Tips & recommendations
World generation
To optimally focus on the LOTRmod experience and reduce avoidable performance killers (see other sections below), it is highly recommended to generate the world with Worldtype = middleearth (level-type in server.properties). This ensures new players spawn in The Shire, at x0 z0, in the Middle-earth dimension. Also see this Wiki page: Middle-earth World Type.
Note that creation of middle-earth portals is set to false in the lotr.cfg provided in the server pack, players will not be abel to get to the Overworld, not The Nether, nor The End. Those dimensions are just to be considered no part of the game.
Server options
The LOTRmod has more ores, flora and fauna, structures and NPCs than vanilla minecraft per generated/loaded chunk. Consequently, the burden per chunk on server performance is higher, allowing for less loaded chunks than for vanilla servers. This forces server owners to reduce heavily on number of player slots and/or view-distance (chunk loading depth) per player. For comparable normal performance, the number of slots should be reduced with a factor of 4 and view-distance should be reduced from 10 to 6. As long as Aternos does not support adjustment of view-distance, server owners can only adjust player access. At our request however, Aternos has adjusted the default view-distance for just the servers using the WOTRMC modpack to 6. Nonetheless, it is still recommendable to allow no more than 4 players on a server (set Slots to 4). If more slots are desirable, do encourage players to band together as much as possible in order to reduce the average number of loaded chunks per player.
If you wish to encourage Aternos to support view-distance adjustment to the owners desire, please bump this request thread:
add-view-distance-capped-to-configurable-options
Server performance management
In order to optimise server performance and player convenience, there are a number of aspects of this modpack to keep in mind:
* The LOTRmod creates a vibrant and diverse game world, adding a lot of items and entities. This implies the server cpu and memory have a tougher time handling Middle-earth chunks than vanilla MC chunks. Therefore we recommend to reduce the view-distance. As Aternos doesn't support this (yet), we decided to use a few mod settings for this purpose, a.o. by reducing NPC spawn attempts, limiting the size and speed of ships and reducing the range where players respawn (Middle-earth respawning mechanics).
* The LOTRmod includes a feature to reduce NPC spawns in dependency of the number of players that are in-game. This is called spawnDamping, and is briefly explained on the LOTRmod commands page. The parameter values for this mechanic can be set using in-game commands but they are stored in a dat file in the world under World/LOTR/spawndamping.dat, so you can also use an NBT data editor to adjust them. We recommend to set all of these values to at least 0.1, but 0.2 or even 0,3 may be commendable as well.
* Access to Utumno is enabled, so anyone could go there at any time. The loading of the Utumno dimension and subsequent additional world generation imposes a heavy burden on any server. We therefore recommend to banner protect the entrance to Utumno and only open this in special server events.
Server size management
The maximum allowed server size of Aternos servers is limited to 4 GB. The world of Middle-earth created by the LOTRmod can easily and rapidly grow beyond that size as the Middle-earth map measures a stunning 350k x 450k blocks and fast travel and many accessible and fast mounts make it easy to explore and generate huge areas of world terrain. Most LOTRmodded servers have world files of 20-100 GB. For this reason it is important for server owners to either 'force' players to only use part of the Middle-earth map ... or to do regular checks and cleanups of the folder world/MiddleEarth/region. The latter is ofc more sympathetic towards players, but does require frequent checks and server owner discipline. A simple method to clean up superfluous region files is to just erase the oldest files. Most region files are created when players travel from one point to another to eventually be never visited again. In order to avoid players losing builds or other features important to them, it may be wise to keep some record of builds that need to be kept. The joetater mod that is included in the modpack can assist in performing regular resets, which would be a more rigorous method to keep the world size in check. A description of joetater is provided on this page.
World generation restrictions
Server owners can consider the following options to reduce the amount of generated region files:
- Define a theme for your LOTRmodded server that restricts the use of the world to only a restricted area. Examples of inspiring lore for such themes are: Battle of Bywater, Battle of Dale. and the Cleansing of Dol Guldur.
- Create multiple servers for various themes so you can get more of Middle earth while still using the free Aternos service! Use the same seed for these worlds, so you can more easily exchange builds you created in one part as they can be pasted looking more smoothly in the same generated environment (using WorldEdit ofc).
- Set rules to restrict travelling great distances, especially on mounts. This won't be popular and may be hard to maintain, but it can be very effective.
- Whether you set a theme for more restricted area activity or set rules to restrict travel, consider to force Show Map Location ON for all players. This does imply everyone can see where everyone else is, so it's a sort of huge meta-gaming player radar, but offensive abuse can be minimal when using consented PvP options of the PvP Mode mod.
WARNINGS
- The new server pack, as of January 23rd 2020, contains fewer world generation affecting mods than the old version. Any world created with the old version cannot be run using the new server pack!
- Bear in mind that the client packs contains much more mods than the server pack. This both relates to world generation and available items. Any world files or structures created with the client pack are likely not transferrable to worlds created with the new server pack!
