Minecarts and Merged Minecarts are also options depending on your needs.

Somewhat off topic, but in general I'd recommend against third party antivirus products on windows.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/antivirus-is-bad/

The first thing I would try is restart your computer, make sure your operating system and java version are up to date. Not expecting that to fix your issue but you never know.

Close Minecraft, go to your .minecraft folder and cut/paste the options.txt file to a backup location (or just delete it). Then relaunch Minecraft. If it's still broken, close Minecraft, cut/paste the entire .minecraft folder to a backup location. Relaunch Minecraft.

The first part will wipe just your settings (controls, sound volume, etc), the second will wipe all your settings (list of servers, installed versions of minecraft, etc.).

@NutjobBob @pand1024 I'm sure you're aware, but it's easy to check server render distance by checking where the lazy chunks are. The outer two loaded chunks will be lazy. Here's a fun device you might find interesting:
https://www.reddit.com/r/technicalminecraft/comments/49kb1v/lazy_chunk_detector/

I didn't know you could repair anvils that way.

If your base is inside of the random tp range you can either wait to get raided or you can move.

@gilbertboys I knew about the re rolling part but thanks for the info on the doors. Why did they add nitwits? It's not like it is even that funny of a joke.

Probably to nerf villagers. Cartographers make librarians half as likely when you are breeding, and nitwits give a chance that your baby villager will be almost completely useless.

Create a village with one villager and 6 doors. Then put all your breeding villagers the correct distance/place below the village and you never have to worry about adding more doors. It's called an infinite villager breeder, and you can look up tutorials, or read about the mechanics at the link Valgys gave.

If mob greifing was turned on this villager breeder would actually be infinite. With mob greifing turned off, the only way to make villagers willing is through trading.

Since the server is on hard mode, you will always get a zombie villager when a zombie kills a villager. This allows you to keep recuring any villager you get to reroll their trades. So for instance if you have a cartographer you can cure them to produce a new random white coated villager including the possibility of a librarian with mending. However, villagers will always keep the same profession (color) but can switch careers (e.g. cartographer -> librarian) when being recured. This means that even with a single brown coated villager such as a fisherman, if you recure them enough times you can get a farmer, but a Nitwit will always be a Nitwit.

Last time I tested I could only see 4 chunks in each direction like so:
◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻
◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻
◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻
◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻
◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ⊠ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻
◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻
◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻
◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻
◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻ ◻

So wouldn't that make the render distance 4?

From what I can tell slime spawn rates are low for the same reasons that mob spawn rates in general are low. In practice this means almost none spawn during good portions of the IRL day. There's some pretty cool redstone projects that I want to do like frosted ice bridges with slime but they require hundreds of slime blocks. I'm pretty sure it would be impossible for me to get all the slime I want in the current server state. If you think I'm wrong, I'm happy to buy a few dubs of slime from you.

@iDogeTwinkie I ask this because I'm the type of a guy who doesn't care about money & materialistic things.

TBH i'm surprised to hear you say this. I remember threads like this or this .

I think happiness is a combination of things. For instance I bought skis and I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of them, but your millage may vary because happiness isn't about the skis. Maybe it's that I'm good at sking, or maybe it's that I still find it challenging, maybe it's about the people I ski with. Maybe it's other things, because I still think I would be happy even if I didn't ski. Sometimes you're going to be happy without trying and sometimes your going to be sad and not know what to do about it, but in the long run I think happiness is something that you seek, find, and ultimately must choose to have.