The Killd Board / Ender dragons
How many ender dragons does it take to crash a Minecraft server?
605. That is the smallest number anywhere on this board, and it makes the ender dragon the most expensive entity we have tested by a clear margin. The server died at 1,544.
Paper 1.21.11 · AMD Ryzen 7 9700X · 6GB allocated
Why ender dragons cost so much
The dragon is a boss, and it is built like one. It flies, which means navigation through open space rather than across a grid. It has a multi-part hitbox rather than a single box, so collision work is multiplied. It runs a phase system that switches between circling, strafing, perching and attacking, it spawns fireballs and breath clouds that are entities in their own right, and it breaks blocks it flies through. Six hundred of those at once is a tick budget spent several times over.
How we tested it
Everything spawned into a single chunk, in one pile, with the server left running until the tick rate gave up. The server ran Paper 1.21.11 on an AMD Ryzen 7 9700X with 6GB allocated, which is the same hardware and the same RAM policy as an ordinary Hostd plan. We watched TPS and tick times rather than guessing, wrote down the count where the server first fell behind, and kept spawning until it either died or made it clear it was not going to.
Nobody is fighting six hundred dragons. The transferable point is that flying, multi-part and projectile-spawning mobs are the expensive shape, and modded packs are full of them.
What this means for your server
If your own server is printing Can't keep up! Is the server overloaded? the cause is the same shape as this one: something in the tick loop is taking longer than its 50ms budget. Roastd reads your RAM allocation, view distance, player slots, JVM flags and logs and names which of those it is. No account, no world upload, no charge.
Questions about ender dragons
What is the most expensive entity in Minecraft?
Of everything we have tested, the ender dragon. It broke our server at 605, against 1,912 for wardens and 2,780 for villagers. Flight, a multi-part hitbox, a phase-based attack system and the projectiles it spawns all add up.
Why do boss mobs lag servers so badly?
Because they do several expensive things at once. Flight means navigating a volume, multi-part hitboxes multiply collision work, and attack phases spawn further entities that then need ticking themselves. A normal hostile mob does one job badly. A boss does five.
Elsewhere on the board
Keep reading
Rent the machine we keep breaking
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