Crashes, No Sound, or Screen Glitches?
Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteWindows Errors? Fix Them Before They Spread
Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallTo reduce entity lag, profile the server while the slowdown is happening, confirm that entity updates are consuming tick time, then lower one workload control at a time. On Paper, the most direct controls are simulation-distance and entity activation ranges. Mob-cap concentration, villager and farm design, spawners, collisions, plugins, and excessive tracking can add further load. Tracking and broadcast ranges can reduce network and client rendering work, but they do not replace diagnosing server-side entity ticks.
Prefer not to run the server on your own PC? Godlike.Host offers hosted Minecraft Java servers with free DDoS protection and up to three free backups a day.
The safest method is iterative: record the current settings, reproduce the same crowded area or farm workload, run a Spark profile, change one setting, reproduce the workload again, and keep the change only if tick cost falls without breaking the gameplay your players need.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
What entity lag looks like
Entity lag is server-side delay in updating mobs, villagers, animals, items, projectiles, and other world objects. A busy server may show several symptoms at once:
- Mobs react late, pathfind in bursts, or appear to freeze and then catch up.
- Villagers take a long time to claim beds or workstations, breed, restock, or move through a trading hall.
- Items on the ground move erratically, pause, or appear to rubber-band.
- Mob farms produce unevenly because spawning, AI, collisions, or collection systems are consuming tick time.
- Players see delayed movement or block interactions even though their own game frame rate is normal.
These signs do not prove that entities are the cause. Redstone, chunk generation, garbage collection, plugins, and network problems can also produce lag. Measure first rather than changing every distance setting at once.
#1 Best Overall
Profile the server during the incident
Paper’s profiling documentation explains that a profiler measures how often methods run, how much time they consume in a tick, and how frequently the garbage collector runs. A profile taken while the server is healthy may miss the actual cause, so collect it while the crowded farm, trading hall, or mob area is producing lag.
Use Spark on Paper 1.21 and later
Paper recommends Spark for Paper 1.21 and later. From the server console or as an administrator with the necessary permission, run:
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors/spark profiler start --timeout 600This records a 600-second profile and then stops. Keep the workload active for the capture: players should stand near the affected farm or village, and the same number of entities should be present as during a normal incident.
Capture only slow ticks
If the problem is intermittent, use Paper’s slow-tick filter:
/spark profiler start --only-ticks-over 100 --timeout 300This attempts to isolate ticks taking more than 100 milliseconds during a 300-second window. It is useful when average performance looks acceptable but occasional entity spikes cause visible freezes. The threshold is a diagnostic filter, not a promise that every slow tick is an entity problem.
What to look for in the report
Inspect the profile for the work that dominates slow ticks. Entity-related entries may involve mob AI, pathfinding, villager behavior, collision handling, item updates, spawning, mob spawners, or a plugin that repeatedly scans nearby entities. Also check whether garbage collection is consuming time; changing activation ranges will not fix a memory-management pause.
The Tool Desk
Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Record the date, player count, world, location, entity counts if shown, and the settings in effect. A before-and-after record lets you compare the same workload rather than relying on how the server feels.
The controls that reduce entity work
| Control | What it changes | Likely benefit | Gameplay or visibility trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
simulation-distance |
Radius, in chunks, in which living entities are updated by the server. | Fewer active chunks and fewer living-entity ticks. | Farms and distant gameplay may stop updating when outside the radius; entities outside it are not ticked or visible to players. |
| Entity activation ranges | Distance from a player at which categories of entities tick normally; farther entities tick less frequently. | Reduces AI and update work around players without necessarily removing entities. | Distant mobs, villagers, items, and other categories can react less smoothly. Dropped items outside the miscellaneous range may appear to lag, rubber-band, or move backward. |
| Mob-spawn distribution | Distributes a player’s share of the mob cap instead of allowing one player to consume the entire cap. | Prevents one concentrated area from starving other players’ spawning opportunities. | Changes where mobs appear; it does not by itself eliminate an overloaded farm. |
| Spawner and collision settings | Controls related to mob-spawner ticking and entity collisions in world configuration. | Can reduce repeated spawning or collision calculations in dense builds. | Spawner output and physical interactions may change. |
entity-broadcast-range-percentage |
How close an entity must be before it is sent to clients; documented valid range is 10–1000 percent. | Less network traffic and fewer entities rendered by distant clients when lowered. | Players may not see distant entities. It is not a substitute for reducing server-side ticking. |
Tracking ranges in spigot.yml |
How far players, animals, and monsters are tracked. | Can reduce visibility and client/network work at distance. | Entities disappear from a player’s view sooner; server AI work may remain. |
Paper documents simulation-distance=10 as its reference default and entity-broadcast-range-percentage=100 as its reference default. Those are configuration reference values, not measured performance results. No authoritative benchmark establishes a universal percentage reduction from any particular setting, because the result depends on entity count, plugins, hardware, world design, and player distribution.
