Optimizing your Minecraft Server can go a long way in helping you and your players enjoy your server at maximum performance. Through intelligent optimizations, you can maximize the value of your hosting and reduce the time spent troubleshooting lag.
For starters, we’ll begin with the version of Minecraft you’re actually going to play on. It’s always recommended to play on the latest possible version of Minecraft, which offers the latest security and bug fixes. However, going a little further back offers significant performance benefits, 1.12.2 is a very stable version of Minecraft that requires less resources to operate and host. Any version after 1.13+ requires 3gb ram minimum, with 6gb being the recommended amount. 1.13-1.14 is not recommended to play on as they are known to have chunk and lighting render issues. These issues were fixed in version 1.15.
Picking the software of your server is important. We highly recommend the use Paper due to its compatibility with Bukkit and Spigot plugins, as well as its many performance improvements. At WinterNode, we strongly encourage players to run Paper even on Vanilla servers. The effects that Paper has on the Vanilla experience is minimal to none and can be mitigated by enabling Papers Unsupported Settings.
We’ll be referencing a couple of amazing guides that have been put together by people in the Paper community with the goal to add more context and direct you to the sections you’re looking for. Regardless of our directing, we encourage you to read through these two guides written by YouHaveTrouble and Paper chan, as they are valuable resources and the authors have put a lot of work into them.”
<aside> ⚠️ A number of the settings and values we recommend will impact the vanilla experience, so it’s highly recommended to read through what we, and the guides we reference, have to say and understand what you’re changing before you do so.
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We hope this article has been helpful for you in optimizing your server. As always, if you’re experiencing unusual lag on your server and the advice here hasn't helped you, please contact our support team at any time.
<aside> ✅ This guide was created through our Help Center Contribution Program by Cic1e, a member of the WinterNode Client Family and updated by @Natalie Trinket, a member of the WinterNode Support Team.
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