The spigot.yml file provides granular control over the most CPU-intensive aspects of Minecraft: entity logic and item management. Tuning these settings is essential for servers with high player counts or massive entity farms.
| Reading Time | Difficulty | Last Updated |
|---|
| 8 minutes | Intermediate | January 2026 |
Impactful Optimization Settings
1. Entity Activation Range
This is arguably the most important setting in Spigot. It determines how close a player must be for a mob’s AI to “wake up.”
- animals: 16 (Default 32)
- monsters: 24 (Default 32)
- misc: 8 (Defualt 16)
- Result: Mobs further than 24 blocks will stand stationary, consuming almost zero CPU.
2. Merge Radius
Dropped items and XP orbs will “clump” together more aggressively, reducing the number of individual entities the server has to track.
- item: 4.0 (Default 2.5)
- exp: 6.0 (Default 3.0)
3. Mob Spawn Range
Controls the distance (in chunks) from a player where mobs are allowed to spawn.
- Recommendation: 6 (Default 8). This ensures mobs only spawn in areas players can actually see, rather than in deep caves 100 blocks away.
Maintenance Settings
| Setting | Default | Optimized | Reason |
|---|
| arrow-despawn-rate | 1200 | 300 | Arrows stay on the ground for 15s instead of 60s. |
| item-despawn-rate | 6000 | 4000 | Clears dropped “trash” items every 3.3 minutes. |
| tick-inactive-villagers | true | false | Prevents out-of-range villagers from calculating pathing. |
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Last Updated: January 2026 | Spigot: Efficiency maximized.