Lower simulation distance carefully
simulation-distance is measured in chunks and determines the radius in which living entities are updated. Reducing it limits the number of chunks that receive active entity simulation. Entities outside that radius are not ticked by the server and are not visible to players.
When it helps
- A profile shows that many loaded chunks are ticking living entities even though players interact with only a small area.
- Players spread across large worlds and each player keeps a broad ring of chunks active.
- Large farms or villages are located far from the player’s actual focus, yet remain inside the simulation radius.
What can break
Because entities outside the radius are not updated, distant farms may stop producing until a player moves close enough. Villager work, breeding, animal movement, item collection, and mob-based mechanisms can behave differently. Explain this to players before changing the value on a survival server.
Rank #3
- The classic UNO card game builds fun on game night with a Minecraft theme.
- UNO Minecraft features a deck and storage tin decorated with graphics from the popular video game.
- Players match colors and numbers to the card on top of the discard pile as in the classic game.
- The Creeper card unique to this deck forces other players to draw 3 cards.
- Makes a great gift for kid, teen, adult and family game nights with 2 to 10 players ages 7 years and older, especially Minecraft and video game fans.
How to change and test it
- Back up the relevant server configuration and write down the current simulation-distance value.
- Lower the value by a modest step rather than making a drastic change. The exact useful value depends on the server’s world layout and player expectations.
- Restart or reload only through the method supported by your Paper setup; do not assume every configuration change is safely hot-reloaded.
- Reproduce the same entity workload and run another Spark profile.
- Walk beyond and back within the previous and new radius. Check farm clocks, villager behavior, animal movement, and whether distant entities are visible as expected.
Keep the change only when the profile shows less tick work and the resulting simulation boundary is acceptable to players.
Tune entity activation ranges
Activation ranges are a finer-grained control. Entities within a category’s range tick normally. Outside that range, they tick less frequently instead of receiving full updates every tick. Paper and Spigot configurations expose categories including animals, monsters, raiders, miscellaneous entities, water mobs, villagers, and flying monsters.
Choose the category that matches the workload
- Animals: Useful when crowded pens contain many passive mobs that players rarely interact with.
- Monsters and raiders: Relevant to dense hostile-mob areas, patrols, and raid-related activity.
- Villagers: Relevant to trading halls and breeder areas, but aggressive throttling can delay work, pathfinding, restocking, and breeding.
- Water mobs: Applies to fish, dolphins, and other aquatic entities in loaded areas.
- Flying monsters: Useful for areas with many airborne hostile mobs.
- Miscellaneous: Includes entities such as dropped items and can visibly affect item movement when the range is too small.
Understand the zero-value exception
Setting a category to zero or below disables activation-range throttling for that category. It does not mean “disable the entities.” The entities continue using normal activation behavior, so a zero value is not a performance setting and should not be used when the goal is to reduce work.
Prevent item and villager surprises
Paper warns that distant dropped items can appear to lag, rubber-band, or move backward when they are outside the miscellaneous activation range. Test item streams, hoppers, collection systems, and pickup behavior from the distances at which players normally watch them. For villagers, test bed and workstation access, pathfinding, trading, breeding, and restocking before accepting a lower range.
Address mob-cap concentration and dense builds
Lowering distances can hide symptoms while leaving the underlying concentration problem intact. Inspect the profile and the affected world for areas where a large number of entities share a small space.
Rank #4
- Now Minecraft lovers can play a special version of UNO!
- Same as Basic UNO but features Minecraft characters and includes special Creeper rule card. Draw this card and the other players have to draw three more cards from the pile!
- The goal is to get rid of all the cards in your hand.
- First player or team to 500 wins.
- When you're down to one card, don't forget to yell "UNO"!
Check mob-cap distribution
Paper documents a per-player mob-spawn distribution option intended to stop one player from consuming the entire mob cap. This matters on multiplayer servers where one highly efficient farm can prevent other players from seeing normal spawning. Distribution changes the allocation of spawning opportunities; it does not make a dense farm cheap to simulate.
Audit farms and villager halls
- Count animals in pens and remove unused breeding stock.
- Check whether a farm leaves large numbers of mobs alive instead of moving them to a kill or collection point.
- Look for villagers sharing tight spaces, repeatedly attempting unreachable paths, or surrounded by unnecessary workstations and beds.
- Inspect item farms for thousands of dropped entities waiting for collection.
- Separate independent farms so that one player does not keep every system active at once.
Review spawners and collisions
World configuration exposes controls related to mob-spawner ticking and entity collisions. A spawner room with mobs packed into a single block can spend substantial time on collision checks and AI even when the final output is small. Test any spawner or collision change against the farm’s intended output, player safety, and collection mechanics.
What’s actually slowing this PC down?
Pick the symptom - the matching free tool is one click away.
