Placing blocks one at a time is fine for a cabin and miserable for a castle. WorldEdit turns building into selecting a region and telling it what to do - fill, replace, hollow out, copy, rotate, smooth. It is the single biggest force-multiplier a builder can install, and it has a real undo, so experimenting is safe.
Install and arm the wand
- 1On a Paper server, Plugins tab → search "WorldEdit" → Install → restart.
- 2Operators can use it immediately; to give it to non-ops, grant the worldedit.* nodes with LuckPerms.
- 3Run //wand to get the selection tool (a wooden axe by default). Left-click a block for position 1, right-click another for position 2 - that rectangular region is now your selection.
The everyday commands
- 1//set <block> - fill the whole selection (e.g. //set stone, or //set 0 to clear it to air).
- 2//replace <from> <to> - swap one block for another only where the first exists (e.g. //replace dirt grass_block).
- 3//walls <block> and //faces <block> - just the sides, or the full shell of the selection.
- 4//copy then //paste - duplicate a structure; stand where you want the anchor point.
- 5//rotate 90 and //flip - reorient what’s on your clipboard before pasting.
- 6//undo and //redo - step backwards or forwards through your edits. Use these liberally.
Brushes and shapes
Beyond selections, WorldEdit can sculpt. /brush sphere stone 5 binds a brush to your tool that paints stone spheres of radius 5 wherever you right-click - perfect for terrain. //sphere, //cyl and //pyramid generate shapes directly. /brush smooth gently rounds off rough terrain. These are how people make natural-looking mountains and caves quickly.
Save and share with schematics
Select a build, run //copy, then //schem save myhouse to store it. //schem load myhouse and //paste drops it anywhere - or in another world. Schematic files are how builders share creations, and how you keep a library of your own structures.
Use it responsibly on a live server
Enormous //set operations touch a lot of blocks at once and can briefly lag the server while they apply and re-light - do the really big edits when others aren’t on, and take a backup before anything drastic. WorldEdit’s //undo covers mistakes, but a Backups-tab snapshot covers the mistakes //undo can’t.