Help/Optimizing Performance

Are you ever in Middle-earth and find that your FPS is falling down to near zero? Or are you busy fighting the Hill-troll Chieftain, only to watch helplessly as a lagspike of death comes upon you, resulting in your death? Well, with a few tweaks, you can help increase the FPS you're getting in this mod, and this will probably help you survive.

What FPS do I need?

In general, any FPS of 30 or higher will be sufficient to fully enjoy this Mod, although if your PC will do 50+ FPS, that's even better. Any FPS of 30 or lower could result in you dying excessively often, especially in PvP.

If you are playing on Multiplayer

If you're playing multiplayer, a common cause of the lag is that the server is overloaded. Signs of this include blocks not breaking properly, and NPCs taking damage seconds after your hit them. In that case, try reconnecting when the server is less busy, and avoid riding horses when the server is busy. Horses force the server to generate chunks faster than normal, which can cause lots of lag for everyone.

If your server is laggy

If you own your own server and players are constantly complaining about the lag, there are a few things that you can do in order to reduce server lag:

• Tell players to not ride fast mounts (horses, rhinos, etc.), raise too many animals in the same place or travel with too many hired units. This doesn't solve your problem, but it can at least help other players get better FPS while you're working on one of the solutions that follow.
• Avoid running MCPC+ and Bukkit plugins. This Mod doesn't always work properly with MCPC+, and using excessive Bukkit plugins can really slow your server down.
• Run your server on a "headless" (without Graphical User Interface) operating system, such as Linux or *BSD, instead of Windows or OSX. These systems will use fewer resources and be much more customizable, helping your server run faster.
• Allocate more RAM to your server.
• Run your world from a Solid State Drive instead of a spinning one.
• Avoid hosting your server on a laptop, because they are slower and have poorer cooling than desktop or server machines.
• Do not use your server for anything other than hosting Lord of the Rings. Using the same computer to host LotR and to watch a YouTube video will make for block lag and unhappy players.
• Connect your server to the internet via Ethernet if possible, because WiFi can get overloaded if there are too many people online. Make sure that it's "fast" Ethernet though, because regular Ethernet only has a speed of 10 MB/s.
• If you are hosting your server at home, consider getting fiber-optic cable, because it usually has a higher upload speed than DSL or ADSL. With DSL, you'll have a hard time getting an upload speed that exceeds 3 MB/s (even though your download speed may be 10 times higher), and upload, not download, speed is very important for any server, including a Minecraft server.
• Go for professional hosting, if you want to host a server for more that about 40 people. Also, rent a server that's a little bigger than you think you'll need; it will mean smoother gameplay.
• Prefer dedicated hosting to cloud (virtualised) hosting.
• Apply one of the solutions marked with an * that can help singleplayer run faster (see below)

Increasing FPS in singleplayer

Installing mods

• (For Legacy) Install Fastcraft. Fastcraft is a small mod that greatly helps increase your framerate. Unlike Optifine (see below) it runs on Forge, and is completely compatible with pretty much all Forge mods (including this one). Mevans himself stated that Fastcraft can virtually double your FPS in places such as Fangorn and Lothlórien You can download it here. *
• Make sure that you are using the latest version of the Mod. You will need the latest version of the Mod to enjoy the full-featured experience, and the later versions of the Mod are typically more performance-optimized than the older versions. *
• Remove any shaders that you're currently using, as these can be quite performance-intensive.

Changing launcher options

• Make sure your game is running 64-bit Java, if not, it'll not be able to use more than 2GB of RAM, and it won't use multiple cores very well. To ensure you are using 64-bit Java, put -d64 into the "JVM arguments" line.
  • For this to work, you must also allocate 4G (or more) of RAM to the game and Java, see here for how to do that.*
• Allocate more RAM to Minecraft. See the guide for fixing RAM crashes. Don't exceed 75% of your PC's available RAM, otherwise, you risk crashing it.*
  • If the above tip doesn't work, you may need to allocate more RAM to Java. See Bat's blog post regarding how to do this.

Changing in-game options

• Disable invasions and don't hire excessively large armies, as rendering a lot of NPC's is very performance intensive. Or, if you want to keep experiencing invasions, using the divide and conquer tactic will make invasions easier to defeat, as well as increasing your FPS.
• Turn down your render distance. However, if you find yourself being forced to go below 8 chunks to get decent FPS, then you'll probably need to try some other method.
• Set graphics from Fancy to Fast -- please don't use Fast graphics when taking Wiki screenshots, however.
• Turn off smooth lighting and clouds -- again, please leave smooth lighting on when taking screenshots for the Wiki.
• Set particles to minimal.
• Looking at the sky has also been known to briefly increase FPS. However if you are deep underground, looking down toward the Void (please don't ask Melkor to be added, however) may also have the same effect.

