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Optimizing Your Minecraft Server - Falix

Why Optimize Your Server

Optimizing your Minecraft server is a great way to help it run better and to get the best performance from your server. It’s also a very good way to prevent your server from lagging and will allow your server to run better with more players. Optimizing your server can be hard, but we will try to make it as easy as possible. Spigot and Paper offer settings that greatly improve performance. This guide breaks down suggested values that get the most out of your server without compromising gameplay.

Bukkit.yml

spawn-limits Default: monsters:70, animals:10, water-animals:15, water-ambient:20, ambient:15 Optimized: monsters:50, animals:8, water-animals:7, water-ambient:10, ambient:1 Performance Impact: Heavy

While there is more to this than “mobs per player” (explained here), lower values mean less mobs. Avoid going too low or the mob shortages will be noticeable. Subsequent values in the guide will make the reduction less noticeable.

chunk-gc.period-in-ticks Def: 600 Opt: 400 Impact: Medium

This unloads vacant chunks faster. Ticking fewer chunks means less TPS consumption.

ticks-per.(type)-spawns Def: monster:1, water:1, water-ambient:1, ambient:1 Opt: monster:5, water:11, water-ambient:21, ambient:31 Impact: Medium

This sets how often (in ticks) the server attempts to spawn entities. Increasing the time between spawn attempts should not impact gameplay. Offsetting the tick rates spreads them out more.

Only go higher if you have significant tick loss to the mobSpawn task.

autosave Def: 6000 (usually) Opt: 6000 Impact: N/A

This enables Bukkit’s world saving and how often it runs (in ticks). It should be 6000 by default, just double check it is not 0 (disabled).

If you use your server or a plugin to run saves, STOP! They just run the very obsolete /save-all command.

Worldsave Lag: Lag spikes from Worldsave? You might want to consider Paper’s lag-free saving.

Spigot.yml

save-user-cache-on-stop-only Default: false Optimized: true Performance Impact: Medium

Should the server constantly save user data (false) or delay that task until a stop/restart (true)? This is nice TPS savings on Spigot (less on Paper since it’s more efficient).

Note: Take regular backups to avoid data loss in the rare event of a fatal crash.

max-tick-time Def: tile:50, entity:50 Opt: tile:1000, entity:1000 Impact: N/A

1000 disables this feature. The small TPS savings is not worth the potential damage. Damage? (click here)

mob-spawn-range Def: 8 Opt: 6 Impact: N/A

This sets the max mob spawning distance (in chunks) from players. After limiting spawns in Bukkit, this will condense mobs to mimic the appearance of normal rates.

Warning: If your view-distance is 6 or smaller, set a spawn range 1 below that value (ex. If view-distance is 5, set mob-spawn-range to 4)

entity-activation-range Def: animals:32, monsters:32, raiders: 48, misc:16 Opt: animals:16, monsters:24, raiders: 48, misc:8 Impact: Medium

Entities past this range will be ticked less often. Avoid setting this too low or you might break mob behavior (mob aggro, raids, etc).

Note: Villagers should be left alone (if possible) to protect mechanics.

tick-inactive-villagers Def: true Opt: false Impact: Medium

Enabling this prevents the server from ticking villagers outside the activation range.

Vanilla behavior ticks all villagers in loaded chunks. Enable villagers-active-for-panic to save some iron farms from breaking.

merge-radius Def: item:2.5, exp:3.0 Opt: item:4.0, exp:6.0 Impact: Medium

Merging items means less ground item ticking. Higher values allow more items to be swept into piles.

Merging will lead to the illusion of items disappearing as they merge together. A minor annoyance.

nerf-spawner-mobs Def: false Opt: true Impact: Medium

When enabled, mobs from spawners will not have AI (will not swim/attack/move). This is big TPS savings for massive mob farms, but also messes with behavior. A farm limiter plugin might be a better solution.

Paper has an option to force nerfed mobs to jump/swim. This fixes water push farms.

item-despawn-rate Def: 6000 (5 minutes) Opt: less? Impact: Situational

The time (in ticks) before a ground item is removed. While the TPS savings can be significant if reduced, it also impacts gameplay on servers where returning to dropped items is critical.

See Paper’s alt-item-despawn-rate so you can target trash items (cobblestone) without clearing valuable items.

arrow-despawn-rate Def: 1200 Opt: 300 Impact: Minor

Similar to item-despawn-rate, but for arrows. Some servers may want to keep arrows on the ground longer, but most will have no complaints if removed faster.

Paper has settings to reduce the gameplay impact of arrow removal. Leave this near default if you use Paper’s arrow options.

## Paper.yml

max-auto-save-chunks-per-tick Default: 24 Optimized: 6 Performance Impact: Heavy

This slows down incremental chunk saving during the world save task. This is incredibly important for modern servers (world saving sucks).

