Minecraft Chunk Loaders – A Guide
Last modified on Sep 18, 2024 in General
By Nathan Young
Overview
Creating mob farms in Minecraft can be a challenging activity, especially if you’re trying to maximize its efficiency. There are countless designs to grind for item drops, with some being in different dimensions. Whether you’re making an enderman or skeleton farm, having it always work without nearby players is possible. This involves you creating a chunk loader in the Minecraft world, which works in Minecraft servers and singleplayer. These kinds of machines will keep several regions activated, meaning they always have ticks running within them. This comes in handy for farming, including growing crops for food like wheat or potatoes. Setting up a chunk loader can be difficult, as it requires some redstone knowledge. There are also some designs for these machines, ranging from complicated to simplistic. Due to this, we’ve created this Apex Hosting guide to show you how to make a chunk loader in Minecraft, along with giving other options to help your farming experience.
What is a Chunk Loader
As the name suggests, chunk loaders continuously load some regions in-game for any activities to always happen. This applies across dimensions too, meaning it’s not only for the Overworld. Only a 3×3 chunk area has the ability to process entities, allowing mob farming to be maximized. It’s encouraged to use Minecraft’s debug mode to reveal these borders, which is done by pressing F3 + G on your keyboard. As for creating a chunk loader, it requires redstone and other essential blocks that’ll keep an item transporting between a Nether portal to activate the regions. This process can be tedious to set up but is well worth the effort since your farms will always be operational despite no players nearby. If you’re wanting to begin creating your own chunk loader in Minecraft, review the subsections below to get started.
How to Make a Chunk Loader
Before starting this process, you’ll need some required resources. These include 10x
Obsidian, 14x
Building Blocks, 2x
Comparator, 2x
Redstone Dust, 4x
Dropper, 2x
Observer, 2x
Hopper, 1x
Flint & Steel, and 2x
Levers. Make sure to gather these supplies in your Minecraft world. If you’re having trouble collecting them, consider enabling cheats or becoming a server operator to easily obtain all required materials.
Afterward, follow the instructions below to build the chunk loader machine in your world.
- Locate your desired spot for the chunk loader, then break 2 blocks on the ground.
- Build a portal, then place 1 Dropper facing up and another one towards the portal.
- Connect 1 Hopper to the first dropper, then place a Comparator behind the dropper.
- Proceed to place a block behind the comparator, then use Redstone Dust on top of it.
- Afterward, set the Observer looking at the redstone so it functions properly.
- Continue to cover up the hopper with building blocks, so items drop correctly.
- Ignite the portal frame, enter the Nether dimension, and verify it’s where you want it.
- Once you’re ready, build the same machine for the second portal.
Note: Levers can be used to stop/start the machine, placed near the redstone dust.
- If successful, items will cross dimensions into the droppers to load chunks.
Chunk Loader Mods & Plugins
If you’re not wanting to learn all about redstone engineering to create a chunk loader, consider using mods or plugins. These can make it so much easier to accomplish this goal, as it’ll only require one block or another feature to quickly do it. We encourage you to try the Chunk Loaders modification on CurseForge, which is for Forge and Fabric across many Minecraft versions. There are other types of mods to choose from too, but this is by far the most popular one. As for plugins, we recommend using ChunkLoader on Spigot which provides you with commands and a menu to quickly set this up. Depending on your Minecraft server or singleplayer setup, these addons will be a huge help for farming in-game.
Common Issues
Unfortunately, lots of players may encounter problems with their newly built chunk loader machine in Minecraft. For example, having the Nether portal within two chunks will not work. This means you and others alike must view the region borders to build the machine in the center. Doing this involves you pressing F3 + G on your keyboard, allowing you to see the chunks properly. Apply this solution in both the Overworld and Nether dimensions, then try to see if that worked. Otherwise, double check your observers, droppers, comparators, and other blocks are correctly configured. However, another problem is that the item dropping into the Nether isn’t being picked up by the machine. This means you have to switch around the design, such as swapping positions for the hopper and dropper. Essentially, you need to have that dropped item be in an endless loop to successfully create a chunk loader in Minecraft.
While having active chunk loaders in your Minecraft world, there may come a time when the server begins to lag. This tends to happen when there are too many machines force loading chunks, as it takes up more resources. Solving this requires you to optimize the server, which can be done by reviewing our modded or non-modded tutorials. Alternatively, stopping the machines or some of them can resolve the situation entirely. It’s only recommended that a couple of chunk loaders are kept active in the world, as this prevents performance issues.
In some cases, players may not get the modifications or plugins to work properly in-game. If this happens, make sure to double check that you’ve installed the correct mod loader or game version. For example, Forge 1.20.1 needs to be active if you have addons for that. This can be done by selecting it from the Game File area of your Apex server panel but can be cliently installed too if needed. This tends to apply only for mods, but plugins require Spigot or Paper with the corresponding game version to also work properly. Afterward, becoming a server operator or having cheats enabled is required to begin using the addon correctly. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any concerns about this situation.
Conclusion
As you continue using chunk loaders in Minecraft, make sure to not overdo it. This is due to possible performance issues, as it uses more resources on your server or computer. However, a few of these machines are perfect for multiple farms. Whether you want to get mob drops or grow crops, there’s always an opportunity with chunk loaders. We hope this Apex Hosting guide helps you create many machines to constantly keep your farms loaded in Minecraft. Remember, you also have mods or plugins as options to achieve the same goal.
Useful Links
How to Make a Nether Portal in Minecraft
Making Mob Farms in Minecraft
How to Enable Cheats in Minecraft
Becoming a Minecraft Server Operator