Use tracking and broadcast ranges for visibility and network load
entity-broadcast-range-percentage controls how close entities must be before they are sent to clients. Paper documents a valid range from 10 to 1000 percent, with 100 percent as the reference default. Tracking ranges in spigot.yml separately define how far players, animals, and monsters are tracked.
These settings primarily affect what clients receive and render. Lowering them can reduce network traffic and client rendering load when players are surrounded by entities they do not need to see. They should not be treated as a replacement for simulation-distance or activation ranges: an entity can still consume server-side tick time even when it is not being broadcast at long range.
When to adjust them
- The Spark profile shows server ticks are acceptable, but players with older hardware suffer frame-rate drops near crowded farms.
- Bandwidth or packet volume rises when players enter entity-dense areas.
- Players do not need to see animals or monsters from far across a build.
What to validate
Ask players to stand at normal viewing distances and confirm that important mobs, pets, enemies, and farm output appear when expected. Check both first entry into the area and movement away from it; overly short tracking can make entities pop in and out in a way players interpret as missing mobs.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.A repeatable tuning workflow
- Back up configuration: Copy the Paper and Spigot configuration files and note the world, server version, player count, and current values.
- Define the incident: Record where the lag occurs, how many players are present, which entities are concentrated there, and whether the symptom is server delay, client rendering, or both.
- Profile during the incident: Run Spark with a 600-second capture, or use the slow-tick command with a 300-second timeout when spikes are intermittent.
- Identify the dominant work: Separate living-entity AI, pathfinding, villagers, item updates, spawning, collisions, plugins, garbage collection, and network symptoms.
- Change one control group: Adjust simulation distance, one or more matching activation categories, mob distribution, spawner or collision behavior, or visibility ranges. Do not change all of them together.
- Reproduce the same workload: Use the same farm, player positions, time of day, and approximate entity population.
- Profile again: Compare tick cost and the relevant Spark entries with the baseline.
- Test gameplay: Check farms, villagers, dropped items, mob behavior, distant visibility, and client rendering.
- Keep or revert: Keep a change only when it improves the measured problem without unacceptable gameplay effects. Restore the backup if the profile does not improve or a key mechanic breaks.
Troubleshoot by symptom
“The server lags only near one farm”
Profile while standing at that farm. Look for concentrated AI, pathfinding, collisions, item entities, or a plugin scanning the area. Reduce the farm’s live entity count or tune the matching activation category before lowering global distances.
“Villagers are slow after changing settings”
Check the villager activation range and simulation-distance boundary. Restore the previous value if workstations, beds, breeding, trading, or restocking no longer behave reliably at normal player positions.
“Dropped items move backward”
Check whether items are outside the miscellaneous activation range. Increase that category or keep collection systems within the normally active area, then test item movement and hopper pickup again.
“Players see fewer mobs, but the server is still slow”
You likely changed broadcast or tracking rather than server-side ticking. Recheck Spark for AI, pathfinding, spawning, collisions, villagers, and plugin work. Visibility controls do not guarantee lower tick cost.
“Lowering simulation distance broke a distant farm”
The farm is outside the radius in which living entities are updated. Move the player or farm within the intended simulation area, or restore the previous distance if continuous distant operation is a requirement.
Free tools Windows power users keep installed
One-click scans. No signup required.
“Lag appears as occasional freezes”
Use the --only-ticks-over 100 Spark profile to isolate slow ticks. If garbage collection or another subsystem dominates the report, entity range changes are unlikely to solve the freeze.
Quick Recap
How to choose between the controls
| If your priority is… | Start by examining… | Measure | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lower server tick cost in a broad area | Simulation distance | Living-entity and total tick time before and after. | Distant farms and gameplay no longer updating. |
| Reduce AI around players while retaining entities | Activation range for the dominant category | Category-specific AI and pathfinding time. | Delayed villager behavior, mob reactions, or item movement. |
| Stop one player’s farm from consuming multiplayer spawning | Per-player mob-spawn distribution and farm concentration. | Spawn distribution and slow-tick profiles at multiple player locations. | Changed farm rates and different spawning locations. |
| Reduce client or network load | Broadcast and tracking ranges | Packet or rendering symptoms and player-visible distance. | Entities appearing too late or disappearing at ordinary viewing distances. |
| Fix a specific dense mechanism | Spawner ticking, collisions, item accumulation, or the plugin named in the profile. | Tick cost at the mechanism before and after. | Lower output or changed physical behavior. |
Practical operating rules
- Profile only when the problem is occurring; a quiet server can produce a misleadingly clean report.
- Change one setting or one related control group at a time so the result is attributable.
- Keep configuration backups and a written before-and-after record.
- Use simulation distance and activation ranges for server-side entity work; reserve tracking and broadcast ranges mainly for visibility, network, and client rendering.
- Test the gameplay that matters to your community, especially villagers, farms, dropped items, and distant entities.
- Do not treat Paper’s reference defaults or the 10–1000 percent broadcast range as performance benchmarks. They are documented configuration boundaries and defaults, not guaranteed optimal values.
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
