Farm & Entity Limits
From CatCraft Wiki
Contents
Summary
CatCraft plays like vanilla Minecraft. Mob farms, animal breeding, villager trading halls, iron golem farms, spawner farms and redstone all work the way you know them. To keep every Realm smooth for everyone, a few generous limits apply when very large numbers of mobs, vehicles or redstone blocks are packed into one place. Most builds never come close to them.
This page lists those limits so you can plan big farms around them. They differ slightly between the Red, Green and Blue Realms, so pick your Realm with the buttons above the limits. They apply in the main Overworld, the Resource world, the Nether and the End, and may change over time, so keep an eye on the changelog channel on our Discord server.
How the limits work
Each limit is a number of mobs and a distance, such as “30 within 20 blocks”. It works in two ways.
- Breeding and spawning. A mob can’t be bred or spawned when that many of its group are already within that distance of it. A message in chat tells you when breeding stops.
- Linked groups. Every few minutes, mobs of the same type that are each within that distance of another one link up into a group. A group can stretch much further than the distance, like a long row of pens that are close together. If a group goes over the limit, the extras are removed.
To keep a very big farm safe, leave a gap wider than the distance between pens of the same animal, or keep each linked group under its limit. Tamed animals are only removed by their own pet limits (wolves, cats, horses and happy ghasts).
Animal and mob limits
On the Green Realm, also up to 5 chickens and 10 turtles
Spawner mobs don’t wander, but water streams still move them
counted together
Named mobs count too, and tamed wolves, cats, horses and happy ghasts count toward their own limits.
Vehicle limits
each type
On the Red and Blue Realms, spread boats and hopper minecarts across a few chunks rather than packing them all into one.
Large animal groups
When 15 or more animals stand within 5 blocks of each other, they stand still and stop pushing each other, which keeps big pens running smoothly. They still grow, breed and drop items as normal, and animals that are named, tamed, on a lead or ready to breed aren’t affected.
Chunk limits
These limits apply per chunk (a 16 x 16 block column) on every Realm. Once a chunk is full, you can’t place any more of that block there.
| Block | Limit per chunk |
|---|---|
 Hoppers |
64 |
 Pistons |
64 |
 Observers |
64 |
 Redstone repeaters |
64 |
 Redstone dust |
128 |
| Spawners |
128 |
 Beds |
128 |
Mob spawning near players
- Mob spawning works per player, so every player gets their own share of mobs around them and one big farm never takes spawns away from others.
- Mobs spawn within about 3 chunks (roughly 48 blocks) of a player.
- Mobs more than 48 blocks from every player despawn, and past 24 blocks (32 blocks on the Green Realm) they can despawn at random.
- Mobs, crops and redstone run within 4 chunks (about 64 blocks) of a player. Anything further away pauses until someone comes closer.
- Phantoms are optional. Turn them on for yourself with /phantoms toggle. They are off by default, so you can skip sleeping without being chased.
Farm tips
AFK farm tips
- The ideal AFK spot for a natural mob-spawning farm is 48 blocks from the spawning platforms, or slightly within this range. Any further and the mobs despawn as soon as they spawn.
- Keep the whole farm within 4 chunks of where you stand, or it will stop running.
- Size your farm to the limits for your Realm. Mobs beyond a limit are cleared, so a bigger pen won’t give you more drops.
- Mobs from spawners don’t wander, but water streams still move them, so water-based spawner farms work as normal without straining the server.
Villager trading halls
Villagers’ pathfinding and AI take a lot of work for the server. So that you can build large trading halls without lag, villagers packed into a trading hall have their pathfinding (movement) switched off. They still refresh their trades as normal.
Villager breeders and iron golem farms
Villager breeders and iron golem farms need the villagers to pathfind (move). Give the villagers enough space to move around, so the server recognises them as part of a farm and not a trading hall.
Iron golem farms need villagers to alternate between scared and unscared states, so they can sleep and reset their internal timers. Optimisations to shapes and hitboxes in the server software have stopped some farm designs from working. If a zombie is always in view, the villagers stay scared and can’t reset their timers.
To fix this, design the farm so the villagers have enough time to switch between scared and unscared.