Optimize paper.yml to Reduce Lag

NOTE: This article is specifically for Minecraft Java Edition servers, and depends on Paper to work.

If you’re running a Paper server, you have a handful of options you can use to optimize your server to ensure optimal performance. This guide will show you the settings offered by Paper that you can take advantage of to optimize your server’s performance.

Below is a list of settings from paper.yml and their recommended values for optimal performance in the order of most impact to least impact on performance. For help on editing this file, reference our guide on modifying Paper configuration.

OPTION DESCRIPTION RECOMMENDED VALUES
max-auto-save-chunks-per-tick
By decreasing this value, you will slow down how often chunks are saved while your server is saving the world. It's recommended not to go lower than 8 or you may experience some chunks not being saved at all. Default: 24
Optimized: 8
optimize-explosions
This is less important as of version 1.15, but may still be useful to enable and use Paper's efficient method for handling explosions like TNT or Creepers.

Default: false
Optimized: true

mob-spawner-tick-rate
You can increase the amount of time in between mob spawner ticks without a significant change to gameplay, but don't go much higher unless you're experiencing a lot of spawner lag.

Default: 1
Optimized: 2

disable-chest-cat-protections
This will completely disable the server checking chests constantly to see if cats are sitting on it. By default if cats are sitting on a chest, players cannot open the chest. Default: false
Optimized: true
container-update-tick-rate
When an inventory or chest is opened, Minecraft refreshes the view every tick by default to properly display the changes. You can decrease how often the inventory is refreshed, but don't go higher than 3 or 4. Default: 1
Optimized: 3
max-entity-collisions
If your players are often found cramming mobs in small spaces, decreasing this number will reduce lag caused by cramming.

Default: 8
Optimized: 2

grass-spread-tick-rate
By increasing this value you will reduce how often the server tries to spread grass from one block to another.  Default: 1
Optimized: 4
non-player-arrow-despawn-rate
creative-arrow-despawn-rate
Since players are unable to pick up non-player or creative arrows that are shot, it makes little sense to keep them around for very long. You can change this to have the arrows despawn after just a few seconds (counted in ticks - meaning "60" = 3 seconds) and reduce entity lag. Default: -1
Options: 60
despawn-range
These options will change the distance away from players where mobs will start to despawn. "hard" will depsawn the mobs instantly, while "soft" will start a periodic check and randomly despawn the mobs at intervals. soft: 28
hard: 96
hopper
disable-move-event
This will cause significant performance improvements as your hoppers will not all tick every inventory slot to see which items need to be moved, drastically decreasing tick lag. Default: false
Optimized: true
prevent-moving-into-unloaded-chunks
If a player goes into an unloaded chunk somehow, possibly caused by lag elsewhere, this will actually increase the lag even more. Enable this to stop players from entering unloaded chunks. Default: false
Optimized: true
use-faster-eigencraft-redstone
While there are plugins that can change how the redstone algorithm is managed, this option has been shown to improve performance significantly without changing vanilla redstone behavior. Default: false
Optimized: true
armor-stands-tick
The only thing that armor stands are ticked for is to check if they are being pushed by water. By disabling this, you can free up some tick activities for other processes and only lose a minor gameplay feature. Default: true
Optimized: false
per-player-mob-spawns
You can adjust how mobs spawn in the world to match vanilla mechanics and prevent players with massive mob farms from disrupting the gameplay of others. Default: false
Optimized: true
alt-item-despawn-rate
This config option deserves an article of suggested optimizations all on its own, but you can use this to set specific dropped items to despawn more  or less frequently than others.  You can see an example with cobblestone despawning after 3 seconds here.

enabled: true
items:
    COBBLESTONE: 60

anti-xray
Paper's built-in anti-xray methods are more efficient than any plugins or other anticheats. Enable this if you are concerned about xrayers but don't want to install a separate plugin to handle it for you. Default: false
Optimized: true

You can further improve performance on your Paper server by optimizing Bukkit and Spigot. Learn more on how to optimize your Bukkit configuration with our guide on optimizing Bukkit’s bukkit.yml. And learn more about optimizing Spigot with our guide on optimizing Spigot’s spigot.yml.

Credit to Celebrimbor for their Server Optimizations Guide on SpigotMC.

If you require any further assistance, please contact our support at: https://shockbyte.com/billing/submitticket.php

Mitchell Smith

Managing Director @ Shockbyte

  • lag, Minecraft Java Edition, Minecraft PC, Paper, Paper config, paper.yml
  • 80 Users Found This Useful
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