Computer-related options

• Make sure no other programs are running while Minecraft is. Video rendering programs, for example, can be CPU intensive, and even an Internet browser like Google Chrome idling in the background can eat up 1G of RAM.*
• Go to your task manager and set javaw.exe to High priority (NOT Realtime as that will crash your system). *
• Put the .minecraft folder (or whatever directory you're using for Lord of the Rings) on a solid-state drive, so that the world and game itself can be loaded faster (you'll notice this especially when first starting the game). If you have enough RAM, put it on a RAM drive, which is even faster than either a SSD or hard drive. Make sure to back-up frequently, however, because a power outage could cause you to lose all your progress (and lead to unhappy players if you're hosting a server). *
• Make sure that you're using RAM to run the game, and not your hard-drive or SSD. If Minecraft runs low on RAM, it will sometimes start using the hard drive/SSD as if it were RAM, making the program slow down by a lot. *
• Turn off Aero in Windows Vista/7. *

Hardware-related options

• Keep your computer cool. Make sure that there's no dust clogging fans or cooling fins and that the room your computer is in is kept cool. Temperatures over 80°C will cause the computer's CPU to throttle to avoid overheating, which will usually result in a sudden lag spike. It could also shorten the life of your processor. *
  • This is especially problematic for laptops, which by nature have less airflow than desktops.
  • You can also try replacing the thermal paste on your CPU if it's getting old.
• If you're playing on a higher-end laptop that has a graphics card, make sure that you're using the dedicated graphics card, and not your CPU's integrated graphics.
  • If you don't know how to do this, see here.
• Make sure your graphics card drivers are up-to-date.

Computer upgrades

Before doing these, open your Task Manager while the game is running, and look at what percentage of your computer's resources (RAM, CPU, and GPU) are being used by javaw.exe.

• Windows: CTL + ALT + DEL
• Mac: Command + Option + Shift + Esc

The one whose usage percentage is the highest is the bottleneck in your computer, and is the one you should upgrade to improve performance. If none of them are close to maxing out, your problem is likely related to either your motherboard, cooling, or power supply.

Before you start replacing components: Check to make sure that the other components in your PC are compatible with the upgrade you're planning to install! It is generally wise double-check your computer's existing components and their limits before you start investing in upgrades. Otherwise, your upgrade may end up costing a lot more money than you initially planned on.

Hard drive

A slow hard drive won't generally cause low FPS, but it will often cause game startup and chunk loading to be slow, and an undersized hard drive may limit how many worlds you can have and how many screenshots you take. While defragmenting the drive can help speed things up, it is often better to simply replace an older hard drive with a solid state drive, as this is a relatively simple and inexpensive upgrade, even on a laptop.

RAM

Installing RAM is generally easy and inexpensive, even in laptops. Before you start, check whether your motherboard and CPU can use the extra RAM you intend to add. If not, you'll likely have to replace one or both. Also check whether your motherboard RAM slots are DDR2, DDR3, DDR4, or DDR5, as they are not interchangeable.

Processor

Minecraft is by nature a very CPU-intensive game, and this is usually the area in which you'll get the biggest return on your investments. The faster your CPU, the better!

• Be aware that a faster CPU may generate more heat than your old one, and require (potentially expensive) upgrades to your cooling system. Take this into consideration when shopping for your new CPU.
• Check how many sockets your motherboard has before installing a new CPU. Otherwise, the new one may not fit.

GPU

Upgrading the GPU is usually the lowest-priority item on the list, unless you want to run a lot of shaders or high-resolution texture packs. If you do decide to upgrade the GPU, or add a GPU to a computer that doesn't already have one (usually only possible on desktops), an entry-level one should meet your needs just fine.

Cooling

If you are experiencing lag spikes, even with capable hardware (especially in warmer weather), then your cooling system is a good place to check. Assuming that all the components are in good working order, a simple and inexpensive upgrade is to add a case fan if you have a desktop. If you have a laptop, consider investing in a cooling pad.

Power supply

In general, you won't have to upgrade the power supply, unless you added a whole bunch of power-hungry hardware to your computer. An undersized power supply can cause throttling, but this is distinguishable from thermal throttling by monitoring the temperature of the components as thermal throttling only sets in above 80^oC, whereas power supply throttling can occur regardless of the temperature.

Motherboard

Generally, you shouldn't have to replace the motherboard unless you have made extensive modifications to your computer's hardware and you find that it isn't helping.