Performance & Shaders

Nytheria runs over 400 mods on Minecraft 1.21.1 with Fabric, so it ships a full set of speed mods, its own repair mod TickMender and a memory recommendation. Shaders are included, but they are switched off until you press a key. This page covers memory, the performance mods, the starting video settings, the shader packs and the steps for a PC that struggles.

Memory first#

Give the game 10 GB (10,240 MB). The pack does not support less than 8 GB (8,192 MB). The pack's own notes say that the live memory use in play is 6 to 7 GB, and that a resource reload late in a long session needs about 9 to 10 GB. The same figures are on the Installation page, together with the steps for the CurseForge app.

• The CurseForge app does not read the pack's user_jvm_args.txt and starts the game with its own small default. You set the memory with the slider in the profile options.
• Memory Settings warns when the game has less than 4,096 MB or more than 12,288 MB, and when your value is more than 30 percent away from its own table. Do not give the game all of your RAM.
• TickMender shows a title-screen hint with the recommended Java arguments. It adds "This modpack runs best with 10 GB of memory" only when the game has less than 10,000 MB and the PC has at least 16,000 MB of RAM.

According to the pack's own measurements, the pack's tuned G1 line of Java arguments beats the ZGC and AppCDS alternatives, but at 8 GB a long flight still causes one or two full garbage collections of 1.2 to 1.9 seconds, whatever arguments you use. That is the reason for the 10 GB recommendation. The line is optional and is printed on the Installation page.

Overview#

Performance in a pack this size comes from four layers. Rendering mods draw less. Game-logic mods do the same work with fewer steps. Memory and loading mods shrink what stays in RAM. Finally, TickMender repairs known problems in other mods. Everything below works without any setting from you.

Performance mods#

Nytheria lists 34 mods in the catalogue category Performance, plus the shader helper Euphoria Patcher. The table names the main ones by job. Server-side mods are invisible to players but matter when you host a world.

The shipped Sodium defaults are applied once through Polybind: automatic chunk builder threads, deferred chunk building, a render-ahead limit of 3, block face and fog occlusion culling, and entity culling on. A pack update only reaches settings you never changed.

TickMender#

TickMender is a mod made for Nytheria. It does not change gameplay. It carries 40 switches, of which 39 are on in the pack. They fix lag spikes, memory leaks, load-time stalls and noisy logs, in the game itself and in other mods, among them Puzzles Lib, the Aether, the Twilight Forest, Better Caves and Iris. A log filter with 58 patterns removes harmless noise from the log.

• Camera shake limit. TickMender caps the screen shake that other mods cause at strength 0.5 and 6 degrees per frame, so shake from other mods is weaker.
• Java hint. On the title screen it shows the recommended Java arguments with a Copy button, a Done button and "Do not show again". It never writes launcher files and never contains -Xmx or -Xms.
• Measured effect. According to its README, a warm start loaded a world in 6 to 8 seconds instead of 34 to 47 seconds in most runs on the author's PC. Your numbers will differ.

Starting video settings#

The pack ships these video settings as a good starting point on the first launch. After that, your own changes are kept.

These values are one machine's settings, so treat them as a starting point rather than a promise. Polybind applies them once, and a later pack update only reaches options you never touched. Press F11 to switch between full screen and a window if you want a chat or the CurseForge app next to the game.

Shaders#

Shaders give the world shadows, water and sky effects, and they cost frame rate, above all the shadows. Nytheria includes three shader packs, switched off by default.

What is included#

Iris Shaders 1.8.14-beta.1 loads the packs and runs on Sodium. The pack folder holds three shader packs and one generated preset folder:

Shadows render up to 24 chunks at most (maxShadowRenderDistance). Iris does not accept unknown shader packs (allowUnknownShaders is false), and its colour space is sRGB.

Switch shaders on and off#

• K turns shaders on or off. The preset is already selected, so one press starts it.
• O opens the shader pack screen, where you pick another pack.
• R reloads the shaders. It shares the key with the reach-around toggle and the Toggle Enchantments menu, so hold it to open the Polybind wheel. See Controls.

