the game rule for the world/server and allow anybody playing to keep their items upon death.

This will have to be activated when new worlds or servers are created, as Minecraft does not remember the command's use when switching between worlds or other play areas.

This command won't keep players' experience intact, which is unfortunate, but getting back XP is a much simpler process than hunting for ancient debris blocks to re-form Netherite gear, for example.

Traversing a Minecraft world, especially its Nether and End dimensions, is dangerous, and death can happen quickly. It only helps to save some time with the keep inventory command because nobody enjoys trekking back to a location just to find one's items (if they're even still there).

There are plenty of inconveniences to be had in Minecraft's Survival Mode, save yourself headaches where you can.