Setting this too low might result in unsaved chunks, so avoid going lower.

optimize-explosions Default: false Optimized: true Impact: Minor

Paper has a very efficient algorithm for explosions with no impact to gameplay.

mob-spawner-tick-rate Def: 1 Opt: 2 Impact: Minor

This is the delay (in ticks) before an active spawner attempts spawns. Doubling the delay will not impact spawn rates. Only go higher if you have significant tick loss from ticking spawners.

disable-chest-cat-detection Def: false Opt: true Impact: Minor

Chests scan for a cat on top of it when opened by a player. While enabling this eliminates vanilla behavior (cats block chests), do you really need this mechanic?

container-update-tick-rate Def: 1 Opt: 3 Impact: Minor

This changes how often (in ticks) inventories are refreshed while open. Do not exceed 4 to avoid visual issues.

max-entity-collisions (in Spigot.yml in some builds) Def: 8 Opt: 2 Impact: Medium

Crammed entities (grinders, farms, etc.) will collide less and consume less TPS in the process.

grass-spread-tick-rate Def: 1 Opt: 4 Impact: Medium

The time (in ticks) before the server tries to spread grass in chunks. This will have no gameplay impact on most game types.

despawn-ranges Def: soft: 32, hard: 128 Opt: soft: 28, hard: 96 Impact: Minor

Soft = The distance (in blocks) from a player where mobs will be periodically removed. Hard = Distance where mobs are removed instantly.

Lower ranges clear background mobs and allow more to be spawned in areas with player traffic. This further reduces the gameplay impact of reduced spawning (bukkit.yml).

hopper.disable-move-event Def: false Opt: true Impact: Heavy

This will significantly reduce hopper lag by preventing InventoryMoveItemEvent being called for EVERY slot in a container.

Warning: Plugins that listen for InventoryMoveItemEvent will break.

non-player-arrow-despawn-rate Def: -1 (uses Spigot arrow-despawn-rate) Opt: 60 (3 seconds) Impact: Minor

Similar to Spigot’s arrow-despawn-rate, but targets skeleton-fired arrows. Since players cannot retrieve mob arrows, this is only a cosmetic change.

creative-arrow-despawn-rate Def: -1 (Spigot arrow-despawn-rate) Opt: 60 (3 seconds) Impact: Minor

Like the setting above, but for player-fired arrows that cannot be retrieved (infinity bows).

prevent-moving-into-unloaded-chunks Def: false Opt: true Impact: Medium

Prevents players from entering an unloaded chunk (due to lag), which causes more lag. The true setting will set them back to a safe location instead.

Note: If you did not pre-generate your world (what’s wrong with you?!) this setting is critical.

use-faster-eigencraft-redstone Def: false Opt: true Impact: Heavy

This setting reduces redundant redstone updates by as much as 95% without breaking vanilla devices. Empirical testing shows a speedup by as much as 10x!

{: .note } If you use a plugin to change redstone algorithms, consider replacing them with this option as plugins tend to break redstone behavior.

armor-stands-tick Def: true Opt: false Impact: Minor

Some items are viewed as entities (require ticking) since they interact with the world. Unticked armor stands will not get pushed by water (do you care?)

Note: Paper also offsets item frame ticking instead of ticking all frames at once. This is not configurable, just enjoy the TPS savings with no gameplay impact.

per-player-mob-spawns Def: false Opt: true Impact: Minor

This implements singleplayer spawning behavior instead of Bukkit’s random algorithms. This prevents the actions of others (i.e. Massive farms) from impacting the server’s spawn rates.

If you lowered spawn-limits in Bukkit and notice shortages of animals and monsters, consider bumping those back up until you find a happy place.

alt-item-despawn-rate Def: false Opt: true Impact: Medium

Remove certain item drops faster (or slower) than the item-despawn-rate set in Spigot. This lets you avoid ticking massive piles of garbage.

Example of despawning cobblestone and netherrack in 15 seconds: enabled: true items: COBBLESTONE: 300 NETHERRACK: 300

Use the Spigot material list when adding items.

no-tick-view-distance Def: -1 Opt: # > view-distance setting Impact: N/A

This is the distance at which chunks are loaded, but will still not be ticked outside your view-distance.

Note: If you had to set your view-distance really low (like 3 or 4), you might set this at 5 or 6 to improve your gameplay experience.

anti-xray.enabled Def: false Opt: true Impact: N/A

Anti-Xray is not needed for small private servers; it is only needed in public servers.

While this setting will actually cost TPS, Paper’s anti-xray is the most efficient in existence! Engine 1 might be less heavy (mainly for clients), but mode 2 is by far more effective.

Server.Properties

view-distance Def: 10 Opt: 6-8 Impact: Heavy

This is the most impactful setting in all your files as it caps the chunk render distance. Open world servers (like Survival) should strive to use 6+, but others on shared hosts, low specs, or huge player counts might consider 4-5 if chunk gen causes lag.

Warning: See note in mob-spawn-range (spigot.yml) if you set your view distance lower than 7.

network-compression-threshold Default: 256 Optimized: Standalone(512) BungeeCord(-1) Impact: Minor

This option caps the size of a packet before the server attempts to compress it. Setting it higher can save some resources at the cost of bandwidth, setting it to -1 disables it.