Shaders and the other visual mods#

• Stellar View Remastered draws the night sky, and hands the sky to the shader while one is active. It takes the sky back when you switch shaders off.
• Better Clouds is set not to use Iris support.
• Dynamic Lighting adds ordinary block light for held items. A shader pack with its own hand-held light can count a torch twice.
• Early Bedtime lets you sleep from tick 11,500 instead of later, because it exists for shader packs that get dark quickly.

More about the look of the world, the weather and the sky is on Atmosphere & Visuals.

Tips for a weaker PC#

Change one thing at a time and check the frame rate after each step.

1. Press K to switch shaders off. Shaders are the largest single cost.
2. Lower the render distance from 12, then the simulation distance from 10.
3. Reduce particles from All. The pack adds many particle effects.
4. Switch Graphics from Fancy to Fast.
5. Turn off the Fresh Animations packs. They animate mobs and need Entity Model Features and Entity Texture Features to work.
6. Lower the entity distance below 75 %.
7. Check the memory against the first section.

Two settings are already in your favour. Dynamic FPS lowers the frame rate while the window is in the background, which is why the frame rate drops when you alt-tab. Sodium Extra adds extra pages to the video screen where you can switch off single effects.

Particles, light and animation#

Several visual mods have a cost you can see in the frame rate, and the pack already trims some of it.

• Particles. Particular ✨ Reforged has its fireflies, falling leaves and waterfall spray switched off, so that Subtle Effects and Falling Leaves draw those instead. Subtle Effects has particle culling on, with a render distance of 5.
• Light. Dynamic Lighting runs in fancy mode with the short range, where light loses 2 levels per block. Self light and entity lights are on.
• Animation. The Fresh Animations family and Fresh Moves are resource packs. Entity Model Features, Entity Texture Features and Entity Sound Features make them work, and NotEnoughAnimations adds more animation.
• Camera. Camera Overhaul is on, also in third person, with a sway of 0.6 and a screen-shake maximum of 2.5. TickMender's camera shake limit applies on top of it.
• Biome colours. Better Biome ReBlend adds its own blend radius of 7 on top of the biome blend of 2 in the table above.

Resource packs and speed#

The pack loads 16 resource packs: 12 zips in the resource pack folder and 4 pack folders in the global packs folder. The default selection for a new player lists 22 entries, including built-in packs of several mods, and the later entries win where two packs change the same file. The Fresh Animations packs sit above the base pack, as their add-ons require, and Enhanced Boss Bars is enabled by default. If you turn the animation packs off to save frame rate, leave the rest of the list as it is.

The four global resource pack folders are always on. They hold the quest book theme, the pack's own assets and two small fixes, so there is nothing to tune in them.

Hosting a world#

If you host, the server-side mods matter more than the video settings. ServerCore and Very Many Players tune ticking and busy servers, Chunk Sending reduces network load, and Alternate Current speeds up redstone. The server pack template asks for 10 GB of RAM in its variables.txt, and the machine needs about 25 percent more than that. Memory advice for servers and the ports are on Running a Server.

Finding the cause of lag#

• The debug screen. BetterF3 replaces the F3 screen with a tidier one. Watch the memory value. If it climbs to the top again and again, the game needs more memory or something leaks.
• spark is a profiler for the client and the server that shows what uses CPU time and memory. Attach its report when you ask for help on Discord.
• Observable is a lag profiler for busy chunks and entities. Its key is unbound; bind one in Key Binds if you want it.

If the game crashes or freezes instead of just running slowly, read Troubleshooting.

In the quest book#

The quest book does not cover performance or shaders. The journal screen itself needs no setting from you.

See also#

• Installation - memory slider and the optional Java arguments
• Troubleshooting - startup problems, crashes and keys
• Controls - the shader keys and the Polybind wheels
• Atmosphere & Visuals - sky, weather, sound and light
• Quality-of-Life Mods - helper mods that save clicks
• Made for Nytheria - TickMender and the other mods built for the pack