Hey guys,

It seems as though lately, the rate at which hostile mobs spawn at night and in caves as gone down drastically. Many players including myself have had problems with it and I would imagine this is linked with the increased population on the server as of late. One of the moderators or admins (I forget who it was) explained to me that there is a general worldwide limit on the amount of hostile mobs that can be spawned at any given time and that a larger amounts of loaded chunks causes few if any mobs to spawn in if the cap is reached. I would imagine that this problem is exacerbated by the amount of XP grinders that many players have on the server.

This issue renders many of the aspects of the game virtually unplayable especially with the new update making gunpowder a commodity. I personally have been trying to get a zombie villager to start my village for almost 3-4 IRL days now but to no avail. I have also tried playing at times when fewer players are online (3-4AM), but this seems to only marginally increase the spawn rates.

If what I was told is correct, would there be a way to increase the server-wide hostile mob cap without causing a tremendous amount of lag to accommodate for the higher server population? Perhaps there would be a way to increase the cap depending on how many players are online (with a limit of course). Hopefully there is a foreseeable solution. Cheers

- Mike_n_ike4

@mike_n_ike4 there is a general worldwide limit on the amount of hostile mobs that can be spawned at any given time and that a larger amounts of loaded chunks causes few if any mobs to spawn in if the cap is reached

If anyone's interested the mob cap depends on the number of loaded chunks. So the more chunks are loaded the higher the cap.

The two main reasons why spawns appear to be so low are:

1. Mob caps are shared between everyone. If you're killing mobs around you but other players aren't, over time mobs will tend to accumulate around players who aren't killing them. Building up to the cap and basically blocking spawns around you.
2. The render distance is low to improve performance. Unfortunately this means that the mob cap is naturally low because few chunks are loaded around each player.

@_Confederacy_ If you want increased spawn rates you can always use an alt

This is a good idea - but (stinky but) it's only really practical in the nether and end (like you said). Different dimensions have their own mob cap. Generally there's so many people in the overworld it won't make any difference, but in the end it doesn't even matter it might work. Just make sure nothing can spawn around your alt.

@Tez1010 do you mean that if more players are in an area more mobs spawn?

It's kinda the opposite. Mob caps depend on the number of chunks loaded, so if players are more spread out more chunks are loaded so the mob caps are higher.

@TheBlizWiz Local difficulty does bugger all to affect mob spawn rates or caps, except for slimes in swamps

If anyone wants any more bedtime reading to send them to sleep this old thread might be interesting :)